r nation to the world, and
makes the travelling Englishman a universal favorite, they keep
the seats to which they have no longer any right, while the tempest
drenches the ladies to whom the places belong; and it is only by the
_forza maggiore_ of our conductor that they can be dislodged. In
the mean time the Portland man exchanges with them the assurances of
personal and national esteem, which that mighty bond of friendship,
the language of Shakespeare and Milton, enables us to offer so
idiomatically to our transatlantic cousins.

What Grossetto was like, as we first rode through it, we scarcely
looked to see. In four or five hours we should strike the railroad at
Follonica; and we merely asked of intermediate places that they
should not detain us. We dined in Grossetto at an inn of the Larthian
period,--a cold inn and a damp, which seemed never to have been
swept since the broom dropped from the grasp of the last Etrurian
chambermaid,--and we ate with the two-pronged iron forks of an extinct
civilization. All the while we dined, a boy tried to kindle a fire
to warm us, and beguiled his incessant failures with stories of
inundation on the road ahead of us. But we believed him so little,
that when he said a certain stream near Grossetto was impassable, our
company all but hissed him.

When we left the town and hurried into the open country, we perceived
that he had only too great reason to be an alarmist. Every little
rill was risen, and boiling over with the pride of harm, and the broad
fields lay hid under the yellow waters that here and there washed over
the road. Yet the freshet only presented itself to us as a pleasant
excitement; and even when we came to a place where the road itself
was covered for a quarter of a mile, we scarcely looked outside the
diligence to see how deep the water was. We were surprised when our
horses were brought to a stand on a rising ground, and the conductor,
cap in hand, appeared at the door. He was a fat, well-natured man,
full of a smiling goodwill; and he stood before us in a radiant
desperation.

Would Eccellenza descend, look at the water in front, and decide
whether to go on? The conductor desired to content; it displeased him
to delay,--_ma, in somma_!--the rest was confided to the conductor's
eloquent shoulders and eyebrows.

Eccellenza, descending, beheld but a disheartening prospect. On every
hand the country was under water. The two diligences stood on a stone
bridge sp