The Warwickshire Herald. — 1893-03-16 (Birmingham, West Midlands, England)

MEMORIES OF FLORENCE. dsaign dto meet attack from either Russians or There is an interesting article, with sketches, in English, but he considers the latter his beat the QUM, on Florence and the Villa Palmieri, friends, and therefore is willing to co-operate in any scheme for the integrity of the north-western where her Majesty proposes to spend a holiday. The Frontier. He desires to be treated on terms of celebrated singer Catalani (says the writer) spent neutrality, and will not accept dictation. Assuring her last days in Villa Lavaggi, while not very far the Viceroy of unalterable friendship, he reserves ' off, in the stately Villa Salviati, Giulia Oriel and the right of treating the Indian frontier tribes in a Mario resided for some years before the death of accordance with sacred law. There is now, it is the former. The walls thus associated with two stated, great excitement among all classes of great names on the stage of mimic love and hate Afghans, who suspect a British invasion of their once witnessed a terrible domestic tragedy ol country. A leading Afghan thief, being asked for information as to the state of affairs, said. jealousy and revenge. For it was hither that the "I will haughty Veronica Cybo brought the head of Catarina talk on trade, but will not sell my king and Carioca, whom she had caused to be murdered. country., We are sharpening swords for foreign and, first twisting round and round the severed attacks. ' It is reported that the Ameer re throat the strands of beautiful golden hair, she dangerously ill from a gouty affection, and an concealed the ghastly object in a jar of flowers, or, English doctor will probably be summoned to attend as some more unpoetically relate, in a basket of him. clean linen, then presented it to her husband, Jacopo Salviati, Catarina's supposed lover. Following the Bolognese road over wind-swept hill and , plain, we reach the steep ascent of Monte Senario, I a convent whose foundation goes back to the early days of Floretine history. Where Giotto's bell-tower, radiant with the gleam of its marbles, now rises beside the Cathedral of Florence, once stood the oratory of a confraternity of seven gentlemen who met together to sing the praises of the Virgin, and were hence called “Laudesi." They were assembled in their oratory on August 15th—the Feast of the Assumption—in the year 1233, when on their blessed eyes broke a vision of a luminous globe with seven rays, which rested on their heads, and was followed by an apparition of the Virgin, surrounded by angels, who exhorted her servants to abandon the world, its wealth and joys, and become religious. They hastened to obey the behest of their heavenly patroness, and at first went to dwell in a meadow then situate just outside Florence, but which later became the site of Santa Croce. The fame of their great piety, however, attracted too many curious crowds; so they prayed to the Holy Mother for guidance in the choice of another i retreat, and she, n a new vision, indicated to thew the solitudes of Monte Senario, then a forest inhabited by wild animals. There is no forest there now, and the landscape has some of the gloomier features of the higher Apennines. Certainly the brethren should have found contemplative leisure in their new abode if anywhere; but, whether this were so or not, their convent grew so in celebrity as to attract at last the doubtful attentions of the envious. 'the Servants of Mary, as they called themselves, were at last accused of heresy, and Piero Martin, the Grand Inquisitor, was sent in 1244 by Pope Innocent IV. to inquire into the matter. But the question was soon set at rest, and the brethren triumphantly vindicated, by an apparition to Piero, of the Virgin arrayed in a black mantle, the habit of the accused order, and accompanied by angels, who presented the inquisitor with seven pure white Lilies, which they had gathered, they told him, on the mountain. Such are some of the scenes which may be visited by Her Majesty and Princess Beatrice in their drives.