want a human interest, for the peasant
girls were going to market at that hour, and I met them everywhere,
bearing heavy burdens on their own heads, or hurrying forward with
their wares on the backs of donkeys. They were as handsome as heart
could wish, and they wore that Italian costume which is not to be seen
anywhere in Italy except at Trieste and in the Roman and Neapolitan
provinces,--a bright bodice and gown, with the head-dress of dazzling
white linen, square upon the crown, and dropping lightly to the
shoulders. Later I saw these comely maidens crouching on the ground in
the market-place, and selling their wares, with much glitter of eyes,
teeth, and earrings, and a continual babble of bargaining.

It seemed to me that the average of good looks was greater among the
women of Trieste than among those of Venice, but that the instances of
striking and exquisite beauty were rarer. At Trieste, too, the Italian
type, so pure at Venice, is lost or continually modified by the mixed
character of the population, which perhaps is most noticeable at the
Merchants' Exchange. This is a vast edifice roofed with glass, where
are the offices of the great steam navigation company, the Austrian
Lloyds,--which, far more than the favor of the Imperial government,
has contributed to the prosperity of Trieste,--and where the
traffickers of all races meet daily to gossip over the news and the
prices. Here a Greek or Dalmat talks with an eager Italian or a slow,
sure Englishman; here the hated Austrian button-holes the Venetian
or the Magyar; here the Jew meets the Gentile on common ground; here
Christianity encounters the hoary superstitions of the East, and makes
a good thing out of them in cotton or grain. All costumes are seen
here, and all tongues are heard, the native Triestines contributing
almost as much to the variety of the latter as the foreigners. "In
regard to language," says Cantu, "though the country is peopled by
Slavonians, yet the Italian tongue is spreading into the remotest
villages where a few years since it was not understood. In the city it
is the common and familiar language; the Slavonians of the North use
the German for the language of ceremony; those of the South, as well
as the Israelites, the Italian; while the Protestants use the German,
the Greeks the Hellenic and Illyric, the _employes_ of the civil
courts the Italian or the German, the schools now German and now
Italian, the bar and the pulpit Italian. M