tackle that hang over the hold, accompanying their toil with cries, long
drawn and roughly melodious, till the bales and puncheons ascend to upper
air. At a little distance, a group of gentlemen are assembled round the
door of a warehouse. Grave seniors be they, and I would wager--if it
were safe, in these times, to be responsible for any one--that the least
eminent among them might vie with old Vicentio, that incomparable
trafficker of Pisa. I can even select the wealthiest of the company.
It is the elderly personage, in somewhat rusty black, with powdered hair,
the superfluous whiteness of which is visible upon the cape of his coat.
His twenty ships are wafted on some of their many courses by every breeze
that blows, and his name--I will venture to say, though I know it not--is
a familiar sound among the far-separated merchants of Europe and the
Indies.

But I bestow too much of my attention in this quarter. On looking again
to the long and shady walk, I perceive that the two fair girls have
encountered the young man. After a sort of shyness in the recognition,
he turns back with them. Moreover, he has sanctioned my taste in regard
to his companions by placing himself on the inner side of the pavement,
nearest the Venus to whom I--enacting on a steeple-top, the part of Paris
on the top of Ida--adjudged the golden apple.

In two streets, converging at right angles towards my watchtower,
I distinguish three different processions. One is a proud array of
voluntary soldiers, in bright uniform, resembling, from the height whence
I look down, the painted veterans that garrison the windows of a toyshop.
And yet, it stirs my heart; their regular advance, their nodding plumes,
the sunflash on their bayonets and musket-barrels, the roll of their
drums ascending past me, and the fife ever and anon piercing through,--
these things have wakened a warlike fire, peaceful though I be. Close to