WENT this morning to see the galley slaves in their interior. The nest of these hornets is sadly picturesque. Unaware of the place, we came upon it somewhat unexpectedly, from the summit of a steep short mound like the Monte Testacio at Rome, raised out of broken earthenware and rubbish. We looked right down on the stagnant ditch of the fort within which they are confined, and saw a mass of beings, the clank of whose chains might be heard for several minutes before they could be discovered. As they came up, two by two, through a narrow covered passage from the recesses of the fort, upon a platform, where they drew up in ranks, we saw about thirty marked men with their faces towards us, of whom the law tells frightful tales behind their backs, while their physiognomy, air, and deportment, too readily sustain some damning word on the reverse of the medal. There they stood, and so vivid was the impression made by thirty picked scoundrels, that they seem even now to stand, some utterly reckless and sullen, others, like mountebanks at a fair, glad to court the astonishment of those who contemplate them in security across the moat. Our attention is at first called to the distinction of two uniforms, yellow and red, of which you will not be two days in Leghorn without learning the interpretation. The faded yellow is to last for life; the "red," although you read on it, omicidio in rissa," "furto violento con mano armato," housebreaking, incest, or other appalling felonies, is but for a definite, though always for a long, period. These ruffians are coupled like hyenas together, and, like them, live only as the useful scavengers of this foul town. Soldiers with loaded guns stand by, but stand aloof, as if even they dreaded coming in contact with them; and there are eight or ten policemen for ordinary discipline, who exceed our hardest featured turnkeys. This party were waiting for the boat which was to convey

them across the moat into the town. Another had already landed, and was receiving, out of a neighbouring shed, the shovel and the rake, with which they are to collect and fling into their cart the feculence of the drains. Two old men, of very unequal stature, but both grey headed, in whom the fire of the eye has been quenched, but not its sedate satanic glare, lead the van; one of them, the murderer of a sister, stands the full glance of the timid visitor in silence; his companion, with a face of which for ferocity we never saw the equal, whines for alms, and coolly refers you to the hump on his back, where the half-obliterated word "grassazione" makes you look again. The house-breaker and the cattle stealer, " abigeato," clank their fetters rythmically, (unless they happen to fight for the end of a cigar which has been thrown away,) and discourse on the mysteries of their particular line, or change permitted jokes with their keeper, as they draw the empty handcart towards the next embankment of dirt. The other detachment is now on board, and is nearing our side of the moat. A crew of branded slaves passing the fosse of Leghorn, and ferried over by one of themselves, chained to his post to work the old rude craft, is a picture ready for the artist! At six in the morning the ferryman is padlocked to his boat; having carried over these unblest spirits to their vile labours, he goes for more, and takes the different relief gangs, consigning the last of them to their quarters at sun set. As we, too, had to go over, we pressed our way through the set just landing-between rape, and murder, and all other revolting enormities who seem surpris. ed at our surprise, and disposed to say, what do you stare at? Did you never see a bloody hand before? We commit ourselves, however, to the slave boatman, who tugs us over, and would no doubt turn us overboard, for sixpence; a horrible offence is stamped on his jacket for life, an offence which none convicted of it in England can

expiate with less than life itself. We spring out impatiently before the boat has well touched the opposite shore, and are directed to a covered archway which leads us to the slave yard. After passing the guard-house, we descend a narrow stair into a sort of impluvium or court, with a shed round it; some of the criminals were sawing, some breaking wood, and some trundling a wheel-barrow full of filth, to a place from which it is to be precipitated into the water of the calm sea sleeping at their feet. How calm! how beautiful! does the sea look to day with the Gorgona, Elba, Corsica, in the distant view, and the shipping and the boats in the harbour! How cheering, after such sights as we are leaving, and glad to leave, is the oar's light stroke, and the plash of the sporting bather, and the voices of the distant market, and the cry of the itinerant fish-men or bean - seller! How invitingly the boats glide about, in and out through the bar; how sparkle those broad spread nets from their sterns, with the silvery scales of fish they are conveying to the steamer! How finely coloured is yonder distant ridge of the Carara quarries, and how animating the groups of the lookers on -the soldiers, with their women and children; the idlers sitting on the wall, and gazing like ourselves; and the priest or the monk taking their morning's walk along the rampart. . . We are now in the parlour of the head of the "Bureau;" he sees we are strangers and Englishmen. He hands us over to a tall jovial fellow, who expects a reward for showing his menagerie, else would he treat our curiosi. ty and interest with derision. He first takes us to the dormitories-filthy rooms they are not; but dingy, crowded, incommodious, and rare places for the spread of any contagious disease; they are four rooms, two over two, with sixty and forty beds in each, disposed in tiers, for the economy of space, like sailors' hammocks. Each bed has a straw mattrass and a bolster, and the convict's cloak or coverlet, similar in colour to his jacket of the day, lies on it. Inside the cloak, the name of the criminal; outside, the crime. At sundown they all return to the fort, get their irons unclinched, walk about half an hour unchained, take off their jackets, and lie down under their cloaks.

Silence is now rigorously exacted, and blows from the custode fall on such as are refractory. A few whose friends enable them to eat a second meal in the evening, are allowed to do so, and they take this coveted addition to their common allowance by themselves. The dormitories, the dining-room, the kitchen, and parlour, have one miserable table in the midst, on which, at ten o'clock, twenty-four ounces of bread and six ounces of beans are given to each. They thrive on this spare diet; besides which they get, every now and then, something extra. They have four quattrina (about five farthings English) for doing particularly dirty work; for work in which there is particular danger, half a paul is given them in consideration of the added risk; and they must go to mass once a week, and confess! Confess!! The forced confessions of branded galley-slaves must be strange indeed! But the Church is here in more ways than one, and in some more promising. By every convict's bed hangs a little lead crucifix, with holy water; coarse prints of sacred subjects, placed here with the best intentions, grace the begrimed walls: devotional verses are printed upon each; and a coloured print of the Madonna, behind a small, ever-burning lamp, is placed at the head of each room, to which the guard, making the convicts imitate his example, touches his hat as he passes. Over every bed, the convict's shoes, stockings, and civil costume are hung up, to remain there during his legal death, like dead men's garments at the morgue at Paris; and here they often remain unworn for many years! You see the shoes, by whose nails the housebreaker may have been tracked; the hat that he wore in the murderous scuffle; the linen still stained with his own or his neighbour's blood; the coat rent in the affray. We asked for a little glossarial information. "Latrocinio's' jacket turned up, and the convict himself had no objection to tell us,"Mine is only highway robbery; but if I rob you with violence at the corner of a street, I wear a yellow jacket, and am marked Grasazzione'-grazia! If I slay you off-hand, it is only red homicide for a few years; but if I bear the badge of omicidia premeditata' on my yellow jacket, it is for thirty years"-bene! We saw a

group of "galeriens" collected round the miserable table. One was seated, the rest were standing in their chains, and dictating to him who was writing. "What is this?" "They are getting the secretary to put down what they want to have purchased, and he is calculating it all up, before he sends it to the custode."" One poor wretch, seated in a cornerby himself, much arrested our attention. His age about the "mezzo cammin' della nostra vita," but he looked old from sickness and suffering. His face livid, his lips blue-his ancles, from which the chains had been removed, swelled; he sat, anxiously absorbed in his own painful sensations, and was breathing quick. We needed not feel his pulse, but we did. The custode smiles, and asks if we are medical. "These are three days that he has been off work," said the custode. "Caro lei che volete ?"-"How can I work?" asked the breathless man? "He is not fit

"Il signor

to work," we interposed. chirurgo," said the keeper, “must settle that-my present orders are so and so; but he has a diseased heart!" And so in fact had the custode, only of a different kind; so he merely shrugged his shoulders, and said, as he turned away, "Non so!' Sometimes they employ him, it seems, to write letters to their friends-" but we always see what they write," said our amiable guide, who was the last person we should have chosen for our confidant; "some write long letters to their wives, some to their children, for no women are admitted here." Here is a life where there is no admission for love or friendship-a life of degradation and privation—a life of peril, hard fare, and reproach. Can any live such lives long? Yes; I saw many there who told me, with glee, that they had passed within a few months, or years, their full period of suffering, and would be liberated at last!

The merit of museums has always appeared to us to depend not so much upon their possessions, as upon the felicity in which these treasures are exhibited. Isolated specimens are, to the uninitiated, mere facts in natural history; the arrangement and combining of these into groups forms a connected story, which cannot fail both to interest and to instruct. In short, those which are best administered are best. It certainly is not in the number of its stuffed hides, in the bleached skeletons of its "ruminan

tia," or in the jars contained in its cupboards, that such exhibitions are rich; but it is in proportion as these are made first to please the eye, and next to fix the attention. In this view, let us glance at a few of the happiest of these collections; and placing at the head of them our own incomparable garden in the Regent's Park, we will suppose our reader on Houssin's carpet, and wish him over Alp and Apennine, to others on the banks of the Arno, or at the foot of the Euganean hills.

We have shown our authority, and placed our body in the one-fourth part of that ingenious plague, (not imagined by Dante himself,) the click revolving stile, and in one momont we are caged as effectually as the animals themselves caged in the incomparable garden, with Armidas out of number, and enchantments beyond our highraised expectation. Right before you are the bears, at graceful gambols on their pole, all being polar bears in this sense. One of them is looking out from the mast-head, and evidently making signals to us. Happy bears!

the only awkward creatures are ye that the fair sex fancy! Happy bears! who secure not only all the first outbreakings of unfatigued admiration from men, women, and children, but a Benjamin's share of the good things from the pastry-booth below. But, oh! thrice happy in these unfor-bearing days, when such a price is set upon your adipose tissues, and Mr Ross every now and then announces his intention of killing a fine fat creature of your species, with as little conscience as Bladon puts a turtle into his cauldron. For ourselves, we always did

how they whisk and swing the tail, and show the enameled teeth, with sardonic expression, as the offensive silk approaches! A little further on, we forget beasts and birds, and every living thing, in our admiration of the flowers, sprinkled over many a gay parterre, which tessellates the well rolled gravel. This is a real garden of plants-not merely a Necropolis of interred roots, epitaphed under their little white tomb-stones, but bear-garden, bird garden, and flowergarden in one-a real Paradeisos ! But to return to the animals. It is well worth the shilling you have paid, merely to have seen, even were it but for once, the attitudes, the tread, the à plomb, of those caged monsters; to catch the old lion sleeping, as he slept to Canova, his terrible eye half closed, and half his lancets sheathed within that fore foot, so gracefully and harmlessly protruding under the bars. As to the monkeys, they secure attention every where, by their fun, frolic, and grimace. Who can refuse to laugh at these hairy Odrys and Grimaldis, who grin and chatter away, though all are doomed to die prematurely of consumption? An old monkey in England is a phenomenon of resistance to climate-constant exercise is no prophylactic, the warm cell and the tenderest care avail not. office would ensure their lives at any premium. They may gibe and chatter away, but it may be fairly doubted whether the poor monkeys, like other comedians, are not melancholy at heart-their acquaintance list, their blue book must be constantly obsolete; no tenant occupies his tiny house for long; permanent friendships must be impossible; even the ourang-outang, the keeper's pet, that impersonation of a bandy-legged ostler, sits miserably by the side of his wizened wife's flannel petticoat, and, like a consumptive lunatic, gazes vacantly as he minches and munches at his stick! But away to the birds, singing, chirping, or whistling their own happiness to the passer by. There the deep-feathered cockatoo stretches forth his graceful head, and parts the feathers on his neck as if on purpose to be caressed, and evidently desiring to hold gentle converse with you as you plunge your hand amidst his down. Surely it is not in this compartment of the aviary that the cruel

admire you; and never saw any one of you on his hind-legs in his native shag, with forepaws gracefully doubled by his sides, [how that small, sly-eyed fellow looks up at us from the pit!] without recalling some of those curious biped specimens of la jeune France, in singular costume, going about the Palais Royale in hairy paletot, and ripe for mischief of any kind. How fraternally you all drink out of the same pail, rub your noses against the same post, and beg for the same bit of bun which some mischievous urchin, taught by his seniors, has let down twenty times till within an inch of your crimson œsophagus. Always bring your Abernethy biscuits here, you will want them for your favourites in the promenade. That eminent person conceived that a good medical manner might be picked up in this school; and we confess we like it better than the monkey or the jackall manner, as the fashion of some is, and would sooner adopt it than others the scrape or the whine, by which some seek to degrade an honourable profession. At this barrier, by a slightly inclined plane, we descend to the animals below stairs, having first sufficiently reconnoitred the fine position which time compels us to abandon, the best by far in the garden for the deliberate study of ladies' ancles, as they stand behind the low parapet on tiptoe and lean over to make overtures to the bears. What a nasty creature that fellow is, half bear, half sloth, who smells at you through his bars, and rattles his overgrown incurvated toe nails, as he springs about his den, or protrudes the terrible apparatus towards muslin dresses, and other loose investments of tender flesh and blood! We next encounter a long line of animals associated at once in their anatomical and moral character. There scowls the dark striped tyrant from Bengal, from the deepest recess of his cage, his eye blazing in the corner, and his very respiration a growl; there lies the lion, worthy of Rubens or Canova; there bounds the graceful but hateful leopard, pacing his narrow prison with brisk light step, and sharp turn, and looking at the spectators, with an expression where ferocity strangely seems to blend with the love of admiration. They were not used to see parasols in the desert-see

No

serpent should have been shut up, among turtle doves and parroquets! for here the boa's fourteen feet of irresistible violence is coiled in barmless sleep on a costly blanket; and the double-barred cobra is waiting in grim repose till the next week's victim rabbit be thrust into his cage! On that pretty margined pond, his miniature Win. dermere, swims the black swan, with his fairer cousins, and other web-footed foreigners of distinction. Hard by, the king of birds, with drooping eyelids, clings in solitary grandeur to his forlorn perch, with his yellow talons bent under him. His neighbour, the grey necked vulture, flaps his colossal wings, or utters a carnivorous cry, as he greedily rushes to the bars, equally ready to devour the gift or the hands that hold it; and the nimble kite, the bright-eyed destroyer of sparrows, and the owl staring at you through his round spectacles, and that offspring of clandestine marriage between pheasant and fowl, and the gazza ladra, and the jackdaw, and all the little birds of the air, are all here. Last, in separate paddocks, as it behoves them, stalk those enormous fowls that

lay eggs big as unshelled cocoa-nuts, who mince their awkward steps, and come sidelong up to you. In coppices, beautifully enameled with crocuses and daisies, the soft-eyed deer quits his rich pasturage for a moment, to rub his cold black nose against the railing where you stand. The timid gazelle is here, and the elk, proud of his stately antlers; and, towering above all, the unwieldy elephant, with his rolling gait and his gouty legs, librating his trunk, and peeping out from between his ivory tusks; while, from the far end of his substantial stall, the fiery eye of the shaggy bonassus arrests and facinates yours, as he glares on you wildly, and pushes his huge neck against the wooden barrier between him and the three slender giraffes, whose beautiful forms stand like Canova's sister graces, intertwining their long amorous necks high over your head. But we are getting already too national, and, in our character of a traveller, are pledged to bring before our reader the merveilles, not so much of a similar as of a dissimilar character, which await him abroad. We will begin with Pisa.

That there be leaning towers, and campaniles, and campo santos, at Pisa, and duomos, and churches and bridges on the long dull quay of the Arno, the reader long since knew; but he probably may not know any thing of the unique farm of the Duke of Tuscany, on which the camel has supplanted the ox; and that it is no longer a scene in which the magnificent horned cattle of Etruria are the protagonists, but a vision of the desert, with the beasts of the desert, and the very sands and tourbillons of the desert, to set it off! To others, the black and white chequer-work of the towers and churches of Pisa!-of our own doings, we shall record only our visit to the camel establishment, and our gleanings there, together with a brief notice of its most interesting and overlooked museum.

"Our present number of camels," said their head keeper to us asking for information, "is about sixty; from ten to fifteen yearly births make up our annual deficiency caused by death, or

the sale of the old and infirm beasts to itinerant showmen. These persons pay us from forty-five to fifty sequins (L.20-L.23) for an old camel to lead about with a halter, and we have no difficulty in thus disposing of them. Such of our camels past their work, as are not thus got rid of, die not unfrequently of accident, or of apoplexy, or still more frequently of inflammation of the bowels. The age attained by the camel here, may be stated to be about that of the horse, viz., from twenty to twenty-five years. They eat about the same quantity of hay, but will find sustenance in grazing upon what would be sorry fodder for the latter. They drink seldom oftener than once in the twenty-four hours. The males alone are employed to workare all stallions. The progeny of too young a camel are weak and sickly, and for this reason ours are not allowed to generate till they have attained their tenth year, from which period the rights of paternity are conceded to them, till they have passed their