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Mrs.
P------ and my wife, U---- and Master Bob, sat in a group together, and
chatted in one corner of our aerial drawing-room, while Mr. Powers and
myself leaned against the parapet, and talked of innumerable things.
When the clocks struck the hour, or the bells rang from the steeples, as
they are continually doing, I spoke of the sweetness of the Florence
bells, the tones of some of them being as if the bell were full of liquid
melody, and shed it through the air on being upturned. I had supposed,
in my lack of musical ear, that the bells of the Campanile were the
sweetest; but Mr. Powers says that there is a defect in their tone, and
that the bell of the Palazzo Vecchio is the most melodious he ever heard.
Then he spoke of his having been a manufacturer of organs, or, at least,
of reeds for organs, at one period of his life. I wonder what he has not
been! He told me of an invention of his in the musical line, a jewsharp
with two tongues; and by and by he produced it for my inspection.


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