can do, has been to create around the modest graves a meagre vegetation, that is in slight contrast to the sterility of most of the bank.  This place of interment is without the relief of trees:  at the present day it is uninclosed, and in the opinions of those who have set it apart for heretic and Jew, it is unblessed.  And yet, though condemned alike to this, the last indignity which man can inflict on his fellow, the two proscribed classes furnish a melancholy proof of the waywardness of human passions and prejudice, by refusing to share in common the scanty pittance of earth which bigotry has allowed for their everlasting repose!  While the Protestant sleeps by the side of the Protestant in exclusive obloquy, the children of Israel moulder apart on the same barren heath, sedulous to preserve, even in the grave, the outward distinctions of faith.  We shall not endeavor to seek that deeply-seated principle which renders man so callous to the most eloquent and striking appeals to liberality, but rest satisfied with being grateful that we have been born in a land in which the interests of religion are as little as possible sullied by the vicious contamination of those of life; in which Christian humility is not exhibited beneath the purple, nor Jewish adhesion by intolerance; in which man is left to care for the welfare of his own soul, and in which, so far as the human eye can penetrate, God is worshipped for himself.

Don Camillo Monforte landed near the retired graves of the proscribed.  As he wished to ascend the low sand-hills, which have been thrown up by the waves and the winds of the gulf on the outer edge of the Lido, it was necessary that he should pass directly across the contemned spot, or make such a circuit as would have been inconvenient.  Crossing himself, with a superstition that was interwoven with all his habits and opinions, and loosening his rapier, in order that he might not miss the succor of that good weapon at need, he moved across the heath tenanted by the despised dead, taking care to avoid the mouldering heaps of earth which lay above the bones of heretic or Jew.  He had not threaded more than half the graves, however, when a human form arose from the grass, and seemed to walk like one who mused on the moral that the piles at his feet would be apt to excite.  Again Don Camillo touched the handle of his rapier; then moving aside, in a manner to give himself an equal advantage from the light of the moon, he drew near the stranger.  His footstep was heard, for the other paused, regarded the approaching cavalier, and folding his arms, as it might be in sign of neutrality, awaited his nearer approach.

“Thou hast chosen a melancholy hour for thy walk, Signore,” said the young Neapolitan; “and a still more melancholy scene.  I hope I do not intrude on an Israelite, or a Lutheran, who mourns for his friend?”

“Don Camillo Monforte, I am, like yourself, a Christian.”

“Ha!  Thou knowest me—­’tis Battista, the gondolier that I once entertained in my household?”