THE LAKE OF COMO.

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in selecting the Tyrol as the theme of a new book. March, 1847, found him at work on some stories of Tyrol life. Addressing his publisher, he urged as an advantage that the theme not being an Irish one would be regarded with more favour by English readers; they being much in the condition of the man who could not enjoy Liston's acting because the actor owed him £10. This volume he had intended for a child's book; but, by an Irish blunder, he wrote about children instead of for them, and consequently travelled out of his titlepage.

The Tyrol tales never appeared. He wrote to McGlashan, asking him to come and visit him in a villa on Lake Como which he had taken: he had another project which would not bear the garbling of a letter, though it might be beautifully discussed in a grape arbour. Even as a mere business one the journey would not be worthless to McGlashan, while to Lever it would prove a gratifying opportunity of recalling old memories.

A paper of his, called "Etchings of Italy," in July, 1847, tells us that to Como he was irresistibly attracted. "The diversity of objects which present themselves along the shores of this enchanting lake-the magnificent villas of the Italian nobility-the soft outline of the hills, clothed with olive, myrtle, and vines through which the frequent chapel rears its white belltower, the beautiful promontory of Bellagio, crowned with terraces and gardens, all form a scene well worthy

of the pencil of Salvator Rosa, or the glowing imagination of Manzoni."

A long account is given of Milan in this paper, and of a visit to the Larazetto in the City of the Plague. He mentions that "sneezing, as recorded by Thucydides, has always been a premonitory symptom of the plague, and reminds us that the custom still exists in Italy of saying 'Salute,' and in Milan as in Ireland 'God bless you' when a sneeze occurs.'

He went on from Mantua and Cremona to Verona and Rome, visiting-en route, Venice-and the now deserted historic site of Pavia. He fell in love with the queen of the Sea, and bade, at last, a sad adieu. "Venice, farewell! long would we linger beside thy waters, charmed by the spell attached to the memory of an Age coeval with the brightest scenes of Italian glory; the age of Raphael and Michael Angelo, of Dante and Tasso."

All was not couleur de rose. "My University degree," he writes, "my commission in a militia regiment, and a vast amount of letters very interesting to me, were seized by the Austrian authorities on the way from Comoto Florence in the August of 1847, being deemed part of a treasonable correspondence-probably purposely allegorical in form-and never restored to me. I fairly own that I'd give all the rest willingly to repossess myself of the Monsoon treaty, not a little for the sake of that quaint old autograph, faintly shaken by the quiet laugh with which he wrote it."*

* Vide vol. i. p. 254.

HIS PAPERS SEIZED.

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Enquiries made by the present writer in the hope of still recovering these papers, has led to the following remarks from one who discharged official duty in Austria under three successive monarchs. The details illustrate Lever's life and times. "I see no possibility of their ever being recovered. The revolutionary movements of 1848 threw the whole of the archives of the police office into the hands of the populace in the first instance, and of the Piedmontese authorities subsequently; and any one that pleased helped themselves to what they liked. Then came the Radedzky restoration' in 1849, and with it a new set of police officials, then the new exodus of these in 1859. It is possible that some of the archives may have been saved and sent to the East; or to Verona, Mantua or Venice, or perhaps to Laibach and Vienna, but who could trace these things? I don't wonder at Mr. Lever having been suspected of anything, travelling as he did, with piebald ponies, and wife and children with long flowing air. The police guards could not make out what he was or might not be, and then he had that peculiar defiant way of treating officials that seems to belong to many Irish persons whom I have known."

People who, many years ago, were brought into contact with Lever, describe him as nervous and retiring. Men thus affected often assume a brusque air, with the object of battling against nervousness, and masking its expression. Lever was painfully sensitive to rebuffs; and when we come to Florence it will be seen that some

folk who there offered marked discourtesies to him, were pilloried in his books.-Even the little clerk at the House of Commons who, on Lever's visit to London in 1865, repulsed his entry without an order, is noticed in "O'Dowd" as "the little man with the long body and the gauze spectacles, who sits at the door of the House and flings back your card so disdainfully when you have omitted the name of the member you fain would ask to protect you." Lever, a bashful man at first, became eventually the direct reverse. "The Law of Physics," he writes in "One of Them," "is the rule of morals, and as the swing of the pendulum is greater in proportion to the retraction, so the bashful man, once emancipated from his reserve, becomes the most daringly aggressive of mortals."

CHAPTER V.

Florence-Lever on the Cascine-The observed of all observers-Court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany-Mrs. Trollope-The Bagni di LuccaRoland Cashel-Declines to write his own life-Maurice TierneyAnster-Heavy pecuniary losses-Florence like a slumbering Volcano -Flight to Spezia-Stung by an electric fish-Eliot WarburtonLever summoned to London as Director of the Conservative PressCollapse of the negotiation with Lord Lyndhurst-Lord Normanby.

To Florence he now bent his course-" Firenze la bella"-that grand old Tuscan city on the Arnofamous for the picturesque beauty of its situation-the agreeability of its society-the antiquity and splendour of its churches-the variety of its theatres-the glitter of its mosaics-the stings of its musquitoes-the balm of its sunshine-the scorch of its scandal-its bracing breezes from the glacial Alps-its sculpture and paintings -cameos and cafés-"pleasures and palaces"-clubs and casinos-its libraries, frescoes, bronzes, bridges, gardens and gates!

Lever, attaching faith to a tradition gathered in boyhood, regarded Florence as the place where, above all others, he could live luxuriously, and yet cheaply. Time was when it deservedly bore this character, but Florence, of late, has become most expensive; and the place which had been so dear to Shelley's memories proved dearer