unobtrusive person, who need not be asked
to dine, or be shown any especial attentions,
but let "come in" when they receive,
or even sometimes when they are all but alone.
I have not many social qualities, nor any
brilliant or engaging ones; but I can play whist
and piquet, possess a moderate gift of languages,
and am a rare listener.  In a word, I am one taken
from that great heap of mankind, as much alike
each other as the eggs in a basket; and although,
doubtless, some amongst us may have their
special qualities and traits, nobody ever takes
the trouble to go in search of them, and thus we
float down the stream of life undistinguished.

I am not usually so garrulous about myself;
nor would I be now, but that I want you to
understand that I am a plain, matter-of-fact,
every-day sort of person, as common-place as
need be.  I am neither fanciful nor imaginative;
perhaps my credulity is too limited to
admit of my being either; but still I am fond of
a certain dreamy indistinctness, such as some
German prose writers have—Messieurs Hoffman
and Tiek, for instance—and I like the cloud
atmosphere which often wraps this incident, leaving
one often at a loss to guess how much is allegory,
how much mysticism, how much matter
of fact. These Germans, too, have another
charm for me—they constantly treat passing
events as mere symbols, indications of this or
that working of the human intelligence, and
developments of this or that faculty; so that
the facts actually lose their importance, except
as they illustrate some abstract proposition.  I
hope the reader will fill in this weak outline of
what I want to convey, and understand me.

It is in the indulgence of a certain speculative
humour of this kind that my summer days
(the happiest of my life) are passed; and I go
on castle-building for hours on themes that
assuredly have little relation to my own existence.
Now, I puzzle myself why the moral qualities
of humanity should bear such scant relation to
the intellectual, so that crime should not be
found to diminish as men grow wiser, nor even
human happiness be greatly served by all the
discoveries of science.  Then, I wonder if
England be really on her decline, as French
writers tell.  Are our glories over, and our days
numbered?  Ought women, who possess
unquestionably some rare gifts of quick apprehension,
to be entrusted with the management of
difficult social and political problems; and what
are the sort of questions her intelligence would
be best employed on?  Why are some nations
courageous and others cowardly; and what
predisposes to this or that character of courage?
Was alchemy a strict fact, or an allegory to be
worked out by a chemical parable, the search
after happiness being the great issue to be solved?
Why is it that constituted forms of government,
which are intellectually higher than all others,
best adapt themselves to nations less
conspicuous for great quickness of apprehension, so
that, though they flourish amongst Saxons,
Hollanders, and the like, they are scarcely practicable
for Celts and the Latin races?

Why is cruelty so constantly allied to timidity?
the rabbit often eating her young, the lioness
never.  Ought fiction ever be deemed successful if
it amuse without a moral; as many fruits
of delicious flavour have no nutritive
property?  Are not contrasts and incompatibilities
ingredients of human happiness—to enjoy the
shade in hours of sunshine; to drink of the ice
cold well in the noon; to listen to the beating
storm from the chimney corner—and, if so, why
do we not seek out contrarieties as elements of
connubial bliss?

I will not weary you with the thousand and
one forms in which this questioning spirit now
amuses me, now tortures me.  I was, as usual,
alone on Wednesday evening last.  I had eaten
my frugal dinner, and sat, almost luxuriously, at
my dessert, fresh culled from my own garden,
of autumn figs and dates.  A modest flask of the
vino d'Asti, a little Piedmontese vintage, was
at my right hand, and a cigar of the truest
perfume—it is my only extravagance—before me.
From my little terrace where I sat, under the
vine trellise, I had a view which all Europe,
search where you will, cannot surpass before
me.  At the other side of the strait that separated
me from the main land, rose a great mountain,
waving from base to summit with a foliage of
every hue, from the dark-leaved orange to the
silvery olive, with picturesque villages on every
crag, and tall, tapering church towers rising
above the trees. Bending abruptly in, a wide
bay opens to view, curving away for miles
inland, every nook and corner discovering some
little fishing hamlet, half buried in chesnut-trees,
while far to the back ground arose great jagged
Alps, with snow-clad summits, but now a-blaze
in all the glorious effulgence of a setting sun,
while the lower hills were deeply blue, as the
great orb had left them.  Many a white sailed
lateener lies listlessly sleeping in the placid sea,
for the wind falls with sunset, and the boatmen
have to wait patiently till the stars are up, and
the light "Tramontane" may creep across the
waveless water.  It was all very beautiful and
very peaceful.  It was just such a picture as
disposes one to think, and ask why will men jar,
and fret, and wrangle, with a world so fair as
this to live in?  What prize is wealth in such a
spot? what value is ambition?  Could I
myself, for instance, drink more deeply of its
enjoyments if Coutts or Drummond had opened an
unbounded credit to my hand, or great princes
deigned to shower their decorations on me? And
yet, even as I sit here, what wild work is going
on over the whole earth—in the East, in China!
Ay, and who knows what dark looks and angry
words are passing between brothers in the Far
West again, while around and about me
villagers are quitting home, to join some far-
away camp amid the low rice-fields and swampy
pasturages of Lombardy?  To be sure it
is for Liberty!  But what is this same Liberty?
Do all peoples comprehend Liberty in the
same way?  Is my Liberty your Liberty?
"Would," cried I, to myself, "that I could
read the hearts of nations, and learn what