thou be, forget not thine other designation: | faring town; the saltest, roughest, most pifor all the green-braided badge of thy new ratical little place that ever was seen. order, see that thou discard not the Muse's Great rusty iron rings and mooring-chains, livery and, in the intervals of senatorial session, give us yet another of those delightful volumes of thine, with their quaint, fantastic, arabesque, crepuscular, enigmatical titles.

capstans, and fragments of old masts and spars, choke up the way; hardy roughweather boats, and seamen's clothing, flutter in the little harbor or are drawn out on the sunny stones to dry; on the parapet of the rude pier, a few amphibious-looking fellows lie asleep, with their legs dangling over the wall, as though earth or water were all one to them, and if they slipped

TRAVELLING LETTERS, WRITTEN ON in, they would float away, dozing comfort

THE ROAD.

BY CHARLES DICKENS.

XII.

TO ROME BY PISA AND SIENA.

THERE is nothing in Italy, more beautiful to me, than the coast-road between Genoa and Spezzia. On one side: sometimes far below, sometimes nearly on a level with the road, and often skirted by broken rocks of many shapes: there is the free blue sea, with here and there a picturesque felùca gliding slowly ou; on the other side, are lofty hills, ravines besprinkled with white cottages, patches of dark olive woods, country churches with their light open towers, and country houses gaily painted. On every bank and knoll by the way side, the wild cactus and aloe flourish in exuberant profusion; and the gardens of the bright villages along the road, are seen, all blushing in the summer-time with clusters of the Belladonna, and are fragrant in the autumn and winter with golden oranges and lemons.

ably among the fishes; the church is bright with trophies of the sea, and votive offerings, in commemoration of escape from storm and shipwreck. The dwellings not immediately abutting on the harbor are approached by blind, low archways, and by crooked steps, as if in darkness and in difficulty of access they should be like holds of ships, or inconvenient cabins under water; and every where, there is a smell of fish, and seaweed, and old rope.

The coast-road whence Camoglia is descried so far below, is famous, in the warm season, especially in some parts near Genoa, for fire-flies. Walking there, on a dark night, I have seen it made one sparkling firmament by these beautiful insects; so that the distant stars were pale against the flash and glitter that spangled every olive wood and hill-side, and pervaded the whole air.

It was not in such a season, however, that we traversed this road on our way to Rome. The middle of January was only just past, and it was very gloomy and dark weather; very wet besides. In crossing the fine Pass of Bracco, we encountered such a storm of mist and rain, that we Some of the villages are inhabited, al- travelled in a cloud the whole way. There most exclusively, by fishermen; and it is might have been no Mediterranean in the pleasant to see their great boats hauled up world, for any thing we saw of it there, on the beach, making little patches of except when a sudden gust of wind clearshade, where they lie asleep, or where the ing the mist before it, for a moment, showwomen and children sit romping and look-ed the agitated sea at a great depth below, ing out to sea, while they mend their nets upon the shore. There is one town, Camoglia, with its little harbor on the sea, hundreds of feet below the road: where families of mariners live, who, time out of mind, have owned coasting-vessels in that place, and have traded to Spain and else where. Seen from the road above, it is like a tiny model on the margin of the dimpled water, shining in the sun. Descended into, by the winding mule-tracks, it is a perfect miniature of a primitive sea

lashing the distant rocks, and spouting up its foam furiously. The rain was incessant; every brook and torrent was greatly swollen; and such a deafening leaping, and roaring, and thundering of water, I never heard the like of in my life.

Hence, when we came to Spezzia, we found that the Magra, an unbridged river on the high-road to Pisa, was too high to be safely crossed in the Ferry Boat, and were fain to wait until the afternoon of next day, when it had, in some degree, sub

sided. Spezzia, however, is a good place] not help thinking of the deep glen (just the to tarry at; by reason, firstly, of its beau- same sort of glen) where the Roc left Sintiful bay; secondly, of its ghostly Inn; bad the Sailor; and where the merchants 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.

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 years ago! Imagine the clumsy carts of quarries, or caves," as they call them five hundred years ago, being used to this there, are so many openings, high up in the hour, and drawn, as they used to be, five hills, on either side of these passes, where hundred years ago, by oxen, whose ancesthey blast and excavate for marble which tors were worn to death five hundred years may turn out good or bad: may make a ago, as their unhappy descendants are now, man's fortune very quickly, or ruin him by in twelve months, by the suffering and agothe great expense of working what is worth ny of this cruel work! Two pair, four nothing. Some of these caves were open-pair, ten pair, twenty pair, to one block, ed by the ancient Romans, and remain as according to its size; down it must come, they left them to this hour. Many others this way. In their struggling from stone are being worked at this moment; others to stone, with their enormous loads behind are to be begun to-morrow, next week, them, they die frequently upon the spot; next month; others are unbought, un- and not they alone; for their passionate thought of; and marble enough for more drivers, sometimes tumbling down in their 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

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.

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 foreboding knowledge of the man who 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 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 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.

thing else is stirring, but warm air. Going 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 dayThe manifold beauties of the Cathedral break, or during a general siesta of the and Baptistery need no recapitulation from population. Or it is yet more like those me; though in this case, as in a hundred backgrounds of houses in common prints, others, I find it difficult to separate my own or old engravings, where windows and delight in recalling them, from your weari-doors are squarely indicated, and one figure ness in having them recalled. There is a (a beggar of course) is seen walking off by picture of St. Agnes, by Andrea del Sarto, itself into illimitable perspective. 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

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. think the president of this amiable society,

I