view as one might have looking down from the
cliffs over Levanti, or Listri, or the Gulf of
Genoa: a broad ocean of blue sea broken by
innumerable headlands of mildest outline, with
waving olive woods and tall dark cypresses
cutting this soft outline. Three handsome men, in
the prime of life, were sitting in an arbour
smoking, and placidly enjoying the gorgeous
scene beneath them. They were too distant to
catch their words, but I could see by their
gestures that their discussion was animated, almost
violent.

"Ah," said I, "I can guess what is the theme
between them. They are talking of Italy and
her future."

"No," said he, dryly; "they are discussing
whether Foco is better in the Esmeralda, or in
the Figlia del Banditto; but though angry,
they'll not quarrel."

I almost dashed the box to the ground in my
anger; but he caught my hand, and gently said,
"Come, you shall have your recompense. Here
is a land at last which will repay you for every
disappointment; here are they whose interests,
embracing every land and every sea, are indeed
men, in all that humanity boasts, as wisest and
most enlightened."

What a strange scene was that I looked on.
A great feast in a large room hung round with
trailing banners and flaunting flags, on which
were inscribed such sentences as "Farmers'
Friend," "Speed the Plough," "The Land, and
they who live by it."  Jolly, happy fellows they
looked that sat around that board, and clinked
their glasses merrily as they cheered the speaker
who was so eloquently addressing them.

"Ah," I thought, "this is the real thing at
last. Here are men who regard the world in
its noblest sense, and understand what ought to
form its true ambitions." I wished I could
have caught what he said, but the noise and
tumult were so great that I could not hear a
word, and I saw plainly that his audience were
intensely excited.

"What is his theme?" I asked, eagerly.
"How deeply he seems to move the hearts of
his hearers."

"He is telling them," whispered the showman,
"that if they restore his party and himself
to power, he'll bring in a bill to lay all the taxation
on the manufacturing interest, and that
he'll repeal the duty on malt."

"And is it thus," I said, "that men are
swayed? Are these their hopes, their wants,
their high aspirings? Is the world nothing
beyond a tricky game with some crowned
croupiers to distribute the winnings? Is there
no people on the earth who can rise above
the miserable cares of every-day existence to
devote some thought to what may make life
nobler, purer, better? Is no nation great
enough to assume the van of civilisation, itself
displaying the arts by which others may advance,
or is the whole structure one narrow round of
selfish interests and selfish enjoyments?"

"Stop -- look here!" cried the showman; and
there was an almost reproof in the tone he
used.

I stooped down and peeped in. It was a
moonlight on the sea-shore, and a solitary figure
sat on a rock and gazed out over the wide
water.

"Listen to his words; for he always talks aloud
when thus alone."

I bent my ear and heard. It was a rich
mellow voice, speaking Italian. He appeared
as though reciting to himself the form of some
essay he was about to commit to writing. If
in some respects it seemed like a sort of
comparison of the various social conditions of men
in different lands, it occasionally diverged from
questions of morals to those of governments.
Never before had I heard the difficulties of
discipline, as adapted to race, so admirably
considered. Where certain concessions could or
could not be accorded; where liberty grew to
be licence, and where limitation became a
tyranny, he touched on with a skill of
marvellous power. That even justice itself took
forms in unison with certain temperaments, he
also showed, so that the penalty that men
deemed reasonable here, might there be
regarded as unendurable. What wise opinions,
too, he uttered on the subject of the Press, and
what perils did he show awaited those who
drew their daily maxims too implicitly from its
guidance.

"May I speak to him?" I cried at last;
"this is indeed the man I have long sought for."

"One question alone can I permit," said the
showman, as he prepared to close the box.

"Of what great nation are you a citizen?"
said I, in deepest deference to the stranger.
"Where is the land whose people have
institutions and maxims such as these?"

"I am a citizen of Monaco, signor," said he,
rising respectfully. "The great country I
belong to is four leagues long and two wide; my
native prince lives in an entresol at Paris."

I burst into a fit of laughing. On looking
around me, the showman and his box were
gone; the flask of Marcobrunner was finished;
the night air was faintly chilly over the sea,
as it feels towards daybreak; but, strangest of
all, the lamp was not on the table, but on the
floor, where I remember the showman had placed
it, the better to display his pictures; and I asked
myself again and again, as I ask you now—

Was it a dream?

Now Ready, price 4d.,
THE HAUNTED HOUSE,
Forming the CHRISTMAS NUMBER of ALL THE
YEAR ROUND; and containing the amount of two
ordinary numbers.