son we must carry the mind of the reader, in order to place it in the midst of the scenes it is our object to portray.

Towards the close of a fine day in the month of August, a light fairy-like craft was fanning her way, before a gentle westerly air, into what is called the Canal of Piombino, steering easterly. The rigs of the Mediterranean are proverbial for their picturesque beauty and quaintness, embracing the xebeque, the felucca, the polacre, and the bombarda, or ketch; and occasionally the lugger. The latter, a species of craft, however, much less common in the waters of Italy than in the Bay of Biscay and the British Channel, was the construction of the vessel in question; a circumstance which the mariners who eyed her from the shores of Elba deemed indicative of mischief. A three-masted lugger that spread a wide breadth of canvass, with a low, dark hull, relieved by a single and almost imperceptible line of red beneath her channels, and a waist so deep that nothing was visible above it but the hat of some mariner taller than common, was considered a suspicious vessel, and not even a fisherman would have ventured out within reach of a shot, so long as her character was unknown. Privateers, or corsairs, as it was the fashion to term them, (and the name, with even its English signification, was often merited by their acts,) not unfrequently glided down that coast; and it was sometimes dangerous for those who belonged to friendly nations to meet them, in moments when the plunder that a relic of barbarism still legalizes, had failed.

The lugger was actually of about one hundred and fifty tons admeasurement; but her dark paint and low hull gave her an appearance of being much smaller than she really was; still, the spread of her canvass, as she came down before the wind wing-and-wing, as seamen term it, or with a sail fanning like the heavy pinions of a sea-fowl on each side, betrayed her pursuits; and, as has been intimated, the mariners on the shore who watched her movements shook their heads in distrust, as they communed among themselves, in very indifferent Italian, concerning her destination and object. This observation, with its accompanying discourse, occurred on the rocky bluff above the town of Porto Ferrajo, in the Island of Elba, a spot which has since become so renowned as the

capital of the mimic dominion of Napoleon. Indeed, the very dwelling which was subsequently used by the fallen emperor as a palace stood within a hundred yards of the speakers, looking out towards the entrance of the canal, and the mountains of Tuscany; or rather, of the little principality of Piombino, the system of merging the smaller in the larger states of Europe not having yet been brought into extensive operation. This house, a building of the size of a better sort of country residence in the United States, was then, as now, occupied by the Florentine governor of the Tuscan portion of the island. It stands on the extremity of a low, rocky promontory which forms the western ramparts of the deep extensive bay, on the side of which, ensconced behind a very convenient curvature of the rocks, which here incline westward in the form of a hook, lies the small port, completely concealed from the sea, as if in dread of visits like those which might be expected from craft resembling the suspicious stranger. This little port, not so large in itself as a modern dock in places like London or Liverpool, was sufficiently protected against any probable dangers by suitable batteries; and as for the elements, a vessel laid upon a shelf in a closet would be scarcely more secure. In this domestic little basin, which, with the exception of a narrow entrance, was completely surrounded by buildings, lay a few feluccas that traded between the island and the adjacent main, and a solitary Austrian ship, which had come from the head of the Adriatic in quest of iron, as it was pretended, but as much to assume the appearance of trade with the Italian dependency, as with any other purpose.

At the moment of which we are writing, however, only a dozen living beings were visible in or about all these craft. The intelligence that a strange lugger, resembling the one described, was in the offing, had drawn nearly all the mariners ashore; and most of the habitués of the port had followed them up the broad steps of the crooked streets which led to the heights behind the town; or to the rocky elevation that overlooks the sea from north-east to west. The approach of the lugger had produced some such effect on the mariners of this unsophisticated and little-frequented port, as that of the hawk is known to excite among the timid tenants of the barnyard. The rig of the stranger, in itself a suspicious circum

stance, had been noted two hours before by one or two old coasters who habitually passed their idle moments on the heights, examining the signs of the weather and indulging in gossip; and their conjectures had drawn to the Porto Ferrajo mall some twenty men who fancied themselves, or who actually were, cognoscenti in matters of the sea. When, however, the low, long, dark hull, which upheld such wide sheets of canvass, became fairly visible, the omens thickened, rumours spread, and hundreds collected on the spot, which, in Manhattanese parlance, would probably have been called a battery. Nor would the name have been altogether inappropriate, as a smail battery was established there, and that, too, in a position which would easily throw a shot two-thirds of a league into the offing; or about the distance that the stranger was now from the shore.

Tommaso Tonti was the oldest mariner of Elba, and, luckily, being a sober and usually a discreet man, he was the oracle of the island in most things which related to the sea. As each citizen, wine-dealer, grocer, innkeeper, or worker in iron came upon the height, he incontinently inquired for Tonti, or 'Maso, as he was generally called; and getting the bearings and distance of the greyheaded old seaman, he invariably made his way to his side, until a group of some two hundred men, women, and children had clustered near the person of the pilota, as the faithful gather about a favourite expounder of the law in moments of religious excitement. It was worthy of remark, too, with how much consideration this little crowd of gentle Italians treated their aged seaman on this occasion; none bawling out their questions, and all using the greatest care not to get in front of his person, lest they might intercept his means of observation. Five or six old sailors, like himself, were close at his side; these, it is true, did not hesitate to speak as became their experience. But Tonti had obtained no small part of his reputation by exercising great moderation in delivering his oracles, and perhaps by seeming to know more than he actually revealed. He was reserved, therefore; and while his brethren of the sea ventured on sundry conflicting opinions concerning the character of the stranger, and a hundred idle conjectures had flown from mouth to mouth among the landsmen and

females, not a syllable which could commit the old man had escaped his lips. He let the others talk at will; as for himself it suited his habits, and possibly his difficulties in deciding, to maintain a grave and portentous silence.

We have spoken of females: as a matter of course an event like this, in a town of some three or four thousand souls, would be likely to draw a due proportion of the gentler sex to the heights. Most of them contrived to get as near as possible to the aged seaman in order to obtain the first intelligence, that it might be the sooner circulated; but it would seem that among the younger of these, was also a sort of oracle of their own, about whose person gathered a dozen of the prettiest girls, either anxious to hear what Ghita might have to say in the premises, or perhaps influenced by the pride and modesty of their sex and condition, which taught them to maintain a little more reserve than was necessary to the less-refined portion of their companions. In speaking of condition, however, the word must be understood with an exceedingly limited meaning. Porto Ferrajo had but two classes of society, the trades-people and the labourers; although there were, perhaps, a dozen exceptions, in the persons of a few humble functionaries of the government, an avvocato, a medico, and a few priests. The governor of the island was a Tuscan of rank, but he seldom honoured the place with his presence, and his deputy was a professional man, a native of the town, whose original position was too well known to allow him to give himself airs on the spot where he was born. Ghita's companions, then, were daughters of shopkeepers, and persons of that class, who, having been taught to read, and occasionally going to Leghorn, beside being admitted by the deputy to the presence of his housekeeper, had got to regard themselves as a little elevated above the more vulgar curiosity of the less-cultivated girls of the port. Ghita herself, however, owed her ascendency to her qualities, rather than to the adventitious advantage of being a grocer's or an innkeeper's daughter, her origin being unknown to most of those around her, as indeed was her family name. She had been landed six weeks before, and left by one who passed for her father at the inn of Cristoforo Dovi, as a boarder, and had acquired all her influence, by

the distinction of having travelled, aided somewhat by her strong sense, great decision of character, perfect modesty and propriety of deportment, with a form which was singularly graceful and feminine, and a face that, while it could scarcely be called beautiful, was, in the highest degree, winning and attractive. No one thought of asking her family name, and she never appeared to deem it necessary to mention it. Ghita was sufficient it was familiar to every one; and, although there were two or three others of the same appellation in Porto Ferrajo, this, by common consent, became the Ghita within a week after she had landed.

Ghita it was known had travelled, for she had publicly reached Elba in a felucca, coming, as was said, from the Neapolitan States. If this were true, she was probably the only person of her sex in the town who had ever seen Vesuvius, or planted her eyes on the wonders of a part of Italy which has a reputation second only to that of Rome. Of course, if any girl in Porto Ferrajo could imagine the character of the stranger, it must be Ghita; and it was on this supposition that she had unwittingly, and, if the truth must be owned, unwillingly collected around her a clientelle of at least a dozen girls of her own age, and apparently of her own class. The latter, however, felt no necessity for the reserve maintained by the curious who pressed near 'Maso; for, while they respected their guest and friend and would rather listen to her surmises than those of any other person, they had such a prompting desire to hear their own voices, that not a minute escaped without a question or a conjecture both volubly and quite audibly expressed. The interjections, too, were somewhat numerous, as the guesses were crude and absurd. One said it was a vessel with despatches from Livorno, possibly with "His Excellenza" on board; but she was reminded that Leghorn lay to the north, not to the west. Another thought it was a cargo of priests going from Corsica to Rome; but she was told that priests were not in sufficient favour just then in France to get a vessel so obviously superior to the ordinary craft of the Mediterranean, to carry them about. While a third, more imaginative than either, ventured to doubt whether it was a vessel at all deceptive appearances of

and