Florentine Notes

I

Yesterday that languid organism known as the Florentine Carnival
put on a momentary semblance of vigour, and decreed a general
corso through the town. The spectacle was not brilliant,
but it suggested some natural reflections. I encountered the line
of carriages in the square before Santa Croce, of which they were
making the circuit. They rolled solemnly by, with their inmates
frowning forth at each other in apparent wrath at not finding
each other more worth while. There were no masks, no costumes, no
decorations, no throwing of flowers or sweetmeats. It was as if
each carriageful had privately and not very heroically resolved
not to be at costs, and was rather discomfited at finding that it
was getting no better entertainment than it gave. The middle of
the piazza was filled with little tables, with shouting
mountebanks, mostly disguised in battered bonnets and crinolines,
offering chances in raffles for plucked fowls and kerosene lamps.
I have never thought the huge marble statue of Dante, which
overlooks the scene, a work of the last refinement; but, as it
stood there on its high pedestal, chin in hand, frowning down on
all this cheap foolery, it seemed to have a great moral
intention. The carriages followed a prescribed course--through
Via Ghibellina, Via del Proconsolo, past the Badia and the
Bargello, beneath the great tessellated cliffs of the Cathedral,
through Via Tornabuoni and out into ten minutes' sunshine beside
the Arno. Much of all this is the gravest and stateliest part of
Florence, a quarter of supreme dignity, and there was an almost
ludicrous incongruity in seeing Pleasure leading her train
through these dusky historic streets. It was most uncomfortably
cold, and in the absence of masks many a fair nose was
fantastically tipped with purple. But as the carriages crept
solemnly along they seemed to keep a funeral march--to follow an
antique custom, an exploded faith, to its tomb. The Carnival is
dead, and these good people who had come abroad to make merry
were funeral mutes and grave-diggers. Last winter in Rome it
showed but a galvanised life, yet compared with this humble
exhibition it was operatic. At Rome indeed it was too operatic.
The knights on horseback there were a bevy of circus-riders, and
I'm sure half the mad revellers repaired every night to the
Capitol for their twelve sous a day.

I have just been reading over the Letters of the President de
Brosses. A hundred years ago, in Venice, the Carnival lasted six
months; and at Rome for many weeks each year one was free, under
cover of a mask, to perpetrate the most fantastic follies and
cultivate the most remunerative vices. It's very well to read the
President's notes, which have indeed a singular