,
Bottled sunbeams from the sun.

If too soaring, too seraphic,
Seems to some that heavenward track,
T'other way there's much more traffic,
Though not many travel back.

What a gradient through Avernus!
What a curve will Hades take!
When with joy the Shades discern us,
How Hell's terminus will shake!

How the Pandemonium Junction,
With the Central will combine,
Rattling both without compunction
Down the Tartarus incline!

Phlegethon no more need fright us,
For we've bridged its fiery way;
And the steamer on Cocytus
Long ago has ceased to pay.

Charon--under sequestration--
Does the Stygian bark resign,
Glad to find a situation
As policeman to the line.

Thoughts of penance need not haunt us;
Who remains our sins to snub?
Pluto, Minos, Rhadamanthus,
All have joined the "Railway Club."

Fortune's gifts, then, catch and cherish;
Follow where her currents flow;
Sure to prosper--or to perish,
Follow, though to Styx we go!

SKETCHES OF ITALY--LUCCA.

The records of travellers in the _Livre des Etrangers_ at Modena, had
prepared us to expect nothing tolerable at the night halts in our
journey through the Apennines to our projected place of _sejour_
during the great heats of summer, the _Bagni di Lucca_. At the
_mountain_ locandas, we were always prepared, not to say resigned, to
encounter those various distresses which seem light evils at a
distance--knowing that we could not starve as long as eggs and
maccaroni were to be found, and even as to lodging we were too old
travellers to flinch at trifles. The rural inn at Piave, which looked
more inviting than the great one of the small place, was delighted to
receive us, and gave us good trout, tolerable bread, and excellent
honey: we were in the midst of a lovely country, we heard a limpid
stream running within a few yards of our window; and what had we to
fear? But night came, and with it more annoyances than one bargains
for even in Italy. A floor of thin planks which had never fitted, and
of which the joinings, which had never been of the kind called
_callidae_, were now widened by time, was all that parted our small
bedroom from that of the horses. Through these, and also through large
rat-holes, there came up copious ammoniacal smells, which our mucous
membrane resented from the first; and well it had