essels unlading at
the wharf and precious merchandise strown upon the ground abundantly
as at the bottom of the sea--that market whence no goods return, and
where there is no captain nor supercargo to render an account of
sales. Here the clerks are diligent with their paper and pencils and
sailors ply the block and 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 Vincentio, 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 toward my watch-tower 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 toy-shop. And yet it stirs my heart. Their regular advance, their
nodding plumes, the sun-flash 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 their rear marches a battalion of schoolboys
ranged in crooked and irregular platoons, shouldering sticks, thumping
a harsh and unripe clatter from an instrument of tin and ridiculously
aping the intricate manoeuvres of the foremost band. N