amused herself with giving me a regular baptism. I found on the mountains our red foxglove in great abundance. The little devils brought me a lot of it, and on our return we wreathed the smoky cabin with a garland of the pretty poisonous flowers -a decoration which surely it had never enjoyed before. And this was to be the token of a feast-day in the cabin: for it is always a feast-day for good people when a guest enters their house.

The Lily had a foolish delight in the garland. "To-morrow," said she, "when you are on the top of the mountain, you will find a blue flower, which is the most beautiful flower in all Corsica."- "If you say so, Fiordalisa, it will surely come true, and I shall find the blue flower to-morrow."

I.

So came on the evening in the vast silent wilderness. Tired with my day's work, I sat down before the cabins, and observed the ever-varying spectacle of the formation of clouds. The mists rose from the gorges, and, alternately drawn on or thrown off by the mountains, they formed into a dense ball in the valleys, or dissolved and dispersed into the clouds, which wound slowly down over the mountain peaks. The flocks came home. regarded with pleasure these long trains of pretty black goats and black sheep, to which the poor herdsmen are indebted for their livelihood. Every herdsman drove or enticed them by a shrill call into an enclosure beside his cabin, where he milked them. This labour is performed with astonishing rapidity. The herdsman sits among the herd, and catches one goat after another by the hind-legs. All the animals he calls by their name, and each he knows perfectly. Some mark, generally on the ear, is the sign to whom the animal belongs. Forty of my host's goats gave only a moderate-sized pailful of milk.

At night the herds remain in the enclosure. The shaggy dogs guard them, not from the wolf, which is not to be found in Corsica, but from the fox, which is remarkably strong and bold on the mountains, and pounces upon the lambs like the wolf. My host's Rosso and Mustaccio were a couple of splendid dogs.

In the meantime the eldest son had returned home with his spoil of fine trout, and Angelo was dressing the evening meal. It struck me as remarkable that the man always cooked, and not the woman. Did he mean thus to honour his guest? For in general, in Corsica the woman occupies the position of servant. While I was pondering this, it occurred to me that in Homer also the men do all this themselves—spit, roast, and serve up the

meat: and thus I had the man of the simple epic stage of culture standing before me bodily. There are in Corsica men of Homer and men of Plutarch.

There was a bread soup, cheese, and milk, and roasted goat's flesh, in honour of the guest. The well-born and godlike goatherd* took the meat from the palo, stuck it on a spit in primitive fashion, and, kneeling before the fire, held it over the glowing embers. The dripping was from time to time smeared on a piece of bread, that the best part of the savoury loin might not be lost. The trout were boiled in a broth of goat's flesh; and, when they were done, he set them before me, helped me with the large spoon, and gave me the same spoon to eat with to my heart's content. I saw in the children's eyes that this was a supper extraordinary; but I should have more thoroughly enjoyed it if they might have shared it with us.

Now for night in the cabin. I was impatient to see how we should bestow ourselves in the narrow room. But it was soon done; the rug was spread on the ground for me, and I stretched myself out upon it along the innermost wall: the Son of Man had not where to lay his head. I looked at Angelo: "Wise and godlike Angelo," said I, "mayest thou hear these my words, and ponder them well in thy heart. Never, I swear to thee, was luxury habitual to me, but a pillow always. pillow always. So, if thou wilt give me something for a pillow, it will be one of the noblest deeds of thy life." Hereupon Angelo the goatherd meditated, and when he had meditated and weighed every thing maturely, he gave me his goatskin, the zaino, and spoke the winged words, "Now sleep, and felicessema notte !"

One after another the others lay down too, the woman and children on the bare ground, with their heads against the wall. Angelo lay next the threshold, with the youngest child Maria next him, then his wife Santa, the Lily, Paola Maria, and I. Thus we lay peacefully in company, all with our feet turned towards the fire. It was not long before they had all fallen asleep, and I contemplated with delight the Gymnosophist's family happily slumbering, and thought of the profound Sancho, how he began to praise the person who invented sleep," the mantle that covers all human cares, the food that allays hunger, the water that banishes thirst, the fire that warms coldness, the coldness that mitigates heat, and, in a word, the universal coin for which all things can be bought, the weight and the See note to p. 259.

scales that make the shepherd and the king equal." The red glow transfused the curious group with its light. I regretted that I was no painter. But the intolerable heat and smoke of the resinous fire prevented me from sleeping; so I got up from time to time, and stepped over the sleepers and through the door-way out into the open air. I stepped from the cabin, I may say, straight into a cloud, which encompassed the mountain and the cottages; and thus I passed from hell to heaven, and back again from heaven to hell.

The night was cold and damp with mist; however, the clouds passed off, and the eternal heavens cast their myriads of lights down upon the mists, the rocky peaks, and the dark larches. I sat for long by the brawling Restonica, whose wild rushing broke in upon this grand, ethereal night. Never had the awful spirit of solitude come so near me as in this night, beneath black rocky mountains, by the headlong course of a boisterous stream, so high in the clouds, in nature's workshop, on a strange island forlorn in the middle of the sea. In such a moment the soul might be terrified by the feeling of isolation, and grieved by the sudden thought that man is after all but an atom-and perhaps, too, this spiritual atom might all at once lose its connexion with all its related atoms, and remain forgotten in empty space. But lo! the soul expands its pinions, and soars joyously from the lonely isolated mountain to its native air, and flies through the realm of spirits, and is never alone. I listen to the sounds of the mountains; sometimes they seem to utter wild laughter-it is the Restonica that rages so. These stones are silent witnesses of fearful ancient throes of creation, children of the ardent embraces of Uranus and Gæa.

The cold air drove me back to the fire. Having fallen asleep at last with weariness, I was suddenly waked by Santa's clear voice exclaiming several times, "Spettacoli divini, spettacoli divini!" She was laying her children straight, they having thrown themselves about into amusing attitudes. It was indeed a "divine spectacle:" the Lily lay entwined like a snake half across her mother, and little Paola had wound her arm round my neck. Perhaps the child had heard an owl in her sleep, or seen in her dreams the vampire that comes to draw the heart's blood.

I passed the rest of the night sitting up and gazing at the flame, and amused myself with picturing to myself the heretics whom the holy Romish church has burnt to the glory of God. But that is in truth an occupation that knows no end.

CHAPTER IV.

THE MOUNTAIN TOP.

THE grey of morning appeared. I went out and revived myself by the waves of the sleepless Restonica, which leapt from rock to rock in the freshness of its youth, and hurried into the valley below. The young stream has a joyous life. After a gladsome course of five-and-twenty miles through evergreen woods, it dies in the waters of the Tavignano. I gained quite an affection for the Restonica; I know its whole life-history, for I have followed it on a single day to the end of its course, and it has presented me with many a delightful draught. Its water is as clear, fresh, and light as the ether, and is renowned far and wide in Corsica. I never drank better water; it refreshed me more than the most generous wine. This incomparable well-spring possesses such keenness that it cleans iron in the shortest possible time, and keeps it from rusting: even Boswell knew that the Corsicans in Paoli's time put their rusty gun-barrels in the Restonica to clean them. All pebbles and stones overflowed by its water are rendered snowy white; and its bed or its banks are garnished with these milk-white stones as far as its conflux with the Tavignano.

When I summoned my guide to ascend the summit of Monte Rotondo, he confessed that he did not know the way. Angelo now became my guide up the mountain. We began the ascent soon after three o'clock in the morning. It was less attended with danger, but far more fatiguing than I had expected.

Several ridges of rock rise one above another, which must be ascended before the Trigione, the last subordinate summit of Rotondo, is reached. It is a huge natural staircase, with colossal steps of splendid reddish primeval granite: heavy giants who storm heaven, grasping masses of rock in their huge hands, might stride up it. Here blocks lie upon blocks, huge and formless as chaos, and as grey; so endlessly piled up that the foot of man despairs. The granite has been often so smoothed by the autumnal rains trickling over it, as to present large surfaces which seem permanently polished. The water flows in inexhaustible plenty from thousands of rills. The growth of trees entirely ceases,

there being only alder bushes that indicate the bounding course of the Restonica.

Two hours afterwards we had climbed up the Trigione, and before us lay the snow-clad mountain top. Its rugged splintered rocks form a crater-like funnel, which is the cause of the mountain's name. Where this huge desolate amphitheatre of rocks opens, lies a little lake, the Lago di Monte Rotondo, darkly spread out amidst green meadows, an icy cold draught in a giant's granite drinking-cup. Fields of snow stretch from the lake to the summit, even in the scorching dog-days, and under the fortysecond parallel of latitude—a rare sight and a curious feeling under a southern sky. They were coated with a crust of ice, and exhaled a cold air. But though I was in the region of eternal snow, the temperature continued pleasantly fresh and reviving, without ever becoming painfully cold.

The summit appeared to the eye very near, but yet we had to clamber over the rocks for two full hours, often on our hands and feet, before we reached it. The most difficult part was the passage over a streak of snow, on which the foot caught no hold. We managed by cutting steps one after another with a sharp stone, into which we could cautiously insert the foot. Thus we at length reached, in a very exhausted state, the extreme summit, which is formed of a grey rent obelisk of rock, and ends in a sharp pinnacle; so that by clasping it one holds one's-self on, suspended at a giddy height.

From this highest peak in Corsica, 9068 feet above the sea, I overlooked the greater part of the island, and the sea deep below on both sides—a view of unspeakable grandeur, such as it will be a joy for life to have been permitted once to behold. The horizon seen from Monte Rotondo is far grander and more beautiful than that from Mont Blanc. The eye wanders far over the island country to the beaming expanse of sea, and beyond the Tuscan islands to the continent of Italy, which in a clear air displays the white Maritime Alps and the entire arch of coast from Nice to Rome. On the other side emerge the mountains of Toulon, and thus the eye may span a grand and wonderful panorama, uniting in a magic ring mountains, seas, islands, the Alps, the Apennines and Sardinia. I was not quite so fortunate in my day; for the clouds and vapours which incessantly rose from the ravines, robbed me of part of my distance. Towards the north I saw the peninsula of Cape Corso stretching out long like a dagger; towards the east, the plains of the coast descending