Correspondence
A LETTER FROM FLORENCE.
(To the Editor of the SeEcrAron.1
Sm.—In spite of the great heat this year in Florence, the number of American visitors passing through during the summer was greater than ever. On the other hand, the Summer Schools, held by the University and the British Institute, were sadly diminished, for few were the students sufficiently enthusiastic to listen to three or four lectures a day with a temperature of 90° in the lecture hall. With the cooler weather the British colony is now returning and signs are not wanting that the influx of foreigners for the winter will be very great. For one thing, the prices of the hotels and pensions have fallen rapidly, and excellent board and lodging can now be obtained for two guineas a week and upwards, in conditions that are far more full of life and interest than could be obtained anywhere else in Europe for such moderate charges.
Florence is making a determined effort to retrieve her
position as an international musical centre. The Municipality with the help of a Committee, including British and American residents, as well as native Florentines, has succeeded in raising a guarantee fund sufficient to maintain a first-class orchestra for at least three years, even were it not supported by the general public, as it is hoped it will be. An orchestral concert will be given every Sunday afternoon in the Politeama Fiorentino, the largest Florentine theatre, under the direction of Maestro Gui, one of the best known Italian conductors. Among other great works, this first season's programme will include the whole of the Beethoven Symphonies. The orches- tra ivill be partially subsidized by the Municipality and will be used for opera during the opera season, which is generally in autumn and late spring after the Scala closes. Besides this new attraction, the Ainici della Alaska have arranged a very interesting programme for their Saturday concerts, and other institutes and musical clubs will doubtless do their utmost to surpass their former traditions.
Florence is rapidly becoming an important educational centre. In addition to the University, the foreign Institutes and the seventeen or eighteen learned societies that hold periodical lectures or discussions, there are now quite a large number of schools for foreign students, and new ones seem to be coming into being nearly every day. It is natural that there should be also many schools of art and music. A new hostel has just been opened by the American Y.M.C.A., where students of all nationalities can live most inexpensively and will have opportunities for fencing, gymnastics, tennis, and so forth. Florence suffers, one might even say, from an excessive number of clubs and institutions, and attempts are 'constantly being made to amalgamate them. The British Institute, which had nearly five hundred students of English last year, is looking forward to a still larger number in the coming session ; it is organizing some interesting courses of lectures and is adding two more rooms to its Library, which is rapidly becoming one of the best libraries for English literature upon the Continent.
It is in centres of international culture such as Florence that
one understands how much international peace depends upon the sympathetic understanding of the great problems of other countries. For the purpose of explaining those of Italy to English-speaking people the two local English newspapers, the Italian Mail and the Italian Tribune, have been acquired and amalgamated by a group of British residents, With a view to setting before all who are interested in Italy the Principal Italian national needs and policies sympathetically. Italian politics in the past were so" complicated that they could afford little of interest to the foreign observer. To-day, however, when the progress of the country is becoming more and More evident in all directions, the new ideas which inspire it should be of interest to everybody.—! am, Sir, &c.,
YOUR FLORENTINE CORRESPONDENT.
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