the wool in his cage; or a tortoise before he buries himself.

I feel that I am getting rusty. That any attempt to think, would
be accompanied with a creaking noise. That there is nothing,
anywhere, to be done, or needing to be done. That there is no more
human progress, motion, effort, or advancement, of any kind beyond
this. That the whole scheme stopped here centuries ago, and laid
down to rest until the Day of Judgment.

Never while the brave Courier lives! Behold him jingling out of
Piacenza, and staggering this way, in the tallest posting-chaise
ever seen, so that he looks out of the front window as if he were
peeping over a garden wall; while the postilion, concentrated
essence of all the shabbiness of Italy, pauses for a moment in his
animated conversation, to touch his hat to a blunt-nosed little
Virgin, hardly less shabby than himself, enshrined in a plaster
Punch's show outside the town.

In Genoa, and thereabouts, they train the vines on trellis-work,
supported on square clumsy pillars, which, in themselves, are
anything but picturesque. But, here, they twine them around trees,
and let them trail among the hedges; and the vineyards are full of
trees, regularly planted for this purpose, each with its own vine
twining and clustering about it. Their leaves are now of the
brightest gold and deepest red; and never was anything so
enchantingly graceful and full of beauty. Through miles of these
delightful forms and colours, the road winds its way. The wild
festoons, the elegant wreaths, and crowns, and garlands of all
shapes; the fairy nets flung over great trees, and making them
prisoners in sport; the tumbled heaps and mounds of exquisite