movement of the sea for the first time. This was rather a
rude trial, for the grey-maned monsters played, as it seemed, at will
with our cockle-shell, tumbling in dolphin curves to reach the shore.
Our boatmen knew all about Shelley and the Casa Magni. It is not at
Lerici, but close to San Terenzio, upon the south side of the village.
Looking across the bay from the molo, one could clearly see its square
white mass, tiled roof, and terrace built on rude arcades with a broad
orange awning. Trelawny's description hardly prepares one for so
considerable a place. I think the English exiles of that period must
have been exacting if the Casa Magni seemed to them no better than a
bathing-house.

We left our boat at the jetty, and walked through some gardens to the
villa. There we were kindly entertained by the present occupiers, who,
when I asked them whether such visits as ours were not a great
annoyance, gently but feelingly replied: "It is not so bad now as it
used to be." The English gentleman who rents the Casa Magni has known
it uninterruptedly since Shelley's death, and has used it for
_villeggiatura_ during the last thirty years. We found him in the
central sitting-room, which readers of Trelawny's _Recollections_ have
so often pictured to themselves. The large oval table, the settees round
the walls, and some of the pictures are still unchanged. As we sat
talking, I laughed to think of that luncheon party, when Shelley lost
his clothes, and came naked, dripping with sea-water, into the room,
protected by the skirts of the sympathising waiting-maid. And then I
wondered where they found him on the night when he stood screaming in
his sleep, after the vision of his veiled self, with its question,
"_Siete soddisfatto?_"

There were great ilexes behind the house in Shelley's time, which have
been cut down, and near these he is said to have sat and written the
_Triumph of Life_. Some new houses, too, have been built between the
villa and the town; otherwise the place is unaltered. Only an awning has
been added to protect the terrace from the sun. I walked out on this
terrace, where Shelley used to listen to Jane's singing. The sea was
fretting at its base, just as Mrs. Shelley says it did when the Don Juan
disappeared.

From San Terenzio we walked back to Lerici through olive woods, attended
by a memory which toned the almost overpowering beauty of the place to
sadness.

VII.--VIAREGGIO.

The same memory drew us,