Observing the eagerness with which I surveyed these objects, our _laquais de place_ declared, it was a pity we had not been in Leghorn ten days earlier, as we might then have found a ship worth seeing, the Delaware, American man-of-war. We sneered at this information, and asked him what a people like the Americans could produce that was worth examining? “I thought so too, gentlemen,” he answered; “but the Delaware was the finest ship that has ever been at Leghorn, as every one admits.” “Of course her crew were black?” “Not so, signore: _I expected that too_; but they were all as white as we are:” which perhaps was not so literally true. The only people in Europe who have a respectful opinion of the Americans are those who see their ships: and these are getting to entertain notions that are a little extravagant the wrong way. Leghorn was the first sea-port that I had entered since leaving Holland, and its delicious odours were inhaled with a delight that no language can describe. I had been living in an atmosphere of poetry for many months, and this was truly an atmosphere of life. The fragrance of the bales of merchandise, of the piles of oranges--of even the mud, saturated as it was with salt--to say nothing of the high seasoning of occasional breathings of tar and pitch, to me were pregnant “with odours of delight.” Still I found that residences in European capitals, and among the Alps and Apennines, is creating a strong distaste for all the more common appliances of commerce. Leghorn seemed vulgar and mean, after Florence, with its pretty little court, its museums and its refinements; and the only things that interested us were the sea, the port, the picturesque vessels, the fragrance, and a cemetery for the Protestant dead. The Island of Gorgona was looming in the haze, a hummock of rock, and it is said there are days on which the mountains of Corsica are visible from the mole. There is also a noble dark pile at no great distance from the town, which is, appropriately enough, called Monte Nero. Its side is garnished with country-houses, and there is a church near its summit that is in great repute among mariners, as a shrine at which offerings are to be made for deliveries from the casualties of the sea: I believe its name is that of Our Lady of the Storms. These Catholics have certainly got all the poetry of the religion.