h a magnificent
stable! It is but a beginning, you will say. True enough, and so is
everything just now here; but, except the Genoese, the Italians have few
real sailors. There are no deep-sea fisheries, and the small craft which
creep along close to shore are not the nurseries of seamen. The world,
however, has resolved, by a large vote, to be hopeful about Italy; and,
of course, she will have a fleet, as she will have all the trade of the
Levant, immensely productive mines, and vast regions of cotton. "What
for no?" as Meg Dodds says; but I can't help thinking there are no
people in Europe so much alike as the Italians and the Irish; and I ask
myself, How is it that every one is so sanguine about the one, and
so hopeless about the other? Why do we hear of the capacity and the
intelligence of the former, and only of the latter what pertains to
their ignorance and their sloth? Oh! unjust generation of men! have
not my poor countrymen all the qualities you extol in these same
Peninsulars, plus a few others not to be disparaged?

THE STRANGER AT THE CROCE DI MALTA.

At the Croce di Malta, where we stopped--the Odessa, we heard,
was atrociously bad--we met a somewhat depressed countryman, whose
familiarity with place and people was indicated by several little
traits. He rebuked the waiter for the salad oil, and was speedily
supplied with better; he remonstrated about the wine, and a superior
"cru" was served the day following. The book of the arrivals, too, was
brought to him each day as he sat down to table, and he grunted out,
I remember, in no very complimentary fashion as he read our names,
"Nobodies."

My Garibaldian friend had gone over to Massa, so that I found myself
alone with this gentleman on the night of my arrival; for, when the
company of the _table-d'hote_ withdrew, he and I were discovered, as the
stage-people say, seated opposite to each other at the fire.

It blew hard without; the sea beat loudly on the shingly shore, and
even sent some drifts of spray against the windows; while within doors
a cheerful wood-fire blazed on the ample hearth, and the low-ceilinged
room did not look a whit the worse that it suggested snugness instead
of splendour. I had got my cup of coffee and my cognac on a little table
beside me; and while I filled the bowl of my pipe, I bethought me how
cheap and come-at-able are often the materials of our comfort, if one
had but the prudence which ignores all display. My compa