Full text: Spence, B.: The "Lions" of Florence and its environs, or the stranger conducted through its principal studios, churches, palaces and galleries

132 - 
especially during autunn and winter, and the Flo¬ 
rentines have a kind proverb: che di Siena non è buono 
neanche il vento. The Tramontano is dry and pier¬ 
cing in winter; but in summer it often brings heavy 
and rainy weather. I have observed that March 
and February are the months in which it is most 
severe, and it generally lasts for three days. It is 
to be regretted that most Strangers pass through 
here during the winter months, when the hills are 
barren, bleak and desolate, when instead of reali¬ 
zing their poetical ideas of an Italian sky, they are 
often presented with a cold foggy atmosphere, more 
like what they have left at home than what they 
expected to meet with on this side the Alps. — May, 
June, September and October are, generally speaking, 
the best months for enjoying Italy and its scenery, 
more especially Florence, which from its position 
in a sort of basin surrounded on all sides by lofty 
mountains often covered with snow, renders the 
Tramontana exceedingly trying to those in health 
and very dangerous to invalids. — No wonder then 
if a young inexperienced stranger fresh from the 
north, who has got his ideas of Italy from the poe¬ 
tical effusions of Rogers, Lamartine or Goethe, or 
perhaps even from the drop scenes of a London 
theatre, arrives in Florence expecting to find the na¬ 
tives lolling under orange trees, singing to the ac¬ 
companiment of the amorous guitar, or gracefully 
From Siena comes nothing good not even the wind.
	        
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