In the time of Augustus, Ravenna was a favorite Roman port and harbor for fleets of war and merchandise. There Theodoric, the great king of the Goths, set up his palace, and there is his enormous mausoleum. As early as A. D. 44 it became an episcopal see, with St. Apollinaris, a disciple of St. Peter, for its bishop. There some of the later Roman emperors fixed their residences, and there they repose. In and about it revolved the adventurous life of Galla Placidia, a woman of considerable talent and no principle, the daughter of Theodosius (the great Theodosius, who subdued the Arian heresy, the first emperor baptized in the true faith of the Trinity, the last who had a spark of genius), the sister of one emperor, and the mother of another,—twice a slave, once a queen, and once an empress; and she, too, rests there in the great mausoleum builded for her. There, also, lies Dante, in his tomb "by the upbraiding shore;" rejected once of ungrateful Florence, and forever after passionately longed for. There, in one of the earliest Christian churches in existence, are the fine mosaics of the Emperor Justinian and Theodora, the handsome courtesan whom he raised to the dignity and luxury of an empress on his throne in Constantinople. There is the famous forest of pines, stretching—unbroken twenty miles down the coast to Rimini, in whose cool and breezy glades Dante and Boccaccio walked and meditated, which Dryden has commemorated, and Byron has invested with the fascination of his genius; and under the whispering boughs of which moved the glittering cavalcade which fetched the bride to Rimini,—the fair Francesca, whose sinful confession Dante heard in hell.

We went down to Ravenna from Bologna one afternoon, through a country level and rich, riding along toward hazy evening, the land getting flatter as we proceeded (you know, there is a difference between level and flat), through interminable mulberry-trees and vines, and fields with the tender green of spring, with church spires in the rosy horizon; on till the meadows became marshes, in which millions of frogs sang the overture of the opening year. Our arrival, I have reason to believe, was an event in the old town. We had a crowd of moldy loafers to witness it at the station, not one of whom had ambition enough to work to earn a sou by lifting our traveling-bags. We had our hotel to ourselves, and wished that anybody else had it. The rival house was quite aware of our advent, and watched us with jealous eyes; and we, in turn, looked wistfully at it, for our own food was so scarce that, as an old traveler says, we feared that we shouldn't have enough, until we saw it on the table, when its quality made it appear too much. The next morning, when I sallied out to hire a conveyance, I was an object of interest to the entire population, who seemed to think it very odd that any one should walk about and explore the quiet streets. If I were to describe Ravenna, I should say that it is as flat as Holland and as lively as New London. There are broad streets, with high houses, that once were handsome, palaces that were once the abode of luxury, gardens that still bloom, and churches by the score. It is an open gate through which one walks unchallenged into the past, with little to break the association with the early Christian ages, their monuments undimmed by time, untouched by restoration and innovation, the whole struck with ecclesiastical death. With all that we saw that day,—churches, basilicas, mosaics, statues, mausoleums,—I will not burden these pages; but I will set down is enough to give you the local color, and to recall some of the most interesting passages in Christian history in this out-of-the-way city on the Adriatic.

Our first pilgrimage was to the Church of St. Apollinare Nuova; but why it is called new I do not know, as Theodoric built it for an Arian cathedral in about the year 500. It is a noble interior, having twenty-four marble columns of gray Cippolino, brought from Constantinople, with composite capitals, on each of which is an impost with Latin crosses sculptured on it. These columns support round arches, which divide the nave from the aisles, and on the whole length of the wall of the nave so supported are superb mosaics, full-length figures, in colors as fresh as if done yesterday, though they were executed thirteen hundred years ago. The mosaic on the left side—which is, perhaps, the finest one of the period in existence—is interesting on another account. It represents the city of Classis, with sea and ships, and a long procession of twenty-two virgins presenting offerings to the Virgin and Child, seated on a throne. The Virgin is surrounded by angels, and has a glory round her head, which shows that homage is being paid to her. It has been supposed, from the early monuments of Christian art, that the worship of the Virgin is of comparatively recent origin; but this mosaic would go to show that Mariolatry was established before the end of the sixth century. Near this church is part of the front of the palace of Theodoric, in which the Exarchs and Lombard kings subsequently resided. Its treasures and marbles Charlemagne carried off to Germany.



DOWN TO THE PINETA

We drove three miles beyond the city, to the Church of St. Apollinare in Classe, a lonely edifice in a waste of marsh, a grand old basilica, a purer specimen of Christian art than Rome or any other Italian town can boast. Just outside the city gate stands a Greek cross on a small fluted column, which marks the site of the once magnificent Basilica of St. Laurentius, which was demolished in the sixteenth century, its stone built into a new church in town, and its rich marbles carried to all-absorbing Rome. It was the last relic of the old port of Caesarea, famous since the time of Augustus. A marble column on a green meadow is all that remains of a once prosperous city. Our road lay through the marshy plain, across an elevated bridge over the sluggish united stream of the Ronco and Montone, from which there is a wide view, including the Pineta (or Pine Forest), the Church of St. Apollinare in the midst of rice-fields and marshes, and on a clear day the Alps and Apennines.

I can imagine nothing more desolate than this solitary church, or the approach to it. Laborers were busy spading up the heavy, wet ground, or digging trenches, which instantly filled with water, for the whole country was afloat. The frogs greeted us with clamorous chorus out of their slimy pools, and the mosquitoes attacked us as we rode along. I noticed about on the bogs, wherever they could find standing-room, half-naked wretches, with long spears, having several prongs like tridents, which they thrust into the grass and shallow water. Calling one of them to us, we found that his business was fishing, and that he forked out very fat and edible-looking fish with his trident. Shaggy, undersized horses were wading in the water, nipping off the thin spears of grass. Close to the church is a rickety farmhouse. If I lived there, I would as lief be a fish as a horse.

The interior of this primitive old basilica is lofty and imposing, with twenty-four handsome columns of the gray Cippolino marble, and an elevated high altar and tribune, decorated with splendid mosaics of the sixth century,—biblical subjects, in all the stiff faithfulness of the holy old times. The marble floor is green and damp and slippery. Under the tribune is the crypt, where the body of St. Apollinaris used to lie (it is now under the high altar above); and as I desired to see where he used to rest, I walked in. I also walked into about six inches of water, in the dim, irreligious light; and so made a cold-water Baptist devotee of myself. In the side aisles are wonderful old sarcophagi, containing the ashes of archbishops of Ravenna, so old that the owners' names are forgotten of two of them, which shows that a man may build a tomb more enduring than his memory. The sculptured bas-reliefs are very interesting, being early Christian emblems and curious devices,—symbols of sheep, palms, peacocks, crosses, and the four rivers of Paradise flowing down in stony streams from stony sources, and monograms, and pious rebuses. At the entrance of the crypt is an open stone book, called the Breviary of Gregory the Great. Detached from the church is the Bell Tower, a circular campanile of a sort peculiar to Ravenna, which adds to the picturesqueness of the pile, and suggests the notion that it is a mast unshipped from its vessel, the church, which consequently stands there water-logged, with no power to catch any wind, of doctrine or other, and move. I forgot to say that the basilica was launched in the year 534.

A little weary with the good but damp old Christians, we ordered our driver to continue across the marsh to the Pineta, whose dark fringe bounded all our horizon toward the Adriatic. It is the largest unbroken forest in Italy, and by all odds the most poetic in itself and its associations. It is twenty-five miles long, and from one to three in breadth, a free growth of stately pines, whose boughs are full of music and sweet odors,—a succession of lovely glades and avenues, with miles and miles of drives over the springy turf. At the point where we entered is a farmhouse. Laborers had been gathering the cones, which were heaped up in immense windrows, hundreds of feet in length. Boys and men were busy pounding out the seeds from the cones. The latter are used for fuel, and the former are pressed for their oil. They are also eaten: we have often had them served at hotel tables, and found them rather tasteless, but not unpleasant. The turf, as we drove into the recesses of the forest, was thickly covered with wild flowers, of many colors and delicate forms; but we liked best the violets, for they reminded us of home, though the driver seemed to think them less valuable than the seeds of the pine-cones. A lovely day and history and romance united to fascinate us with the place. We were driving over the spot where, eighteen centuries ago, the Roman fleet used to ride at anchor. Here, it is certain, the gloomy spirit of Dante found congenial place for meditation, and the gay Boccaccio material for fiction. Here for hours, day after day, Byron used to gallop his horse, giving vent to that restless impatience which could not all escape from his fiery pen, hearing those voices of a past and dead Italy which he, more truthfully and pathetically than any other poet, has put into living verse. The driver pointed out what is called Byron's Path, where he was wont to ride. Everybody here, indeed, knows of Byron; and I think his memory is more secure than any saint of them all in their stone boxes, partly because his poetry has celebrated the region, perhaps rather from the perpetuated tradition of his generosity. No foreigner was ever so popular as he while he lived at Ravenna. At least, the people say so now, since they find it so profitable to keep his memory alive and to point out his haunts. The Italians, to be sure, know how to make capital out of poets and heroes, and are quick to learn the curiosity of foreigners, and to gratify it for a compensation. But the evident esteem in which Byron's memory is held in the Armenian monastery of St. Lazzaro, at Venice, must be otherwise accounted for. The monks keep his library-room and table as they were when he wrote there, and like to show his portrait, and tell of his quick mastery of the difficult Armenian tongue. We have a notable example of a Person who became a monk when he was sick; but Byron accomplished too much work during the few months he was on the Island of St. Lazzaro, both in original composition and in translating English into Armenian, for one physically ruined and broken.



DANTE AND BYRON

The pilgrim to Ravenna, who has any idea of what is due to the genius of Dante, will be disappointed when he approaches his tomb. Its situation is in a not very conspicuous corner, at the foot of a narrow street, bearing the poet's name, and beside the Church of San Francisco, which is interesting as containing the tombs of the Polenta family, whose hospitality to the wandering exile has rescued their names from oblivion. Opposite the tomb is the shabby old brick house of the Polentas, where Dante passed many years of his life. It is tenanted now by all sorts of people, and a dirty carriage-shop in the courtyard kills the poetry of it. Dante died in 1321, and was at first buried in the neighboring church; but this tomb, since twice renewed, was erected, and his body removed here, in 1482. It is a square stuccoed structure, stained light green, and covered by a dome,—a tasteless monument, embellished with stucco medallions, inside, of the poet, of Virgil, of Brunetto Latini, the poet's master, and of his patron, Guido da Polenta. On the sarcophagus is the epitaph, composed in Latin by Dante himself, who seems to have thought, with Shakespeare, that for a poet to make his own epitaph was the safest thing to do. Notwithstanding the mean appearance of this sepulcher, there is none in all the soil of Italy that the traveler from America will visit with deeper interest. Near by is the house where Byron first resided in Ravenna, as a tablet records.

The people here preserve all the memorials of Byron; and, I should judge, hold his memory in something like affection. The Palace Guiccioli, in which he subsequently resided, is in another part of the town. He spent over two years in Ravenna, and said he preferred it to any place in Italy. Why I cannot see, unless it was remote from the route of travel, and the desolation of it was congenial to him. Doubtless he loved these wide, marshy expanses on the Adriatic, and especially the great forest of pines on its shore; but Byron was apt to be governed in his choice of a residence by the woman with whom he was intimate. The palace was certainly pleasanter than his gloomy house in the Strada di Porta Sisi, and the society of the Countess Guiccioli was rather a stimulus than otherwise to his literary activity. At her suggestion he wrote the "Prophecy of Dante;" and the translation of "Francesca da Rimini" was "executed at Ravenna, where, five centuries before, and in the very house in which the unfortunate lady was born, Dante's poem had been composed." Some of his finest poems were also produced here, poems for which Venice is as grateful as Ravenna. Here he wrote "Marino Faliero," "The Two Foscari," "Morganti Maggiore," "Sardanapalus," "The Blues," "The fifth canto of Don Juan," "Cain," "Heaven and Earth," and "The Vision of Judgment." I looked in at the court of the palace,—a pleasant, quiet place,—where he used to work, and tried to guess which were the windows of his apartments. The sun was shining brightly, and a bird was singing in the court; but there was no other sign of life, nor anything to remind one of the profligate genius who was so long a guest here.



RESTING-PLACE OF CAESARS—PICTURE OF A BEAUTIFUL HERETIC

Very different from the tomb of Dante, and different in the associations it awakes, is the Rotunda or Mausoleum of Theodoric the Goth, outside the Porta Serrata, whose daughter, Amalasuntha, as it is supposed, about the year 530, erected this imposing structure as a certain place "to keep his memory whole and mummy hid" for ever. But the Goth had not lain in it long before Arianism went out of fashion quite, and the zealous Roman Catholics despoiled his costly sleeping-place, and scattered his ashes abroad. I do not know that any dead person has lived in it since. The tomb is still a very solid affair,—a rotunda built of solid blocks of limestone, and resting on a ten-sided base, each side having a recess surmounted by an arch. The upper story is also decagonal, and is reached by a flight of modern stone steps. The roof is composed of a single block of Istrian limestone, scooped out like a shallow bowl inside; and, being the biggest roof-stone I ever saw, I will give you the dimensions. It is thirty-six feet in diameter, hollowed out to the depth of ten feet, four feet thick at the center, and two feet nine inches at the edges, and is estimated to weigh two hundred tons. Amalasuntha must have had help in getting it up there. The lower story is partly under water. The green grass of the inclosure in which it stands is damp enough for frogs. An old woman opened the iron gate to let us in. Whether she was any relation of the ancient proprietor, I did not inquire; but she had so much trouble in, turning the key in the rusty lock, and letting us in, that I presume we were the only visitors she has had for some centuries.

Old women abound in Ravenna; at least, she was not young who showed us the mausoleum of Galla Placidia. Placidia was also prudent and foreseeing, and built this once magnificent sepulcher for her own occupation. It is in the form of a Latin cross, forty-six feet in length by about forty in width. The floor is paved with rich marbles; the cupola is covered with mosaics of the time of the empress; and in the arch over the door is a fine representation of the Good Shepherd. Behind the altar is the massive sarcophagus of marble (its cover of silver plates was long ago torn off) in which are literally the ashes of the empress. She was immured in it as a mummy, in a sitting position, clothed in imperial robes; and there the ghastly corpse sat in a cypress-wood chair, to be looked at by anybody who chose to peep through the aperture, for more than eleven hundred years, till one day, in 1577, some children introduced a lighted candle, perhaps out of compassion for her who sat so long in darkness, when her clothes caught fire, and she was burned up,—a warning to all children not to play with a dead and dry empress. In this resting-place are also the tombs of Honorius II., her brother, of Constantius III., her second husband, and of Honoria, her daughter.

There are no other undisturbed tombs of the Caesars in existence. Hers is almost the last, and the very small last, of a great succession. What thoughts of a great empire in ruins do not force themselves on one in the confined walls of this little chamber! What a woman was she whose ashes lie there! She saw and aided the ruin of the empire; but it may be said of her, that her vices were greater than her misfortunes. And what a story is her life! Born to the purple, educated in the palace at Constantinople, accomplished but not handsome, at the age of twenty she was in Rome when Alaric besieged it. Carried off captive by the Goths, she became the not unwilling object of the passion of King Adolphus, who at length married her at Narbonne. At the nuptials the king, in a Roman habit, occupied a seat lower than hers, while she sat on a throne habited as a Roman empress, and received homage. Fifty handsome youths bore to her in each hand a dish of gold, one filled with coin, and the other with precious stones,—a small part only, these hundred vessels of treasure, of the spoils the Goths brought from her country. When Adolphus, who never abated his fondness for his Roman bride, was assassinated at Barcelona, she was treated like a slave by his assassins, and driven twelve miles on foot before the horse of his murderer. Ransomed at length for six hundred thousand measures of wheat by her brother Honorius, who handed her over struggling to Constantius, one of his generals. But, once married, her reluctance ceased; and she set herself to advance the interests of herself and husband, ruling him as she had done the first one. Her purpose was accomplished when he was declared joint emperor with Honorius. He died shortly after; and scandalous stories of her intimacy with her brother caused her removal to Constantinople; but she came back again, and reigned long as the regent of her son, Valentinian III., —a feeble youth, who never grew to have either passions or talents, and was very likely, as was said, enervated by his mother in dissolute indulgence, so that she might be supreme. But she died at Rome in 450, much praised for her orthodoxy and her devotion to the Trinity. And there was her daughter, Honoria, who ran off with a chamberlain, and afterward offered to throw herself into the arms of Attila who wouldn't take her as a gift at first, but afterward demanded her, and fought to win her and her supposed inheritance. But they were a bad lot altogether; and it is no credit to a Christian of the nineteenth century to stay in this tomb so long.

Near this mausoleum is the magnificent Basilica of St. Vitale, built in the reign of Justinian, and consecrated in 547, I was interested to see it because it was erected in confessed imitation of St. Sophia at Constantinople, is in the octagonal form, and has all the accessories of Eastern splendor, according to the architectural authorities. Its effect is really rich and splendid; and it rather dazzled us with its maze of pillars, its upper and lower columns, its galleries, complicated capitals, arches on arches, and Byzantine intricacies. To the student of the very early ecclesiastical art, it must be an object of more interest than even of wonder. But what I cared most to see were the mosaics in the choir, executed in the time of Justinian, and as fresh and beautiful as on the day they were made. The mosaics and the exquisite arabesques on the roof of the choir, taken together, are certainly unequaled by any other early church decoration I have seen; and they are as interesting as they are beautiful. Any description of them is impossible; but mention may be made of two characteristic groups, remarkable for execution, and having yet a deeper interest.

In one compartment of the tribune is the figure of the Emperor Justinian, holding a vase with consecrated offerings, and surrounded by courtiers and soldiers. Opposite is the figure of the Empress Theodora, holding a similar vase, and attended by ladies of her court. There is a refinement and an elegance about the empress, a grace and sweet dignity, that is fascinating. This is royalty, —stately and cold perhaps: even the mouth may be a little cruel, I begin to perceive, as I think of her; but she wears the purple by divine right. I have not seen on any walls any figure walking out of history so captivating as this lady, who would seem to have been worthy of apotheosis in a Christian edifice. Can there be any doubt that this lovely woman was orthodox? She, also, has a story, which you doubtless have been recalling as you read. Is it worth while to repeat even its outlines? This charming regal woman was the daughter of the keeper of the bears in the circus at Constantinople; and she early went upon the stage as a pantomimist and buffoon. She was beautiful, with regular features, a little pale, but with a tinge of natural color, vivacious eyes, and an easy motion that displayed to advantage the graces of her small but elegant figure. I can see all that in the mosaic. But she sold her charms to whoever cared to buy them in Constantinople; she led a life of dissipation that cannot be even hinted at in these days; she went off to Egypt as the concubine of a general; was deserted, and destitute even to misery in Cairo; wandered about a vagabond in many Eastern cities, and won the reputation everywhere of the most beautiful courtesan of her time; reappeared in Constantinople; and, having, it is said, a vision of her future, suddenly took to a pretension of virtue and plain sewing; contrived to gain the notice of Justinian, to inflame his passions as she did those of all the world besides, to captivate him into first an alliance, and at length a marriage. The emperor raised her to an equal seat with himself on his throne; and she was worshiped as empress in that city where she had been admired as harlot. And on the throne she was a wise woman, courageous and chaste; and had her palaces on the Bosphorus; and took good care of her beauty, and indulged in the pleasures of a good table; had ministers who kissed her feet; a crowd of women and eunuchs in her secret chambers, whose passions she indulged; was avaricious and sometimes cruel; and founded a convent for the irreclaimably bad of her own sex, some of whom liked it, and some of whom threw themselves into the sea in despair; and when she died was an irreparable loss to her emperor. So that it seems to me it is a pity that the historian should say that she was devout, but a little heretic.



A HIGH DAY IN ROME



PALM SUNDAY IN ST. PETER'S

The splendid and tiresome ceremonies of Holy Week set in; also the rain, which held up for two days. Rome without the sun, and with rain and the bone-penetrating damp cold of the season, is a wretched place. Squalor and ruins and cheap splendor need the sun; the galleries need it; the black old masters in the dark corners of the gaudy churches need it; I think scarcely anything of a cardinal's big, blazing footman, unless the sun shines on him, and radiates from his broad back and his splendid calves; the models, who get up in theatrical costumes, and get put into pictures, and pass the world over for Roman peasants (and beautiful many of them are), can't sit on the Spanish Stairs in indolent pose when it rains; the streets are slimy and horrible; the carriages try to run over you, and stand a very good chance of succeeding, where there are no sidewalks, and you are limping along on the slippery round cobble-stones; you can't get into the country, which is the best part of Rome: but when the sun shines all this is changed; the dear old dirty town exercises, its fascinations on you then, and you speedily forget your recent misery.

Holy Week is a vexation to most people. All the world crowds here to see its exhibitions and theatrical shows, and works hard to catch a glimpse of them, and is tired out, if not disgusted, at the end. The things to see and hear are Palm Sunday in St. Peter's; singing of the Miserere by the pope's choir on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday in the Sistine Chapel; washing of the pilgrims' feet in a chapel of St. Peter's, and serving the apostles at table by the pope on Thursday, with a papal benediction from the balcony afterwards; Easter Sunday, with the illumination of St. Peter's in the evening; and fireworks (this year in front of St. Peter's in Montorio) Monday evening. Raised seats are built up about the high altar under the dome in St. Peter's, which will accommodate a thousand, and perhaps more, ladies; and for these tickets are issued without numbers, and for twice as many as they will seat. Gentlemen who are in evening dress are admitted to stand in the reserved places inside the lines of soldiers. For the Miserere in the Sistine Chapel tickets are also issued. As there is only room for about four hundred ladies, and a thousand and more tickets are given out, you may imagine the scramble. Ladies go for hours before the singing begins, and make a grand rush when the doors are open. I do not know any sight so unseemly and cruel as a crowd of women intent on getting in to such a ceremony: they are perfectly rude and unmerciful to each other. They push and trample one another under foot; veils and dresses are torn; ladies faint away in the scrimmage, and only the strongest and most unscrupulous get in. I have heard some say, who have been in the pellmell, that, not content with elbowing and pushing and pounding, some women even stick pins into those who are in the way. I hope this latter is not true; but it is certain that the conduct of most of the women is brutal. A weak or modest or timid woman stands no more chance than she would in a herd of infuriated Campagna cattle. The same scenes are enacted in the efforts to see the pope wash feet, and serve at the table. For the possession of the seats under the dome on Palm Sunday and Easter there is a like crush. The ceremonies do not begin until half-past nine; but ladies go between five and six o'clock in the morning, and when the passages are open they make a grand rush. The seats, except those saved for the nobility, are soon all taken, and the ladies who come after seven are lucky if they can get within the charmed circle, and find a spot to sit down on a campstool. They can then see only a part of the proceedings, and have a weary, exhausting time of it for hours. This year Rome is more crowded than ever before. There are American ladies enough to fill all the reserved places; and I fear they are energetic enough to get their share of them.

It rained Sunday; but there was a steady stream of people and carriages all the morning pouring over the Bridge of St. Angelo, and discharging into the piazza of St. Peter's. It was after nine when I arrived on the ground. There was a crowd of carriages under the colonnades, and a heavy fringe in front of them; but the hundreds of people moving over the piazza, and up the steps to the entrances, made only the impression of dozens in the vast space. I do not know if there are people enough in Rome to fill St. Peter's; certainly there was no appearance of a crowd as we entered, although they had been pouring in all the morning, and still thronged the doors. I heard a traveler say that he followed ten thousand soldiers into the church, and then lost them from sight: they disappeared in the side chapels. He did not make his affidavit as to the number of soldiers. The interior area of the building is not much greater than the square of St. Mark in Venice. To go into the great edifice is almost like going outdoors. Lines of soldiers kept a wide passage clear from the front door away down to the high altar; and there was a good mass of spectators on the outside. The tribunes for the ladies, built up under the dome, were of course, filled with masses of ladies in solemn black; and there was more or less of a press of people surging about in that vicinity. Thousands of people were also roaming about in the great spaces of the edifice; but there was nowhere else anything like a crowd. It had very much the appearance of a large fair-ground, with little crowds about favorite booths. Gentlemen in dress-coats were admitted to the circle under the dome. The pope's choir was stationed in a gallery there opposite the high altar. Back of the altar was a wide space for the dignitaries; seats were there, also, for ambassadors and those born to the purple; and the pope's seat was on a raised dais at the end. Outsiders could see nothing of what went on within there; and the ladies under the dome could only partially see, in the seats they had fought so gallantly to obtain.

St. Peter's is a good place for grand processions and ceremonies; but it is a poor one for viewing them. A procession which moves down the nave is hidden by the soldiers who stand on either side, or is visible only by sections as it passes: there is no good place to get the grand effect of the masses of color, and the total of the gorgeous pageantry. I should like to see the display upon a grand stage, and enjoy it in a coup d'oeil. It is a fine study of color and effect, and the groupings are admirable; but the whole affair is nearly lost to the mass of spectators. It must be a sublime feeling to one in the procession to walk about in such monstrous fine clothes; but what would his emotions be if more people could see him! The grand altar stuck up under the dome not only breaks the effect of what would be the fine sweep of the nave back to the apse, but it cuts off all view of the celebration of the mass behind it, and, in effect, reduces what should be the great point of display in the church to a mere chapel. And when you add to that the temporary tribunes erected under the dome for seating the ladies, the entire nave is shut off from a view of the gorgeous ceremony of high mass. The effect would be incomparable if one could stand in the door, or anywhere in the nave, and, as in other churches, look down to the end upon a great platform, with the high altar and all the sublime spectacle in full view, with the blaze of candles and the clouds of incense rising in the distance.

At half-past nine the great doors opened, and the procession began, in slow and stately moving fashion, to enter. One saw a throng of ecclesiastics in robes and ermine; the white plumes of the Guard Noble; the pages and chamberlains in scarlet; other pages, or what not, in black short-clothes, short swords, gold chains, cloak hanging from the shoulder, and stiff white ruffs; thirty-six cardinals in violet robes, with high miter-shaped white silk hats, that looked not unlike the pasteboard "trainer-caps" that boys wear when they play soldier; crucifixes, and a blazoned banner here and there; and, at last, the pope, in his red chair, borne on the shoulders of red lackeys, heaving along in a sea-sicky motion, clad in scarlet and gold, with a silver miter on his head, feebly making the papal benediction with two upraised fingers, and moving his lips in blessing. As the pope came in, a supplementary choir of men and soprano hybrids, stationed near the door, set up a high, welcoming song, or chant, which echoed rather finely through the building. All the music of the day is vocal.

The procession having reached its destination, and disappeared behind the altar of the dome, the pope dismounted, and took his seat on his throne. The blessing of the palms began, the cardinals first approaching, and afterwards the members of the diplomatic corps, the archbishops and bishops, the heads of the religious orders, and such private persons as have had permission to do so. I had previously seen the palms carried in by servants in great baskets. It is, perhaps, not necessary to say that they are not the poetical green waving palms, but stiff sort of wands, woven out of dry, yellow, split palm-leaves, sometimes four or five feet in length, braided into the semblance of a crown on top,—a kind of rough basket-work. The palms having been blessed, a procession was again formed down the nave and out the door, all in it "carrying palms in their hands," the yellow color of which added a new element of picturesqueness to the splendid pageant. The pope was carried as before, and bore in his hand a short braided palm, with gold woven in, flowers added, and the monogram "I. H. S." worked in the top. It is the pope's custom to give this away when the ceremony is over. Last year he presented it to an American lady, whose devotion attracted him; this year I saw it go away in a gilded coach in the hands of an ecclesiastic. The procession disappeared through the great portal into the vestibule, and the door closed. In a moment somebody knocked three times on the door: it opened, and the procession returned, and moved again to the rear of the altar, the singers marching with it and chanting. The cardinals then changed their violet for scarlet robes; and high mass, for an hour, was celebrated by a cardinal priest: and I was told that it was the pope's voice that we heard, high and clear, singing the passion. The choir made the responses, and performed at intervals. The singing was not without a certain power; indeed, it was marvelous how some of the voices really filled the vast spaces of the edifice, and the choruses rolled in solemn waves of sound through the arches. The singing, with the male sopranos, is not to my taste; but it cannot be denied that it had a wild and strange effect.

While this was going on behind the altar, the people outside were wandering about, looking at each other, and on the watch not to miss any of the shows of the day. People were talking, chattering, and greeting each other as they might do in the street. Here and there somebody was kneeling on the pavement, unheeding the passing throng. At several of the chapels, services were being conducted; and there was a large congregation, an ordinary church full, about each of them. But the most of those present seemed to regard it as a spectacle only; and as a display of dress, costumes, and nationalities it was almost unsurpassed. There are few more wonderful sights in this world than an Englishwoman in what she considers full dress. An English dandy is also a pleasing object. For my part, as I have hinted, I like almost as well as anything the big footmen,—those in scarlet breeches and blue gold-embroidered coats. I stood in front of one of the fine creations for some time, and contemplated him as one does the Farnese Hercules. One likes to see to what a splendor his species can come, even if the brains have all run down into the calves of the legs. There were also the pages, the officers of the pope's household, in costumes of the Middle Ages; the pope's Swiss guard in the showy harlequin uniform designed by Michael Angelo; the foot-soldiers in white short-clothes, which threatened to burst, and let them fly into pieces; there were fine ladies and gentlemen, loafers and loungers, from every civilized country, jabbering in all the languages; there were beggars in rags, and boors in coats so patched that there was probably none of the original material left; there were groups of peasants from the Campagna, the men in short jackets and sheepskin breeches with the wool side out, the women with gay-colored folded cloths on their heads, and coarse woolen gowns; a squad of wild-looking Spanish gypsies, burning-eyed, olive-skinned, hair long, black, crinkled, and greasy, as wild in raiment as in face; priests and friars, Zouaves in jaunty light gray and scarlet; rags and velvets, silks and serge cloths,—a cosmopolitan gathering poured into the world's great place of meeting,—a fine religious Vanity Fair on Sunday.

There came an impressive moment in all this confusion, a point of august solemnity. Up to that instant, what with chanting and singing the many services, and the noise of talking and walking, there was a wild babel. But at the stroke of the bell and the elevation of the Host, down went the muskets of the guard with one clang on the marble; the soldiers kneeled; the multitude in the nave, in the aisles, at all the chapels, kneeled; and for a minute in that vast edifice there was perfect stillness: if the whole great concourse had been swept from the earth, the spot where it lately was could not have been more silent. And then the military order went down the line, the soldiers rose, the crowd rose, and the mass and the hum went on.

It was all over before one; and the pope was borne out again, and the vast crowd began to discharge itself. But it was a long time before the carriages were all filled and rolled off. I stood for a half hour watching the stream go by,—the pompous soldiers, the peasants and citizens, the dazzling equipages, and jaded, exhausted women in black, who had sat or stood half a day under the dome, and could get no carriage; and the great state coaches of the cardinals, swinging high in the air, painted and gilded, with three noble footmen hanging on behind each, and a cardinal's broad face in the window.



VESUVIUS

CLIMBING A VOLCANO

Everybody who comes to Naples,—that is, everybody except the lady who fell from her horse the other day at Resina and injured her shoulder, as she was mounting for the ascent,—everybody, I say, goes up Vesuvius, and nearly every one writes impressions and descriptions of the performance. If you believe the tales of travelers, it is an undertaking of great hazard, an experience of frightful emotions. How unsafe it is, especially for ladies, I heard twenty times in Naples before I had been there a day. Why, there was a lady thrown from her horse and nearly killed, only a week ago; and she still lay ill at the next hotel, a witness of the truth of the story. I imagined her plunged down a precipice of lava, or pitched over the lip of the crater, and only rescued by the devotion of a gallant guide, who threatened to let go of her if she didn't pay him twenty francs instantly. This story, which will live and grow for years in this region, a waxing and never-waning peril of the volcano, I found, subsequently, had the foundation I have mentioned above. The lady did go to Resina in order to make the ascent of Vesuvius, mounted a horse there, fell off, being utterly unhorsewomanly, and hurt herself; but her injury had no more to do with Vesuvius than it had with the entrance of Victor Emanuel into Naples, which took place a couple of weeks after. Well, as I was saying, it is the fashion to write descriptions of Vesuvius; and you might as well have mine, which I shall give to you in rough outline.

There came a day when the Tramontane ceased to blow down on us the cold air of the snowy Apennines, and the white cap of Vesuvius, which is, by the way, worn generally like the caps of the Neapolitans, drifted inland instead of toward the sea. Warmer weather had come to make the bright sunshine no longer a mockery. For some days I had been getting the gauge of the mountain. With its white plume it is a constant quantity in the landscape: one sees it from every point of view; and we had been scarcely anywhere that volcanic remains, or signs of such action,—a thin crust shaking under our feet, as at Solfatara, where blasts of sulphurous steam drove in our faces,—did not remind us that the whole ground is uncertain, and undermined by the subterranean fires that have Vesuvius for a chimney. All the coast of the bay, within recent historic periods, in different spots at different times, has risen and sunk and risen again, in simple obedience to the pulsations of the great fiery monster below. It puffs up or sinks, like the crust of a baking apple-pie. This region is evidently not done; and I think it not unlikely it may have to be turned over again before it is. We had seen where Herculaneum lies under the lava and under the town of Resina; we had walked those clean and narrow streets of Pompeii, and seen the workmen picking away at the imbedded gravel, sand, and ashes which still cover nearly two thirds of the nice little, tight little Roman city; we had looked at the black gashes on the mountain-sides, where the lava streams had gushed and rolled and twisted over vineyards and villas and villages; and we decided to take a nearer look at the immediate cause of all this abnormal state of things.

In the morning when I awoke the sun was just rising behind Vesuvius; and there was a mighty display of gold and crimson in that quarter, as if the curtain was about to be lifted on a grand performance, say a ballet at San Carlo, which is the only thing the Neapolitans think worth looking at. Straight up in the air, out of the mountain, rose a white pillar, spreading out at the top like a palm-tree, or, to compare it to something I have seen, to the Italian pines, that come so picturesquely into all these Naples pictures. If you will believe me, that pillar of steam was like a column of fire, from the sun shining on and through it, and perhaps from the reflection of the background of crimson clouds and blue and gold sky, spread out there and hung there in royal and extravagant profusion, to make a highway and a regal gateway, through which I could just then see coming the horses and the chariot of a southern perfect day. They said that the tree-shaped cloud was the sign of an eruption; but the hotel-keepers here are always predicting that. The eruption is usually about two or three weeks distant; and the hotel proprietors get this information from experienced guides, who observe the action of the water in the wells; so that there can be no mistake about it.

We took carriages at nine o'clock to Resina, a drive of four miles, and one of exceeding interest, if you wish to see Naples life. The way is round the curving bay by the sea; but so continuously built up is it, and so inclosed with high walls of villas, through the open gates of which the golden oranges gleam, that you seem never to leave the city. The streets and quays swarm with the most vociferous, dirty, multitudinous life. It is a drive through Rag Fair. The tall, whitey-yellow houses fronting the water, six, seven, eight stories high, are full as beehives; people are at all the open windows; garments hang from the balconies and from poles thrust out; up every narrow, gloomy, ascending street are crowds of struggling human shapes; and you see how like herrings in a box are packed the over half a million people of Naples. In front of the houses are the markets in the open air,—fish, vegetables, carts of oranges; in the sun sit women spinning from distaffs or weaving fishing-nets; and rows of children who were never washed and never clothed but once, and whose garments have nearly wasted away; beggars, fishermen in red caps, sailors, priests, donkeys, fruit-venders, street-musicians, carriages, carts, two-wheeled break-down vehicles,—the whole tangled in one wild roar and rush and babel,—a shifting, varied panorama of color, rags,—a pandemonium such as the world cannot show elsewhere, that is what one sees on the road to Resina. The drivers all drive in the streets here as if they held a commission from the devil, cracking their whips, shouting to their horses, and dashing into the thickest tangle with entire recklessness. They have one cry, used alike for getting more speed out of their horses or for checking them, or in warning to the endangered crowds on foot. It is an exclamatory grunt, which may be partially expressed by the letters "a-e-ugh." Everybody shouts it, mule-driver, "coachee," or cattle-driver; and even I, a passenger, fancied I could do it to disagreeable perfection after a time. Out of this throng in the streets I like to select the meek, patient, diminutive little donkeys, with enormous panniers that almost hide them. One would have a woman seated on top, with a child in one pannier and cabbages in the other; another, with an immense stock of market-greens on his back, or big baskets of oranges, or with a row of wine-casks and a man seated behind, adhering, by some unknown law of adhesion, to the sloping tail. Then there was the cart drawn by one diminutive donkey, or by an ox, or by an ox and a donkey, or by a donkey and horse abreast, never by any possibility a matched team. And, funniest of all, was the high, two-wheeled caleche, with one seat, and top thrown back, with long thills and poor horse. Upon this vehicle were piled, Heaven knows how, behind, before, on the thills, and underneath the high seat, sometimes ten, and not seldom as many as eighteen people, men, women, and children,—all in flaunting rags, with a colored scarf here and there, or a gay petticoat, or a scarlet cap,—perhaps a priest, with broad black hat, in the center,—driving along like a comet, the poor horse in a gallop, the bells on his ornamented saddle merrily jingling, and the whole load in a roar of merriment.

But we shall never get to Vesuvius at this rate. I will not even stop to examine the macaroni manufactories on the road. The long strips of it were hung out on poles to dry in the streets, and to get a rich color from the dirt and dust, to say nothing of its contact with the filthy people who were making it. I am very fond of macaroni. At Resina we take horses for the ascent. We had sent ahead for a guide and horses for our party of ten; but we found besides, I should think, pretty nearly the entire population of the locality awaiting us, not to count the importunate beggars, the hags, male and female, and the ordinary loafers of the place. We were besieged to take this and that horse or mule, to buy walking-sticks for the climb, to purchase lava cut into charms, and veritable ancient coins, and dug-up cameos, all manufactured for the demand. One wanted to hold the horse, or to lead it, to carry a shawl, or to show the way. In the midst of infinite clamor and noise, we at last got mounted, and, turning into a narrow lane between high walls, began the ascent, our cavalcade attended by a procession of rags and wretchedness up through the village. Some of them fell off as we rose among the vineyards, and they found us proof against begging; but several accompanied us all day, hoping that, in some unguarded moment, they could do us some slight service, and so establish a claim on us. Among these I noticed some stout fellows with short ropes, with which they intended to assist us up the steeps. If I looked away an instant, some urchin would seize my horse's bridle; and when I carelessly let my stick fall on his hand, in token for him to let go, he would fall back with an injured look, and grasp the tail, from which I could only loosen him by swinging my staff and preparing to break his head.

The ascent is easy at first between walls and the vineyards which produce the celebrated Lachryma Christi. After a half hour we reached and began to cross the lava of 1858, and the wild desolation and gloom of the mountain began to strike us. One is here conscious of the titanic forces at work. Sometimes it is as if a giant had ploughed the ground, and left the furrows without harrowing them to harden into black and brown stone. We could see again how the broad stream, flowing down, squeezed and squashed like mud, had taken all fantastic shapes,—now like gnarled tree roots; now like serpents in a coil; here the human form, or a part of it,—a torso or a limb,—in agony; now in other nameless convolutions and contortions, as if heaved up and twisted in fiery pain and suffering,—for there was almost a human feeling in it; and again not unlike stone billows. We could see how the cooling crust had been lifted and split and turned over by the hot stream underneath, which, continually oozing from the rent of the eruption, bore it down and pressed it upward. Even so low as the point where we crossed the lava of 1858 were fissures whence came hot air.

An hour brought us to the resting-place called the Hermitage, an osteria and observatory established by the government. Standing upon the end of a spur, it seems to be safe from the lava, whose course has always been on either side; but it must be an uncomfortable place in a shower of stones and ashes. We rode half an hour longer on horseback, on a nearly level path, to the foot of the steep ascent, the base of the great crater. This ride gave us completely the wide and ghastly desolation of the mountain, the ruin that the lava has wrought upon slopes that were once green with vine and olive, and busy with the hum of life. This black, contorted desert waste is more sterile and hopeless than any mountain of stone, because the idea of relentless destruction is involved here. This great hummocked, sloping plain, ridged and seamed, was all about us, without cheer or relaxation of grim solitude. Before us rose, as black and bare, what the guides call the mountain, and which used to be the crater. Up one side is worked in the lava a zigzag path, steep, but not very fatiguing, if you take it slowly. Two thirds of the way up, I saw specks of people climbing. Beyond it rose the cone of ashes, out of which the great cloud of sulphurous smoke rises and rolls night and day now. On the very edge of that, on the lip of it, where the smoke rose, I also saw human shapes; and it seemed as if they stood on the brink of Tartarus and in momently imminent peril.

We left our horses in a wild spot, where scorched boulders had fallen upon the lava bed; and guides and boys gathered about us like cormorants: but, declining their offers to pull us up, we began the ascent, which took about three quarters of an hour. We were then on the summit, which is, after all, not a summit at all, but an uneven waste, sloping away from the Cone in the center. This sloping lava waste was full of little cracks,—not fissures with hot lava in them, or anything of the sort,—out of which white steam issued, not unlike the smoke from a great patch of burned timber; and the wind blew it along the ground towards us. It was cool, for the sun was hidden by light clouds, but not cold. The ground under foot was slightly warm. I had expected to feel some dread, or shrinking, or at least some sense of insecurity, but I did not the slightest, then or afterwards; and I think mine is the usual experience. I had no more sense of danger on the edge of the crater than I had in the streets of Naples.

We next addressed ourselves to the Cone, which is a loose hill of ashes and sand,—a natural slope, I should say, of about one and a half to one, offering no foothold. The climb is very fatiguing, because you sink in to the ankles, and slide back at every step; but it is short,—we were up in six to eight minutes,—though the ladies, who had been helped a little by the guides, were nearly exhausted, and sank down on the very edge of the crater, with their backs to the smoke. What did we see? What would you see if you looked into a steam boiler? We stood on the ashy edge of the crater, the sharp edge sloping one way down the mountain, and the other into the bowels, whence the thick, stifling smoke rose. We rolled stones down, and heard them rumbling for half a minute. The diameter of the crater on the brink of which we stood was said to be an eighth of a mile; but the whole was completely filled with vapor. The edge where we stood was quite warm.

We ate some rolls we had brought in our pockets, and some of the party tried a bottle of the wine that one of the cormorants had brought up, but found it anything but the Lachryma Christi it was named. We looked with longing eyes down into the vapor-boiling caldron; we looked at the wide and lovely view of land and sea; we tried to realize our awful situation, munched our dry bread, and laughed at the monstrous demands of the vagabonds about us for money, and then turned and went down quicker than we came up.

We had chosen to ascend to the old crater rather than to the new one of the recent eruption on the side of the mountain, where there is nothing to be seen. When we reached the bottom of the Cone, our guide led us to the north side, and into a region that did begin to look like business. The wind drove all the smoke round there, and we were half stifled with sulphur fumes to begin with. Then the whole ground was discolored red and yellow, and with many more gay and sulphur-suggesting colors. And it actually had deep fissures in it, over which we stepped and among which we went, out of which came blasts of hot, horrid vapor, with a roaring as if we were in the midst of furnaces. And if we came near the cracks the heat was powerful in our faces, and if we thrust our sticks down them they were instantly burned; and the guides cooked eggs; and the crust was thin, and very hot to our boots; and half the time we couldn't see anything; and we would rush away where the vapor was not so thick, and, with handkerchiefs to our mouths, rush in again to get the full effect. After we came out again into better air, it was as if we had been through the burning, fiery furnace, and had the smell of it on our garments. And, indeed, the sulphur had changed to red certain of our clothes, and noticeably my pantaloons and the black velvet cap of one of the ladies; and it was some days before they recovered their color. But, as I say, there was no sense of danger in the adventure.

We descended by a different route, on the south side of the mountain, to our horses, and made a lark of it. We went down an ash slope, very steep, where we sank in a foot or little less at every step, and there was nothing to do for it, but to run and jump. We took steps as long as if we had worn seven-league boots. When the whole party got in motion, the entire slope seemed to slide a little with us, and there appeared some danger of an avalanche. But we did n't stop for it. It was exactly like plunging down a steep hillside that is covered thickly with light, soft snow. There was a gray-haired gentleman with us, with a good deal of the boy in him, who thought it great fun.

I have said little about the view; but I might have written about nothing else, both in the ascent and descent. Naples, and all the villages which rim the bay with white, the gracefully curving arms that go out to sea, and do not quite clasp rocky Capri, which lies at the entrance, made the outline of a picture of surpassing loveliness. But as we came down, there was a sight that I am sure was unique. As one in a balloon sees the earth concave beneath, so now, from where we stood, it seemed to rise, not fall, to the sea, and all the white villages were raised to the clouds; and by the peculiar light, the sea looked exactly like sky, and the little boats on it seemed to float, like balloons in the air. The illusion was perfect. As the day waned, a heavy cloud hid the sun, and so let down the light that the waters were a dark purple. Then the sun went behind Posilipo in a perfect blaze of scarlet, and all the sea was violet. Only it still was not the sea at all; but the little chopping waves looked like flecked clouds; and it was exactly as if one of the violet, cloud-beautified skies that we see at home over some sunsets had fallen to the ground. And the slant white sails and the black specks of boats on it hung in the sky, and were as unsubstantial as the whole pageant. Capri alone was dark and solid. And as we descended and a high wall hid it, a little handsome rascal, who had attended me for an hour, now at the head and now at the tail of my pony, recalled me to the realities by the request that I should give him a franc. For what? For carrying signor's coat up the mountain. I rewarded the little liar with a German copper. I had carried my own overcoat all day.



SORRENTO DAYS

OUTLINES

The day came when we tired of the brilliancy and din of Naples, most noisy of cities. Neapolis, or Parthenope, as is well known, was founded by Parthenope, a siren who was cast ashore there. Her descendants still live here; and we have become a little weary of their inherited musical ability: they have learned to play upon many new instruments, with which they keep us awake late at night, and arouse us early in the morning. One of them is always there under the window, where the moonlight will strike him, or the early dawn will light up his love-worn visage, strumming the guitar with his horny thumb, and wailing through his nose as if his throat was full of seaweed. He is as inexhaustible as Vesuvius. We shall have to flee, or stop our ears with wax, like the sailors of Ulysses.

The day came when we had checked off the Posilipo, and the Grotto, Pozzuoli, Baiae, Cape Misenum, the Museum, Vesuvius, Pompeii, Herculaneum, the moderns buried at the Campo Santo; and we said, Let us go and lie in the sun at Sorrento. But first let us settle our geography.

The Bay of Naples, painted and sung forever, but never adequately, must consent to be here described as essentially a parallelogram, with an opening towards the southwest. The northeast side of this, with Naples in the right-hand corner, looking seaward and Castellamare in the left-hand corner, at a distance of some fourteen miles, is a vast rich plain, fringed on the shore with towns, and covered with white houses and gardens. Out of this rises the isolated bulk of Vesuvius. This growing mountain is manufactured exactly like an ant-hill.

The northwest side of the bay, keeping a general westerly direction, is very uneven, with headlands, deep bays, and outlying islands. First comes the promontory of Posilipo, pierced by two tunnels, partly natural and partly Greek and Roman work, above the entrance of one of which is the tomb of Virgil, let us believe; then a beautiful bay, the shore of which is incrusted with classic ruins. On this bay stands Pozzuoli, the ancient Puteoli where St. Paul landed one May day, and doubtless walked up this paved road, which leads direct to Rome. At the entrance, near the head of Posilipo, is the volcanic island of "shining Nisida," to which Brutus retired after the assassination of Caesar, and where he bade Portia good-by before he departed for Greece and Philippi: the favorite villa of Cicero, where he wrote many of his letters to Atticus, looked on it. Baiae, epitome of the luxury and profligacy, of the splendor and crime of the most sensual years of the Roman empire, spread there its temples, palaces, and pleasure-gardens, which crowded the low slopes, and extended over the water; and yonder is Cape Misenum, which sheltered the great fleets of Rome.

This region, which is still shaky from fires bubbling under the thin crust, through which here and there the sulphurous vapor breaks out, is one of the most sacred in the ancient world. Here are the Lucrine Lake, the Elysian Fields, the cave of the Cumean Sibyl, and the Lake Avernus. This entrance to the infernal regions was frozen over the day I saw it; so that the profane prophecy of skating on the bottomless pit might have been realized. The islands of Procida and Ischia continue and complete this side of the bay, which is about twenty miles long as the boat sails.

At Castellamare the shore makes a sharp bend, and runs southwest along the side of the Sorrentine promontory. This promontory is a high, rocky, diversified ridge, which extends out between the bays of Naples and Salerno, with its short and precipitous slope towards the latter. Below Castellamare, the mountain range of the Great St. Angelo (an offshoot of the Apennines) runs across the peninsula, and cuts off that portion of it which we have to consider. The most conspicuous of the three parts of this short range is over four thousand seven hundred feet above the Bay of Naples, and the highest land on it. From Great St. Angelo to the point, the Punta di Campanella, it is, perhaps, twelve miles by balloon, but twenty by any other conveyance. Three miles off this point lies Capri.

This promontory has a backbone of rocky ledges and hills; but it has at intervals transverse ledges and ridges, and deep valleys and chains cutting in from either side; so that it is not very passable in any direction. These little valleys and bays are warm nooks for the olive and the orange; and all the precipices and sunny slopes are terraced nearly to the top. This promontory of rocks is far from being barren.

From Castellamare, driving along a winding, rockcut road by the bay, —one of the most charming in southern Italy,—a distance of seven miles, we reach the Punta di Scutolo. This point, and the opposite headland, the Capo di Sorrento, inclose the Piano di Sorrento, an irregular plain, three miles long, encircled by limestone hills, which protect it from the east and south winds. In this amphitheater it lies, a mass of green foliage and white villages, fronting Naples and Vesuvius.

If nature first scooped out this nook level with the sea, and then filled it up to a depth of two hundred to three hundred feet with volcanic tufa, forming a precipice of that height along the shore, I can understand how the present state of things came about.

This plain is not all level, however. Decided spurs push down into it from the hills; and great chasms, deep, ragged, impassable, split in the tufa, extend up into it from the sea. At intervals, at the openings of these ravines, are little marinas, where the fishermen have their huts' and where their boats land. Little villages, separate from the world, abound on these marinas. The warm volcanic soil of the sheltered plain makes it a paradise of fruits and flowers.

Sorrento, ancient and romantic city, lies at the southwest end of this plain, built along the sheer sea precipice, and running back to the hills,—a city of such narrow streets, high walls, and luxuriant groves that it can be seen only from the heights adjacent. The ancient boundary of the city proper was the famous ravine on the east side, a similar ravine on the south, which met it at right angles, and was supplemented by a high Roman wall, and the same wall continued on the west to the sea. The growing town has pushed away the wall on the west side; but that on the south yet stands as good as when the Romans made it. There is a little attempt at a mall, with double rows of trees, under that wall, where lovers walk, and ragged, handsome urchins play the exciting game of fives, or sit in the dirt, gambling with cards for the Sorrento currency. I do not know what sin it may be to gamble for a bit of printed paper which has the value of one sou.

The great ravine, three quarters of a mile long, the ancient boundary which now cuts the town in two, is bridged where the main street, the Corso, crosses, the bridge resting on old Roman substructions, as everything else about here does. This ravine, always invested with mystery, is the theme of no end of poetry and legend. Demons inhabit it. Here and there, in its perpendicular sides, steps have been cut for descent. Vines and lichens grow on the walls: in one place, at the bottom, an orange grove has taken root. There is even a mill down there, where there is breadth enough for a building; and altogether, the ravine is not so delivered over to the power of darkness as it used to be. It is still damp and slimy, it is true; but from above, it is always beautiful, with its luxuriant growth of vines, and at twilight mysterious. I like as well, however, to look into its entrance from the little marina, where the old fishwives are weaving nets.

These little settlements under the cliff, called marinas, are worlds in themselves, picturesque at a distance, but squalid seen close at hand. They are not very different from the little fishing-stations on the Isle of Wight; but they are more sheltered, and their inhabitants sing at their work, wear bright colors, and bask in the sun a good deal, feeling no sense of responsibility for the world they did not create. To weave nets, to fish in the bay, to sell their fish at the wharves, to eat unexciting vegetables and fish, to drink moderately, to go to the chapel of St. Antonino on Sunday, not to work on fast and feast days, nor more than compelled to any day, this is life at the marinas. Their world is what they can see, and Naples is distant and almost foreign. Generation after generation is content with the same simple life. They have no more idea of the bad way the world is in than bees in their cells.



THE VILLA NARDI

The Villa Nardi hangs over the sea. It is built on a rock, and I know not what Roman and Greek foundations, and the remains of yet earlier peoples, traders, and traffickers, whose galleys used to rock there at the base of the cliff, where the gentle waves beat even in this winter-time with a summer swing and sound of peace.

It was at the close of a day in January that I first knew the Villa Nardi,—a warm, lovely day, at the hour when the sun was just going behind the Capo di Sorrento, in order to disrobe a little, I fancy, before plunging into the Mediterranean off the end of Capri, as is his wont about this time of year. When we turned out of the little piazza, our driver was obliged to take off one of our team of three horses driven abreast, so that we could pass through the narrow and crooked streets, or rather lanes of blank walls. With cracking whip, rattling wheels, and shouting to clear the way, we drove into the Strada di San Francisca, and to an arched gateway. This led down a straight path, between olives and orange and lemon-trees, gleaming with shining leaves and fruit of gold, with hedges of rose-trees in full bloom, to another leafy arch, through which I saw tropical trees, and a terrace with a low wall and battered busts guarding it, and beyond, the blue sea, a white sail or two slanting across the opening, and the whiteness of Naples some twenty miles away on the shore.

The noble family of the Villa did not descend into the garden to welcome us, as we should have liked; in fact, they have been absent now for a long time, so long that even their ghosts, if they ever pace the terrace-walk towards the convent, would appear strange to one who should meet them; and yet our hostess, the Tramontano, did what the ancient occupants scarcely could have done, gave us the choice of rooms in the entire house. The stranger who finds himself in this secluded paradise, at this season, is always at a loss whether to take a room on the sea, with all its changeable loveliness, but no sun, or one overlooking the garden, where the sun all day pours itself into the orange boughs, and where the birds are just beginning to get up a spring twitteration. My friend, whose capacity for taking in the luxurious repose of this region is something extraordinary, has tried, I believe, nearly every room in the house, and has at length gone up to a solitary room on the top, where, like a bird on a tree he looks all ways, and, so to say, swings in the entrancing air. But, wherever you are, you will grow into content with your situation.

At the Villa Nardi we have no sound of wheels, no noise of work or traffic, no suggestion of conflict. I am under the impression that everything that was to have been done has been done. I am, it is true, a little afraid that the Saracens will come here again, and carry off more of the nut-brown girls, who lean over the walls, and look down on us from under the boughs. I am not quite sure that a French Admiral of the Republic will not some morning anchor his three-decker in front, and open fire on us; but nothing else can happen. Naples is a thousand miles away. The boom of the saluting guns of Castel Nuovo is to us scarcely an echo of modern life. Rome does not exist. And as for London and New York, they send their people and their newspapers here, but no pulse of unrest from them disturbs our tranquillity. Hemmed in on the land side by high walls, groves, and gardens, perched upon a rock two hundred feet above the water, how much more secure from invasion is this than any fabled island of the southern sea, or any remote stream where the boats of the lotus-eaters float!

There is a little terrace and flower-plat, where we sometimes sit, and over the wall of which we like to lean, and look down the cliff to the sea. This terrace is the common ground of many exotics as well as native trees and shrubs. Here are the magnolia, the laurel, the Japanese medlar, the oleander, the pepper, the bay, the date-palm, a tree called the plumbago, another from the Cape of Good Hope, the pomegranate, the elder in full leaf, the olive, salvia, heliotrope; close by is a banana-tree.

I find a good deal of companionship in the rows of plaster busts that stand on the wall, in all attitudes of listlessness, and all stages of decay. I thought at first they were penates of the premises; but better acquaintance has convinced me that they never were gods, but the clayey representations of great men and noble dames. The stains of time are on them; some have lost a nose or an ear; and one has parted with a still more important member—his head,—an accident that might profitably have befallen his neighbor, whose curly locks and villainously low forehead proclaim him a Roman emperor. Cut in the face of the rock is a walled and winding way down to the water. I see below the archway where it issues from the underground recesses of our establishment; and there stands a bust, in serious expectation that some one will walk out and saunter down among the rocks; but no one ever does. Just at the right is a little beach, with a few old houses, and a mimic stir of life, a little curve in the cliff, the mouth of the gorge, where the waves come in with a lazy swash. Some fishing-boats ride there; and the shallow water, as I look down this sunny morning, is thickly strewn with floating peels of oranges and lemons, as if some one was brewing a gigantic bowl of punch. And there is an uncommon stir of life; for a schooner is shipping a cargo of oranges, and the entire population is in a clamor. Donkeys are coming down the winding way, with a heavy basket on either flank; stout girls are stepping lightly down with loads on their heads; the drivers shout, the donkeys bray, the people jabber and order each other about; and the oranges, in a continual stream, are poured into the long, narrow vessel, rolling in with a thud, until there is a yellow mass of them. Shouting, scolding, singing, and braying, all come up to me a little mellowed. The disorder is not so great as on the opera stage of San Carlo in Naples; and the effect is much more pleasing.

This settlement, the marina, under the cliff, used to extend along the shore; and a good road ran down there close by the water. The rock has split off, and covered it; and perhaps the shore has sunk. They tell me that those who dig down in the edge of the shallow water find sunken walls, and the remains of old foundations of Roman workmanship. People who wander there pick up bits of marble, serpentine, and malachite,—remains of the palaces that long ago fell into the sea, and have not left even the names of their owners and builders,-the ancient loafers who idled away their days as everybody must in this seductive spot. Not far from here, they point out the veritable caves of the Sirens, who have now shut up house, and gone away, like the rest of the nobility. If I had been a mariner in their day, I should have made no effort to sail by and away from their soothing shore.

I went, one day, through a long, sloping arch, near the sailors' Chapel of St. Antonino, past a pretty shrine of the Virgin, down the zigzag path to this little marina; but it is better to be content with looking at it from above, and imagining how delightful it would be to push off in one of the little tubs of boats. Sometimes, at night, I hear the fishermen coming home, singing in their lusty fashion; and I think it is a good haven to arrive at. I never go down to search for stones on the beach: I like to believe that there are great treasures there, which I might find; and I know that the green and brown and spotty appearance of the water is caused by the showing through of the pavements of courts, and marble floors of palaces, which might vanish if I went nearer, such a place of illusion is this.

The Villa Nardi stands in pleasant relations to Vesuvius, which is just across the bay, and is not so useless as it has been represented; it is our weather-sign and prophet. When the white plume on his top floats inland, that is one sort of weather; when it streams out to sea, that is another. But I can never tell which is which: nor in my experience does it much matter; for it seems impossible for Sorrento to do anything but woo us with gentle weather. But the use of Vesuvius, after all, is to furnish us a background for the violet light at sundown, when the villages at its foot gleam like a silver fringe. I have become convinced of one thing: it is always best when you build a house to have it front toward a volcano, if you can. There is just that lazy activity about a volcano, ordinarily, that satisfies your demand for something that is not exactly dead, and yet does not disturb you.

Sometimes when I wake in the night,—though I don't know why one ever wakes in the night, or the daytime either here,—I hear the bell of the convent, which is in our demesne,—a convent which is suppressed, and where I hear, when I pass in the morning, the humming of a school. At first I tried to count the hour; but when the bell went on to strike seventeen, and even twenty-one o'clock, the absurdity of the thing came over me, and I wondered whether it was some frequent call to prayer for a feeble band of sisters remaining, some reminder of midnight penance and vigil, or whether it was not something more ghostly than that, and was not responded to by shades of nuns, who were wont to look out from their narrow latticed windows upon these same gardens, as long ago as when the beautiful Queen Joanna used to come down here to repent—if she ever did repent—of her wanton ways in Naples.

On one side of the garden is a suppressed monastery. The narrow front towards the sea has a secluded little balcony, where I like to fancy the poor orphaned souls used to steal out at night for a breath of fresh air, and perhaps to see, as I did one dark evening, Naples with its lights like a conflagration on the horizon. Upon the tiles of the parapet are cheerful devices, the crossbones tied with a cord, and the like. How many heavy-hearted recluses have stood in that secluded nook, and been tempted by the sweet, lulling sound of the waves below; how many have paced along this narrow terrace, and felt like prisoners who wore paths in the stone floor where they trod; and how many stupid louts have walked there, insensible to all the charm of it!

If I pass into the Tramontano garden, it is not to escape the presence of history, or to get into the modern world, where travelers are arriving, and where there is the bustle and proverbial discontent of those who travel to enjoy themselves. In the pretty garden, which is a constant surprise of odd nooks and sunny hiding-places, with ruins, and most luxuriant ivy, is a little cottage where, I am told in confidence, the young king of Bavaria slept three nights not very long ago. I hope he slept well. But more important than the sleep, or even death, of a king, is the birth of a poet, I take it; and within this inclosure, on the eleventh day of March, 1541, Torquato Tasso, most melancholy of men, first saw the light; and here was born his noble sister Cornelia, the descendants of whose union with the cavalier Spasiano still live here, and in a manner keep the memory of the poet green with the present generation. I am indebted to a gentleman who is of this lineage for many favors, and for precise information as to the position in the house that stood here of the very room in which Tasso was born. It is also minutely given in a memoir of Tasso and his family, by Bartolommeo Capasso, whose careful researches have disproved the slipshod statements of the guidebooks, that the poet was born in a house which is still standing, farther to the west, and that the room has fallen into the sea. The descendant of the sister pointed out to me the spot on the terrace of the Tramontano where the room itself was, when the house still stood; and, of course, seeing is believing. The sun shone full upon it, as we stood there; and the air was full of the scent of tropical fruit and just-coming blossoms. One could not desire a more tranquil scene of advent into life; and the wandering, broken-hearted author of "Jerusalem Delivered" never found at court or palace any retreat so soothing as that offered him here by his steadfast sister.

If I were an antiquarian, I think I should have had Tasso born at the Villa Nardi, where I like best to stay, and where I find traces of many pilgrims from other countries. Here, in a little corner room on the terrace, Mrs. Stowe dreamed and wrote; and I expect, every morning, as I take my morning sun here by the gate, Agnes of Sorrento will come down the sweet-scented path with a basket of oranges on her head.



SEA AND SHORE

It is not always easy, when one stands upon the highlands which encircle the Piano di Sorrento, in some conditions of the atmosphere, to tell where the sea ends and the sky begins. It seems. practicable, at such times, for one to take ship and sail up into heaven. I have often, indeed, seen white sails climbing up there, and fishing-boats, at secure anchor I suppose, riding apparently like balloons in the hazy air. Sea and air and land here are all kin, I suspect, and have certain immaterial qualities in common. The contours of the shores and the outlines of the hills are as graceful as the mobile waves; and if there is anywhere ruggedness and sharpness, the atmosphere throws a friendly veil over it, and tones all that is inharmonious into the repose of beauty.

The atmosphere is really something more than a medium: it is a drapery, woven, one could affirm, with colors, or dipped in oriental dyes. One might account thus for the prismatic colors I have often seen on the horizon at noon, when the sun was pouring down floods of clear golden light. The simple light here, if one could ever represent it by pen, pencil, or brush, would draw the world hither to bathe in it. It is not thin sunshine, but a royal profusion, a golden substance, a transforming quality, a vesture of splendor for all these Mediterranean shores.

The most comprehensive idea of Sorrento and the great plain on which it stands, imbedded almost out of sight in foliage, we obtained one day from our boat, as we put out round the Capo di Sorrento, and stood away for Capri. There was not wind enough for sails, but there were chopping waves, and swell enough to toss us about, and to produce bright flashes of light far out at sea. The red-shirted rowers silently bent to their long sweeps; and I lay in the tossing bow, and studied the high, receding shore. The picture is simple, a precipice of rock or earth, faced with masonry in spots, almost of uniform height from point to point of the little bay, except where a deep gorge has split the rock, and comes to the sea, forming a cove, where a cluster of rude buildings is likely to gather. Along the precipice, which now juts and now recedes a little, are villas, hotels, old convents, gardens, and groves. I can see steps and galleries cut in the face of the cliff, and caves and caverns, natural and artificial: for one can cut this tufa with a knife; and it would hardly seem preposterous to attempt to dig out a cool, roomy mansion in this rocky front with a spade.

As we pull away, I begin to see the depth of the plain of Sorrento, with its villages, walled roads, its groves of oranges, olives, lemons, its figs, pomegranates, almonds, mulberries, and acacias; and soon the terraces above, where the vineyards are planted, and the olives also. These terraces must be a brave sight in the spring, when the masses of olives are white as snow with blossoms, which fill all the plain with their sweet perfume. Above the terraces, the eye reaches the fine outline of the hill; and, to the east, the bare precipice of rock, softened by the purple light; and turning still to the left, as the boat lazily swings, I have Vesuvius, the graceful dip into the plain, and the rise to the heights of Naples, Nisida, the shining houses of Pozzuoli, Cape Misenum, Procida, and rough Ischia. Rounding the headland, Capri is before us, so sharp and clear that we seem close to it; but it is a weary pull before we get under its rocky side.

Returning from Capri late in the afternoon, we had one of those effects which are the despair of artists. I had been told that twilights are short here, and that, when the sun disappeared, color vanished from the sky. There was a wonderful light on all the inner bay, as we put off from shore. Ischia was one mass of violet color, As we got from under the island, there was the sun, a red ball of fire, just dipping into the sea. At once the whole horizon line of water became a bright crimson, which deepened as evening advanced, glowing with more intense fire, and holding a broad band of what seemed solid color for more than three quarters of an hour. The colors, meantime, on the level water, never were on painter's palette, and never were counterfeited by the changeable silks of eastern looms; and this gorgeous spectacle continued till the stars came out, crowding the sky with silver points.

Our boatmen, who had been reinforced at Capri, and were inspired either by the wine of the island or the beauty of the night, pulled with new vigor, and broke out again and again into the wild songs of this coast. A favorite was the Garibaldi song, which invariably ended in a cheer and a tiger, and threw the singers into such a spurt of excitement that the oars forgot to keep time, and there was more splash than speed. The singers all sang one part in minor: there was no harmony, the voices were not rich, and the melody was not remarkable; but there was, after all, a wild pathos in it. Music is very much here what it is in Naples. I have to keep saying to myself that Italy is a land of song; else I should think that people mistake noise for music.

The boatmen are an honest set of fellows, as Italians go; and, let us hope, not unworthy followers of their patron, St. Antonino, whose chapel is on the edge of the gorge near the Villa Nardi. A silver image of the saint, half life-size, stands upon the rich marble altar. This valuable statue has been, if tradition is correct, five times captured and carried away by marauders, who have at different times sacked Sorrento of its marbles, bronzes, and precious things, and each time, by some mysterious providence, has found its way back again,—an instance of constancy in a solid silver image which is worthy of commendation. The little chapel is hung all about with votive offerings in wax of arms, legs, heads, hands, effigies, and with coarse lithographs, in frames, of storms at sea and perils of ships, hung up by sailors who, having escaped the dangers of the deep, offer these tributes to their dear saint. The skirts of the image are worn quite smooth with kissing. Underneath it, at the back of the altar, an oil light is always burning; and below repose the bones of the holy man.

The whole shore is fascinating to one in an idle mood, and is good mousing-ground for the antiquarian. For myself, I am content with one generalization, which I find saves a world of bother and perplexity: it is quite safe to style every excavation, cavern, circular wall, or arch by the sea, a Roman bath. It is the final resort of the antiquarians. This theory has kept me from entering the discussion, whether the substructions in the cliff under the Poggio Syracuse, a royal villa, are temples of the Sirens, or caves of Ulysses. I only know that I descend to the sea there by broad interior flights of steps, which lead through galleries and corridors, and high, vaulted passages, whence extend apartments and caves far reaching into the solid rock. At intervals are landings, where arched windows are cut out to the sea, with stone seats and protecting walls. At the base of the cliff I find a hewn passage, as if there had once been here a way of embarkation; and enormous fragments of rocks, with steps cut in them, which have fallen from above.

Were these anything more than royal pleasure galleries, where one could sit in coolness in the heat of summer and look on the bay and its shipping, in the days when the great Roman fleet used to lie opposite, above the point of Misenum? How many brave and gay retinues have swept down these broad interior stairways, let us say in the picturesque Middle Ages, to embark on voyages of pleasure or warlike forays! The steps are well worn, and must have been trodden for ages, by nobles and robbers, peasants and sailors, priests of more than one religion, and traders of many seas, who have gone, and left no record. The sun was slanting his last rays into the corridors as I musingly looked down from one of the arched openings, quite spellbound by the strangeness and dead silence of the place, broken only by the plash of waves on the sandy beach below. I had found my way down through a wooden door half ajar; and I thought of the possibility of some one's shutting it for the night, and leaving me a prisoner to await the spectres which I have no doubt throng here when it grows dark. Hastening up out of these chambers of the past, I escaped into the upper air, and walked rapidly home through the narrow orange lanes.



ON TOP OF THE HOUSE

The tiptop of the Villa Nardi is a flat roof, with a wall about it three feet high, and some little turreted affairs, that look very much like chimneys. Joseph, the gray-haired servitor, has brought my chair and table up here to-day, and here I am, established to write.

I am here above most earthly annoyances, and on a level with the heavenly influences. It has always seemed to me that the higher one gets, the easier it must be to write; and that, especially at a great elevation, one could strike into lofty themes, and launch out, without fear of shipwreck on any of the earthly headlands, in his aerial voyages. Yet, after all, he would be likely to arrive nowhere, I suspect; or, to change the figure, to find that, in parting with the taste of the earth, he had produced a flavorless composition. If it were not for the haze in the horizon to-day, I could distinguish the very house in Naples—that of Manso, Marquis of Villa,—where Tasso found a home, and where John Milton was entertained at a later day by that hospitable nobleman. I wonder, if he had come to the Villa Nardi and written on the roof, if the theological features of his epic would have been softened, and if he would not have received new suggestions for the adornment of the garden. Of course, it is well that his immortal production was not composed on this roof, and in sight of these seductive shores, or it would have been more strongly flavored with classic mythology than it is. But, letting Milton go, it may be necessary to say that my writing to-day has nothing to do with my theory of composition in an elevated position; for this is the laziest place that I have yet found.