The evening was the fashionable hour, and, with the addition of Mr. Greenough, the sculptor, to our party, we drove to the Cascine about an hour before sunset to see the equipages, and enjoy the close of the festival. The drives intersect these beautiful grounds irregularly in every direction, and the spectacle was even more brilliant than in the morning. The nobility and the gay world of Florence flew past us, in their showy carriages of every description, the distinguished occupants differing in but one respect from well-bred people of other countries--_they looked happy_. If I had been lying on the grass, an Italian peasant, with my kinsmen and friends, I should not have felt that among the hundreds who were rolling past me, richer and better born, there was one face that looked on me contemptuously or condescendingly. I was very much struck with the universal air of enjoyment and natural exhilaration. One scarce felt like a stranger in such a happy-looking crowd.
Near the centre of the grounds is an open space, where it is the custom for people to stop in driving to exchange courtesies with their friends. It is a kind of fashionable open air _soirée_. Every evening you may see from fifty to a hundred carriages at a time, moving about in this little square in the midst of the woods, and drawing up side by side, one after another, for conversation. Gentlemen come ordinarily on horseback, and pass round from carriage to carriage, with their hats off, talking gayly with the ladies within. There could not be a more brilliant scene, and there never was a more delightful custom. It keeps alive the intercourse in the summer months, when there are no parties, and it gives a stranger an opportunity of seeing the lovely and the distinguished without the difficulty and restraint of an introduction to society. I wish some of these better habits of Europe were imitated in our country as readily as worse ones.
After threading the embowered roads of the Cascine for an hour, and gazing with constant delight at the thousand pictures of beauty and happiness that met us at every turn, we came back and mingled in the gay throng of carriages at the centre. The _valet_ of our lady-friends knew everybody, and, taking a convenient stand, we amused ourselves for an hour, gazing at them as they were named in passing. Among others, several of the Bonaparte family went by in a splendid barouche; and a heavy carriage, with a showy, tasselled hammer-cloth, and servants in dashy liveries, stopped just at our side, containing Madame Catalani, the celebrated singer. She has a fine face yet, with large expressive features, and dark, handsome eyes. Her daughter was with her, but she has none of her mother's pretensions to good looks.