sided. Spezzia, however, is a good place to tarry at; by reason, firstly, of its beautiful bay; secondly, of its ghostly Inn; thirdly, of the head-dress of the women, who wear, on one side of their head, a small doll's straw hat, stuck on to the hair; which is certainly the oddest and most roguish head-gear that ever was invented.

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not help thinking of the deep glen (just the same sort of glen) where the Roc left Sinbad the Sailor; and where the merchants from the heights above, flung down great pieces of meat for the diamonds to stick to. There were no eagles here, to darken the sun in their swoop, and pounce upon them; but it was as wild and fierce as if there had been hundreds.

But the road, the road down which the marble comes, however immense the blocks! The genius of the country, and the spirit of the institutions, pave that road, repair it, watch it, keep it going! Con

The Magra safely crossed in the Ferry Boat-the passage is not by any means agreeable, when the current is swollen and strong we arrived at Carrara, within a few hours. In good time next morning, we got some ponies, and went out to see the mar-ceive a channel of water running over a ble quarries. rocky bed, beset with great heaps of stone They are four or five great glens, run-of all shapes and sizes, winding down the ning up into a range of lofty hills, until middle of this valley; and that being the they can run no longer, and are stopped by road-because it was the road five hundred being abruptly strangled by Nature. The quarries, or caves," as they call them there, are so many openings, high up in the hills, on either side of these passes, where they blast and excavate for marble: which may turn out good or bad: may make a man's fortune very quickly, or ruin him by the great expense of working what is worth nothing. Some of these caves were opened by the ancient Romans, and remain as they left them to this hour. Many others are being worked at this moment; others are to be begun to-morrow, next week, next month; others are unbought, unthought of; and marble enough for more ages than have passed since the place was resorted to, lies hidden every where: patiently awaiting its time of discovery.

As you toil and clamber up one of these steep gorges (having left your pony soddening his girths in water, a mile or two lower down) you hear, every now and then, echoing among the hills, in a low tone, more silent than the previous silence, a melancholy warning bugle,-a signal to the miners to withdraw. Then, there is a thundering, and echoing from hill to hill, and perhaps a splashing up of great fragments of rock into the air; and on you toil again until some other bugle sounds, in a new direction, and you stop directly, lest you should come within the range of the new explosion.

There were numbers of men, working high up in these hills-on the sides-clearing away, and sending down the broken masses of stone and earth, to make way for the blocks of marble that had been discovered. As these came rolling down from unseen hands into the narrow valley, I could

years ago! Imagine the clumsy carts of five hundred years ago, being used to this hour, and drawn, as they used to be, five hundred years ago, by oxen, whose ancestors were worn to death five hundred years ago, as their unhappy descendants are now, in twelve months, by the suffering and agony of this cruel work! Two pair, four pair, ten pair, twenty pair, to one block, according to its size; down it must come, this way. In their struggling from stone to stone, with their enormous loads behind them, they die frequently upon the spot; and not they alone; for their passionate drivers, sometimes tumbling down in their energy, are crushed to death beneath the wheels. But it was good five hundred years ago, and it must be good now; and a railroad down one of these steeps (the easiest thing in the world) would be flat blasphemy.

When we stood aside to see one of these cars drawn by only a pair of oxen (for it had but one small block of marble on it), coming down, I hailed, in my heart, the man who sat upon the heavy yoke, to keep it on the neck of the poor beasts-and who faced backward: not before him as the very Devil of true despotism. He had a great rod in his hand, with an iron point; and when they could plough and force their way through the loose bed of the torrent no longer, and came to a stop, he poked it into their bodies, beat it on their heads, screwed it round and round in their nostrils, got them on a yard or two, in the madness of intense pain; repeated all these persuasions, with increased intensity of purpose, when they stopped again; got them on, once more; forced and goaded

them to an abrupter point of the descent; | quitted themselves very well; unlike the and when their writhing and smarting, and common people of Italy generally, who the weight behind them, bore them plung-(with some exceptions among the Neapoliing down the precipice in a cloud of scat- tans) sing vilely out of tune, and have tered water, whirled his rod above his very disagreeable singing voices. head, and gave a great whoop and hallo, as if he had achieved something, and had no idea that they might shake him off, and blindly mash his brains upon the road, in the noon-tide of his triumph.

I might have known better, but, somehow, I had expected to see it, casting its long shadow on a public street where people came and went all day. It was a surCarrara, shut in by great hills, is very prise to me to find it in a grave retired picturesque and bold. Few tourists stay place, apart from the general resort, and there; and the people are nearly all con- carpeted with smooth green turf. But the nected, in one way or other, with the work- group of buildings clustered on and about ing of marble. There are also villages this verdant carpet, comprising the Tower, among the caves, where the workmen live. the Baptistery, the Cathedral, and the It contains a beautiful little Theatre, newly- Church of the Campo Santo, is perhaps the built; and it is an interesting custom there most remarkable and beautiful in the whole to form the chorus of laborers in the mar- world; and from being clustered there, toble quarries, who are self-taught and sing gether, away from the ordinary transactions. by ear. I heard them in a comic opera, and details of the town, they have a singuand in an act of "Norma;" and they aclarly venerable and impressive character.

It is the architectural essence of a rich old city, with all its common life and common habitations pressed out and filtered away.

collection of paintings, of any sort, in Italy, where there are many heads, there is, in one of them, a striking accidental likeness of Napoleon. At one time, I used to please my fancy with the speculation whether these old painters, at their work, had a would one day arise to wreak such destruction upon art: whose soldiers would make targets of great pictures, and stable their horses among triumphs of architecture. But the same Corsican face is so plentiful in some parts of Italy at this day, that a more commonplace solution of the coincidence is unavoidable.

SISMONDI compares the tower, to the usual pictorial representations in children's books, of the Tower of Babel. It is a foreboding knowledge of the man who happy simile, and conveys a better idea of the building than chapters of labored description. Nothing can exceed the grace and lightness of the structure; nothing can be more remarkable than its general appearance. In the course of the ascent to the top (which is by an easy staircase), the inclination is not very apparent; but, at the summit, it becomes so, and gives one If Pisa be the seventh wonder of the the sensation of being in a ship that has world in right of its Tower, it may claim heeled over, through the action of an ebb- to be, at least, the second or third in right tide. The effect upon the low side, so to of its beggars. They waylay the unhappy speak-looking over from the gallery, and visiter at every turn, escort him to every seeing the shaft recede to its base-is very door he enters at, and lie in wait for him, startling; and I saw a nervous traveller with strong reinforcements, at every door hold on to the Tower involuntarily, after by which they know he must come out. glancing down, as if he had some idea of The grating of the portal on its hinges is propping it up. The view within, from the the signal for a general shout, and the moground-looking up, as through a slanted ment he appears, he is hemmed in, and tube-is also very curious. It cetainly in- fallen on, by heaps of rags and personal clines as much as the most sanguine tour-distortions. The beggars seem to embody ist could desire. The natural impulse of all the trade and enterprise of Pisa. Noninty-nine people out of a hundred, who thing else is stirring, but warm air. Going were about to recline upon the grass below it, to rest and contemplate the adjacent buildings, would probably be not to take up their position under the leaning side, it is so very much aslant.

The manifold beauties of the Cathedral and Baptistery need no recapitulation from me; though in this case, as in a hundred others, I find it difficult to separate my own delight in recalling them, from your weariness in having them recalled. There is a picture of St. Agnes, by Andrea del Sarto, in the former, and there are a variety of rich columns in the latter, that tempt me strongly.

It is, I hope, no breach of my resolution not to be tempted into elaborate descriptions, to remember the Campo Santo; where grass-grown graves are dug in earth brought more than six hundred years ago, from the Holy Land; and where there are, surrounding them, such cloisters, with such playing lights and shadows falling through their delicate tracery on the stone pavement, as surely the dullest memory could never forget. On the walls of this solemn and lovely place, are ancient frescoes, very much obliterated and decayed, but very curious. As usually happens in almost any

through the streets, the fronts of the sleepy houses look like backs. They are all so still and quiet, and unlike houses with people in them, that the greater part of the city has the appearance of a city at daybreak, or during a general siesta of the population. Or it is yet more like those backgrounds of houses in common prints, or old engravings, where windows and doors are squarely indicated, and one figure (a beggar of course) is seen walking off by itself into illimitable perspective.

Not so Leghorn (made illustrious by SMOLLET's grave) which is a thriving, business-like, matter-of-fact place, where idleness is shouldered out of the way by commerce. The regulations observed there, in reference to trade and merchants, are very liberal and free; and the town, of course, benefits by them. Leghorn has a bad name in connection with stabbers, and with some justice it must be allowed; for, not many years ago, there was an assassination club there, the members of which bore no ill-will to any body in particular, but stabbed people (quite strangers to them) in the streets at night, for the pleasue and excitement of the recreation. I think the president of this amiable society,

was a shoemaker. He was taken, how-square brick tower; outside the top of ever, and the club was broken up. It which a curious feature in such views in would, probably, have disappeared in the Italy-hangs an enormous bell. It is like natural course of events, before the railroad a bit of Venice without the water. There between Leghorn and Pisa, which is a good are some curious old Pallazzi in the town, one, and has already begun to astonish which is very ancient; and without having Italy with a precedent of punctuality, or- (for me) the interest of Verona, or Genoa, der, plain dealing, and improvement-the it is very dreary and fantastic, and most inmost dangerous and heretical astonisher of teresting.

all. There must have been a slight sensa- We went on again, as soon as we had tion, as of earthquake, surely, in the Vati-seen these things, and going over a rather can, when the first Italian railroad was thrown open.

subject, and were very soon as comfortable When we got on the mountain pass, as need be. We had the usual dinner in this which lies beyond this place, the wind (as solitary house; and a very good dinner it they forewarned us at the inn) was so teris, when you are used to it. There is some-rific, that we were obliged to take my other thing with a vegetable or some rice in it, half out of the carriage, lest she should be which is a sort of short-hand or arbitrary blown over, carriage and all, and to hang character for soup, and which tastes very to it, on the windy side (as well as we could well, when you have flavored it with plenty for laughing) to prevent its going, heaven of grated cheese, lots of salt, and abun-knows where. For mere force of wind, dance of pepper. There is the half fowl this land-storm might have competed with of which this soup has been made. There an Atlantic gale, and had a reasonable is a stewed pigeon, with the gizzards and chance of coming off victorious. The blast livers of himself and other birds stuck all came sweeping down great gullies in a round him. There is a bit of roast beef, range of mountains on the right: so that the size of a small French roll. There are we looked with positive awe at a great moa scrap of Parmesan cheese, and five little rass on the left, and saw that there was not withered apples, all huddled together on a a bush or twig to hold by. It seemed as if, small plate, and crowding one upon the once blown from our feet, we must be swept other, as if each were trying to save itself out to sea, or away into space. There was from the chance of being eaten. Then snow, and hail, and rain, and lightning, and there is coffee; and then there is bed. You thunder; and there were rolling mists, travdon't mind brick floors; you don't mind elling with incredible velocity It was dark, yawning doors, nor banging windows; you awful, and solitary to the last degree; there don't mind your own horses being stabled were mountains above mountains, veiled in under the bed and so close, that every angry clouds; and there was such a wrathtime a horse coughs or sneezes, he wakes ful, rapid, violent, tumultuous hurry, every you. If you are good humored to the peo-where, as rendered the scene unspeakably ple about you, and speak pleasantly, and exciting and grand. look cheerful, take my word for it you may be well entertained in the very worst Italian Inn, and always in the most obliging manner, and may go from one end of the country to the other (despite all stories to the contrary) without any great trial of your patience any where. Especially, when you get such wine in flasks, as the Orvieto, and

the Monte Pulciano.

in

It was a relief to get out of it, notwithstanding; and to cross even the dismal dirty Papal Frontier. After passing through two little towns; in one of which, Acquapen. dente, there was also a "Carnival progress: consisting of one man dressed and masked as a woman, and one woman dressed and masked as a man, walking ankle-deep, through the muddy streets, in a It was a bad morning when we left this very melancholy manner; we came, at place; and we went, for twelve hours, over dusk, within sight of the Lake of Bolsena, a country as barren, as stony, and as wild, on whose bank there is a little town of the as Cornwall in England, until we came to same name, much celebrated for malaria. Radicofani, where there is a ghostly, goblin With the exception of this poor place, there inn: once a hunting-seat, belonging to the is not a cottage on the banks of the lake or Dukes of Tuscany. It is full of such ram-near it (for nobody dare sleep there); not bling corridors, and gaunt rooms, that all the a boat upon its waters; nor stick or stake murdering and phantom tales that ever were to break the dismal monotony of seven-andwritten, might have originated in that one twenty watery miles. We were late in gethouse. There are some horrible old Pa- ting in, the roads being very bad from Jazzi in Genoa; one, in particular, not un-heavy rains; and, after dark, the dulness of like it outside but there is a windy, creak- the scene was quite intolerable. ing, wormy, rustling, door-opening, foot-on- We entered on a very different, and a staircase-falling character about this Radicofani Hotel, such as I never saw, any where else. The town, such as it is, hangs on a hill-side above the house, and in front of it. The inhabitants are all beggars; and as soon as they see a carriage coming, they swoop down upon it, like so many birds of prey

:

finer scene of desolation, next night, at sunset. We had passed through Montefiaschone (famous for its wine,) and Viterbo (for its fountains): and after climbing up a long hill of eight or ten miles extent, came suddenly upon the margin of a solitary lake: in one part very beautiful, with a luxuriant wood; in another, very barren, and shut in