y streets--gay shops--various costumes--Greeks, Turks, Jews,
and Christians, mingled on terms of friendly equality--a crowded port,
and all the activity of prosperous commerce.

Leghorn is in every sense a _free_ port: all kinds of merchandise
enter exempt from duty, all religions are equally tolerated, and all
nations trade on an equal footing.

The Jews, who are in every other city a shunned and degraded race, are
among the most opulent and respectable inhabitants of Leghorn: their
quarter is the richest, and, I may add, the _dirtiest_ in the city:
their synagogue here is reckoned the finest in Europe, and I was
induced to visit it yesterday at the hour of worship. I confess I was
much disappointed; and, notwithstanding my inclination to respect
always what is respectable in the eyes of others, I never felt so
strong a disposition to smile. An old Rabbi with a beard of venerable
length, a pointed bonnet, and a long white veil, got up into a superb
marble pulpit and chanted in strange nasal tones, something which was
repeated after him in various and discordant voices by the rest of the
assembly. The congregation consisted of an uncouth set of men and
boys, many of them from different parts of the Levant, in the dresses
of their respective countries: there was no appearance of devotion, no
solemnity; all wore their hats, some were poring over ragged books,
some were talking, some sleeping, or lounging, or smoking. While I
stood looking about me, without exciting the smallest attention, I
heard at every pause a prodigious chattering and whispering, which
seemed to come from the regions above, and looking up I saw a row of
latticed and skreened galleries where the women were caged up like
the monkies at a menagerie, and seemed as noisy, as restless, and as
impatient of confinement: the door-keeper offered to introduce me
among them, but I was already tired and glad to depart.

* * * * *

We have visited the pretty English burial-ground, and the tomb of
Smollet, which in the true English style is cut and scratched all over
with the names of fools, who think thus to link their own
insignificance to his immortality. We have also seen whatever else is
to be seen, and what all travellers describe: to-morrow we leave
Leghorn--for myself without regret: it is a place with which I have no
sympathies, and the hot, languid, damp atmosphere, which depresses the
spirits and relaxes the nerves, has