Bologna, July 6, 1851.

"See Naples and die!" says the proverb: but I am in no hurry to "shuffle off this mortal coil," and rather weary of seeing. I think I should have found a few choice friends in Naples, but my time is limited, and the traveling through Southern Italy neither pleasant nor expeditious. Of Vesuvius in its milder moods I never had a high opinion; and, though I should have liked to tread the unburied streets of Pompeii, yet Rome has nearly surfeited me with ruins. So I shortened my tour in Italy by cutting off the farther end of it, and turned my face obliquely homeward from the Eternal City. What has the world to show of by-gone glory and grandeur which she cannot at least equal?

Let no one be sanguine as to his good resolutions. I as firmly resolved, when I first shook from my feet the dust of Civita Vecchia, that I never again would enter its gates, as I ever did to do or forbear any act whatever. But, after a tedious and ineffectual attempt to make up a party of Americans to come through from Rome to Florence direct, I was at last obliged to knock under. All the seats by Diligence or Mail on that route were taken ahead for a longer time than I could afford to wait; and offers to fill an extra coach if the proprietors would send one were utterly unavailing. Such a thing as Enterprise is utterly unknown south of Genoa, and the idea of any obligation on the part of proprietors of stage-lines to make extra efforts to accommodate an extra number of passengers is so queer that I doubt whether Italian could be found to express it. So some dozen or more who would gladly have gone through by land to Florence were driven back upon Civita Vecchia and Leghorn—I among the number.

Three of us left Rome in a private carriage at noon on Tuesday the 1st, and reached Civita Vecchia at 10 minutes past 9 P. M.—the inner gate having been closed at 9. One of my companions was known and responsibly connected at the port, and so was enabled to negotiate our admission, though the process was a tedious one, and our carriage had to be left in the outer court, or between the two walls. Here I left it at 10; it may have been got in afterward. We found all the rooms taken at the best Hotel (Orlandi), and were driven to accept such as there were left. The boat (Languedoc) was advertised to start for Leghorn at 7 next morning, by which time I succeeded in getting my Passport cleared (for no steamboat in these waters will give you a permit to embark until you have handed in your Passport, duly cleared, at its office, as well as paid for your passage); but the boat was coolly taking in water long after its advertised hour, and did not start until half past eight.

We had an unusually large number of passengers, about one hundred and fifty, representing nearly every European nation, with a goodly number of Americans; the day was cloudy and cool; the wind light and propitious; the sea calm and smooth; so that I doubt if there was ever a more favorable passage. I was sick myself, a result of the night-air of the Campagna, bad lodging and inability to obtain a salt-water bath in the morning, by reason of the Passport nuisance, but for which I should have been well and hearty. We made Leghorn (120 miles) in about eleven hours, which is very good time for the Mediterranean. But reaching the harbor of Leghorn was one thing, getting ashore quite another; an hour or more elapsed before any of us had permission to land. I was one of the two first who got off, through the preconcerted interposition of a powerful Leghorn friend who had procured a special permit from the Police, and at whose hospitable mansion we passed the night. I was unwell throughout; but an early bath in the Mediterranean was the medicine I required, and from the moment of taking it I began to recover. By seasonable effort, I recovered my Passport from the Police office, duly visÉd, at 10 A. M. and left by Railroad for Florence at 10½, reaching the capital of Tuscany (60 miles) about 1 o'clock, P. M.

Florence (Italian FirenzÈ) is pleasantly situated on both sides of the Arno, some forty miles in a direct line from its mouth. The river is here about the size of the Hudson at Sandy Hill or the Mohawk at Canajoharie, but subject to rapid swellings from rains in the Apennines above. One such occurred the night I was there, though very little rain fell at Florence. I was awakened in the night by the rushing and roaring of its waters, my window having only a street between it and the river, which subsided the next day, without having done any material damage.

That day was the 4th of July, and I spent most of it, under the guidance of friends resident at Florence, in looking through the galleries devoted to Paintings and Statuary in the two famous palaces of the reigning family and in the Academy. Although the collections embrace the Venus de Medicis and many admirable Paintings, I cannot say that my expectations were fully realized. Ill health may in part account for this; my recent acquaintance with the immense and multiform treasures of Art at Rome may also help explain my obtuseness at Florence. And yet I saw nothing in Rome with greater pleasure or profit than I derived from the hour I spent in the studio of our countryman Powers, whose fame is already world-wide, and who I trust is now rapidly acquiring that generous competence which will enable him to spend the evening of his days in ease and comfort in his native land. The abundance of orders constantly pouring in upon him at his own prices does not induce him to abandon nor postpone his efforts in the ideal and more exalted sphere of his art, but rather to redouble those efforts; and it will yet be felt that his "Greek Slave" and "Fisher Boy," so widely admired, are not his loftiest achievements. I defy Antiquity to surpass—I doubt its ability to rival—his "Proserpine" and his "Psyche" with any models of the female head that have come down to us; and while I do not see how they could be excelled in their own sphere, I feel that Powers, unlike Alexander, has still realms to conquer, and will fulfill his destiny. If for those who talk of America quitting her proper sphere and seeking to be Europe when she wanders into the domain of Art, we had no other answer than Powers, that name would be conclusive.

Greenough is now absent from Florence. I met him at Turin, on his way to America, on account (I casually heard) of sickness in his family. But I obtained admission to his studio in Florence, and saw there the unfinished group on which he is employed by order of Congress, to adorn one of the yet empty niches in the Capitol. His execution is not yet sufficiently advanced to be judged, but the design is happy and most expressive.

I saw something of three younger American Sculptors now studying and working at Florence—Hart of Kentucky, Galt of Virginia, and Rogers of New-York. (Ives is absent—at Rome, I believe, though I did not meet him there.) I believe all are preparing to do credit to their country. Hart has been hindered by a loss of models at sea from proceeding with the Statue of Henry Clay which he is commissioned by the Ladies of Virginia to fashion and construct; but he is wisely devoting much of his time to careful study and to the modeling of the Ideal before proceeding to commit himself irrevocably by the great work which must fix his position among Sculptors and make or mar his destiny. I have great confidence that what he has already carefully and excellently done is but a foretaste of what he is yet to achieve, and that his seeming hesitation will prove the surest and truest efficiency.

I think there are but few American painters in Florence. I met none but Page, who is fully employed and expects to spend some time in Italy. His health is better than during his last year in New-York.

The strong necessity of moving on compelled me to tear myself away from a pleasant party of Americans assembled at dinner in Florence last evening to celebrate the 76th Anniversary of American Independence, and take the Diligence at 8 o'clock for this place on the road to Venice, though no other American nor even an Englishman came along. I have found by experience that I cannot await the motions of others, nor can I find a party ready to take post-horses and so travel at rational hours. The Diligence or stage-coach traveling in Italy appears to be organized on purpose to afford the least possible accommodation at the most exorbitant cost. This city, for example, is 63 miles from Florence on the way to Padua and Venice, and the Diligence leaves Florence for Bologna at no other hour than 8 P. M. arriving here at 1½ o'clock next day; fare 40 to 45 Tuscan pauls or $4.45 to $5. But when you reach Bologna at midday, after an all-night ride, you find no conveyance for any point beyond this until ten o'clock next morning, so that you must wait here twenty-one hours; and the Diligence might far better, so far as the travelers' convenience and comfort is concerned, have remained in Florence till an early hour in the morning, making the passage over the Apennines by day and saving their nights' rest. Three or four travelers may break over this absurd tyranny by taking post-horses; a single one has no choice but to submit. And, having reached Bologna, I tried to gain time, or at least avoid another night-ride, by taking a private carriage (vetturino) this afternoon for Ferrara, thirty miles further on, sleep there to-night, and catch a Diligence or Mail-Coach to-morrow morning, so as to reach Padua in the evening: but no—there is no coach out of Padua Venice-ward till 4 to-morrow afternoon, and I should gain nothing but extra fatigue and expense by taking a carriage to Ferrara, so I give it up. I must make most of the journey from Ferrara to Padua by night, and yet take as much time as though I traveled only by day,—for I am in Italy.

The valley of the Arno, especially for some miles on either side of Florence, is among the most fertile portions of this prolific land, and is laboriously though not efficiently cultivated. All the Grains grow luxuriantly throughout Italy, though Indian Corn is so thickly planted and so viciously cultivated that it has no chance to ear or fill well. There is enough labor performed on the average to insure sixty bushels of shelled grain to the acre, but the actual yield will hardly exceed twenty-five. And I have not had the first morsel of food prepared from this grain offered me since I reached the shores of Europe. Wheat is the favorite grain here, and, requiring less depth of soil than Indian corn, and having been much longer cultivated here, yields very fairly. Barley and Oats are grown, but to a limited extent; of Rye, still less. The Potato is planted very sparingly south of Piedmont, and not so commonly there as in Savoy. The Vine is a universal favorite, and rarely out of view; while it often seems to cover half the ground in sight. But it is not grown here in close hills as in France and around Cincinnati, but usually in rows some twenty or thirty feet apart, and trained on trees kept down to a hight of eight to twelve feet. Around Rome, a species of Cane is grown wherewith to support the vines after the manner of bean-poles, which, after serving a year or two in this capacity, is used for fuel, and new stalks of cane replace those which have been enfeebled by exposure and decay. The plan of training the vines on dwarfed trees (which seems to me by far the most natural) prevails here as well as on the other side of the Apennines; so that the vine-stalks are large and may be hundreds of years old, instead of being (apparently) fresh from the ground every year or two. The space between the vine-rows is usually sown with Wheat, but sometimes planted with Corn or laid down to Grass, and a moderate crop realized.

Crossing the Apennines mainly in the night, they seemed a little higher than the Green Mountains of Vermont, but lacking the thrifty forests of which I apprehend the proximity of Railroads is about to despoil that noble range. But the Apennines, though cultivated wherever they can be, are far more precipitous and sterile than their American counterpart, and seem to be in good degree composed of a whitish clay or marl which every rain is washing away, rendering the Arno after a storm one of the muddiest streams I ever saw. I presume, therefore, that the Apennines are, as a whole, less lofty and difficult now than they were in the days of Romulus, of Hannibal, or even of Constantine.

We crossed the summit about daylight, and began rapidly to descend, following down the course of one of the streams which find the Adriatic together near the mouth of the Po. At 5 A. M. we passed the boundary of Tuscany and entered the Papal territory, so that our baggage had to be all taken down and searched, and our Passports re-scrutinized—two processes to which I am becoming more accustomed than any live eel ever was to being skinned. The time consumed was but an hour and the pecuniary swindle trifling. But though the hour was early and there were few habitations in sight, there soon gathered around us a swarm of most importunate beggars—brown, withered old women spinning on distaffs held in the hand (a process I fancied the world had outgrown), and stopping every moment to hold out a dirty claw, with a most disgusting grimace and whine—"For the love of God, Signor"—with ditto old men, and children of various sizes, the youngest who could walk seeming as apt at beggary as their grandames who have followed it, "off and on," for seventy or eighty years. If the ancient Romans had equaled their living progeny in begging, they need not have dared and suffered so much to achieve the mastery of the world—they might have begged it, and saved an infinity of needless slaughter. These people have no proper pride, no manly shame, because they have no hope. Untaught, unskilled in industry, owning nothing, their government an absolute despotism, their labor only required at certain seasons, and deemed amply rewarded with a York shilling or eighteen pence per day, and themselves the virtual serfs of great landholders who live in Rome or Bologna and whom they rarely or never see—is it a wonder that they stoop to plead and whine for coppers around every carriage that traverses their country? That they fare miserably, their scanty rags and pinched faces sufficiently attest; that they are indolent and improvident I can very well believe: for when were uneducated, unskilled, hopeless vassals anything else? Italy, beautiful, bounteous land! is everywhere haggard with want and wretchedness, but these seem nowhere so general and chronic as in the Papal territories. Every political division of Italy but this has at least some section of Railroad in operation; Rome, though in the heart of all and the great focus of attraction for travelers, has not the first mile and no prospect of any, though it would seem a good speculation to build one if it were to be used only in transporting hither the Foreign troops absolutely essential here to keep the people quiet in their chains. "And this, too, shall pass away!"