temperaments more easily catch a new language and a new tone of society. Is it not fortunate for you that I am interrupted in these gossipings by the order to march? Mary Anne has come to tell me that we are to start in half an hour; and so, adieu till we meet at Spezia. Spezia, Croce di Malta. The little sketch that I send with this will give you some very faint notion of this beautiful gulf, with which I have as yet seen nothing to compare. This is indeed Italy. Sea, sky, foliage, balmy air, the soft influences of an atmosphere perfumed with a thousand odors,--all breathe of the glorious land. The Garden--a little promenade for the townspeople, that stretches along the beach--is one blaze of deep crimson flowers,--the blossom of the San Giuseppe,--I know not the botanical name. The blue sea--and such a blue!--mirrors every cliff and crag and castellated height with the most minute distinctness. Tall lateen-sailed boats glide swiftly to and fro; and lazy oxen of gigantic size drag rustling wagons of loaded vines along, the ruddy juice staining the rich earth as they pass. Como was beautiful; but there was--so to say--a kind of trim coquetry in its beauty that did not please me. The villas, the gardens, the terraced walks, the pillared temples, seemed all the creations of a landscape-gardening spirit that eagerly profited by every accidental advantage of ground, and every casual excellence of situation. Now, here there is none of this. All that man has done here had been even better left undone. It is in the jutting promontories of rock-crowned olives,--the landlocked, silent bays, darkened by woody shores,--the wild, profuse vegetation, where the myrtle, the cactus, and the arbutus blend with the vine, the orange, and the fig,--the sea itself, heaving as if oppressed with perfumed languor,--and the tall Apennines, snow-capped, in the distance, but whiter still in the cliffs of pure Carrara marble,--it is in these that Spezia maintains its glorious superiority, and in these it is indeed unequalled.