The next morning Mildred had risen with the dawn, leaving her aunt and the rest of the passengers locked in their slumbers. What a delightful sensation awaited her as she rose from the close cabin of the steamer, and, ascending upon deck, met the breeze, the sunrise, the dancing waters of the Mediterranean, and hailed at her side the mountain coast of Italy! It was the first time in her life she had seen the blue hill crested with the snowy summits of the more distant and lofty mountain,—a combination which the art of the painter is daily attempting to imitate, but the etherial effect of which it never can at all approach. What an enchantment is the first view of the greater beauties of nature! The first lake—the first mountain—the first time we behold the eternal snow, white as the summer cloud, but which passes not away—is an era in our existence,—a first love without its disappointment. The inhabitant of a mountainous country, though he may boast his greater intimacy with nature, though he may have linked all the feelings of home with her grandeur and sublimity, can never know what the dweller in the plain and the city has felt, who, with matured taste, with imagination cultivated by literature, stands, in all the vigour of his mind, for the first time before the mountain! It was but a distant view of the Alps that Mildred now obtained; but that snowy ridge against the blue sky—that moved not, that was not cloud—exercised an indescribable fascination over her.

Winston was also soon upon deck; but, observing how well she was employed, he was careful not to disturb her. He well knew how essential was solitude to the highest gratification which either art or nature afford. It is but a secondary or declining excitement that we feel when we are restless to communicate it to another. The heart is but half full of its object, that, to complete its pleasure, craves for sympathy.

It was not till they were within sight of Genoa that he ventured to approach the side of the vessel where she was sitting.

“Now,” said he, with a smile, “it is permissible to talk. We approach the shore too near for picturesque effect; and the town of Genoa, seen here from the bay, whatever tourists may assert, is neither more nor less than what a sea-port town may be expected to be.”

“Yes,” said Mildred; “I was just observing to myself that a hilly coast, delightful to him who is on it, and delightful to the distant spectator, is at a certain mid-way station seen to great disadvantage. It has lost the cerulean hue—that colour laid in the air—that visible poetry which it had appropriated to itself; it has lost this enchantment of distance, and it is still too remote for the natural beauty of its several objects to be perceived. These are dwarfed and flattened. The trees are bushes, mere tufts of green; the precipices and cliffs are patches of gravel darker or lighter. For the charm of imagination it is too near; for the effect of its own realities, too remote. And yet—and yet—see what a life is thrown over the scene by the shadow of that passing cloud, moving rapidly over the little fields, and houses, and the olive groves! How it brightens all, by the contrast it forms with the stream of light which follows as rapidly behind it! I retract—I retract—Nature has a pencil which never is at fault; which has always some touch in reserve to kindle every scene into beauty.”

“But the town——”

“Oh, I surrender the town. Certainly, if this is the view which tourists admire, they shall never have the moulding of my anticipations. The sail by the coast has been delightful; but it is precisely here, in presence of this congregation of ordinary buildings, that the pleasure deserts us.”

“People,” said Winston, “have described Genoa the Proud as if its palaces stood by the sea. They have combined, I suspect, in one view all that the exterior and the interior of the town had presented to them. They have taken the little privilege of turning the city inside out; just as if one should make up a picture of the approach to London by the river Thames, by lining its banks with sections cut out of Regent’s Park. But here we are at anchor, and shall soon be able to penetrate into this city of palaces.”

They landed, and Alfred Winston assisted the ladies to disembark, but showed no symptoms of any intention to attach himself to their party. He did not even select the same hotel. But as all travellers are seeing the same sights, visiting the same churches, the same palaces, the same points of view, it was not possible for them to be long without meeting. And these casual encounters seemed to afford to both parties an equal pleasure.

We have seen that there was a strain of thought in Mildred’s mind, which found neither sympathy nor apprehension with her companions. Mr. Bloomfield was, indeed, more intelligent than his sister; but his half-perceptions, coupled unfortunately with no distrust whatever of himself, made him the more tedious companion of the two; for he would either inflict upon her some misplaced flippancy, or some wearisome common-place; which last he doubted not was extremely edifying to his niece. Good man! he little suspected that the great difference between himself and his niece consisted in this, that he was indeed incapable of receiving any edification from her; whilst she, in her own silent way, would often extract from the chaff he dealt in, some truth for herself. Her responsive “Yes,” was, often yielded in assent to a meaning other and higher than he was aware he had expressed. To her, therefore, the intellectual sympathy which she found in their fellow-traveller was peculiarly grateful; it was as novel as it was agreeable.

If she had refused to be pleased with the applauded view of the bay of Genoa, she was unfeignedly interested in the interior of the town. Nor, perhaps, is there any town in Italy, with the exception of Venice, which makes a more striking impression upon the traveller. He walks through a street of palaces, the painted fronts of many of which remind him of the scenes of the theatre—so that he can hardly believe himself to be in a real town; he sees the orange-tree upon the terrace above him, and its veritable golden fruit hangs over his head—is hanging in the open air: he feels he is now really in Italy! he sees the light arcade running by the side of the palace, with its decorated arch, its statues, its vases; and as he passes along the street, the open portico partly reveals the branching staircase, and the inner court, with its deserted galleries, and its now so solitary fountain. And as he walks on—in striking contrast—narrow, very narrow streets, at his right or at his left, descend upon him, dark and precipitous as a mountain gorge, bringing down the clattering mule, laden ingeniously enough with whatever is elsewhere stowed into a cart, or the antique sedan, the only vehicle in which a living man could navigate those straits. Then the multitude of priests and friars, black and brown—the white muslin veil thrown over the heads of the women, or the gaudy scarf of printed cotton substituted by the poorer sort (Miss Bloomfield exclaimed, and very naturally, that they had got their bed furniture about their ears)—all this, and much more, which it is not exactly our purpose to describe, give to the town an air of complete originality. The very decay, in some parts, of its antique state and grandeur, adds to its interest. One looks into the deserted porch, deserted of all but that sleepy shoe-black, who has installed himself in its shade with the necessary implements of his calling; and one sees the fountain still bubbling up, still playing there before its only companion, that stained and mutilated statue, who looks on with how pensive, how altered, how deploring an aspect!

The young priests, with their broad hats and well draped vests of spotless black cloth, Mildred thought the best dressed men she had any where seen. The finished dandy looks contemptible by the side of these. She could not pass the same compliment on the brown friar, corded and sandeled, with his low brow and his bare shaven crown. In vain does he proclaim that his poverty is voluntary, and most meritorious: he has a sad, plebeian aspect; and even his saintly brother in black manifestly looks down upon him, as they meet upon the pavement, as belonging to the democracy of their sacred order. Voluntary poverty! the faith in the existence of such a thing is rarer even than the thing itself; it is worn out; and in this age a mendicant friar can be nothing more than a legalised beggar, earning his subsistence (as the Church, we suppose, would explain it) by the useful office of stimulating the charity of men; there being in the natural constitution of society so few occasions for the practice of benevolence.

Our fellow-travellers had met in the church of the Annunciation, one of the most gorgeous structures which the Catholic religion has erected for its worship. It would be almost impossible for gilding, and painting, and all the decorative arts, to produce any thing more splendid than the interior of this temple. Neither Versailles nor Rome has any thing to compete with the sumptuous effect which is here produced by these means. By drawing a red silk curtain across the upper windows, there is thrown over the gilding so rich a hue, that the roof and pillars glow as if with molten gold. High up, within the dome, there stand, in pairs, one at each side of every window, gilded statues; and these, in the red light thrown upon them, look as if invested with flame. They reminded Mildred of some description she had read in Southey’s Curse of Kehama.

Winston was disposed to quarrel with the building as being too gorgeous; but Mildred, who resigned herself more readily to genuine and natural impulses of pleasure, and who at all times expressed the unaffected dictates of her taste, would not acquiesce in any censure of the kind.

“No,” she maintained, “if the artist aim at being gorgeous, he must stop at no half measures. There is a higher aim, no doubt, where form and proportion ought more strictly to predominate over colour, and all the splendour of marble and of gilding. But if he is resolved to dazzle us—if to be sumptuous is his very object, let him throw timidity to the winds; let him build—as he has done here—in gold; let him paint—as on this ceiling—in such glowing colours as even this roof of flame cannot overpower. Look up the dome; see how these clouds are rolling down upon us!”

“But,” said Winston, still disposed to be critical, “there is something else in that dome which seems disposed to fall; and which, from its nature, ought to manifest no such tendency. Do you remark those small Corinthian pillars placed round the upper part of the dome—how they lean inward? A pillar is the last thing which ought to look as if it needed support; yet these evidently, unless fastened to the wall, would, by their own gravity, fall down upon us. This is surely contrary to the simplest rules of taste, yet it is not the first time I have observed in Italy this species of ornament.”

“I acquiesce in your criticism,” said Mildred, with a smile; “now point me out something to admire.”

They sat down quietly on one of the benches, placed there for the service of the faithful, to survey at leisure this sumptuous edifice, and let its impression sink into their memory. But this pleasure was not a little interrupted by the devotees in their neighbourhood—dirty, ragged, squalid men and women, mumbling and spitting—spitting and mumbling. They were unreasonable enough to feel that the devotion of these people was quite an intrusive circumstance. For such worshippers!—such a temple!—thought Mildred. They were jabbering their prayers, like idiocy, behind her. “Let us move away,” she whispered. “After all,” said Winston, as they retired, “it is for their idiocy, and not our admiration, that the temple is built.”

On leaving this building they directed their steps towards the suburbs of the town, and entered a church which, in its modest appearance, formed a strong contrast with the one they had just visited. A level space before it, planted with trees, gave it the air of an English parish church. Neither the interior nor the exterior presented any architectural display. Whilst Mr. and Miss Bloomfield were walking up to the altar, and taking, as in duty bound, a survey of the whole building, Mildred and her companion lingered near the entrance, attracted by some monumental tablets set up against the walls. The bas-reliefs on one, or two of these were remarkable for their beauty, their elegance and tenderness, and the inscriptions accorded with them, and seemed full of feeling.

“I am glad,” she said, “we happened to enter here. I was beginning to be a little out of humour with my catholic brethren; but these tablets bring me back to a charitable and kindly mood.”

Winston joined her in reading some of the inscriptions.

“It is really,” said he, “the first time I can remember to have been affected by monumental inscriptions, or to have read them with any pleasure or patience. In an English churchyard, the tombstone either preaches at you—and that with such an offensive dogmatism as none but a dead man would venture to assume—or it presents a fulsome collection of laudatory phrases, shovelled upon the dead with as much thought and consideration as were the dirt and clay upon his coffin. If verse is added, it seems to have been supplied, with the stone, by the stone-mason; the countrymen of Milton—and not alone the poor and ignorant—select, to be engraved on the enduring marble, some pitiable doggerel that ought never to have been heard beyond the nursery, so that few persons stop to read the epitaphs in our churchyards, unless in a spirit of mockery, and with the hope of extracting a jest from them.”

“For which reason, amongst others,” said Mildred, “I generally avoid them. I would respect the dead,—and the living in their affliction. But what a natural, humane, tender, and faithful spirit are some of these written in! And this beautiful figure of a young girl ascending to the skies, embracing the cross in her arms,—what a sweet piety it breathes! How well it bears out the inscription underneath, the conceit in which might otherwise have at least failed to please,—

“And here—how full of tenderness—how full of faith—seem these simple words!—

“And this,—

“Earth and Heaven—how they mingle here!”

“Is it poetry or religion that we are reading?” said Winston. “It seems to me as if these people had suddenly turned their poetry into faith.”

“Or have some of us been turning our faith into poetry? I believe,” added Mildred, “that, in every mind, not utterly destitute of imagination, the boundaries of the two are not very rigidly defined. There is always something of faith in our poetry, and something of poetry in our faith.”

They were now joined by Mr. and Miss Bloomfield, who had made their tour of the church; and the whole party retraced their steps towards their hotel. Winston felt that he had not once indulged Mr. Bloomfield in an opportunity of venting his lamentations over the evils of travel, and the discomforts of foreign parts; he therefore asked that gentleman how he had found himself accommodated at the hotel at which he had descended.

“Ay,” said Mr. Bloomfield, delighted to have a topic on which he could feelingly expatiate, “Descended!—’tis the Frenchman’s phrase. I know that I have ascended to my hotel, and to no trivial elevation. Why, the hotel itself does not begin till where another house might end, and where it ends might be a problem for astronomers to calculate. The ladies got deposited somewhere beneath the clouds; but for myself I am really at a frightful altitude. I was conducted up a dark stone-staircase with an iron-bannister; after some time my guide branched off laterally through by-passages, with unglazed openings, having the most cheerless look-out imaginable, and across damp landing-places contiguous to sinks, and what seemed wash-houses, and where you heard the perpetual dripping of water. All this lay in the road to my bed-room; but the bed-room was not reached yet. I had again to mount—to mount—till I was almost giddy. When at length I attained the apartment destined for me—the only one, I was assured, vacant in the hotel—and was left up there alone in it, I felt so removed from all human fellowship, all succour or sympathy from the inhabitants of the earth below, that I do declare, if I had not been a little initiated on the journey—if I had come direct from my English home at Wimborne—and if, moreover, I was not here in character of protector to two ladies, and therefore bound to carry a bold face in all extremities—I do declare that I should have thrown myself down in utter despair upon the floor, and there lay till the undertaker should come and take me down again!—it seemed the only mode of descent that was at all practicable.”

“Certainly it would be the easiest and the safest,” said Winston, humouring his vein of exaggeration. “And yet it is hardly upon the floor that you would have thrown yourself—which being probably of painted tiles, would have given you a cruel reception. You would rather have chosen Captain Shandy’s attitude, when he was overwhelmed with grief, and flung yourself face foremost upon the bed.”

“Very true. And as to that same bed, whether owing to the fatigue of my toilsome ascent, or to some good properties of its own, I must confess I never slept on any thing more agreeable. Yet, on examination, I found it stuffed with the dried leaves of the Indian corn. Strange substitute for a feather bed! It is inconceivable how comfortable I found it. And to be the dried leaves of Indian corn—a sort of straw, in short. And the next morning when I woke, and saw by daylight the light and elegant drapery of my bed, and looked up at the gaily painted ceiling—I suppose in this country the pigeon-houses have their ceilings painted—I could hardly believe that I was in an attic—raised even to the fifth power of an attic.”

When Alfred Winston mounted to his attic that night—as Mr. Bloomfield persisted in calling every elevated dormitory—he ought, if fatigue was sufficient to ensure it, to have slept soundly too. But he did not. He did not sleep at all. And the result of this sleepless night was a resolution, which does not seem strictly consequent thereon,—a resolution to rise with the dawn, and leave Genoa immediately.

The fact was, that this Mildred Willoughby was exercising over him, not, as is often said, a fascination “for which he could not account,” but one for which he could account too well. She realized all that he had ever pictured to himself of feminine charms,—his ideal of woman,—grace, beauty, tenderness, and a mind highly cultivated. But he had not come to Italy to fall in love. Besides, what had he, in Italy or elsewhere, to do with love? It was a thing out of his calculation at all times and places, and just now more than ever. How could he see Italy—see any thing—with this Mildred by the side of him? He would escape from this dangerous party. It was their intention, he had heard, to proceed to Pisa; he would start at once to Florence, and visit Pisa on his return. By this means he should get the start of them, and he would keep it.

By eight o’clock that morning he was travelling on the road to Florence.

The Bloomfields were a little surprised at not encountering their agreeable companion again; and at length concluded that he had taken his departure. Rather abruptly, to be sure, yet what claim had either on the other to any of the ceremonies of social intercourse? They were mere travellers, whom hazard had thrown together.

“After all,” said Mr. Bloomfield; “we have never been introduced.”

“Very true,” said Miss Bloomfield, “that never struck me.”

Mildred was silent.