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No taste, no arrangement, paltry looking-glasses, and rat's-tail candles. I had half a mind to return to Boboli. October 23rd. Do you recollect our evening rambles last year upon the hill of pines? and the dark valley where we used to muse in the twilight? I remember we often fancied the scene like Valombrosa; and vowed, if ever an occasion offered, to visit that deep retirement.
They are not quite on a level with the parks of London, it is true; or even with the Tuileries, or Luxembourg, or the Boboli, or the Villa Reale, or fifty more grounds and gardens, of a similar nature, that might be mentioned; but, seen in the spring and early summer, they adorn the building they surround, and lend to the whole neighbourhood a character of high civilization, that no other place in America can show, in precisely the same form, or to the same extent.
"She has a headache," said Effie. "Oh, I'm sorry," returned Colville. "Yes, she deputed me to take her young people out for an airing," said Mrs. Amsden; "and Miss Graham decided us for the Boboli, where she hadn't been yet. I've done what I could to make the place attractive. But what is an old woman to do for a girl in a garden?
Thorns, though figurative, remind one of the cicala, a creature which leaves nothing else untouched here. Surely their clamours and depredations have no equal. I used to walk in the Boboli Gardens, defying the heat, till they had eaten up the little shade some hedges there afforded me; and till, by their incessant noise, all thought is disturbed, and no line presented itself to my memory but
He has had the ingenuity to protect himself in his own climate, but when he travels he is at the mercy of customs and traditions in which the idea of physical comfort is still rudimentary. He cannot warm himself before a group of statuary, or extract heat from a canvas by Raphael, nor keep his teeth from chattering by the exquisite view from the Boboli Gardens.
He examined them with charmed attention until she closed them on the handle of her umbrella. Then, standing behind her, he looked at her again. Her bust and arms, graceful and pure in line, her beautiful form, which was like that of a living amphora, pleased him. "Monsieur Dechartre, that black spot over there is the Boboli Gardens, is it not? I saw the gardens three years ago.
She picked up from the spot where he had thrown his shawl a handsome morocco-bound pocket copy of Dante, and opening it to discover the name of the owner, she saw written on the fly-leaf in a bold and beautiful hand, "S. E. M., Boboli Gardens, Florence. Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch' entrate." "What does this mean, grandpa?" She held up the book and pointed out the words of the dread inscription.
Having remained some time in this pious hue, I returned home and feasted upon grapes and ortolans with great edification; then walked to one of the bridges across the Arno, and surveyed the hills at a distance, purpled by the declining sun. Its mild beams tempted me to the garden of Boboli, which lies behind the Palazzo Pitti, stretched out on the side of a mountain.
The gardens of Boboli never appeared more beautiful than now, for the solemn shadow of the groves was relieved by the soft illumination of the broad paths; the sheets of water glistened in the quiet moonbeams, and every statue and every sculptured form was invested with a new and indescribable beauty.
And so also it has been with Florence; where I spent three weeks: enough for the first hazy radiant dawn of sympathy to pass away; yet constantly adding an increase of knowledge and of love, while I examined, and tried to understand, the wonderful minds that have left behind them there such abundant traces of their presence.... On Sunday, the day before I left Florence, I went to the highest part of the Grand Duke's Garden of Boboli, which commands a view of most of the City, and of the vale of the Arno to the westward; where, as we had been visited by several rainy days, and now at last had a very fine one, the whole prospect was in its highest beauty.
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