gates massy, and the corps-de-logis you see from without, being divided into cells opening on long corridors, the whole has the air of a prison, and is well calculated to depress the spirits. Within these gloomy walls I was enclosed about the hour of noon, and left to almost perfect solitude; for it so happened, that at the moment, and during all the tedious time I passed there, not one traveller was performing quarantine, though the Lazzaretto is generally pretty well tenanted.

When my janitor had secured the iron-bound wicket-gate that admitted me, he introduced a short, thick-set, garlic-coloured, amphibious-looking fellow, (being partly clad in the dress of a sailor, and partly in that of a landsman,) who stood grinning complacently from ear to ear, and twitching about an oilskin-covered hat, at the foot of a staircase which led to my cell. This was the guardiano appointed to watch over me, to see that I broke no bounds, that I touched nothing, that I was never ill: all this he was to do for a certain sum, (I think it was about two francs daily,) fixed by the Quarantine authorities; and in consideration of another daily sum d'usage, or "de volonté," he would add to his functions of my gaoler those of my domestic. I had nothing to say to these arrangements, but I did whisper to the officer of the establishment, who had admitted me, that his satellite had a most forbidding countenance, and smelt most pungently of garlic, on which the dapper, consequential man in authority over me, was pleased to remark" That les soldats de la peste were not chosen on account of their beauty, and that garlic was an excellent febrifuge and supposed to be good even against the plague." He, however, allowed me an alternative. By paying him some money, I might send the gardien now, before he had touched me or any of my things, back to the town, and get in another of his corps in his stead; but this I begged to decline, not knowing but the second might be as ill-visaged as the first, and smell just as strong of garlic. Up-stairs, therefore, I followed my gaolerservant, the officer, with a bundle of large keys and a long stick in his hand, coming after me to give a few sententious instructions. “Here," said he, as we reached a long, low corridor, with the doors of some thirty or more cells opening upon it," here you will have plenty of room to walk about and take fresh air and exercise, but you must not descend those stairs until farther orders; and you must be very particular not to throw over any bits of paper, or any thing you have touched, into the yard below, and you must settle (arranger in this instance meant payer) with your gardien about going to bed at ten o'clock or otherwise, for he must not lose sight of you in the night. There is plenty of room, you see-you have the whole suite d'apartements at your choice, which is no small privilege, for I have seen the time, when the commerce of the Levant was active, that a whole family, women and children, and all, would be happy to get the worst-the smallest one of these rooms.' I pointed to a door about the middle of the cell-looking range, and asked to see the interior of that room. The officer detached a key from his bundle, and opening the door, said I had made an excellent choice, that that was my apartment, that he was always below in case of my wanting any thing, à numero un, and then with an assurance that he

was my most devoted, humble servant, and too happy at the opportunities of cultivating my acquaintance, my dapper friend skipped down stairs, and left me in agreeable tête-à-tête with the man of garlic. The room of which I took possession was large, gloomy, and dirty, as well might be; and within it was a smaller chamber, fouler and darker still-the latter was the dormitory of the gardien, which worthy personage, producing a rush-broom, began to remove the more moveable part of the dirt without giving me a word of warning. I ran from the dust, which rose like the sands of the desert under a simoom, into the open corridor, and began a course of monotonous perambulations up and down, lengthways and breadthways, which repeated Heaven knows how many times each day and night, must have made at the end of my quarantine a sum total of melancholy miles performed, of no trifling amount. When the man had swept the rooms, he descended and presently re-appeared with a large earthen vase, containing chloride of lime, which was placed in my cell, and on being well stirred, dissipated every odious smell except his garlic. My luggage was then brought up, and my cell furnished successively with a rickety table, two chairs, a truckle bedstead on which I spread my travelling mattress, and with a very few other conveniencies or luxuries. When all these were properly arranged, and I looked round, I could not but acknowledge that the Lazzaretto at Marseilles was a better place, than the church at Gallipoli, and that if eight-and-thirty days had been got through there, I might survive five-and-twenty here. I took out the faithful companions of my wanderings, a few favourite books, some maps, writing materials, and papers, which, set in order on the high, broad, stone mantelpiece, added considerably to the appearance of my apartment, and offered me comforts and resources far dearer than any adventitious ones I could hope to find in my imprisonment. By the time all these preparations were made, my spirits had considerably recovered from the depression I could not avoid at first. I lighted my Turkish pipe, I renewed my promenade in the corridor, and compared its long, free open space with the deck of the foul old ship I had left, which was so encumbered with raw unpressed cotton bales, and bales of goats' hair, and I know not what other bales of Levant exportation, that I had not more than three yards space to stretch my legs upon, and this for nearly a month! In process of time, indeed, I became comfortable, nay, even exhilarated, and though not quite prepared to declare in the spirit of statu-quo-itism, that my status could not be better, I felt that it might be a thousand and a thousand times worse. This good-humour was dissipated by my gardien's bringing me a wretchedly-cooked dinner from a species of gargot, or cook-shop, which is permitted to exist within the walls of the Lazzaretto. A man, perhaps, is no great philosopher whose humour can be influenced, though but momentarily, by a dinner; but I should like to see the Englishman's philosophy that could stand the pest of garlic invading him from fish, meat, vegetables-and this, too, when he has gained an appetite, as I had done, by walking and breathing the fresh air from the sea. I had known something in former times of the cuisine Provençale and its proneness to garlic, and ought to have warned my provider; but now that I did so, he seemed astonished at my want

of taste, and absolutely indignant when I desired him never to infect me again, and offered to give him so many sous per diem if he himself would eat no more garlic during his attendance on me. I have observed, in the course of my travels, that there are few points on which national or local prejudice is more chary and susceptible than on the article of the cuisine; and if, as was the case, the greatest genius of our day, who is at the same time the best-natured man living—I mean, of course, Sir Walter Scott-could suffer his gentle, and all but imperturbable temper to be ruffled by a friend of mine, who quizzed at Abbotsford the cookery of the Scotch generally, and their mode of dressing woodcocks particularly, it is not surprising that my Marseillais, who was a morose brute, should be irate at my disrespectful mention of the staple commodity of the cuisine Provençale. As to my proposition that he should eat no garlic himself, he seemed to consider it as an abominable interference in the rights of man.

That day I dined on bread and olives. My wine was one of those noxious drugs that are fabriquées to such an extent at Marseilles, and retailed and shipped under the false name of claret-it also tasted of garlic in my mouth, and I really began to think I was destined to die of that fetid root, to which I applied all the dishonouring epithets with which King Jamie traduced the Virginian weed. On the morrow a kind merchant in Marseilles, to whom I was warmly recommended, remedied the defect of the wine from his own cellar, but as to the edibles, in spite of all my remonstrances, I could never get them free of a certain odour. I suppose, from constant use, the entire batterie de cuisine of the Lazzaretto was impregnated with the essence of garlic.

The next annoyance I endured was from my gardien's short black clay-pipe, which was hardly ever out of his mouth, the fellow smoking in my room, where he invariably seated himself close to me, without asking permission or making excuse. This, however, I could remedy without prejudice to himself. I gave him clean pipes, and substituted the Turkish weed, the crackling and fragrant Latakia, for the tobacco of France, which being a Government monopoly is bad, as all articles similarly produced and restricted, will ever be.

The first evening I passed in my confinement was a very dull one. It was in vain I tried the conversational resources of my companion -he was a very dull fellow, and spoke the barbarous Provençal patois with so much strictness that it was with difficulty I could understand him. I left my cell to walk in the corridor-he followed me-I returned to my seat by the hearth, where we had a good blazing wood-fire, for the nights were cold, and my familiar came and seated himself opposite to me. When we had discussed a silent pipe, I went out to walk again, and again my unsightly, unsavoury tormentor was at my side. At last I became quite nervous at finding this monster, more pertinacious if not so horrid as he that beset Frankenstein, constantly at my elbow, and feeling I had no right to interfere with his enjoyment of air and exercise, I again returned to my room; but the very next instant, there he was seated opposite to me with his coarse garlic-coloured face glaring in the reflection of the bright flames, with one horny fist balancing his pipe, the other thrust in the pocket of his nether garment, and his legs stretched out

towards the fire, as if he was perfectly at home. Though many months have passed since then, I still feel a sort of vulgar horror creep over me as I recall that man, who persecuted me for five-and-twenty days; and it is a truth, that for a long while after, his odious figure haunted my dreams like the rhubarb-vender in the "Opium Eater." If the mind and eye are once seized or possessed by an odious object, it is astonishing how difficult it is to detach them from it. I tried to read, but though the verse was Tasso's, my eye was constantly wandering from the book to the person of my familiar; I smoked my chibook and attempted to look at nothing but the pale-blue smoke that issued from it, but, spite of myself, I was the next instant gazing on the garlic-coloured face and the squat, insolent figure of my gardien, who never broke silence save by a loud long yawn.

About ten o'clock these yawns becoming louder and more frequent, I suggested the expediency of his going to bed. "Je vous attends," was the laconic but startling reply, with which he followed up a yawn so tremendous, and opened full before me, (for he never turned his hideous visage) that I thought he was going to swallow me-chair, rickety table, lamp, books, and all.

"Comment? - vous m'attendez," said I, "what has my going to bed to do with yours?—I have no intention of going to bed for several hours."

"Then I must lock the door," said he, " and put the key under my pillow." And this he did, to my no small annoyance, for I had counted on an uninterrupted walk in the quiet corridor when he should be asleep, and felt (ridiculously enough, perhaps,) an increase of nervousness at thus being locked-up in a room.

In a very few minutes after my familiar had retired to the small inner chamber, the door of which, if it ever had one, was gone, yawns were succeeded by the loudest snoring it has ever been my lot to hear. To this enduring, and appropriate accompaniment, I read several cantos of the melodious Italian Epic, and I remember very well that one of them was the canto containing the exquisitely luxurious description of the enchanted garden of Armida, where,

"Vezzosi augelli infra le verdi fronde
Temprano a prova lascivette note."

To give a regular diary of my Quarantine would be to afflict the reader with a portion of the ennui I then endured; so I will merely throw together the circumstances that enlivened or saddened the days of my captivity, without reference to order or date.

At one end of the long corridor in which I used to walk, there was an unlocked door, opening into a chapel where mass was performed on Sundays and holidays, for the benefit of the people on the Lazzaretto establishment, and of such persons as might be performing quarantine there. In this chapel, which was neat and almost elegant, there was a large picture, always covered by a green curtain. I had looked in from my door, at the end of the corridor, which admitted me to a grated gallery above the picture, a hundred times, and at all hours of the day, in hopes of seeing this green curtain withdrawn, but always in vain, until the Christmas-eve, when the chapel was studiously decorated in honour of the season, and the picture that had irritated

my curiosity uncovered and revealed to sight. I have seldom been impressed with more horror by a work of art. This was the subject, -which might be consonant to a Lazzaretto, though it certainly was not calculated to cheer the spirits of a melancholy inmate :-during the destructive epidemic which raged at Barcelona, the French Government very laudably sent several medical-men to afford assistance to the suffering Spaniards, and to investigate the nature of the mysterious malady. One of these, a young man, and, I believe, a native of Marseilles, distinguished himself in an eminent degree, by his skill, his never-tiring humanity, and assiduous attentions to the sick; but one day, as he stood by the side of a patient whom he was going to bleed, he was suddenly seized by the most fatal symptoms of the infection, and, in a few hours, the fearless, devoted philanthropist had ceased to breathe. The moment selected by the painter is that where the physician is first struck by the insidious malady, and certainly he has succeeded in depicting it with horrid, ghastly truth. The fixed eyes, the livid lips, the drooping figure of the physician, the robust, but attenuated form, and decayed and sunken countenance of the patient, sent me away shivering from that picture I had been so impatient to see, and with the confirmation of an opinion, I had long before formed, in some of the churches of Spain and Italy, that the fine arts are misapplied when turned to such revolting subjects.

The other end of my promenade, the corridor, looked over a narrow enclosure, which a cross, and here and there a swelling of the earth, and an uncouth tombstone, denoted as a place of sepulture. It was the cemetery of the Lazzaretto, where those were buried who died in Quarantine. Some of its graves had received victims of the plague, who had brought the malady from Alexandria; and the officer of the Lazaretto-my dapper friend-who had a certain familiar eloquence in him, harrowed me, one day, with a detailed account of the sufferings and the madness of a ship's crew, that all died of the plague, pent up in another enclosure hard by the cemetery, where they now slept the calm sleep of death. With these localities and associations I had food to give the melancholy mood that would often invade me, and by peeping in the Romish chapel, whose dim obscurity was rendered visible by a solitary lamp burning before the effigy of the Virgin, at one extremity of the corridor, or gazing over the burying-ground at the other, I could, at times, bring my mind to an aberration, and a species of supernaturalism it had long been a stranger to; for I had buried all the ghosts of former years during my quarantine in the Church of Gallipoli. Up to that period, though smiling at my feeling, I had not been able wholly to rid myself, at midnight hours and in solitary places, of a certain creeping awe, and of the superstitious, ghostly impressions of my childhood, which had been more than usually exposed to legends and ghost stories; but, after sleeping eight-and-thirty nights in a sacristy, within an old church, with the dead underneath, and statues and pictures that looked like spectres, above ground, I had been pretty well cured, and indeed considered myself ghost-proof for the rest of my days. In justice, however, to my philosophy and manhood, I must remark this difference from the feelings of former times;—instead of