Sunday morning, we cast anchor in Valetta
harbour, and I start for the shore in a government
boat, with my Malta mails aboard, and the
British flag flying from her stern, I am greeted
by a jovial cheer from all my male fellow-
passengers.

Through indigo-blue water the boat is pulled
by two half-clad fellows with naked feet, and
after a great deal of shouting and backing, draws
up within three feet of some very slippery
pointed stones, which are regarded as the land-
mg-place of Valetta, and upon which I am
requested to jump. In fear and trembling I obey,
and happily land on my feet, then follow my
conductor up long flights of steps, and eventually
up a steep narrow street, at right angles
to which I find the principal thoroughfare of the
town in which the post-office is situated.
Directly I get within reach of the building my
official capacity is renascent within me. I lose
my slouching walk, my indolent manner, my
travelled lassitude; starch seems spontaneously
to bud in my shirt collar, and buckram to generate
in the seams of my coat. I am on my native
foolscap, and my name is M'Gillott. So, being
in this frame of mind, I scrutinise rigidly the
exterior of the Malta post-office, and find it an
agreeable mixture of the Italian palazzo and
Thames-street warehouse styles of architecture.
Ascending three mouldy steps I come upon a
large broad staircase, in different portions of
which three men, in various stages of mouldiness,
with cigarettes in their mouths, are practically
making a jocose comment upon the large
placard, " Smoking not allowed," which stares
on them from the walls, and at the top I find an
office which has evidently suffered from the
relaxing effect of the climate, and which, though
perfectly useful, is not sufficiently British for
one in my present state of mind. For, I connect
business with Britain, and cannot dissever the
idea. I do not believe in French banks where
there are no shovels, no drawers full of notes,
no piles of sovereigns, no big ledgers, no
Stationers' Almanack, no Kelly's Directory; I do
not believe in German post-offices where the tariff
is written in ink, where the clerks smoke cigars
as they sort the letters, and where you push your
despatch and receive your change under a small
arch in a wirework fence; I do not believe in
the attempt at a British post-office in Constantinople
where a Janissary has to stand with a
stick to whack the hands of the Turks who will
scramble for the letters indiscriminately; and
even at Malta, which presents the nearest
approach to the business aspect at home, I wanted
more lion and unicorn, more mahogany graining,
more brass lettering, more scarlet-coating, more
ceremonial, more unapproachableness.

I am not prepared to say much about Malta,
for my stomach, which has done me yeoman's
service since we started, and is constantly to be
relied on at sea, rebels the instant I set foot on
shore, and I have scarcely walked a yard before
the steep hills of Valetta rise to greet me, and
the quaint, half-Moorish, half-Spanish, white,
picturesque houses bow down to me on either

side. In a word, I turn deadly sick, and
so continue during the six hours I pass on
shore; yet in those six hours I see nearly all
that is worth seeing, I imagine, for, accompanied
by the Postmaster-General of the island,
an old colleague and chum, I stroll through
the principal streets, and have scarcely started
before I find how false have been my original
impressions of the place. I have pictured
it to myself as wholly Anglicised, as an Italian
version of the English quarter of Boulogne,
and am most agreeably disappointed. What
though English inscriptions appear in every
other shop, what though from each drinking-
house we pass come, even at that early hour,
shouts of naval songs attributable to the pen of
Charles Dibdin and other equally patriotic but
far less spirit-stirring bards; the names inscribed
over each shop, the wares exhibited in their
windows, and the natives presiding behind the
counters, are purely and entirely foreign. John
Bull does not lurk in Giovanni Pac, nor does
Jones lie hid in Gaetano Schenibri, lovely coral
of the most flowing red, or, better still, of the
palest pink, silver filagree ornaments of the
finest workmanship, lace of the rarest quality,
these are not the wares which Jenkins vends!
Smout, of the Livery of the Haberdashers' Company,
and of 1066 Great Lounge-street, would
as soon think of serving his customers in the
scarlet coat and tops in which on " off days" he
follows the Queen's hounds, as of appearing
before them in the gold ear-rings, variegated
shirt-front, red neckerchief, and slashed jacket
of maroon-coloured velvet worn by Luigi
Portelli! It is Sunday, and the streets, narrow,
steep, and ill-paved, are thronged with an idle,
lounging, picturesque crowd; beggars, with
the least possible clothing of the filthiest rags,
are lying against the walls, basking in the
sunshine and apparently perfectly indifferent to
being walked over; vagabond dogs with
protruding tongues, unpleasantly suggestive of
hydrophobia, cast furtive glances at the naked
calves of the native boatmen as they pass, and
are seemingly only prevented by the encrustation
of dirt from making a rabid clash at them;
beefy-faced, bullet-headed, stolid-looking
English soldiers move here and there among the
crowd, in face, figure, and general aspect a
curious contrast to the swarthy-skinned, snaky-
eyed, lithe-limbed Maltese.

Passing through the town, and noticing in the
jeweller's shops all my ship-companions
engaged in bargaining (for it is as incumbent on
the visitor to purchase coral and silver filagree
at Malta, as it is to buy Maids-of-Honour
at Richmond, inlaid ware at Tunbridge, or
yellow slippers at Margate), we come to the
barracks: a range of white-faced buildings standing
unprotected in the glaring, scorching sun—
it is now March, what will it be in July?—and
thence to some pretty, elevated gardens, known,
if I remember rightly, as the ramparts, whence
there is a lovely view of the town and the
harbour, and where we find a little old gentleman
in naval uniform and cap, strolling up and down