of fire." Indeed, the whole country seems as if it were covered with electric sparks*.

From the following lines, taken from a short poem in Heber's Indian Journals, intitled "An Evening Walk in Bengal," these insects appear to be equally abundant in the eastern hemisphere:Yet mark! as fade the upper skies, Each thicket opes ten thousand eyes. Before, beside us, and above, The fire-fly lights his lamp of love, Retreating, chasing, sinking, soaring, The darkness of the copse exploring.

SIENA.

Empty lodgings and unfurnished walls,

Unpeopled offices, untrodden stones.-SHAKSPEARE.

THE road from Florence to Siena is hilly and tedious. The views between the former place and Poggibonsi are agreeably diversified, but they are hardly fine enough to account for the fame of Tuscan scenery. The vales and lower declivities of the hills are covered with cornfields and vineyards; the upper slopes, with olive-groves. But this country, abounding with corn, wine, and oil, may be said to be pretty rather than picturesque. If the orange-tree is thought to be too round and formal in its appearance to constitute a picturesque object, what shall we say of the olive, the mulberry, the poplar, and the elm?-the first of these being, from the paleness and scantiness of its foliage, scarcely more beautiful than the common willow; and the others, to which the vine is here invariably married, being on that account pruned after the fashion of an English filbert. Such, however-with the exception of a few cypresses scattered here and there

are the only trees that cover the somewhat arid hills of this part of Tuscany; for here the Englishman will look in vain for the thick-matted herbage, and umbrageous masses of wood, that distinguish the landscapes of Britain. Between Poggibonsi and Siena, the country wears a less pleasing aspect, but it does not degenerate into down

right deformity: in fact, the scenery between Florence and Poggibonsi seems to have been too much eulogized; between Poggibonsi and Siena, to have been too unsparingly condemned.

Siena, which once reckoned a hundred-and-fifty thousand inhabitants, now scarcely contains an eighth of the number. It stands on the summit of a bleak hill. On entering by the Florentine gate, you pass through a long irregular street, which nearly bisects this depopulated town; but you must strike off among the less frequented streets, before you meet with the objects of principal interest-the Lizza, the Citadel, the Cathedral, and the Piazza del Campo. It is only here that you meet with tiles laid in that fish-bone manner, supposed to be the "spicata testacea" of Pliny. In the "master-line," and some others of the principal streets, the pavement, though formed of smaller stones, may compare with that of Flo

rence.

The term palace is everywhere prostituted in Italy, but nowhere more so than at Siena, where every gentleman's house-though few of them include courts, the distinctive feature of a palace-is dignified with that high-sounding name. Some of these old mansions are in a mixed, demi-gothic style—a style which characterizes all the public works of their two most distinguished architects, Agostino and Agnolo.

The Piazza del Campo is sloped, like an ancient theatre, for public games; and, like that, forms the segment of a circle, in the chord of which stands the Palazzo Pubblico a work of different dates and designs, and

parcelled out into different objects-such as the public offices, the courts of law, the theatre, and the prisons. The Sala del Consistorio is embellished by some frescos of Mecherino's, remarkable for their difficult foreshortenings: among them is a figure of Justice, of which Vasari says, that "it is impossible to conceive a more beautiful one among all that were ever painted with a view to appear foreshortened when seen from below." In other respects, however, these works are thought to be on too large a scale to exhibit a very favourable specimen of Mecherino's style-that style being, according to Lanzi, "somewhat like a spirit which retains all its strength so long as it is pent up in a phial, but which, when poured out into a larger vessel, evaporates and is lost." In the same Sala is a Judgment of Solomon, by Giordano; and in other apartments may be seen various works by Salimbeni, Casolani, &c. All these works, however, sustained considerable injury from the earthquakes of 1797, which damaged this as well as many other palaces at Siena.

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In the Cathedral-considered one of the finest in Italy we see the same piebald architecture which we have already had occasion to notice more than once: we find marble walls polished on both sides, and built in alternate courses of black and white-a front overcharged with ornament on the outside, and plain within-a belfry annexed, but not incorporated with the pile-a cupola bearing plumb on its four supports-circular arches resting on round pillars-doors in double architraves — columns based upon lions tearing lambs. All these are

peculiar to the Tuscan churches built in the Lombard style; but here, too, are indisputable marks of the Gothic, particularly on the front, the vaults, and the windows*.”

The labour bestowed on this edifice must have been almost endless. The very spouts are loaded with ornament; the windows are formed like so many scenes of perspective, with a multitude of puny pillars retiring one behind another; the larger columns are carved with fruits and foliage, which run twisting about them from top to bottom; the whole front is covered with such a variety of figures, and such a profusion of decoration, that nothing can be better suited to the taste of those who prefer false beauties and meretricious ornaments to a noble and majestic simplicity.

On contemplating the architecture of this cathedral, we can hardly help falling into the reflections which the sight of it excited in Addison. "When," says he, "a man sees the prodigious pains and expense that our forefathers have been at in these barbarous buildings, one cannot but fancy what miracles of architecture they would have left us, had they only been instructed in the right way; for, when the devotion of those ages was much warmer than it is at present, and the riches of the people much more at the disposal of the priests, there was as much consumed on these Gothic cathedrals, as would have finished a greater variety of noble buildings than have been raised either before or since that time.”

The pavement of this cathedral-a sort of engraved

* Forsyth.