Corsica, in receiving these poor banished Italians, does more than simply practise her cherished religion of hospitality, she discharges a debt of gratitude. For in earlier centuries Corsican refugees found the most hospitable reception in all parts of Italy; and banished Corsicans were to be met with in Rome, in Florence, in Venice, and in Naples. The French government has hitherto treated its guests on the island with liberality and tolerance. The remote seclusion of their position compels these exiles to a life of contemplative quiet; and they are, perhaps precisely on this account, more fortunate than their brethren in misfortune in Jersey or London. CHAPTER IV. FRANCESCO MARMOCCHI OF FLORENCE--THE GEOLOGY OF CORSICA. Hic sola hæc duo sunt, exul, et exilium.--SENECA _in Corsica_. Προσκυνοῦντες τὴν εἱμαρμένην σοφοὶ .--ÆSCHYL. _Prom._ I was told in a bookseller's shop into which I had gone in search of a Geography of the island, that there was one then in the press, and that its author was Francesco Marmocchi, a banished Florentine. I immediately sought this gentleman out, and made in him one of the most valuable of all my Italian acquaintances. I found a man of prepossessing exterior, considerably above thirty, in a little room, buried among books. Possibly the rooms of most political exiles do not present such a peaceful aspect. On the bookshelves were the best classical authors; and my eye lighted with no small pleasure on Humboldt's _Cosmos_; on the walls were copperplate views of Florence, and an admirable copy of a Perugino; all this told not only of the seclusion of a scholar, but of that of a highly cultivated Florentine. There are perhaps few greater contrasts than that between Florence and Corsica, and my own feelings were at first certainly peculiar, when, after six weeks' stay in Florence, I suddenly exchanged the Madonnas of Raphael for the Corsican banditti; but it is always to be remembered that Corsica is an island of enchanting beauty; and though banishment to paradise itself would remain banishment, still the student of nature may at least, as Seneca did, console himself here with the grandeur and beauty around him, in undisturbed tranquillity. All that Seneca wrote from his Corsican exile to his mother on the consolation to be found in contemplating nature, and in science, Francesco Marmocchi may fully apply to himself. This former Florentine professor seemed to me, in his dignified retirement and learned leisure, the happiest of all exiles.