LITTLE ITALIAN OWL. 283 



garden, I determined to import a dozen of these birds into our own 

 country. And still, said I to myself, the world will say it was a strange 

 whim in me, to have brought owls all the way from Italy to England ; 

 seeing that owls, ay, and hawks too, are by no means scarce in our 

 palaces, and in Parliament, and on the magisterial benches. Be this 

 as it may, I agreed with a bird-vender in the market at the Pantheon 

 for a dozen young civettas ; and having provided a commodious cage 

 for the journey, we left the Eternal City on the 2oth of July 1842, 

 for the land that gave me birth. 



At Genoa, the custom-house officers appeared inclined to make 

 me pay duty for my owls. " Gentlemen," said I, " these birds are 

 not for traffic j neither are they foreigners : they are from your own 

 dear country, la bellissima Italia, and I have already strong reason 

 to believe that they are common in Genoa, so that they can well be 

 spared." The custom-house officers smiled as I said this, and then 

 they graciously allowed me and my owls to proceed to the hotel, 

 without abstracting a single farthing from my pocket. We passed 

 through the sunny regions of Piedmont with delight, and over the 

 snowy summit of Mount St. Gothard without any loss, and" thence we 

 proceeded northward, through Lucerne to Basle. Here Monsieur 

 Passavant, the banker, a wormwood-looking money-monger, seemed 

 determined that myself and my owls, and the rest of my family, 

 should advance no farther. Having lost my letter of credit in the 

 late shipwreck, and there not having been time, after my return to 

 Rome and my short stay there, to receive another from London, I 

 was furnished, by the bank of Prince Torlonia, with a very warm and 

 complimentary letter of introduction to Passavant of Basle, in case 

 I might fall short of money on my way home ; and Prince Canino 

 (Charles Bonaparte), whom I accidentally met in Genoa, gave me 

 another of the same tenour. But all would not do. I only wanted 

 ;i2, which, with what I had by me, would have enabled me to 

 reach Cologne, where I could have got any supply of money from 

 the good landlord of the Hotel du Rhin. Passavant, to whom I had 

 presented the two letters, and to whom I had given a full account 

 of the unfortunate shipwreck, could not possibly comprehend how I 

 could have the temerity to travel without a regular letter of credit. 

 I offered him my draught on Denison, of London. He refused to 



