And there they are with their boxes on the ground, displaying their looking-glasses and other goods to the honest rustics and their dames and their daughters, and selling away and chaffering and laughing just as of old.  And there they are again at nightfall in the hedge alehouses, eating their toasted cheese and their bread, and drinking the Suffolk ale, and listening to the roaring song and merry jest of the labourers.  Now, if they regret England so who are in America, which they own to be a happy country, and good for those of Piedmont and of Como, how much more must I regret it, when, after the lapse of so many years, I find myself in Spain, in this frightful town of Coruna, driving a ruinous trade, and where months pass by without my seeing a single English face, or hearing a word of the blessed English tongue.

Myself.—­With such a predilection for England, what could have induced you to leave it and come to Spain?

Luigi.—­I will tell you:  about sixteen years ago a universal desire seized our people in England to become something more than they had hitherto been, pedlars and trampers; they wished, moreover, for mankind are never satisfied, to see other countries:  so the greater part forsook England.  Where formerly there had been ten, at present scarcely lingers one.  Almost all went to America, which, as I told you before, is a happy country, and specially good for us men of Como.  Well, all my comrades and relations passed over the sea to the West.  I, too, was bent on travelling; but whither?  Instead of going towards the West with the rest, to a country where they have all thriven, I must needs come by myself to this land of Spain; a country in which no foreigner settles without dying of a broken heart sooner or later.  I had an idea in my head that I could make a fortune at once, by bringing a cargo of common English goods, like those which I had been in the habit of selling amongst the villagers of England.  So I freighted half a ship with such goods, for I had been successful in England in my little speculations, and I arrived at Coruna.  Here at once my vexations began:  disappointment followed disappointment.  It was with the utmost difficulty that I could obtain permission to land my goods, and this only at a considerable sacrifice in bribes and the like; and when I had established myself here, I found that the place was one of no trade, and that my goods went off very slowly, and scarcely at prime cost.  I wished to remove to another place, but was informed that, in that case, I must leave my goods behind, unless I offered fresh bribes, which would have ruined me; and in this way I have gone on for fourteen years, selling scarcely enough to pay for my shop and to support myself.  And so I shall doubtless continue till I die, or my goods are exhausted.  In an evil day I left England and came to Spain.

Myself.—­Did you not say that you had a countryman at St. James?