Gianetta soon made her appearance, bringing in her mamma and the child.

"My daughter tells me," said the innkeeper's wife, "that you are fond of children, and would like to amuse yourself by nursing my little bambino. There," added she, holding out the child towards me-"it is a fine boy, is it not?"

"It is perfectly beautiful," I exclaimed, taking it from her, and gazing on its sweet and smiling face. All children in all countries will come to me. I suppose they find something congenial in my character, and detect it by my looks. At all events, they never pay me the compliment to be afraid of me, but, concluding that I was born to amuse and play with them, take possession of my whole faculties at once, without the slightest ceremony.

I requested both mother and daughter to sit down and take a glass of wine with me. Gianetta could not, however, break so easily through the force of habit, and politely declined; but her mamma accepted both the chair and the wine, and while I held her sweet little boy on my knee, and allowed him to amuse himself by playing with my beard and mustachoes, entered, though somewhat timidly, into conversation with me. She was a small, delicate woman, of about thirty-five, and had, no doubt, been formerly pretty. But she was faded now, both in form and face. It struck me that she was not a Genoese, though I knew not from what part of Italy she could have come. I inquired. She said she was a Venetian, and added, with a peculiar sadness of tone, that, notwithstanding her present situation, her family was noble. I please myself with tracing my own lineage in part from Venice, but did not tell her so. It was enough that she was noble, and, like the city from which she came, in decay.

Business, in a short time, called both mother and daughter away; but they left the bambino, so that I had something to do for the rest of the evening. As I said, we were friends at once, and indeed, if I can boast of anything, it is of this, that I know how to amuse children, especially when very young. Master Piero, however, had one fault. He was excessively drowsy, and, not very long after the departure of his mamma, fell asleep in my arms.

heart, and plays about its lips. The greatest fount of inspiration on earth is the face of a sleeping child, with its long, dark lashes fringing the mystery of its eyes, the colour of which you know not—the depths of which your thought cannot fathom.

I looked at little Piero; he had the dark blood of Venice in him. Still he reminded me of a fair child, nearly about the same age, which I had left beyond the Alps, and which a thousand and a thousand times had occupied the place he then filled. What is it that constitutes the tie of kindred? The sweet little fellow on my knee was not mine, and therefore I could relinquish him in half an hour, or an hour, to his mother's arms, and forget and dismiss him from my recollection almost as though I had never seen or nursed him. But how different my relation to the other child! Something existed there which neither time, nor distance, nor life, nor death, could obliterate? We are all His offspring, but yet, in a peculiar sense, the being that emerges from your own soul is yours. There may be, for aught we know, a spiritual chain always binding together parent and child, and preventing them from even becoming separated. Indeed, there must be; for the circle of your love becomes wide enough to embrace the whole world, when your children are far away you, and makes you feel them still within your grasp. And so it is when they die. A part of your soul goes with them out of life, and accompanies them wherever it pleases God to send them.

from

Thoughts like these passed through my mind as I leaned over little Piero, and inhaled the perfume of his breath, which was sweet and delicate as that of Paradise. Oh, that we could be always children!—that we could traverse this sad promontory of life with their ineffable purity about us! The grave would then be as soft as a down pillow, and to turn our back upon the sun no more painful than to pass out of a light room into a dark one. The sleep of peace would brood over us,

and we should be at rest.

CHAPTER XXVI.
THE STEAMER.

I was glad to leave Genoa, and got up in the morn ing with a light heart to get my passport put in order, and pack up for departure-no difficult affair, as a single carpet bag contained my luggage. But just as I was going on board the steamer, I encountered an unexpected obstacle.

I wish you could have seen me then, with its little head on my left arm, and its face composed into the most exquisite softness and beauty by sleep. I had put a footstool under my left foot, just to raise my knee a little and make him comfortable; and there I I had come into Italy with my French passport, sat, with the candles burning and unsnuffed before which mentioned a wife and seven children; and when me, and the wine remaining undrunk. All the restless I presented myself to the proper authorities for a persadness of the day had departed. A mysterious influ-mit to go on board, I was informed that I must produce ence had passed up from Piero's face to mine, and thence to my heart, and rendered me almost as happy as himself. There is a wonderful power in childhood; and to be like it, even in a terrestrial sense, is to be in the kingdom of heaven. It has the most perfect faith in all things: it lies down in the arms of man or woman, friend or stranger, and fears nothing. It feels that there is a divinity that hedges it about, and envelopes it in a roseate cloud of safety that disarms malice, and cruelty itself, and renders them incapable of hurting it.

All the grandeur of humanity seems to be concentrated and bound up in childhood-above all, when it sleeps, when it dreams, when unutterable joy fills its

them before I could start. I said they were in Switzerland, but the wise man shook his head. He would have it they were somewhere in Genoa, and that I meant to make a present of them to the King of Sardinia. I told him it was absurd, and that I should lose my passage to Leghorn through his folly. But this did not mend the matter. He would not suffer me to embark.

At last, after much altercation, he told me that I might go to the English consul, and that if he certified all was right, I should be suffered to leave Genoa in peace. Imprecating all sorts of evil upon his head, I ran off to the consul's, and although he knew no more of my wife and children than the man in the moon, he

immediately certified whatever I required, and a short ||joy which she had scarcely any right to taste, and for time afterwards I was on the steamer's deck. which she might some day be called to a strict account.

After a short time she walked up and down the deck with me, nodding to her husband familiarly as we passed him. He was engaged in conversation with a knot of Frenchmen on politics, I fancy, for they were all extremely animated. When tired of walking, we went and sat down together, upon which she sent me to ask her husband to join us.

It was exactly like getting out of prison. Every hour I had remained at Genoa, my mind was in a state of complete stagnation. I could not think I could not write. I kept no journal. If I read, I might as well have spared myself the pains, since no trace of it remained the next hour. The moment I was on the steamer, I felt myself at home again. There was life, there was bustle, there was the splashing of waves, the noise of the engine, the bawling of the sailors, the buzz of conversation among the passengers, and, above" all, the fresh breeze blowing joyously over the Medi

terranean.

God bless the sea, thought I, since it will bear me from Genoa, which has been converted into a sort of prison by royalty. And yet, how beautiful it looked from the steamer's deck!-rows of palaces, rising tier above tier in amphitheatrical sweep on the face of a mountain, with gardens and orange-groves interspersed, and over all a sky of indescribable blue.* I left it, however, without a single regret, and turned away carelessly from the prospect of it to explore for pleasant faces among the passengers.

On a camp-stool, near the steersman's wheel, sat an English lady, admiring the view, from which I had turned carelessly away. Passing near her, I said"Well, it certainly does not look amiss from the sea." She felt the observation was addressed to her, and said, in reply

"No, sir; it is one of the finest views in the world!"

"You have travelled a great deal?" I said, inquiringly.

"What I meant," answered she, smiling, was, that I supposed it was one of the finest views in the world. But I have seen very little as yet, and cannot judge."

|

Oblige me," he said, in a very good-natured tone, by telling my wife I will come presently when I shall have finished this discussion."

She seemed displeased at this, became moody, tapped the deck with her foot, and her foot with the handle of the parasol, which she held upside down in her hand. Presently the tears came into her eyes, and she dropped her veil to conceal them. Her perturbation was not of long continuance.

"Have you read Burnett," said she, "on the state of the dead, and those who rise again ?" "Yes."

"It is a very curious book, is it not? I remember reading it when I was a girl, and its reasoning and ingenuity struck me greatly; yet, do you know I don't think that there will be any personal identity in the next world; and I hope, at all events, we shall not know each other. There are certain persons I should not like to meet, even there."

"That is an extraordinary idea," I said.

Yes, but you would quite understand it if—but no matter. As you say, however, it is an odd idea; yet it greatly pleases me to entertain it."

It was now growing dark, and the sea breeze, as usual, blew rather cold. I had not paid the slightest attention to the sunset, or the coming on of night; and should not have noticed the circumstance even then, but that the lady's husband came up, and said— "It is getting very chill, love; I think we had better go below."

"You had better go, dear," she replied; "but I fear I shall not be able to bear the air of the close cabin-it will make me ill."

"But consider, dear; you can't remain on deck all night."

"Not exactly, perhaps; but if you have no objection, I will sit here till I am tired, after which I can go below. Send Ann to me with my cloak. This gentleman is amusing me by relating his travels and adventures; and you know I could listen to such things for ever."

Here was a chance of my being delivered from my ennui. We immediately entered into conversation. I found she was going to Naples with her husband, who was in delicate health. She pointed him out to me among the passengers- -a tall, fair-haired man, with an agreeable countenance, though not over-intellectual. For herself, she was a woman of extraordinary character, as was evident from the expression of her countenance, which, notwithstanding her occasional smiles, had something deeply melancholy in it. There seemed no doubt she had some weight upon her mind. Without any visible cause, and while talking of subjects altogether indifferent, her eyes would fill with tears, her lips quiver, and turn pale, and she would require a short interval of silence to recover herself. There was nothing she so much liked to talk about as death, our chances of immortality, and the probable state of the soul beyond the grave. Yet she was not alto-trating cold of the night." gether a gloomy person. But, in entering into the pleasures of life, she seemed to be snatching a fearful

*My friend Linton has in his sketch-book several accurate views of Genoa, taken from various points. I wish they were before the public, as nothing can surpass their admirable fidelity. He has traversed, in many cases, the same ground as myself in Northern and in Southern Italy, and in Sicily, and the number and variety of his studies are wonderful. Strange that he should not yet be a member of the Royal Academy!

The husband bowed; and observing me wrapped up in a heavy Scotch plaid, said—

"I see, sir, you are prepared for the worst, though I doubt whether even that will keep out the pene

"It has often done so," I replied; "and I fancy it will have to perform the office many times yet before I have done with it."

"The gentleman is going up the Nile," observed his wife.

"Indeed!" said he. "Well I should much like to talk with you about your intended journey; but I am shivering with cold, and must go below." Then turning to his wife-" Ann shall bring you your cloak immediately, love."

Meanwhile, permit me, madam," said I, "to,, husband, who was the man of her choice, and of all offer you a part of my plaid.'

"At my words her garments seemed to be converted "I was born," said Mrs. F "in the north of into mist, and melted away from about her, leaving her England, where my father, an old baronet, is still living. glorious form still more radiant and glorious than ever Our house was in size a castle, very old-fashioned, full naked before me. I now discovered wings mantling of small rooms, corridors, narrow staircases, up and over the shoulders, while a wreath of quivering light down passages, and odd nooks of all kinds. It had played about her forehead. Words cannot express my likewise a chapel in it, and near this chapel lay my sensations at that moment. I was not afraid-I felt bed-room, with a long narrow sitting-room attached to myself transported into the invisible world; I stood it, in which I used frequently to sing and play by my-face to face with a disembodied spirit, and yet love self. I had a sister—an only sister—who, at the time was uppermost in my nature; I yearned to embrace to which I refer, was just married, and had gone to my sister, but some mysterious fear held me chained to Switzerland on her wedding-tour. She was one year the chair on which I sat. older than myself, and we had loved each other as sisters only can love. At parting, she pressed me to her breast, and cried as though her heart would break; not that she feared to traverse the world with her

You

"The spectre advanced a few paces, and said, 'Where I am, Fanny, you must shortly be. will go through all I have gone through. You will love; you will descend towards the sun; you will pass through the portals of the great deep; and you will then find yourself beside me for ever in paradise!'

"The figure then retreated towards the wall dividing my chamber from the chapel. The wall opened, and the vision passed through it no longer dim and obscure, but in a blaze of light-and I saw the soul of Julia shoot upwards through the roof towards heaven.

"And was not this," inquired Mrs. F, looking earnestly in my face, "a very extraordinary thing?" "It was, madam, if you did not dream it."

66

|| striking ideas, her mind was forcibly turned away in a different direction. Perceiving this, I began to talk of the Nile of the desert-of the ruined temples, palaces, and tombs, found in Egypt and Nubia; and in this way so far kindled her imagination, that she expressed several times an earnest wish that she could persuade her husband to accompany me.

"I should be happy then," she exclaimed, "especially among the tombs."

Her teeth at length began to chatter, and I strove to persuade her to go down into the cabin. But she would not listen to it. It was evident she feared to be left alone with her own thoughts. Again and again I dwelt upon my anticipations of the desert, and on all the interesting things I expected to behold. Most of the foreigners had now been driven below by the chill of the night, and I would myself have gladly followed their example, but that Mrs. F must, in that case, have been left almost alone on deck. I therefore proposed we should walk to and fro, and,

Well, that was the explanation I should have given myself, but that I was writing when it commenced, and found myself perfectly awake at its conclusion. However, that was not all. Next day we had been out riding in the park, my father and I. and on our return I ascended for a moment to my bed-finding she had no objection to smoke, lighted a cigar. room. The door was locked outside. I opened it, and went in, and there saw Julia, with her elbow leaning on the window seat, and her left hand supporting her head. In her right hand she held a crucifix, from which, however, her eyes were averted. They were indeed fixed upon the sky. As I advanced, she melted into thin air, and the chair remained empty. Again, two nights after, I was asleep in bed. A long wax taper had been left burning on a table beside me; as, indeed, I began to be afraid to be left alone in the dark. A cold, clammy hand placed upon my face awoke me-and Julia stood by my bedside! She bared her bosom, and I saw a stream of blood trickling down from her left breast. I shrieked with terror, so that I awoke my maid, who slept in the next room. It was Ann, whom you just now saw bring me my cloak. The poor girl came running into the room, to inquire what was the matter. I said, there is my sister-look! she is standing beside you. Touch her. Is she living or dead?'

"Dear mistress, you are distracted,' said the girl, there is nothing here but you and me. “No, Ann,' cried I, I see her distinctly. Stretch out your left hand-you cannot fail to touch her.'

She was a very interesting, and, in some respects, a very superior woman; yet I would not have lived with her for the world. She would have driven me to commit suicide. I could compare the turn of her mind to nothing so aptly as to the occupations of a grave digger. She seemed to be always among the spoils of mortality-collins, vaults, ghosts, the loss of loved friends, the presentiment of future losses-these were her topics; yet she was young, and something more than pretty. Her health seemed good, her husband loved her, and all that she could desire from fortune she possessed. What did she then need to render her happy? Health of mind! There was a malady in her soul; and I may as well state here how her pilgrimage terminated. She went, as she expected, to Naples, and thence, after a short stay, to Palermo. Here, being one day out with her husband in a boat, at the foot of the Monte Pellegrino, a borasco overtook them. The boat was upset, and Mrs. F was drowned. On my return from Egypt,

I saw her tomb, erected to her memory by her husband, who, having recovered his health in Sicily, still, I believe, survives-a jolly, country gentleman, and most likely a Protectionist. Poor Mrs. Flies on a sunny slope, south of Palermo. A little cypress tree stands at her feet, and another at her head; and, "Come into bed with me, dear Ann,' said I, when I visited the spot, abundant roses were flowerthis is the third time I have seen her. I must telling around her grave. The remembrance of this my father. I shall go mad else.'

Julia then glided out of the room noiselessly, and we were left alone.

"Next morning's post brought us a letter from the Grisons. It was from Julia's husband, and surrounded with a deep black border. Julia was dead. In climbing one of the mountains, her foot had slipped, and she had been precipitated down a lofty cliff. Her husband was inconsolable. He never returned to England; but, going out to India, there, in a few months, fell a victim to the climate. I have never since seen Julia's ghost. But I am going to my own grave; and my husband, though sickly and feeble, will bury me, and carry back the sad news to my father."

I tried to drive the idea out of her head; but it was to no purpose. She had become reconciled to it, and took, consequently, but little interest in the affairs of this world, except when, by a succession of new and

night then came over me powerfully, and I went away depressed and melancholy. If I may say it without impiety, I think she deserved a better fate; and would, most likely, have been a cheerful and happy woman at this moment, had those around her known how to "minister to a mind diseased."

CHAPTER XXVIII.
DAWN AT SEA.

Most persons have spent a night at sea, and seen the sun rise over the waves. I have done so frequently; but have seldom, perhaps, enjoyed my sensations more than on the oocasion in question. There are words, I dare say, in our language, which would describe the noise made by the rush of a steamer through the waves, when they break violently against its prow, run rippling along its sides, and there melt

ferent directions, never more to meet in this world. Yet, perhaps, they do not mutually forget. There are those who, seen but as it were for a moment, still in that short space of time make an impression which no series of years can obliterate. In the course of your future life their faces come again and again before the mind's

away into the white foamy wake which it leaves behind it. I went with Mrs. F by my side, and leaned over the bulwark, where the spray now and then sprinkled our faces. What motion, what vitality! What restless energy seemed to be in those cold waves, which, dull and inorganic as they were, had gone on rolling about the earth since the creation-indestruc-eye, smiling and fascinating as of yore; and you cantible, eternal—while I, who then looked upon them, not, whatever efforts you may make, dismiss them. should pass away, God knows whither. We leave no As I sat by my lonely fire, throwing fresh logs upon token of our existence upon the earth. Life comes it from time to time, and lighting one cigar after anoand goes, and ebbs and flows, and disappears, and is for-ther, I indulged in speculations, somewhat profitless, gotten. We seem made for the world, not the world you will say, on the character, callings, and prospects for us. A certain number of days and nights passing of the other inmates of the house. Who were they? over us in succession exhausts our vitality, and we What were they? Was there any one within its ample are absorbed in the universal scheme of things, out of walls who, like me, was sitting down solitary by the which we arose. The elements have no compassion fire, yearning for companionship? on us, and yet we are all in all to each other-a smile, a word, a pressure of the hand. These, slight as they are, and infinitely fleeting, arç sufficient to fill our souls with emotion, and give rise to thoughts, which, if our very essence perish not, will not them selves perish to all eternity.

I was looking out upon the sea, and into the starbedropped sky, when a faint pale flush appeared, just on the horizon's verge towards the east. Extending right and left, it ran like a luminous thread just where the ocean's margin touched the overhanging firmament. A sense of extreme pleasure came over me. I seemed to be watching the process of creation, and was, indeed, present at the birth of day. Soon the light became stronger, warmer, more prolific, calling into being innumerable objects around, which to the eye had no existence before. Over the waves was diffused a cold, grey, fluttering, luminous appearance, which seemed to impart to them new functions, and a new character. In a few minutes the east had been converted into the palace of the dawn, enriched with cloudy pillars, which supported a brilliant tabernacle over the ascending goddess. Then came the purple flush, the crimson, and gold embroidery, which spread round the mantle of the sun-the blazonry of saffron, and blue, and amethyst, shooting up far into the vault of heaven, making the eye and the heart glad as the young day was perfected before us. Suddenly the fiery disk of the great luminary rose above the sea, and everything was flooded with transparent light, and appeared to laugh for joy.

We now by degrees neared the land, and in the course of the day arrived at Leghorn, where I was, in a short time, to undergo so much of pleasure and pain. I took my leave of Mrs. F, and her husband, on the quay, and followed the bandit sort of personage who was to conduct me to my hotel in the Via Grande. It was a spacious house, and I secured myself a very nice apartment, au troisieme, where I immediately had a fire lighted, and sat down to coffee and cigars.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE PHILOSOPHER.

One of the penalties a traveller pays for his enjoyments is the state of perpetual vicissitude in which he lives with respect to men and women. Chance brings him into contact with individuals whom he likes-with whom it would probably afford him pleasure to spend whole ages. But the waves of change that bring them towards each other soon drift them away again, in dif

I opened my carpet-bag, and, taking out "Paradise Lost," made a desperate attempt to read. It would not do. There was nothing epic in my temper that evening. Had the "Thousand and One Nights" been within reach, I might have become absorbed in themmight have dropped into the valley of diamonds with Sindbad, or laughed with Zobeidé and her sisters, or descended with the young man and his mistress into the subterranean apartment where they were consumed to ashes, or shed delicious tears with Shemselrehar, or wandered over the Blue Sea with Unce El Woojood. I had left the book at home; though it would have been the best of all companions up the Nile, and on the way thither. I now deeply felt the loss of it. It is of all books the best for a melancholy hour, when you are more dreaming than waking, and when you have not courage to build castles in the air without some one's assistance. When one is sad, however, one has always a resource in the waiter. I rang the bell, not that I wanted anything, but I thought it best to seem to want something, that I might have an excuse for talking with somebody. My summons was immediately answered by a little, lively, fat, roundfaced fellow, who, for some reason which I never could divine, was called by the very odd name of Tonto. I have known a lady who delighted in the name of Totty, but Tonto was a novelty. However, as that was the name he answered to, I accommodated myself to the necessities of the case, and boldly applied the mystical syllables to the jovial-looking individual before me

Tonto," said I, "have you got anything nice for supper?-not that I am in the least hungry, but that I should like to eat something just by way of passing the time."

"It's an excellent plan," auswered Tonto. "I always have recourse to it myself when I am melancholy.". "And does that often happen?" I inquired.

Yes, Tonto," I observed, "they are the cause of all sadness; for which, however, they make up, by being the cause of all joy too."

"It is very true," said he, brightening up as he gave his assent to the proposition.

"With respect to the supper, however," said I, "what have you got ?"

He ran over the names of a hundred dishes; but, as am not learned in Italian cookery, I was, when he had done, just as far to seek as ever. I, therefore, came