here's no fleet, not a frigate, in the
port.

"Where are they?"

"At Spezia."

"Where is Spezia?"

The landlord, to whom this question is propounded, takes out of a
pigeon-hole of his desk a large map and unfolds it, saying, proudly,
"There, sir, that is Spezia--a harbour that could hold Portsmouth,
and Plymouth, and Brest, and Cherbourg "--I'm not sure he didn't say
Calais--"and yet have room for our Italian fleet, which, in two years'
time, will be one of the first in Europe."

"The ships are building, I suppose?" said I.

"They are."

"And where?"

"In America, at Toulon, and in England."

"None in Italy?"

"Pardon me; there is a corvette on the stocks at Leghorn, and they are
repairing a boiler at Genoa. Ah! Signor John Bull, take care; we have
iron and coal mines, we have oak and hemp, and tallow and tar. There
was a winged lion once that swept the seas before people sang 'Rule
Britannia.' History is going to repeat itself."

"Let me be called at eight to-morrow morning, and my coffee be ready by
nine."

"And we shall want a vetturino for Spezia," added my Garibaldian; "let
him be here by eleven."

GARIBALDI'S WORSHIPPERS.

The road from Genoa to Spezia is one of the most beautiful in Europe. As
the Apennines descend to the sea they form innumerable little bays and
creeks, alongside of which the road winds--now coasting the very shore,
now soaring aloft on high-perched cliffs, and looking down into deep
dells, or to the waving tops of tall pine-trees. Seaward, it is a
succession of yellow-stranded bays, land-locked and narrow; and on the
land side are innumerable valleys, some waving with horse-chestnut and
olive, and others stern and rock-bound, but varying in colour from the
bluish-grey of marble to every shade of porphyry.

For several miles after we left Genoa, the road presented a succession
of handsome villas, which, neglected and uncared for, and in most
part untenanted, were yet so characteristically Italian in all their
vast-ness--their massive style and spacious plan--as to be great
ornaments of the scenery. Their gardens, too--such glorious wildernesses
of rich profusion--where the fig and the oleander, the vine and the
orange, tangle and intertwine--and cactuses, that would form the wonder
of our conservatories, are trained into hedgerows to protect cabbages.
My companion pointed out to me one of these villas on a little jutting
promontory of rock, with a narrow bay on one si