“Will Jones, think you, presume to be imperative if it be Alfred Tennyson who has brought up his hot water? Will Brown be critical about the polish, if it be Owen Meredith has taken him his boots? Will even Snooks cry out, ‘Holloa, you fellow!’ to a passing waiter, if the individual so addressed might chance to be an Oriental Secretary or a Saturday Reviewer? “And would the most infatuated of Bagmen venture on what O’Connell used to call a ‘chuck-under-the-chin manner,’ were the chamber-maid to be Margaret Maitland? “Such, in brief, is my plan, O’Dowd; nor is the least of its advantages that it gets rid of the Pension List, and that beggarly £1200 a-year by which wealthy England assumes to aid the destitute sons and daughters of letters. As for myself, I have fixed on my station. I mean to be swimming-master, and the prospectus shall announce that His Excellency the late Minister at the Court of-----ducks ladies every morning from eight till nine. Think over the project, and drop me a hint as to the sort of place would suit you.” ITALIAN TRAITS AND CHARACTERISTICS. My diplomatic friend is rarely very serious in his humour; this morning, however, he was rather disposed that way, and so I took the opportunity to question him about Italy, a country where he has lived long, and whose people he certainly understands better than most Englishmen. I gathered from him that he considered the English were thoroughly well informed on Italy, but in the most hopeless ignorance as to the Italians. “As for the house and the furniture, you know it all.” said he; “but of the company you know positively nothing.” Byron understood them better than any other Englishman. He had his admission _par la petite porte_--that is, he gained his knowledge through his vices; and the Italians were so flattered to see a great Milor adapt himself so readily to their lax notions and loose morality that they grew frank and open with him. His pretended--I suppose it was only pretended--dislike to England disarmed them, too, of all distrust of him; and for the first time they felt themselves judged by a man who did not think Charing Cross finer than the Piazza del Popolo. Byron’s rank and station gained him a ready acceptance where the masses of our travelling countrymen would not be received; for the Italians love rank, and respect all its gradations. Even the republics were great aristocracies; and in all their imitations of France they have never affected “equality.” They love splendour too, and display; and in all their festivals you see something like an effort to recall a time when their cities were the grandest and their citizens the proudest in all Europe. They are a very difficult people to understand. There are not so many salient points in the Italian as in the German or the Frenchman; his character is not so strongly accented; his traits are finer--his shades of temperament more delicate.