to put to sea. He went for a five days' cruise, but kept carefully out of sight of land. It had been rumored that the fleet was to range the Istrian coast, and confront Tegetthoff at Fasana or Pola. It did nothing of the kind: it stood to the south-east, and in mid-channel sailed backwards and forwards in open order, the ships keeping one thousand yards apart from each other, and exercising none of the manoeuvres of battle. They were better hidden, it was said, in the middle of the Adriatic than were the Austrians at Pola. Boggio, a member of the Chamber of Deputies, had embarked on board the "Re d' Italia," as Persano's guest, and seems to have understood that he was to pay for his entertainment by indiscriminate praise. "How cowardly are these Austrians!" he said, "they will not give us a chance; they fly before us." But the Marquis Paolucci, Albini's chief of the staff, to whom the remark was addressed, replied: "It is not the Austrians who should be called cowardly, it is we who have been humiliated:" and Albini had previously permitted himself to say in Paolucci's hearing: "This is not the way to make war. We have lost an opportunity which may never return."
The feeling against Persano was general, and he was urged to go out. "Would you tell the people," wrote Depretis, "the people who are vain enough to believe our sailors the best in the world, that after spending three hundred millions, we have done nothing better than get together a squadron which dare not meet the Austrian? Why, they'd stone us! As if the mere name of the Austrian navy has not always been a subject of ridicule! If Tegetthoff declines to meet us, we will effect a landing somewhere on the coast; At Lissa, for instance. Lissa, by its central position, would insure us the sovereignty of the Adriatic: let us take Lissa." There seems to have been no positive order to attack Lissa; only to do something: but Lissa had been suggested, and Persano had not sufficient force of character or originality of judgment to disapprove of it, or to suggest any distinct alternative. He would have preferred remaining at Ancona, brilliant in a gold coat trimmed with blue cloth; but that he was not allowed to do. And so, on the afternoon of July 16, in a state of hurry and flurry, he put to sea; having neither detailed charts, nor plans, nor information as to the defences of Lissa; without even the soldiers that had been offered him as a force for landing.
But why Lissa? In England, Lissa, if known at all, is known only as the headquarters of our Adriatic cruisers in the Old French War, and as giving a name to the brilliant little action (March 12, 1811) in which Captain Hoste, with his squadron of three frigates and a corvette, not only defeated the Franco-Venetian squadron of six frigates, a brig, and four small craft, a force more than double his own, but drove the French commodore's ship irrecoverably on shore, captured two others, and compelled a third, which afterwards escaped, to strike her flag. Just at the present time it is pleasant to remember that one of the participators in this, one of the most sparkling affairs on record, was the twenty-two-gun corvette "Volage," commanded by Captain Phipps Hornbv, the father of the admiral whose flag is now flying as commander-in-chief of our fleet in the Mediterranean.
Lissa is an island, or rather a mass of hill and mountain, eleven miles long from east to west, and six broad from north to south, rising in some of its peaks to a height of nearly two thousand feet. Its principal productions, according to the gazetteer, are wine, oil, almonds, and figs; bees, sheep, and goats are reared in great numbers by its inhabitants; and near its coasts are rich sardine fisheries. But neither figs nor sardines formed its value in Italian eyes. The English had fortified the principal harbor, the Bay of San Giorgio, and on its recurring to the Austrians the fortifications had been preserved and added to. In time of war it evidently might, from its position and security, become a place of the utmost importance. Besides San Giorgio, in the north-east corner of the island, there are two minor harbors, Comisa at the extreme west, and Manego at the south-east corner, the fortifications of which, though small, were situated on high ground, so as to be secure against any mere naval attack: they might very well have been left to surrender when the forts of San Giorgio had been carried.
Persano, however, thought differently. The fleet arrived in the neighborhood of the island on the night of the 17th; by dawn of the 18th it was off San Giorgio. Albini with the wooden ships was to attack Manego; Vacca with three of the ironclads was to shell Comisa; Persano with the main body was to operate against San Giorgio. By eleven o'clock, fire was opened on Comisa. It was quite futile. The forts were perched on the hills at heights of five hundred feet, which to
