in part the outcome of his travels,—full of lively feeling for the beauties of nature, and the most active interest in the wonders of botany, Hügel spent ten years at Florence, years replete with manifold activity and enjoyment. Of these years the winter was spent in the city[1], the summer mostly in its neighbourhood, chiefly at the beautiful country-seat of Quarto,—then the property of Prince Demidoff, but later of the Grand Duchess Marie of Russia,—which commands the lovely, luxuriant valley of the Arno, and the hills and mountains which surround it. Hügel's villa at Hietzing was now the property of Duke William of Brunswick, but a portion of the precious contents of the green-houses were in the hands of M. de Demidoff at San Donato, near Florence, and there Hügel diligently visited his old friends.
Baron von Hügel was always on good terms with Florentine society, which at that time still preserved many of its old traditions, and in social intercourse with the Austrian Minister political differences, whatever they might be, were as little as possible in evidence. It was not the fault of Hügel that sentiments due to causes already indicated were spreading more and more, especially after the Peace Congress at Paris and the new departure made by Piedmont at that time, and that the revolution began in the most peaceful, best administered, and in its domestic circumstances, happiest country of the Peninsula. Whether he had formed a sufficiently definite and clear conception of the movement which had taken hold upon men's minds, and if not of the intentions, at least of the means at the disposal of the party, which, in April 1859, brought about the overthrow of the Grand Duke; whether
- ↑ The Embassy occupied the 'Casa Vecchia,' a fine old house in Via Pucci (corner of Via Servi), now an artists' club. A. v. H.
