population profoundly impressed with its own
consequence, rigorously regardful of
conventionalities, and tyrannical in its use of
public opinion. In our every-day dress and
demeanour we look fishermen, or mere idlers—
loafers, in American parlance—that is, a class not
disposed for work, nor rich enough for leisure.
See us on a Sunday, or, better still, a "festa,"
however, and what a marvellous change will
come over your judgment!

The Passeggiata, or the Promenade, a walk
which extends along the margin of the sea from
the Dominican convent to a bluff rock about
three-quarters of a mile distant, is our Mall. It
is there the rank, the fashion, the beauty, the
wit, and the "toilette" of Porto Stretto take
their airing; and certainly a stranger spectacle
cannot be imagined. During the week, as I have
said, we take fish, or we salt them. We import
little "colonials," such as coffee and sugar, rum,
and such-like, and export our onions and our
melons, and occasionally our sardines; but, on
the "festa," we all come out in the masquerade
of the smartest citizens—silks and satins and
even velvets sail down the Promenade on square-
built resolute-looking dark-featured damsels,
escorted by beaux in lacquered boots,
inconveniently high-heeled, and the very gaudiest of
neckties. It is a grand display of fine clothes
and suffering wearers, for there is a painful
consciousness of extravagance and peril in the
exploit that gives it a look of martyrdom. But
we move along in stately fashion, criticising the
apothecary's wife and the tobacconist's daughter,
and hoarding up our own suspicions that there is
far more splendour abroad than many could
rightly account for.

The "Order of the Course" prescribes that
the walkers should pass before a certain stone
bench, where our highest dignitaries usually
seat themselves; and of these let me present the
chief—our great man! It is with pride I am
able to name the Signer Corroni, late vice-consul
of Sardinia at Termakopolis, a diplomatist of the
first order, a man of fashion, a man of pleasure,
a man of letters, and a wit. His family for
centuries belonged to Porto Stretto, and it was with
a graceful good feeling towards his native town
that he came back from all the turmoil and
ambition of a public life to pass his last years
amongst us. Though common eyes might only
see in him a thin shrivelled up pinched featured
man, with a pompous air and pretentious expression,
wearing clothes of a very ancient cut, and
a hat hill-shaped and towering, we know better;
we recognise him as he is—the rival of Thiers
and Palmerston and Gortschakoff, come to meditate
in retirement over that dismemberment of
Europe he has long predicted and now waits for.
In this respect he is a terror to us. Dr. Cumming
is a bland and sanguine prophet compared
to him. He has had it all revealed to him. The
Cossacks are to win, and the Pope be "nowhere!"
He says he told Cavour so; he declares
that the last days of that great man were
embittered by not having listened to his counsels,
which were, to make Porto Stretto the capital
of the kingdom, and declare war with France at
once.

These opinions, I am bound to confess, are
attributed to him, though I have never heard
them myself from his lips, for he is the most
mysterious of men. Why he went first to his
Consulate, and why he left it, what he did there,
or what he left undone, are alike shrouded in
mystery. His daily life is a puzzle that none
can decipher: on what he dines, or who cooks it,
when he sleeps, and what he carries in certain
wonderful pockets which, from their strange
localities and size, seem to be closely derived
from the pouches of the monkey tribe. But his
grandest mystery is a large brass-bound and
locked volume, in which he is seen to write
every day; but whether it be a history of Porto
Stretto, a chronicle of his own day, or a
biography, none can divine. The bland smile of
conscious greatness—a greatness which has not
yet met its right acknowledgment—tells that
there is something there. But what can it be?

Next in rank to the Signor Corroni is the
Commandante del Porto, Signor Baretta, a large
white-faced, close-shaven, unwholesome-looking
man, so hopelessly deaf that he did not even hear
the fall of a rock behind his house that stove in
the wall of the kitchen. He is a great loyalist,
however, flaunts his tricolor at any chance the
calendar gives him, and, when asked how he is,
answers, "Viva il Re Galantuohomo!"

After him in position comes a very different
character, a little unwashed peering-eyed
mean-looking creature, who was once a something in
the Customs, but has now retired on his pension
of three hundred and eighty francs a year; this
is Signor Crotta, the personification of all that
is prying in curiosity and unabashed in impertinence.
To buy a dozen of figs in the marketplace,
to have your shoes soled, your watch
repaired, to post a letter without his knowledge,
are feats totally impossible. He is behind every
door, and under every sofa, apparently; for he
is the chronicle of all the secret events of our
community.

It is said, too, that the mystery of Signor
Corroni's life is no mystery to him, but that in
return for the great mail's notice he preserves it
inviolable.

The last of our dignitaries, though the highest
in local rank, is the sindaco, Signor Mordoni,
a little dark-visaged suspicious-looking man,
said to be in hourly communication with
Mazzini and the Red Republicans; but so afraid of
the consequences of his free opinions, that he
talks of the Casa de Savoia on every possible or
impossible occasion.

The same worthies, assisted by one Panocco,
a very old snuff-begrimed priest, with a
much-patched cassock, and the "assistant-judge," who
acts as customs officer and jailer also, in
commendam, form a nightly committee at the
apothecary's, where the world at large is discussed,
and very unfavourable opinions of it expressed,
compared with the section of the same that
inhabits Porto Stretto.

At nine, the society—la crême—assemble at