The heats set in in the middle of June; the days became excessively hot.  But the sea-breeze cooled the air at noon, and extreme heat always put Shelley in spirits.  A long drought had preceded the heat; and prayers for rain were being put up in the churches, and processions of relics for the same effect took place in every town.  At this time we received letters announcing the arrival of Leigh Hunt at Genoa.  Shelley was very eager to see him.  I was confined to my room by severe illness, and could not move; it was agreed that Shelley and Williams should go to Leghorn in the boat.  Strange that no fear of danger crossed our minds!  Living on the sea-shore, the ocean became as a plaything:  as a child may sport with a lighted stick, till a spark inflames a forest, and spreads destruction over all, so did we fearlessly and blindly tamper with danger, and make a game of the terrors of the ocean.  Our Italian neighbours, even, trusted themselves as far as Massa in the skiff; and the running down the line of coast to Leghorn gave no more notion of peril than a fair-weather inland navigation would have done to those who had never seen the sea.  Once, some months before, Trelawny had raised a warning voice as to the difference of our calm bay and the open sea beyond; but Shelley and his friend, with their one sailor-boy, thought themselves a match for the storms of the Mediterranean, in a boat which they looked upon as equal to all it was put to do.

On the 1st of July they left us.  If ever shadow of future ill darkened the present hour, such was over my mind when they went.  During the whole of our stay at Lerici, an intense presentiment of coming evil brooded over my mind, and covered this beautiful place and genial summer with the shadow of coming misery.  I had vainly struggled with these emotions—­they seemed accounted for by my illness; but at this hour of separation they recurred with renewed violence.  I did not anticipate danger for them, but a vague expectation of evil shook me to agony, and I could scarcely bring myself to let them go.  The day was calm and clear; and, a fine breeze rising at twelve, they weighed for Leghorn.  They made the run of about fifty miles in seven hours and a half.  The “Bolivar” was in port; and, the regulations of the Health-office not permitting them to go on shore after sunset, they borrowed cushions from the larger vessel, and slept on board their boat.

They spent a week at Pisa and Leghorn.  The want of rain was severely felt in the country.  The weather continued sultry and fine.  I have heard that Shelley all this time was in brilliant spirits.  Not long before, talking of presentiment, he had said the only one that he ever found infallible was the certain advent of some evil fortune when he felt peculiarly joyous.  Yet, if ever fate whispered of coming disaster, such inaudible but not unfelt prognostics hovered around us.  The beauty of the place seemed unearthly in its excess:  the distance we were at from all signs of civilization, the sea at our feet, its murmurs or its roaring for ever in our ears,—­all these things led the mind to brood over strange thoughts, and, lifting it from everyday life, caused it to be familiar with the unreal.  A sort of spell surrounded us; and each day, as the voyagers did not return, we grew restless and disquieted, and yet, strange to say, we were not fearful of the most apparent danger.