yancy which the terrible uncertainties of the siege
could not repress.

"Our general talks nobly, Tiernay," said he, as he gave me his arm to
assist me; "but you'll stare when I tell you that 'wanting for nothing'
means, having four ounces of black bread, and ditto of blue cheese per
diem; and as to a horse, if I possessed such an animal, I'd have given
a dinner-party yesterday and eaten him. You look surprised, but when you
see a little more of us here, you'll begin to think that prison rations
in the fleet yonder were luxuries compared to what _we_ have. No matter:
you shall take share of my superabundance, and if I have little else to
offer, I'll show you a view from my window, finer than any thing you
ever looked on in your life, and with a sea-breeze that would be
glorious if it didn't make one hungry."

While he thus rattled on, we reached the street, and there calling a
couple of soldiers forward, he directed them to carry me along to his
quarters, which lay in the upper town, on an elevated plateau that
overlooked the city and the bay together.

From the narrow lanes, flanked with tall, gloomy houses, and steep,
ill-paved streets, exhibiting poverty and privation of every kind, we
suddenly emerged into an open space of grass, at one side of which a
handsome iron-railing stood, with a richly ornamented gate, gorgeously
gilded. Within this was a garden and a fish-pond, surrounded with
statues, and further on, a long, low villa, whose windows reached to the
ground, and were shaded by a deep awning of striped blue and white
canvas. Camelias, orange-trees, cactuses, and magnolias, abounded every
where; tulips and hyacinths seemed to grow wild; and there was in the
half-neglected look of the spot something of savage luxuriance that
heightened the effect immensely.

"This is my Paradise, Tiernay, only wanting an Eve to be perfect," said
Latrobe, as he set me down beneath a spreading lime-tree. "Yonder are
your English friends; there they stretch away for miles beyond that
point. That's the Monte Creto, you may have heard of; and there's the
Bochetta. In that valley, to the left, the Austrian outposts are
stationed; and from those two heights closer to the shore, they are
gracious enough to salute us every evening after sunset, and even
prolong the attention sometimes the whole night through. Turn your eyes
in this direction, and you'll see the 'cornice' road, that leads to La
Belle France, but of which we see as mu