What with a Pisan campanile, a Corsican manse, festooning vines, a cluster of bamboo canes—indicative of the warm south—and the group of mountains with the truncated peak in the distance, a very clever sketch was produced, though not one of my friend's best;—and I have great reason to be obliged to him for his sketches, without which I fear this would be a dull book. At that moment, indeed, I would have preferred his companionship. However, bating this feeling and a certain hankering for my breakfast in the course of a two hours' walk, I trudged on alone in a very pleasant frame of mind. Nothing could be more charming than the green slopes round which the path wound, with occasional glimpses of the Golo beneath,—its rapid stream white as the milky Rhone,—after leaving behind the orchards and gardens. The rest of the descent lay through evergreen shrubbery so frequently mentioned, and a more exquisite piece of _máquis_ I had not seen. Thus sauntering on, sometimes talking with Antoine, a species of shrub, which I had not much observed before, attracted my particular attention among the arbutus and numerous other well-known varieties. It was a bushy evergreen, of shapely growth, five or six feet high, with masses of foliage and clusters of bright red berries, having an aromatic scent.
“What do you call this shrub, Antoine?” plucking a branch.
“_Lustinea_; the country people express an oil from the berries for use in their lamps.”
“Ah! I perceive it is the _Lentiscus_.” In Africa and the isle of Scios they make incisions in the stems, from which the gum mastic is procured. The Turks chew it to sweeten the breath. It grows also in Provence, Italy, and Spain.
Presently, I sat down on a bank, casting anxious glances up the path after my friend, and, basking in the sun, finished Antoine's basket of figs, which only whetted my appetite, while I was endeavouring to indoctrinate Antoine with the persuasion that our countrymen in general are neither “_Calvinistes_” nor “_Juives_.” Antoine, who had been asking a variety of questions about “_Inghilterra_” and “_Londra_” was not better informed on this subject than a great many foreigners I have met with in Catholic countries, who, by the former term, class all Protestants with the Reformed churches of the Continent. I have often had to inform them, to their manifest surprise, that we have bishops, priests and deacons, cathedrals, choirs, deans and canons, vestments, creeds, liturgies and sacraments, in the English church, and were, in short, very like themselves, at least in externals. Matters of faith I did not feel inclined to meddle with.