As Pisa Has Ceased To Be The Colony Of Literary English It Once Was, In
The Time Of Byron And Hunt And Shelley, To Name No Others, So Leghorn
Has Ceased To Be The Mercantile Colony Of Former Days.
It has still a
great deal of commerce with England, but this is no longer carried on by
resident
Merchants, though here and there an English name lingers in the
style of a business house; and the distinctive qualities of both
colonies are united in the author of a charming book who fills the post
of British consul at Leghorn. His _Tuscan Towns_ must not be confused
with another book called _Tuscan Cities,_ though, if the traveller
chooses to carry both with him about Tuscany, I will not say that he
could do better. In _Tuscan Cities_ there is nothing about Leghorn, I
believe, but in _Tuscan Towns_ there is a specially delightful chapter
about the place, its people, language, and customs which I can commend
to the reader as the best corrective of the errors I must have been
constantly falling into here.
It was in company no less enviable than this author's that I revisited
the port on a gray Sunday afternoon of my stay, and then for the first
time visited the ancient fortifications which began to be in the time of
the Countess Matilde and intermittently increased under the rule of the
Pisan, Genoese, and Florentine republics, until the Medicean grand-dukes
amplified them in almost the proportions I saw.
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