rocky wooded island, the Isola Palmeria, which rises steeply across a narrow strait; though the purpose to which it has been devoted--a prison for convicts--neither adds to its charm nor awakens pleasant reflections. To some minds also the harbor itself, busy and bright as the scene often is, will suggest more painful thoughts than it did in olden days. For it is no preacher of "peace at any price," and is a daily witness that millennial days are still far away from the present epoch. Here may be seen at anchor the modern devices for naval war: great turret-ships and ironclads, gunboats and torpedo launches--evils, necessary undoubtedly, but evils still; outward and visible signs of the burden of taxation, which is cramping the development of Italy, and is indirectly the heavy price which it has to pay for entering the ranks of the great Powers of Europe. These are less picturesque than the old line-of-battle ships, with their high decks, their tall masts, and their clouds of canvas; still, nothing can entirely spoil the harbor of Spezzia, and even these floating castles group pleasantly in the distance with the varied outline of hills and headlands, which is backed at last, if we look southward, by the grand outline of a group of veritable mountains--the Apuan Alps. IX THE TUSCAN COAST Shelley's last months at Lerici--Story of his death--Carrara and its marble quarries--Pisa--Its grand group of ecclesiastical buildings--The cloisters of the Campo Santo--Napoleon's life on Elba--Origin of the Etruscans--The ruins of Tarquinii--Civita Vecchia, the old port of Rome--Ostia.