skill urges his dreamy bark amid the throng and in the tortuous canals for an hour or two, and then sleeps in the sun, is a type of that rest in labor which we do not attain.  What happiness there is in a dish of polenta, or of a few fried fish, in a cup of coffee, and in one of those apologies for cigars which the government furnishes, dear at a cent—­the cigar with a straw in it, as if it were a julep, which it needs five minutes to ignite, and then will furnish occupation for a whole evening!  Is it a hard lot, that of the fishermen and the mariners of the Adriatic?  The lights are burning all night long in a cafe on the Riva del Schiavoni, and the sailors and idlers of the shore sit there jabbering and singing and trying their voices in lusty hallooing till the morning light begins to make the lagoon opalescent.  The traveler who lodges near cannot sleep, but no more can the sailors, who steal away in the dawn, wafted by painted sails.  In the heat of the day, when the fish will not bite, comes the siesta.  Why should the royal night be wasted in slumber?  The shore of the Riva, the Grand Canal, the islands, gleam with twinkling lamps; the dark boats glide along with a star in the prow, bearing youth and beauty and sin and ugliness, all alike softened by the shadows; the electric lights from the shores and the huge steamers shoot gleams on towers and facades; the moon wades among the fleecy clouds; here and there a barge with colored globes of light carries a band of singing men and women and players on the mandolin and the fiddle, and from every side the songs of Italy, pathetic in their worn gayety, float to the entranced ears of those who lean from balconies, or lounge in gondolas and listen with hearts made a little heavy and wistful with so much beauty.

Can any one float in such scenes and be so contentedly idle anywhere in our happy land?  Have we learned yet the simple art of easy enjoyment?  Can we buy it with money quickly, or is it a grace that comes only with long civilization?  Italy, for instance, is full of accumulated wealth, of art, even of ostentation and display, and the new generation probably have lost the power to conceive, if not the skill to execute, the great works which excite our admiration.  Nothing can be much more meretricious than its modern art, when anything is produced that is not an exact copy of something created when there was genius there.  But in one respect the Italians have entered into the fruits of the ages of trial and of failure, and that, is the capacity of being idle with much money or with none, and getting day by day their pay for the bother of living in this world.  It seems a difficult lesson for us to learn in country or city.  Alas! when we have learned it shall we not want to emigrate, as so many of the Italians do?  Some philosophers say that men were not created to be happy.  Perhaps they were not intended to be idle.

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