Rossetti); and in any case those couples could come and see them
when they were old men and women; but now they had one another in
a moment of half-holiday which could not last forever.

In the evening there were not so many lovers at the religious
meetings before the classic edifice opposite the hotel, where the
devotions were transacted with the help of a brass-band; but
there were many youths smoking short pipes, and flitting from one
preacher to another, in the half-dozen groups. Some preachers
were nonconformist, but there was one perspiring Anglican priest
who labored earnestly with his hearers, and who had more of his
aspirates in the right place. Many of his hearers were in the
rags which seem a favorite wear in Liverpool, and I hope his
words did their poor hearts good.

Slightly apart from the several congregations, I found myself
with a fellow-foreigner of seafaring complexion who addressed me
in an accent so unlike my own American that I ventured to answer
him in Italian. He was indeed a Genoese, who had spent much time
in Buenos Ayres and was presently thinking of New York; and we
had some friendly discourse together concerning the English. His
ideas of them were often so parallel with my own that I hardly
know how to say he thought them an improvident people. I owned
that they spent much more on state, or station, than the
Americans; but we neither had any censure for them otherwise. He
was of that philosophic mind which one is rather apt to encounter
in the Latin races, and I could well wish for his further
acquaintance. His talk rapt me to far other and earlier scenes,
and I seemed to be conversing with him under a Venetian heaven,
among objects of art more convincing than the equestrian statue