it at length withdraws, its votaries too quit the stations which they have occupied, and repair to their respective habitations. Should any one feel disposed to pity these living posts, his pity would only be thrown away; for they are happy, perfectly happy: they have enjoyed the whole livelong day the supreme earthly Italian felicity, the delicioso far niente, and have had no occasion to think of any thing else. Beyond this point their wishes do not extend. see the frugal sons of Italy, with their long pale faces, ranged in rows on some open place, perhaps before the church, or wherever else the sun shines in autumn and winter; their eyes looking right forward beyond their somewhat prolix noses; sometimes extending their hands towards the genial orb of day, and striving, by means of the rapid friction of the said, hands, to communicate to their other chilly members the warmth which they have received. This the Italians call Scaldarsi al fuoco degli As there are epicures and gour, Spagnuoli-"warming themselves at mands every where, so Italy is not the fire of the Spaniards"-but the without them: but individual instan, sun is as much the fire of the Italices, prove nothing; and though we ans as of the Spaniards; nay, I can here discover a haggard figure striv scarcely believe that the latter knowing to swallow a piece of polenta, and how to turn this gratuitous warmth to better account than the former. A gleam of sunshine in autumn or winter is a signal at which the windows of the palace and the papered casements of the cottage are alike thrown open. The inhabitants pour forth from their cool dwellings, and crowd like sheep against a thunder-storm in dense masses on the spot upon which the sun shines; while the inmate of the palace, who suffers equally from cold, repairs to the open window to receive his share of the fuoco degli Spagnuoli, or fuoco degli Italiani. there another taking at regular intervals dried chesnuts* from his pocket, endeavouring with the utmost efforts of his jaws to masticate them, and meanwhile treating himself to a mezzo boccale di vino piccolot, still it would be most unjust to charge the whole nation with gluttony and extravagance. Italian meals seem, on the contrary, designed merely to excite the appetite, not to satisfy it. In many good houses they have no regu lar dinner; but every hungry individual seeks something to eat, and *As hard as Carrara marble: a full quarter of an hour is required to pulve rize one of them. Let no one be apprehensive of coming too late or missing any thing at the Sagra; for in truth there is noAfter the grapes have been twice thing to miss; and would you wish to make the acquaintance of all the vil-pressed for the benefit of the master, they are put into a tub, and boiling water mixlagers, you will find them, in the lasted with salt is poured over them for the rays of the departing sun, motionless on the same spot where they hailed his appearance in the morning: there they stop, and would no doubt stop till the day of judgment, if the luminary were as constant as they; but when, weary of their tedious society, benefit of the labourer. By this operation the yet remaining juice is certainly extracted, and the result is the vino piccolo, which is a cooling and by no means unpleasant beverage; but possesses little of that cheering and generous property which rejoices the heart of man. takes it either while walking about, or in any corner he pleases. At night, instead of supper, they drink a cup of coffee without milk; and with this cup of coffee in his stomach, the Italian quits the bottega as full and as big as if he came from the table of an archbishop. The Venetian deserves less praise on the score of frugality than the other Italians; in regard to good living indeed, Venice may be called the Vienna of Italy. There the citizen dines in due style. His repast consists of una brava minestra di riso col bravo formaggio (rice-soup with cheese), del bravo alesso (beef), con una brava salza (with a sop), brave polpette (hash), a bravo arrosto (roasted meat), together with a brava insalata (salad); but on fast-days of a bravo pesce (fish), or a brava frittata (omelette), with which he drinks a few brave bottiglie di vino, but not piccolo. The Venetian never speaks of any dish without prefixing the epithet of bravo, which sounds very comical; he enumerates all the brave things of which he has partaken with warmth and vivacity; he seems to enjoy them over again in recollection; and, in short, he is fully qualified to act no insignificant part even in Vienna itself. But let us return to the Sagra, that we may make ourselves acquainted with all its amusements. We pass the village bottega without stopping, for the company there is not the most select, and the effluvia which meet us at the entrance authorize us to infer, that the inmates have eaten no inconsiderable quantity of a plant, which, to my knowledge, is not used" any where as a perfume. We will therefore rather stay in the open air, where we shall have occasion to observe two favourite games of the Italians, called alle bocce and alla mora. The former cannot long engage our attention; the latter, in which the Italians are not surpassed by any nation in the world, would detain us longer, if our ears were capable of enduring the horrid uproar. But the shadows are lengthening: some of the living posts mentioned above are beginning to move off: the stomach demands its rights. As, however, the Marchesa C. is as bitter an enemy to the English as she is a cordial admirer of the French, and consequently we have no reason to expect a welcome at her mansion; and all our inquiries for something to eat at the village osteria, are answered with Niente-mica—illustrissimo, no; the most prudent course we can pursue is, to take advantage of the lovely autumnal evening, such as thrice blessed Italy alone can furnish, and to return on foot to the town. E I leave you to make what use you please of these pages, merely suggesting, that it might not be amiss to dedicate them to the inhabitants of the country towns of Italy. balls. The balls are thrown on the ground, * A game which is played with three and the player strives to make his ball stop the nearest to the ball first thrown. Alla mora is too generally known to need description; but I cannot help remarking, that a public-house, in which ten couple of Italians are playing alla mora affords a more correct idea than any thing I know! of the tremendous spectacle of the falls of Schaffhausen and Niagara boroofs 223 f { ANECDOTES OF THE DOG. THE late Mr. Tresham related to || The dog seized the bread, but find the writer, that when at Rome he saw a dog which was in the habit of frequenting a coffee-room; and on any person giving him a piece of coin, he would run with it to a shop for bread, which bread he would bring to the coffee-house, and eat it before the donor, as if to shew that he had put the money to a proper use. He has also heard an anecdote of a dog that used to be sent by his master every morning to a baker's with a penny in his mouth to purchase a roll for breakfast. He had continued to do this for some time, when the baker changed his journeyman, and the dog was unheeded. The master, who was acquainted with the practice of his four-footed customer, happened to enter the shop, and the journeyman was blamed for his inattention. The fellow took it in ill part, and resolved next time to wreak his revenge on the dog. Accordingly he kept a roll as hot as possible, and at the appointed hour proffered it to the canine customer. to ada ing it too hot to hold, dropped it; he tried it again, still it was too much for him. At length, as if guessing the trick, he jumped on the counter, caught up his penny, and changed his baker. A dog, being run over by a carriage, had his leg broken: a humane surgeon seeing this, had the dog brought home, set the leg and cured him. The dog was discharged, but never failed when he met his friend to recognise him by wagging his tail. One day, a noise of a dog barking was heard at the surgeon's door. The servant was ordered to ascertain the cause. It proceeded from the surgeon's former patient, who had brought with him another dog with a broken leg. It is related of Hogarth's bull-dog, that he would, when his master missed attending the club, go thither alone, seat himself in his master's chair, and when the meeting was over return home. FACTS AND FICTIONS. WALTER JEFFERSON, THE recreations of Walter Jefferson, after many hours of useless attendance at chambers, were at this time entirely confined to the tea-table of an old friend of his mother's, whose daughter, Rhoda Woodyatt, cheered him, when often worn out by the solicitudes of the day. No impropriety was ever dreamed of in this intercourse: they had slept in ་་་ 1 the same cradle; had been parted, it is true, during the years of schooling, but now his arm was ever ready to escort her to the park, and sometimes to the pit of the theatre. He was too honest and too prudent to attempt to inspire a passion which he could never return. They called each other by their christian names, rendered more familiar by abbrevia tions, and in talking of their little penchants for any of the opposite sex, they laughed as would brother and sister at their mutual criticisms, predilections, or observations. There appeared indeed something so absurd to Jefferson in the idea of his falling in love with a girl who had but a poor thousand which she could call her own, that he deemed himself perfectly free from contagion; and to be certain of this, he was in the constant practice of examining his heart during every absence from her. On his occasional departures from her, he found she was very seldom in his thoughts, and he fancied himself quite as happy in the company of some country attorney as he would have been in that of Rhoda Woodyatt. Dan Cupid was not, however, to be treated thus: with all the urchin's apparent indifference to what was going on, he was aiming dart after dart at the bosom of the as yet insensible Rhoda, who, in the seeming impossibility of their union, flattered herself that he would never be united to any one else, or that she only felt that interest in the welfare of Jefferson which she should feel for any other friend; and while she would sit for the quarter of an hour together hearing something of the practice of the courts," or the case of" Rotherham versus Botherum," she never asked herself, how or for what did her heart so violently beat, from the excitation of his anticipated" going the circuit," or on his expected return. Love, however, like murder, will out: various means combine to tell the dreadful truth; the following was the medium in this case: A course of hard reading in a close room at length brought Jefferson to so debilitated a state, that something fatal was anticipated. He found himself in that situation which requires all the kind assistance of friendship to keep his tottering frame together. His mind was so shattered, that he shed tears like a girl from nervous irritability. His aching limbs barely bore the burthen of his body, weak as it was. At such a time who could be coldly cautious? Indeed he wanted a nurse and a friend who was young and able to attend on him, and his only friend was Rhoda: she prepared his medicines; she surmised his wants; she read to him, and made his pillow easier to his head. Rhoda recovered him to life: while she was doing this, anxiety stole the roses from her cheeks, but joy at his convalescence dressed her face with smiles. Her arm supported his enfeebled frame when he walked, and coldly as he was constructed, did he never press that hand which had been stretched out to save him? To be brief, she redeemed his life with half her own. Health and strength revi sited the frame of Jefferson; but poor Rhoda Woodyatt bent like a lily in the storm, and stood conscious of owning a love which could never be returned. On again resuming his professional career, and on his first departure after it from the lodgings of Rhoda's mother, Jefferson lost no time m settling the account between him and his benefactress. Without suffering the least consideration of his own happiness to interfere with hers, he preferred at once probing the wound to the bottom to suffering the conta gion to take a firmer hold. He endeavoured to, and he did, consider every point in the most dispassionate manner: the result was, that in marrying Rhoda he struck a ba- | got it all." The reflections which lance of certain, considerable, and this rencontre awakened were quickeverlasting misery; and in leavingly drowned, not in bumpers of wine, her to a chance of happiness, he was acting like a man of honour. He lost no time in acquainting her with the result of his cogitations: that as it appeared to him that he could never marry, he scorned to hold any female in the vexatious trammels of a never-dying hope, sickened with endless disappointment. Alas! this determination, kindly as it was written, reasonably as it was dictated, failed for a long time to convince her; and as she day by day pored over it with the indistinct vision of tearful eyes, till she found a true and fatal corroboration of her fears, uncheered even by her mother, who dared not bid her hope, she became paler and paler yet; and days and weeks and years beheld her as one who wanders on a lonely beach waiting the distant sail-but yet, nor yet, a sail appears. Jefferson, for more reasons than one after this cruel éclaircissement, changed the scene of his operations from Edinburgh to London. Here, where impudence holds constant warfare with merit, Jefferson soon forgot poor Rhoda-when we say forgot her, we mean that she no longer weighed down his heart with chagrin; she no longer haunted him in the glare of day and occupation; but in the night and in the silence of solitude her form would flit before his imagination like the visions of Ossian. Sometimes in a concourse of females his beating heart would tell him, that some form was by, which resembled her whom it was criminal to think of more; but when this double opened her mouth, "he forVol. IV. No. XXII. but in larger draughts of law, and hurrying to some busy scene of action, all within would quickly fall into a repose. He was one morning in particular much startled by the ap pearance of a lady as she quickly passed the Temple-porch; but his surprise was greater still on hearing the peal of his office-bell, evidently pulled by the hand of the fair-one who had been the cause of this spe culation. He had not even time to quiet the uproar which this incident had caused within his breast, when the little dirty urchin, whom he found it necessary to retain in his service at half-a-crown a week, ushering the lady into an adjoining apartment, announced her to his master as the Hon. Miss Rothchild, with Mr. Johnson. Jefferson, although to his credit be it spoken he was no coxcomb, veiled his soiled stockings with a pair of jet-black Wellingtons, poked his fingers through his hair, to awaken it from the dormant state into which it had fallen, and tucking in a frill somewhat tumbled by a second day's exhibition, and giving a glance at his fingernails, somewhat tipped with the ebony of his profession, entered the room, when the figure before him caused him to feel more than his usual trepidation. The form of the lady was Rhoda's, yet somewhat taller, for she wore feathers, and her nose was a little more Grecian. Her eyelashes were quite as long, and her eyes, though larger, of the same colour with those of Miss Woodyatt; but her voice came to him in larger volumes, and she posНи 1 |