quantitata di amoutti" which Cardinal Mauria, of
Savoy, was so anxious that Albania, the painter,
should supply him with. I see a chandelier,
glittering with crystal pendents and wax-lights
—the good old candles of yellow wax, not the
meagre, bleached, half-hearted gentilities the
chandlers sell us too often now-a-days. I see
walls with silken draperies, and choice pictures,
and rare Venice mirrors, with frames like a
whole horticultural show sculpt in gold. The
furniture of the salone is of precisely the
pattern I should wish Messrs. Jackson and Graham
to send into Curzon-street, sparing no
expense, and asking no questions about settlement.
I hope that the eyes which have thus dived into
the penetralia of a Venetian dwelling-house are
not impertinent. Where is the use of having
pretty things, if you don't allow the world outside
to admire them? and are not all the really nice
people who possess pretty things always ready to
exhibit their treasures? Finally, at the window
of this enchanting chamber, amidst flowers in
boxes and flowers in vases, and with a sprightly
little Maltese dog snoozing in her sleeve, is the
prettiest picture of all—the plump little lady,
blowing her placid cloud:

Se non son piu Sovrana,
lo son Veneziana,

she seems to be warbling between her whiffs,
in that endearing dialect of the Adriatic which
is as soft as crême à la vanille, and a great deal
healthier.

I salute you, noble lady of Venice! Did
I dare to launch into familiarity—did I
presume to indulge in slang, I might say what I
think—that you are a BRICK. In any case, I
prefer you to Medora in her bower, to Mariana
in the South, and to the Lady of Shalott. I would
bow to you, lady mine, were not bowing under the
coved roof of a gondola almost as difficult a feat
as bowing in bed. More than once the little lady
has waved a smoke-spiral amicably towards me.
There is a certain freemasonry among smokers.
I am thinking that to-morrow evening I shall
wave my handkerchief to her, when I am
violently pulled back on to the cushions of the
gondola, and the barcaroli are instructed in a
passionate voice to row faster homewards. There
is no harm, surely, in wishing to wave one's
handkerchief to such a remarkably plump and
jovial-looking lady.

Yes, red-sashed boatman, take me home;
and then, when I have filled my inkhorn and
nibbed my pen, take me, if you please, back to
Havana. Never mind the heat. We shall be
hotter before we are through this day's work.
Never mind the dust. The sea-breeze will
blow some time after gun-fire, and if you can
exist unsmothered until then, you will be
refreshed. Let us hail the first volante, whose
dark and merry-faced postilion invites us to
enter, and drive to the cigar manufactory,
world famous, and unequalled in the world,
perhaps, of "La Hija de Cabaña y Carvajal." For
shortness, it is called "Cabaña's."

There is no longer a palpable Cabaña in the
flesh. Firms remain, but names pass away. Is
there a Child? Is there a Fortnum, or, haply,
a Mason? Is there a Chevet, or a Widow
Cliquot? Did you ever see Swan and Edgar
walking together? There has not been a
Cramer for twenty years; and what contemporary
man ever knew Boodle? The actual
representative of the great Cuban house of Cabaña
is the Señor Anselmo del Valle. I had had
the advantage of a special introduction to this
gentleman at his retail establishment ere I
visited his factory. The monarch of Nicotine
sat enthroned among odoriferous cedar boxes
and cigars yet more fragrant, serene and sweet-
smelling, like an old Turk merchant in the
Bezesteen among his shawls, and chibouks,
and spices, and rose-attar. A lissom, dusky,
oily-looking man, if I remember aright, with a
lustrous, bush-like moustache, and who, reclining
in a low chair, and in a full suit of white linen,
gently perspiring. The chief monarch of the
great mosque of Araby the blest, this Señor
Anselmo del Valle. What a halcyon existence?
A mattress of lotus-hair—a continuous and
diaphanous drapery of grateful incense hanging
round. Nothing to do all day long save loll
in a rocking-chair, and take gold ounces in
exchange for boxes of superfine Cabañas. For the
cigar business is essentially a ready-money one.
So many cigars as you make you can sell, and
so many cigars as you sell do you get paid for,
in Havana, on the nail. I have often thought
that to be a brewer of pale ale at Burton-on-
Trent must be the acme of human felicity.
You have only to go on brewing barrels of beer,
and an ever-thirsty public will go on buying and
paying. Dr. Johnson had an inkling of this, when,
taking stock, as executor under Thrale's will, of
the great brewhouse which was afterwards to
become Barclay and Perkins's, he told Topham
Beauclerk that he had at last discovered the
"source of boundless prosperity and inexhaustible
riches." When I went to Havana, however,
I was fain to place the vat in the second rank.
The superlative degree I reserve for the cigar
trade. "Boundless prosperity and inexhaustible
riches" are, in the case of a Cabaña or an
Anselmo del Valle, associated with something even
more productive of happiness. The cigar
merchant can pass, at least, eighteen hours out of the
twenty-four in the delicious occupation of smoking
his own cigars. Now the Burton brewer,
however fond he may be of the famous decoction
of hops, malt, and the water of the Mendip Hills,
fermented on the placid banks of Trent, can
scarcely go on drinking his own pale ale all day
long. Nature wouldn't stand it. The brain
and stomach would alike revolt from this
perpetual state of beer. As a rule, traders are
averse from consuming their own wares. Some
sagacity warns off: others satiety sickens.
Your provincial innkeeper does not share with
a very good grace, and with a chance guest, the
bottle of blue ink, logwood, and spirits of
turpentine which he sells as claret, and charges
ten and sixpence for. The grocer's apprentice
soon grows tired of filching figs and munching