way to impulsive outbursts that he had never thought of yielding to in his white cravat moments.” The Spezzia folk supposed that Lever was asleep, not only on the occasion thus described, but at other times, when he presented an aspect of luxurious somnolency; but, like Lords Palmerston and Beaconsfield, he was wide awake all the while. He took no shame to himself that he could not work beneath an Italian sun, and he resigned his whole being to a voluptuous indolence, as though obeying an ordinance of nature. "I reflect, however, much, but I do so always with my eyes closed, and a pillow under my head; and with such a semblance of perfect repose that calumnious people have said I was asleep. And really there is in the hot basking noon of Italy, while the ear rings with the cicala, and the very atmosphere glitters, a something of intense enjoyment, as though it were a world made for pure delight, for all that can steep the senses in rich enjoyment, and draw over the mind a dreamy rapture, the seventh heaven of ecstatic fancy." Maturin used to wear a red wafer on his forehead, as an intimation to his household that he was then engaged in creative thought, and was not to be disturbed. A similar understanding had once existed in Lever's family. "These hours of reflection," he tells us in 1865, "occupy a large share of the forenoon, and of the time between an early dinner and sunset. They are periods of great enjoyment; they once were even more so, when an opinion prevailed that it would be little short of sacrilege HIS INTELLECTUAL SWOONS. 243 to disturb me, such being the creative hours of my active intelligence. The faith has long since changed for a less reverent version of my labours, and people are less scrupulous about interruption. Long habit, however, stands my part, and I can return to my broken reflections at any moment, and follow out their course as pleasantly and as profitably as before." He lay in one of these intellectual swoons, after a long swim, with a faint sea breeze stealing gently into the room through the closed jalousies, when he was startled by the boom of cannon from the English fleet, as it proudly entered the bay; and he gives a long account of his intercourse with the officers and their brawny blue-eyed men,-how he dined with them constantly, beat them at whist, and entertained them in return. He met the officers at picnics and balls, and was amused to see them going at the Lancers as if they were boarding a Frenchman." He associated with them in their flirtations, and cordially welcomed them to the land of moonlight and Shelley. Lever calls them generous fellows, with whom he lived lately so happily, "drank to them all health and prosperity,' and when the hour for separation came, it was effected not without a sigh." แ * He went on a short cruise in one of the ships, when a sham fight at midnight was got up for his entertainment-of all of which he gives an account in a letter to John Lever, and sent for the perusal of Harry Innes, the only thing from his pen descriptive of nautical life :-" Lever learned that an officer of the fleet hailed from Kilkenny," writes Mr. Innes. "He was immediately hunted up, and became for some days an inmate of his The locality in which he lived was much given to gossip. "There is not one of them," he said, “who would not rather find out how Mrs. Rigges got that new bonnet with the fall of real lace- Valenciennes, my dear!'-than know how Prussia jockied Austria out of Holstein." This sort of thing annoyed him at first, but ere long he was wise enough to seek honey from these sources of stings. "I live in a small neighbourhood," he writes, "a circle so limited that each of us knows perfectly every circumstance of the other— his means, his tastes, his joys, troubles, and creditors." And again :-"We all live with such accurate information about each other, that disguise or concealment would be the most miserable of all failures; and this same openness is more effectual in the suppression of many little affectations and snobberies than a régime of the most perfect good taste and good manners." He said that he could no more dare to "give sixpence more for the turbot in the market than my neighbour has offered, than I could make love to the wife of his bosom; for I know that the fishmonger must come down to his price, and it would be perfidy in me to enhance it." But philosophic consolation was drawn from these and other reflections, and he finally decided that such customs proved a death-blow to all pretension and rivalry. But for the sameness in his life, more incident would house, and passed a time that, long after, he looked upon as a bright spot on memory's waste. Lever's recollections of old days and old scenes had a vividness beyond the understanding of come-day and go-day good people." NEARLY LOSES HIS OFFICE. 245 mark his books. Every tiny tale which he heard in casual talk was at once seized, and in reproduction enriched. How his brain continued, without adequate fuel, to work so well, is a marvel. The military men with whom he had mixed in early life fed "Lorrequer," "O'Malley," "Jack Hinton," and "Tom Burke." Lever's dry diplomatic life abroad presented of late years few points of nutrition for novels, and yet, instead of the attractive adventures of a subaltern or an aidede-camp as of yore, we find him turning to good account the proceedings of a private secretary or an attaché of the Foreign Office. One day a sensational incident well nigh cut short his own consular career. He promised a friend at this time that he would amuse him some day in telling the cause of his sudden departure from Spezzia. On applying for an explanation to the man who shared the most largely Lever's confidence, he replies : "The Vice-Consulship at Spezzia was created for Lever by the Tory Secretary for Foreign Affairs of the day, and as there was really nothing for him to do at Spezzia he contrived to live at Florence.* A Whig * Very exaggerated impressions exist as to the amount of Lever's salaries. One essayist describes Lord Derby saying, "Here, Lever, is £800 a year for doing nothing; and you are the very man to do it." A letter from Lord Derby, dated "Foreign Office, February 1st, 1877," supplies the real data. Mr. Charles Lever held the appointment of Vice-Consul at Spezzia, in the consular district of Genoa, with a salary of £250 a year, from November 26, 1858, until February 13, 1867, when that post was abolished. He was then promoted to be Her Majesty's Consul at Trieste [March 2, 1867], with a salary of £500 a year, and an allowance of £100 for office expenses, which post he held until his death June 1, 1872." Ministry soon after came into power, Lord R-being Foreign Secretary. Lord R's first step was to take away Sir J. H from Turin and the minor Italian courts to which he was accredited, and to send out in his place his own brother-in-law, Sir H. E. H's first move was to haul up Lever for not residing at Spezzia; on which occasion he threw it in Lever's teeth that the ViceConsulship was a job got up for Lever's benefit; to which he replied that at least he did not owe it to his brotherin-law,' or something awfully cheeky to that effect. Lever was very near losing the post; and afterwards, when Lord Stanley (now Lord Derby) came to the Foreign Office, he transferred Lever to the Consulship at Trieste.” One of the personages alluded to by Major D— as holding a high diplomatic post, which he received through an influential kinsman, said to Lever at Florence, in presence of several persons, "Your appointment seems a perfect sinecure. How can you be Consul at Spezzia and live entirely at Florence? You got it, I suppose, in recognition of your novels?" "Yes, sir," replied Lever, "I got it in compliment to my brains; you got yours in compliment to your relatives." His diplomatic employment brought him into frequent intercourse with Foreign Office swells, whom he constantly photographs in his later books, from Sir Horace Upton in Glencore," to Sir Shally Doubleton in "A Day's Ride."* * Addressing a consul-probably Lever himself-one is made to say :"Possibly your name may not be Paynter, sir: but you are evidently before me for the first time, or you would know that, like my great colleague and |