gether apart, regarding them with looks of fear, which even the raging elements seemed not to divert. At the same moment a strong smell of sulphur filled the atmosphere. Conceiving a thunderbolt had struck the brig, and scarce knowing what I did, I rushed forward, and seizing the foremost Jew with a savage grasp, 'base Israelite!' cried I, are you the Jonah?' Trembling, he sunk upon his knees, and implored me for the love of Abraham, to spare his life, confessing they had stowed a quantity of aqua fortis in the hold. The mystery was explained. The jars of sulphuric acid had broken in the heavings of the vessel, and their contents mingling with the silks and woollen stuffs, produced combustion. The sailors already abandoned themselves to despair. In vain I ordered, supplicated and reviled. They lay in su pine misery, calling upon the Virgin, and giving themselves up as lost. O the excitement of that hour! Years appeared concentrated in moments. I seemed endowed with an almost supernatural energy, and firmly resolved to stretch every nerve and sinew for preservation. With no assistance but that of the cabin boy, who alone listened to my orders, I threw off the hatches. A tremendous cloud of steam rolled up in thick volumes. Half suffo. cated, we proceeded to throw boxes and bales into the sea; saturated with the acid, they fumed and hissed as they struck the water. Our hands and clothes were soon terribly scorched; yet with breathless haste we toiled on, while the lightning flashed with two-fold vividness, and the gale raged with unabated fury. The sailors finally came to our aid; and after many hours of incessant ex ertion, the traces of fire were removed and we suck exhausted on the deck. The darkness was intense, and as we lay, still tossed by the tempest, a new and borrible fear entered our minds. We apprehended that we were drifting towards the Barbary coast, and should be thrown on shore only to be cruelly murdered. The horrors of such a fate we could too easily imagine, and with torturing anxiety, awaited the dawn. It was then that I vowed, if my life was spared, to dedicate it to St. Francis. The horrible scene of that night had revolutionized my nature. The danger passed like a hot iron over my soul. My previous life had been a pastime. This first adventure was replete with the terrible, and its awful excitement penetra. ted my heart. An age seemed to exhaust itself in every passing moment of our painful vigil. We gazed in silent suspense towards the east. There an ebon mass of vapor hung, like a wall of black marble. At length, a short, deep, crimson gush, glowed through its edge. Slowly the suu arose, and displayed to our astonished and gladdened eyes the farthest point of Sardinia. How we entered the harbor unpiloted, was a mystery to us as well as the hospitable inhabitants. From the vessel we hurried to the church, to render thanks to the Virgin for our deliverance. I threw my cap upon the pavement, and knelt at the first shrine. My companions uttered an exclamation of surprise. The intense care and apprehension of that night of terrors, had sprinkled the snow of age amid my locks of jot." SAN MARINO. "With light heart the poor fisher moors his boat, Wallenstein. THE ancient Via Emilia is still designated by an excellent road which crosses Romagna in the direction of the Adriatic. It traverses an extensive tract of fertile land, chiefly laid out in vineyards. As we passed through this rich and level country, the occasional appearance of a team drawn by a pair of beautiful grey oxen and loaded with a reeking butt of new wine, proclaimed that it was the season of vintage. But autumn was not less pleasingly indicated, by the clusters of purple grapes suspended from cane-poles at almost every cottage-window, and by the yellow and crimson leaves of the vines, that waved gorgeously in the sun as far as the eye could reach, like garlands with which departing summer had decorated the fields in commemoration of the rich harvest she had yielded. The single companion who shared with me the open carrriage so well adapted for such a jaunt, was a large landed proprietor in the neighboring district, and, being quite familiar with every nook and feature of the surrounding country, he endeavored to amuse me by pointing out all objects of interest with which we came in view. Here was a little chapel under whose walls a notorious thief concealed an immense treasure, and when the term of his imprisonment had expired, returned and disinterred it. There was the Devil's bridge, so called because it is said to have been built in a single night. This veteran beggar, distinguished from the mendicant group of the village by the erect air of his emaciated figure, was a soldier under Napoleon, and has now roam. ed back to his native town, to live on the casual alms of the passing traveller; while that stout and well-clad man who succeeded, with the loss of a thumb, in arresting a formidable bandit, is living snugly on a pension. The shallow stream over which we are now passing is believed to be the Rubicon. Yon gay contadina with large silver ear-rings, whose laugh we hear from the chaise behind, is a bride on her way from church; and that white and flower-decked crib which a peasant is carrying into his cottage, is the bier of a child. It was only at long inter. vals that the agreeable though monotonous scenery was varied to the view, and within the precincts of the towns scarcely a single pleasing object could the eye detect, to counteract the too obvious evidences of human misery. In all the Papal villages, indeed, the same scene is presented. At every gate the traveller is dunned for his passport by an Austrian guard, whose mustaches and cold northern visage are as out of place in so sunny a region, as would be an orange-grove amid the sands of Cape Cod, or annoyed by the wretched inheritor of one of the noblest of ancient titles-a Roman soldier, clad in a loose, brown, shaggy coat, who after keeping him an hour to spell out credentials which have been read a score of times since he entered the territory, has the effrontery to ask for a few biocchi to drink his health at the nearest wine-shop. When, at length, one is allowed to enter and hurry through the dark, muddy streets, no sign of enterprize meets the gaze, but a barber's basin dangling from some doorway, a crowd collected around a dealer in vegetables, or, if it be a festa, a company of strolling circusriders, decked out in tawdry finery, cantering round to collect an audience for the evening. No activity is manifested, except by the vetturini who run after the carriage, vociferating for employment, and the paupers who collect in a dense crowd to impede its progress. In the midst of such tokens of degradation, planted in the centre the square, rises a statue of some pope or archbishop in bronze or marble, with tall mitre and outstretched arm; and, as if to demonstrate the imbecility of the weakest and most oppressive of Italian governments, around the very pedestal are grouped more improvidents than would fill a hospital, and idle, reckless characters enough to corrupt an entire community. There is something peculiarly provoking in the appearance of these ugly, graceless statues, which are so ostentatiously stuck up in every town throughout the Pontifical states-the emblem of a ruinous and draining system, which has reduced these naturally fertile localities to their present wretchedness, |