arms (a publisher's arms!) emblazoned on the
panels. People looked up from their little
tables outside the cafés, and said to each other
with wonder, "It is the unique publisher."

Endless were the stories that went round of
his revolutionary principles. How widows came
to him in deep mourning, to tell with tears how
they had been refused a miserable forty pounds
for their husbands' poems. "Astonishing,
madam!" exclaims the sympathising and unique
publisher. "A shame! a disgrace! Do me the
honour to accept this trifle of, say, three hundred.
I am exceedingly indebted to you for this
preference—I am indeed!" For the copyright of
Chateaubriand's works, he gave five and twenty
thousand pounds, and celebrated the contract
by a superb entertainment to that viscount and
his friends, in a superb hotel, such as publisher,
unique or other, had never dwelt in before now.
He revelled in what are called in France
"luxurious editions," in the dissipation of costly
papers and the most exquisite type. He gloried
in monster undertakings, what are called
"heavy" in the trade, series of sixteen and
twenty tomes. They were his Austerlitz and
Marengo, to which he would point with pride.

But one day when he was advanced in life,
there came his Waterloo, and he sank crushed by
his own speculations. Perhaps, the hotel, the
cabriolet, and the entertainments to noble
viscounts had something to do with the
catastrophe; more likely it was the unwieldy
proportions of his enterprises. The little shop in
the Palais Royal, fondly looked back to, did not
witness this decadence. It had long been
exchanged for the stately hotel, where the
banquets had been given to distinguished guests.
But, with the banquets it had now faded away,
like a tinsel pantomimic structure; and it ac-
tually came to this sad end, that the poor
unique, beaten at last by fortune, was glad to
yield up his spirit upon a settle-bed in the
dismal ward of a public hospital.

    THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER.

THE rising of the Italian people from
under their unutterable wrongs, and the tardy
burst of day upon them after the long long
night of oppression that has darkened their
beautiful country, has naturally caused my mind
to dwell often of late on my own small wanderings
in Italy. Connected with them, is a curious
little drama, in which the character I myself
sustained was so very subordinate, that I may
relate its story without any fear of being
suspected of self-display. It is strictly a true
story.

I am newly arrived one summer evening, in a
certain small town on the Mediterranean. I
have had my dinner at the inn, and I and the
mosquitoes are coming out into the streets
together. It is far from Naples; but a bright
brown plump little woman-servant at the inn,
is a Neapolitan, and is so vivaciously expert
in pantomimic action, that in the single
moment of answering my request to have a
pair of shoes cleaned which I left up-stairs,
she plies imaginary brushes, and goes
completely through the motions of polishing the
shoes up, and laying them at my feet. I
smile at the brisk little woman in perfect
satisfaction with her briskness; and the brisk little
woman, amiably pleased with me because I am
pleased with her, claps her hands and laughs
delightfully. We are in the inn yard. As the
little woman's bright eyes sparkle on the
cigarette I am smoking, I make bold to offer
her one; she accepts it none the less merrily,
because I touch a most charming little dimple
in her fat cheek, with its light paper end.
Glancing up at the many green lattices to assure
herself that the mistress is not looking on, the
little woman then puts her two little dimpled
arms a-kimbo, and stands on tiptoe to light her
cigarette at mine. "And now, dear little sir,"
says she, puffing out smoke in a most innocent
and Cherubic manner, "keep quite straight on,
take the first to the right, and probably you will
see him standing at his door."

I have a commission to "him," and I have
been inquiring about him. I have carried the
commission about Italy, several months. Before
I left England, there came to me one night a
certain generous and gentle English nobleman (he
is dead in these days when I relate the story,
and exiles have lost their best British friend),
with this request: "Whenever you come to such
a town, will you seek out one Giovanni Carlavero,
who keeps a little wine-shop there, mention
my name to him suddenly, and observe how it
affects him?" I accepted the trust, and am on
my way to discharge it.

The sirocco has been blowing all day, and it
is a hot unwholesome evening with no cool sea-
breeze. Mosquitoes and fire-flies are lively
enough, but most other creatures are faint. The
coquettish airs of pretty young women in the
tiniest and wickedest of dolls' straw hats,
who lean out at opened lattice blinds, are
almost the only airs stirring. Very ugly and
haggard old women with distaffs, and with
a grey tow upon them that looks as if they
were spinning out their own hair (I suppose
they were once pretty, too, but it is very difficult
to believe so), sit on the footway leaning
against house walls. Everybody who has come
for water to the fountain, stays there, and seems
incapable of any such energetic idea as going
home. Vespers are over, though not so long
but that I can smell the heavy resinous incense
as I pass the church. No man seems to
be at work, save the coppersmith. In an Italian
town he is always at work, and always thumping
in the deadliest manner.

I keep straight on, and come in due time to
the first on the right: a narrow dull street,
where I see a well-favoured man of good stature
and military bearing, in a great cloak, standing
at a door. Drawing nearer to this threshold, I
see it is the threshold of a small wine-shop;
and I can just make out, in the dim light, the
inscription that it is kept by Giovanni Carlavero.

I touch my hat to the figure in the cloak, and