Whose cigars ever equalled thine, thou prince of Ganymedes? and when were cigars more justly appreciated, than as our puffs kept time with the trolling ditty, resounding through the walls of thy domain?
The luxury of those days!
Then would Sol come peeping in upon us; as unwelcome and unlooked-for a visitant, as to the enamoured Juliet, when she sighing told her lover that
"'Twas but a meteor that the sun exhaled, To be to him that night a torch-bearer, And light him on his way to Mantua."
Then, with head dizzy from its gladness, with heart unduly elate, has the Strada Teatro seen us, imperiously calling for the submissive calèche. Arrived in our chamber, how gravely did we close its shutters! With what a feeling of satisfied enjoyment, did we court the downy freshness of the snow-white sheet!
Sweet and deep were our slumbers--for youth's spell was upon us, and our fifth lustre had not yet heralded us to serious thoughts and anxious cares.
Awoke by the officious valet, and remorseless friend, deemest though our debauch was felt? No! an effervescent draught of soda calmed us; we ate a blood orange, and smoked a cigar!
We often hear Malta abused. Byron is the stale authority; and every snub-nosed cynic turns up his prominent organ, and talks of "sirocco, sun, and sweat." Byron disliked it--he had cause. He was there at a bad season, and was suffering from an attack of bile. We know of no place abroad, where the English eye will meet with so little to offend it, and so much to please and impress.
There is such a blending together of European, Asiatic, and African customs; there is such a variety in the costumes one meets; there is such grandeur in their palaces--such glory in their annals; such novelty in their manners and habits; such devotion in their religious observances; such simplicity and yet such beauty, in the dress of the women; and their wearers possess such fascinations; that we defy the most fastidious of critics, who has really resided there, to deny to Malta many of those attributes, with which he would invest that place, on whose beauty and agrémens, he may prefer of all others to descant.
With the commonplace observer, its superb harbour, studded with gilded boats; its powerful fortifications, where art towers over nature, and where the eye looks up a rock, and catches a bristling battery; the glare of its scenery, with no foliage to cover the white stone;--all these, together with the different way in which the minutiae of life are transacted,--will call forth his attention, and demand his notice.