fterwards a pleasant contrast.

III.

TRIESTE.

If you take the midnight steamer at Venice you reach Trieste by six
o'clock in the morning, and the hills rise to meet you as you enter the
broad bay dotted with the sail of fishing-craft. The hills are bald and
bare, and you find, as you draw near, that the city lies at their feet
under a veil of mist, or climbs earlier into view along their sides. The
prospect is singularly devoid of gentle and pleasing features, and
looking at those rugged acclivities, with their aspect of continual
bleakness, you readily believe all the stories you have ever heard of
that fierce wind called the Bora, which sweeps from them through Trieste
at certain seasons. While it blows, ladies walking near the quays are
sometimes caught up and set afloat, involuntary Galateas, in the bay,
and people keep in-doors as much as possible. But the Bora, though so
sudden and so savage, does give warning of its rise, and the peasants
avail themselves of this characteristic. They station a man on one of
the mountain-tops, and when he feels the first breath of the Bora, he
sounds a horn, which is a signal for all within hearing to lay hold of
something that cannot be blown away, and cling to it till the wind
falls. This may happen in three days or in nine, according to the
popular proverbs. "The spectacle of the sea," says Dall' Ongaro, in a
note to one of his ballads, "while the Bora blows, is sublime, and when
it ceases the prospect of the surrounding hills is delightful. The air,
purified by the rapid current, clothes them with a rosy veil, and the
temperature is instantly softened, even in the heart of winter."

The city itself, as you penetrate it, makes good with its stateliness
and picturesqueness your loss through the grimness of its environs. It
is in great part new, very clean, and full of the life and movement of a
prosperous port; but, better than this so far as the mere sight-seer is
concerned, it wins a novel charm from the many public staircases by
which you ascend and descend its hillier quarters, and which are made of
stone, and lightly railed and balustraded with iron.

Something of all this I noticed in my ride from the landing of the
steamer to the house of friends in the suburbs. There I grew better
disposed toward the hills, which, as I strolled over them, I found
dotted with lovely villas, and everywhere traversed by perfectly-kept
carriage-roads, and easy and pleasant foot-path