nds. These
are in great part perpendicular, and are over clambered with airy
stairways climbing to pensile arbors. Where horizontal, they are
diversified with mimic seas for swans to sail upon, and summer-houses
for people to lounge in and look at the swans from. On the point of
land furthest from the acclivity stands the Castle of Miramare, half
at sea, and half adrift in the clouds above:--

"And fain it would stoop downward
To the mirrored wave below;
And fain it would soar upward
In the evening's crimson glow."

I remember that a little yacht lay beside the pier at the castle's
foot, and lazily flapped its sail, while the sea beat inward with as
languid a pulse. That was some years ago, before Mexico was dreamed of
at Miramare: now, perchance, she who is one of the most unhappy among
women looks down distraught from those high windows, and finds in the
helpless sail and impassive wave the images of her baffled hope, and
that immeasurable sea which gives back its mariners neither to love
nor sorrow. I think though she be the wife and daughter of princes, we
may pity this poor Empress at least as much as we pity the Mexicans to
whom her dreams have brought so many woes.

It was the midnight following my visit to Miramare when the fiacre
in which I had quitted my friend's house was drawn up by its greatly
bewildered driver on the quay near the place where the steamer for
Venice should be lying. There was no steamer for Venice to be seen.
The driver swore a little in the polyglot profanities of his native
city, and descending from his box, went and questioned different
lights--blue lights, yellow lights, green lights--to be seen at
different points. To a light, they were ignorant, though eloquent, and
to pass the time, we drove up and down the quay, and stopped at the
landings of all the steamers that touch at Trieste. It was a snug
fiacre enough, but I did not care to spend the night in it, and I
urged the driver to further inquiry. A wanderer whom we met, declared
that it was not the night for the Venice steamer; another admitted
that it might be; a third conversed with the driver in low tones, and
then leaped upon the box. We drove rapidly away, and before I had, in
view of this mysterious proceeding, composed a fitting paragraph for
the _Fatti Diversi_ of the _Osservatore Triestino_, descriptive of the
state in which the Guardie di Polizia should find me floating in the
bay, exanimate and evidently the