Civita Vecchia, Jan. 1.—­We left Palo just after sunrise, and walked in the cool of the morning beside the blue Mediterranean.  On the right, the low outposts of the Appenines rose, bleak and brown, the narrow plain between them and the shore resembling a desert, so destitute was it of the signs of civilized life.  A low, white cloud that hung over the sea, afar off, showed us the locality of Sardinia, though the land was not visible.  The sun shone down warmly, and with the blue sky and bluer sea we could easily have imagined a milder season.  The barren scenery took a new interest in my eyes, when I remembered that I was spending amidst it that birth-day which removes me, in the eyes of the world, from dependant youth to responsible manhood.

In the afternoon we found a beautiful cove in a curve of the shore, and went to bathe in the cold surf.  It was very refreshing, but not quite equal to the sulphur-bath on the road to Tivoli.  The mountains now ran closer to the sea, and the road was bordered with thickets of myrtle.  I stopped often to beat my staff into the bushes, and inhale the fragrance that arose from their crushed leaves.  The hills were covered with this poetical shrub, and any acre of the ground would make the fortune of a florist at home.

The sun was sinking in a sky of orange and rose, as Civita Vecchia came in sight on a long headland before us.  Beyond the sea stretched the dim hills of Corsica.  We walked nearly an hour in the clear moonlight, by the sounding shore, before the gate of the city was reached.  We have found a tolerable inn, and are now enjoying the pleasures of supper and rest.

Marseilles, Jan. 16.—­At length we tread the shore of France—­of sunny Provence—­the last unvisited realm we have to roam through before returning home.  It is with a feeling of more than common relief that we see around us the lively faces and hear the glib tongues of the French.  It is like an earnest that the “roughing” we have undergone among Bohemian boors and Italian savages is well nigh finished, and that, henceforth, we shall find civilized sympathy and politeness, if nothing more, to make the way smoother.  Perhaps the three woful days which terminated at half-past two yesterday afternoon, as we passed through the narrow strait into the beautiful harbor which Marseilles encloses in her sheltering heart, make it still pleasanter.  Now, while there is time, I must describe those three days, for who could write on the wet deck of a steamboat, amid all the sights and smells which a sea voyage creates?  Description does not flourish when the bones are sore with lying on planks, and the body shivering like an aspen leaf with cold.

About the old town of Civita Vecchia there is not much to be said, except that it has the same little harbor which Trajan dug for it, and is as dirty and disagreeable as a town can well be.  We saw nothing except a little church, and the prison-yard, full of criminals, where the celebrated bandit, Gasparoni, has been now confined for eight years.