It is a very singular thing, and one for which it is difficult to offer any satisfactory explanation, that the change in Florence in respect to the prevalence of crime has been of late years very great indeed I have mentioned more than once, I think, the very remarkable absence of all crimes of violence which characterised Florence in the earlier time of my residence there.  It was not due to rigorous repression or vigilance of the police, as may be partly judged by the above anecdote.  There was, in fact, no police that merited the name.  But anything in the nature of burglary was unheard of.  The streets were so absolutely safe that any lady might have traversed them alone at any hour of the day or night.  And I might add to the term “crimes of violence” the further statement that pocket-picking was equally unheard of.

Now there is perhaps more crime of a heinous character in Florence, in proportion to the population, than in any city in the peninsula.  I think that about the first indication that all that glittered in the mansuetude of Firenze la Gentile was not gold, showed itself on the occasion of an attempt to naturalise at Florence the traditional sportiveness of the Roman Carnival.  There and then, as all the world knows, it has been the immemorial habit for the population, high and low, to pelt the folks in the carriages during their Corso procession with bonbons, bouquets, and the like.  Gradually at Rome this exquisite fooling has degenerated under the influence of modern notions, till the bouquets having become cabbage stalks, very effective as offensive missiles, and the bonbons plaster of Paris pellets, with an accompanying substitution of a spiteful desire to inflict injury for the old horse-play, it has become necessary to limit the duration of the Saturnalia to the briefest span, with the sure prospect of its being very shortly altogether prohibited.  But at Florence on the first occasion, now several years ago, of an attempt to imitate the Roman practice, the conduct of the populace was such as to demand imperatively the immediate suppression of it.  The carriages and the occupants of them were attacked by such volleys of stones and mud, and the animus of the people was so evidently malevolent and dangerous, that they were at once driven from the scene, and any repetition of the practice was forbidden.

It is so remarkable as to be, at all events, worth noting, that contemporaneously with this singular deterioration in respect to crime, another social change has taken place in Florence. La Gentile Firenze has of late years become very markedly the home of clericalism of a high and aggressive type.  This is an entirely new feature in the Florentine social world.  In the old time clerical views were sufficiently supported by the Government to give rise to the famous Madiai incident, which has been before alluded to.  But clericalism in its more aggressive aspects was not in the ascendant either