I can imagine no drearier ride than that by rail from Pisa to Rome. The road skirts the sea most of the way. For many miles it traverses the Roman Campagna. The dreaded miasma which rises at night from this vast plain has left it tenantless, except by the station-masters and hands, and the herdsmen needed to watch over the droves of horses and oxen and flocks of sheep which browse on the abundant herbage. These herdsmen look wild and brigandish in their peaked hats and slashed jackets. Whether they take quinine freely, or are naturally proof against malaria, I know not. But it is a fact that most of them—as also of the railway servants—do not have the haggard and palsied look I had expected to note among them. Even they, however, have fears of the consequences of their exposure; for I noticed at every station, where there were several buildings, large young groves of the eucalyptus or blue-gum tree.Its balsamic odor was perceptible from the car-windows. The Italian Government encourages the setting out of this tree as a preventive of malaria.
The success of the experiment is still a matter of dispute. In point of fact, the shepherds and others who live in miserable huts, hundreds of feet from the railway-track and have no such protection, seem as strong and hearty as those who dwell continually in the shade of the blue-gum tree.
We attended the special services at St. Peter’s on Good-Friday. Driving through the streets we found the banks and shops of all kinds open as usual. The only indication of the solemnity of the day was the increased attendance at all the churches. And this may be, in part, explained by the extraordinary musical attractions. At St. Peter’s many thousand persons must have been present between 4.30 and 6.30P. M., when theTenebrœandMisererewere chanted or sung by a great concourse of priests and a select choir. The music was impressive, but its proper effects were lost on all hearers who could not squeeze into the little side-chapel where it was performed. Every effort had been made to render St. Peter’s gloomy, but without avail. The brilliant mosaics and frescoes were all shrouded. The eighty-ninelamps which burn about the crypt of St. Peter’s tomb were extinguished. But glorious sunshine flooded the whole interior. It streamed in mighty beams through the colorless windows facing the west, and set at naught all puny attempts to make the most splendid church in the world look dark and dull. About six o’clock the throng was the greatest. For two hours people had been pouring in, but only a small part of the vast floor was occupied. Among the worshipers or spectators were friars of every known order, richly attired officers of every grade in the Italian army, common soldiers of all branches of the service, men and women representing every nation of Europe, and a great many Americans, besides countless numbers of the highest as well as the lowest classes of Roman society. The spectacle was one of deep interest, aside from the somber devotional exercises which had convoked this immense multitude.
On Easter-Sunday hundreds of shops were still open in the narrower and poorer streets of Rome. The day was perfect. The sun shone from a cloudless sky—just warm enough to be pleasant. We drove to St. Peter’s at 9.30A. M., and found everybody going in the same direction. But, although people had been streaming into the church for an hour before we arrived, the number on the floorwas hardly noticeable. The magnificent pictures were again revealed in all the undimmed freshness of their original tints. The lights which circle St. Peter’s tomb were once more burning. Red cloths had been hung over some of the marble pillars. The church was thus made as bright and beautiful as possible, but to me it seemed scarcely more so than on Good-Friday. On this joyous occasion the English cardinal, Howard—a thick-set man, with a large head and a deep, sonorous voice—conducted the services. These took place almost directly beneath the dome, and were heard and witnessed by a great congregation. The singing by the choir was very fine—the boys’ and men’s voices mingling with exquisite effect. The chanting of the priests was less pleasing to the musical ear. While these exercises were progressing under the dome, priests were celebrating masses in many of the side-chapels, which were also partly filled with worshipers. At the boxes, which serve as confessionals, were fathers, who touched the kneeling faithful with long wands. As for the bronze image of St. Peter, there was a constant succession of persons, of all ages and stations in life, who kissed his foot in passing, carefully wiping the well-worn spot before applying their lips to the cold metal.
Interesting as was the occasion, it was tamecompared with the ceremonies observed by the Popes before the patrimony of Peter passed under the control of the King of Italy. In the old days the Holy Father read the mass in St. Peter’s on Easter-Sunday, and was borne from the church in grand procession. At a later hour he appeared on theloggia, and gave his benediction “to the city and the world.” After dark there was a wonderful illumination of the dome. All these striking rites and customs are now things of the past. Pope Leo XIII was nowhere publicly visible during the joyous festival of 1886. He was seen only by a few of the strangers in Rome—themselves devout Catholics—who had previously obtained cards of admission to the private chapel where the Pope himself officiated, and they took the sacrament from his hands.
The most popular man in Italy is the King. No statesman shares with him the confidence and affection of the people. One day I noticed a stir in and about the great doorway of the Hôtel de Londres, where I was stopping. Heads were bared on all sides. Everybody in sight was bowing profoundly. In front of the hotel stood a common open carriage with two horses, simply caparisoned, and a driver in dark livery. A tall, handsome officer of high rank, splendidlyattired, sat on the left side of the vehicle. The rest of the seat was occupied by a stout, middle-aged man in citizen’s clothes. His cheek-bones were high, his lower jaw was massive, his mustache iron-gray, and, as he kept up a constant motion of doffing and replacing his hat, I remarked a broad forehead crowned with hair thick and bristling. He looked just enough like the portraits of Humbert the First to convince me that he was the King of Italy. And so it proved. He had called at the Hôtel de Londres to visit the Prussian Princess Marie, who had a suite of rooms at the house. This lady is the widow of the “Red Prince” Frederick Charles. She happened to be out at the time, and so the King did not alight, but drove away in his modest turn-out, receiving from all persons on the Piazza di Spagna the most respectful salutation. Drivers of carriages on hire, and even beggars at the street corners, were greeted by him as courteously as the Roman nobles who dashed past him in equipages far more showy than his own. The day previous to this visit he had made a return-call on Prince Fushimy of Japan at the same hotel. Though politeness costs nothing, it goes far to make King Humbert a great favorite with crowned heads as well as with the Italian people. That policy of Italy, which has made friends of every nation in Europe, is dictated by the King, andrepresents his considerate politeness and native shrewdness. The courage which he showed at Naples during the last cholera epidemic was only one of numerous instances proving his devotion to the welfare of his constitutional subjects. His queen—the “Pearl of Savoy”—is not less successful in winning hearts. She is a fine-looking blonde, an accomplished whip, the patroness of unnumbered charities, and as courteous as her lord.
Visiting the Pantheon, I saw, just as I did three years before, many people standing in front of the tomb of the late Victor Emanuel. They were mostly Italians, by whom the memory of the man who made their country one is almost worshiped. Hundreds of wreaths of immortelles and other flowers are hung around and above the tomb. These come from all the secular universities, academies, and public institutions of Italy, and also from private hands. They are renewed from time to time, and look beautifully fresh. Long streamers of silk or satin attached to the floral offerings bear inscriptions eulogistic ofIl Rè Galantuomo. In a large book which lies open, visitors voluntarily enter their names. Hundreds of thousands have thus been registered since the mortal remains of Victor Emanuel were here inshrined. There could be no grander mausoleum than the Pantheon.It is the best preserved of all the great edifices of ancient Rome—identified with the mightiest power of the old world, and with the rise and progress of Christianity. No longer a pagan temple, but a Christian church, it is the proper resting-place of the unifier of Italy. Although the relations between the Quirinal and the Vatican have been much strained ever since the Pope lost his temporal sovereignty, it is not impossible that, some day, the Roman Catholic Church will be proud that she holds within her consecrated Pantheon the ashes of the king who was still her son. At the Pantheon, as at St. Peter’s, I am always struck with the magnificent effect of the admission of pure sunlight, free from the intervention of stained glass. The sole illumination of the Pantheon, you know, comes from a great circular hole in the dome. It admits the rain, which leaves a round wet place on the stone floor beneath. But there is still ample room for the free movement of the crowds that come and go, without dampening their feet. Majestic as is the dome that rises in its perfect curve to a height of 140 feet above the floor, it impresses the beholder even less than the sight of the distant blue concave which he sees through that immense opening. As for the details of the interior, they appear in the flood of daylight in all their richness and variety of color. It by no means follows that a“religious light” should be “dim.” St. Peter’s and the Pantheon triumphantly refute that too prevalent notion.
None of my guide-books—even the most recent in date—give any description of some remarkable and interesting statues and pedestals which have been brought to light within a year. The images are life-sized sculptures of what might be called “lady superiors” of the Vestal Virgins. No one of whom I inquired could tell me where they were; but I found them for myself in an open excavated space not far from the Forum Romanum. Two or three of the statues are almost perfect. They are marble, exquisitely chiseled, and are doubtless good resemblances of the distinguished originals. Though vestal virgins, they have a matronly look. They were evidently women of intellectual ability, as also of high social rank. They seem born to command. Their main attire was the full, graceful robe universally worn in their day. Five or six thick fillets bound about their foreheads, covering also part of their hair, reminded me of a badge almost similar, worn by nuns of various orders in the Roman Catholic Church. But, though their dress was all simplicity and modesty, their bearing was anything but humble. The whole expression of face and form was one of intense self-satisfactionand pride. The pedestals to which these statues once belonged have been mostly recovered in fine condition. They bear warm tributes to the many virtues of the illustrious ladies whom they commemorate. And yet history tells us that the vestal virgins had seats of honor near the Cæsars in the Colosseum, and without pity saw Christians devoured in the arena by wild beasts, and that no spectators were more heartless than they when the fallen gladiators looked up to their boxes for the signal of mercy which should have saved them from the victor’s sword!
At least once a year that dreadful old ruin—the Colosseum—is the scene of a ghastly and weird illumination. The exhibition came off on the night of the 24th of April, between ten o’clock and midnight. The interior of the stupendous structure was packed with human beings who waited for a long time with much impatience for the show to begin. Suddenly brilliant lights—many electric and others calcium—flashed out from the lofty tiers of the amphitheatre, while a belt of fire girded the top wall. The effect was startling. Every stone and brick in the huge pile was instantaneously revealed, photographing itself in imperishable lines on the brain of the beholder. The feeling excited was akin to terror. The faces of allthose men and women looked pale, as they were upturned to the heights where thousands of brutal Romans had so often sat and feasted on scenes of torture and butchery. To behold the Colosseum by moonlight is something never to be forgotten, as the partial shadows lend themselves to the conjuration of specters from the dark passage-ways which one sees all around him. But the illumination of which I write is still more impressive, when red and green lights are alternately used. These are somehow infernal in their suggestiveness. When to their peculiar effects you add the hoarse cries of great companies of rooks aroused from their repose in the crevices of the topmost tiers—and circling wildly through the air overhead—you have something very much like a pandemonium, which is repeated in a nightmare when you return home to sleep.
One does not often have the chance of being uncivil to a king. But it was my misfortune on one occasion to be, or to seem, downright rude to Humbert the First.
We were taking a carriage-ride in the Villa Borghese. The sun glared intensely. The broad drives in the grounds had not been sprinkled, and the dust rose in clouds under the few wheels that stirred it up. My eyes were sheltered with blue glasses, and a light umbrella held against the sun cut into the view very seriously. The coachman, after the manner of his race, had been pointing out objects of interest with which we were already perfectly familiar, clothing his superfluous information in a Tuscanpatois. We paid no attention to the numerous remarks delivered at us over his left shoulder, as our exhaustive study of the Villa Borghese on previous visits had qualified us as first-class guides to the place. Therefore, when he said something that sounded like “Eel R-ray” (Il Rè), Idid not associate the words with the instant approach of the King of Italy.
A moment later a two-horse carriage dashed past us. The horses were black and beautiful, throwing out their fore-legs with a free and splendid action. A gentleman (whom I should not have failed to recognize, but for my blue glasses and the whirl of dust) sat bolt upright on the front seat, guiding his spirited team with a firm hand. The seat behind was occupied by a servant in quiet livery. The equipage came and went like a flash; but, quick as it was, the accomplished driver had time to take off his hat at us, moving it through an arc of about two feet, and replace it. Before I could answer this remarkably courteous salute from an entire stranger, he was off. Meantime coachee had, in his humble way, atoned for my short-coming. He had lifted his hat and bowed profoundly. When all was over, he turned clear round and said again (this time almost reproachfully), “Eel R-ray, signor.” Then I knew that I had cut a king, and that our driver, who had observed my discourtesy with a side eye, was, in effect, chiding me for it.
The good fellow saw that I was flustered by this unpleasant incident; for I really burned with shame to think that I should be guilty of rudeness to the politest of kings in his own capital. So hehastened to explain to me, as nearly as I could make out from his provincial Italian, that the King would be sure to pass us again in a few minutes. For you see the Villa Borghese is not very large, and carriages keep circling about and returning on their tracks. Well, this time I determined to be ahead of the King, and doff my hat first, through as ample a curve as my arm would allow. I shut up the umbrella and pocketed the blue glasses, that nothing might impede the grace of the atoning action. Sure enough, just as we turned the end of a long oval, there was the King bearing down on us again.
Looking at him over my box-seat, I identified him easily by the front view. In all Italy there is no second pair of mustaches like his; they curl like rams’ horns, and are almost as thick. His horses were trotting a two-and-a-half-minute gait, and his piercing black eyes sparkled with pleasure as he watched them. A second more, and he was on our port-bow, as sailors would say. Then was my time. Having the brim of my Derby well in hand, I made a tremendous flourish with it at His Majesty. If gestures convey ideas, then he must have seen that I meant to pay the utmost respect to him as the democratic King of Italy. The monarch instinctively raised his hand to his hat as if to take it off; then, catching a clear sight of my face,he evidently remembered me as the ill-bred person whom he had met in his rounds five minutes before. His eyes were instantly averted. He did not remove his hat. This time the King of Italy had cut me, and had served me just right.
The most affable of coachmen then managed to explain that we should probably intersect the orbit of the King for the third time, if we kept on driving around the grounds. For my own part I had had about enough of it. The King and I were even. So, to avoid the embarrassment of a third meeting, I ordered the man to leave the Villa and go over to the Pincian Hill. He turned the horses for the purpose, but had not proceeded far before the well-known stiff figure and the flaring mustaches intercepted our retreat by dashing down a side-road out of a little piece of woods. I would have given something to avoid the encounter. But there was no escaping it. As the King drew into the main road, the salute I felt bound to make was an awkward one, and I was conscious of a slight tingling in the tips of my ears. His Majesty must have noticed my confusion, for there was an amused look in his eyes, and his mustaches were not thick enough to mask the slight upward curves at the corners of his mouth. And then, in the off-hand way which has made him so genuinely popular, he doffed his hat and returned my bow withaccrued interest. So happily ended my first exchange of civilities with a king.
A short ride transferred us from the Villa Borghese to the Pincian Hill. We reached the crest in time to hear the four-o’clock concert, performed before an attentive audience of a hundred persons in carriages and a thousand on foot. The selections were all from Italian composers, and probably known by heart by most of the people present, who stood or sat like statues as if entranced by the music. The band, which belongs to the finest regiment of the Roman garrison, played divinely. But all the charm of their performance could not keep my eyes and thoughts from the Eternal City basking in the warm sunshine below—a wide expanse of churches, palaces and ruins. Almost every church is crowned with a dome, and each of these huge bulbs, whose slates reflect the sun with a dull glow, looks like a feeble imitation of Michael Angelo’s great work. But not one of them detracts from the grandeur of St. Peter’s, which, from whatever point of view it is seen, dwarfs all the rest into insignificance. St. Angelo Castle—in shape a snuff box—the uplifted swell of the Pantheon, the Capitol, the Quirinal Palace, are easily identified through the haze which envelopes all. The blue Campagna is dimly seen in the distance. Through the foreground theyellow Tiber makes its serpentine curves, flashing like gold under the westering sun.
The next day we had the good fortune to meet the Queen while driving in the Villa Doria Pamphilj. That time royalty had no cause to complain. The most loyal of her subjects could not have outdone my obeisance, though it was rendered more to the beautiful woman than to the Queen. She did not descend upon us unawares, like the King the day before. We knew of her coming afar off, for she advertised her approach by the scarlet magnificence of her box-cloth and the blazing uniforms of her coachman and foot-guards. I saw this brilliant turn-out a quarter of a mile away, and, having kings on my mind just then, supposed that His Majesty was taking the air in state. I was relieved and pleased when our driver, pointing his whip at the flaming red spots in the distance, said, “La Regina!” Just at that point in the road stood a line of carriages drawn up in waiting to see the Queen pass. Some of them had been standing there a long time in expectation of the event, for it had become known that she would make the circuit of the Villa Doria Pamphilj that afternoon; and the best place of all to see her was that wide opening in the road, where our victoria had joined the many other carriages. The Queenpassed us all at the slowest of paces. Each person in the long line received an individual nod from her, given with exceeding dignity and grace. She is every inch a queen; and that is saying a great deal, for she is of the Junonian order, and her uncommon height is made symmetrical by a generous breadth of shoulders and a satisfying plenitude of bust. Her arms, as guessed at by the outlines of her tight sleeves, are strong and shapely. Her eyes are a deep blue, her hair is a light chestnut, her complexion her own pink and white. People who think of Italians only as swarthy in face, with hair and eyes of jet, do not know of what delicate beauty the race is capable when it strays into the blonde type. Queen Margherita is at the head of the fair branch of the great Italian family. She is the “Pearl of Savoy.” She was dressed with the severest simplicity. There was not a jewel visible, and one did not remember the colors she wore. Her own flower, the daisy, is not less ostentatious. But her native loveliness needs no ornamental setting. She reigns over men’s hearts by her birthright of beauty; and I can think of no better phrase to couple with this than the homely one that she is “just as good as she looks.”
My sanitary inspection of Naples was hasty, and did not prepare me to give the city a clean bill of health. The streets through which I passed were less dirty than those of New York. Except for certain foul smells on the waterfronts, there was nothing in Naples to alarm the stranger, ever sensitive on the subject of fever and cholera. The light-hearted Neapolitans laugh at the fears of Englishmen and Americans. They are now claiming great things for their city on the strength of their new and copious water-supply. Visitors, however, refuse to believe in its excellence as a beverage, and persist in drinking Apollinaris, Victoria, St. Galmier, Source Badoit, and some other natural or doctored water. It is not for the interest of hotel-keepers to decry those bottled waters, from the sale of which they make large profits. But the landlord of the “Nobile” assured me that none of them can possibly be purer and healthier than the fluid which sparklesuntouched in thecaraffeson his tables. The water is freely used for sprinkling the streets and sluicing the gutters. The fountains of New York are dried up and mute; but those of Naples play at certain hours of the day, if not from morning to night. They remind us of the abundant jets and cascades which we had, with so much regret, left behind us at Rome. Though the weather in early May is extremely pleasant, and the heat just right for out-of-door exercise, the sun glares at times with Italian fierceness. Then it is refreshing to see the fountains glittering aloft, and to hear the musical splash of their waters in deep marble basins.
The radical improvements which are expected to render Naples one of the healthiest cities of Europe have yet to be made. But they are all planned, and the work has begun on some of them. They include a complete system of sewerage and the construction of long, wide streets through those populous quarters where the sun and fresh air never come now. It was in this swarming, dark, and unventilated district that the cholera did its worst. Toward these great works the Italian Government has contributed ten million dollars, and the city (and province) of Naples eight million more. It is by showing such interest in the fortunes of all her component parts, especially the large cities, that unified Italy deepens her holdupon the affections of her people all over the peninsula.
Snow on Vesuvius in May! The weather at Sorrento flies in the face of all the authorities. We have been warned a hundred times not to visit Southern Italy during the “hot month” of May. At the Hôtel Tramontano we burned little sticks of wood at the rate of a quarter of a cord a day in the vain effort to keep our sitting-room comfortable. Our English friends have misled us in the kindest manner possible. They call the weather warm at 60° Fahr., and hot at 70°. Americans, accustomed to broiling summers at home, find this climate barely genial at the very time when Englishmen are roasted out of it. Therefore, I say, put no faith in their statements where temperature is concerned. Men who never wear overcoats, and who walk twenty miles before breakfast, are no guides for people less hardened. With the exception of one day (strangely enough) in London, and another in Naples, we have not stopped at a hotel where a fire at night was not a necessity as well as an expensive luxury. Of course, the thickness of the walls is responsible for some of the coldness. At Naples I looked down from the balcony of my hotel and watched some masons at work just across the narrow street. They were layingoutside walls three feet thick, and walls of two feet between the rooms. The rising structure seemed to be a jail or a bank. I inquired, and found it was designed for an elegant private residence. Yet, for the exclusion of heat, it might as well be a prison, and would look like one, if the walls were not papered and frescoed.
Vesuvius is an ever-fascinating subject of study. I observe it fifty times a day with undiminished interest. The changed position of the sun and every passing cloud, and especially the shifting directions and forms of the “smoke,” make a new picture of the mountain every time. The natives for twenty miles around look upon Vesuvius at once as a barometer and a weather-vane. When the vapor—for such it is for the most part—drifts, they know from what quarter the wind is blowing. The capricious shapes it suddenly assumes at times foretell them of coming storms or calms. I am not yet deep in this lore. But, all the same, it is a pleasure to note the protean changes of the escaping steam. Sometimes it goes straight up to the sky in a long, slender shaft, and at the extreme height opens out like a palm-tree. Then, again, it looks like a mushroom, with a thick stem and a “chunky” top. Often it streams out horizontally at great length, like the smoke of a steamer at sea. When the wind is out of the north or east,accompanied by a slight rain, then I notice that the vapor rolls down the mountain like its own lava. At other times Vesuvius makes a huge white cap or turban for itself—the vapor settling down on the peak and remaining stationary. Frequently this enlarges into a shroud and gradually covers the volcano from head to foot. At night, when the sky is clear, there is only one thing to be seen on Vesuvius—that is the dull-red light which crowns its dark outlines. While under my observation it was in a state of unusual activity. It “worked,” as the phrase is.
One morning “Old Vesuve” (for so one finds himself calling the volcano after a short acquaintance) indicated a change of wind from the northeast to the southwest. This favored an expedition to the famous Blue Grotto of Capri, which can not be entered when the wind is driving the water against and into the narrow opening through which the little boats must pass. I made the trip from Sorrento to Capri by steamer, and was then transferred to a frail-looking but stanch canoe, most skillfully handled. The waves were pretty high—the effect of a storm which had lasted two days. As we neared the portal of the grotto, it seemed impossible to shoot through it, for it is not more than three feet high and three wide, and the waterwas constantly rushing in and out of it with a deafening roar and showers of spray. At times more than half of the opening was filled with the current, which threatened to dash the fragile bark into splinters and drown the passengers. The boatman himself hesitated. The conditions were much worse than those he usually overcame with ease. But he watched his chances, and, seizing a moment when the current was setting outward, he caught hold of a jutting point of rock, and, by a sudden jerk, swung us in. I had been lying flat in the boat, drenched with spray. Responding to his call, I sat up and looked around.
My first feeling was of disappointment. The grotto is not blue. The wonderful color, of which one hears so much, is in the water. The vault rises to a graceful arch in the center and covers a space—irregular in shape—equal, perhaps, to 125 feet square. Its point of greatest height is thirty or forty feet above the water. The stone is of a dirty white, and the faint reflection of light from its concave surface doubtless has something to do with the production of the phenomenon which gives the grotto its name. The water of the Mediterranean is beautiful under all conditions. One need not penetrate grottoes in order to admire its tints, ever varying on a background of blue. But here the relations of the water to the light of day areunique. I tried to study the thing in cold blood, and these are my conclusions about it: Some of the diffused daylight enters the cave through the only opening above the water-line. This light irradiates the water to a certain depth, and causes the white roof to be reflected in it. A great deal of light also enters beneath the surface of the water, through the opening which descends to the floor of the grotto. This floor also seems to be white (as observed by me) at its depth of (say) fifty feet. It therefore sends back the reflection which the water has already received from the limestone roof. This double effect gives a brilliant silver tone to the inclosed mass of blue water. One hunts in vain for some comparison to convey a clear idea of the unearthly beauty of the spectacle. Sky-blue satin with the sun shining on it would resemble the surface of the water as I saw it. But that simile fails to describe the extraordinary effects of the Blue Grotto. These are mainly derived from the depths, and are best compared to the sheen of silver and blue which are noticed in the heart of a sapphire held up against the sunlight.
I was rudely aroused from these cogitations by a boat bumping against mine. A man in it apologized, and thrust a card into my hand. Inspecting it by the faint light, I saw that it was themenuof adéjeûnerwhich would be held hot in waiting for all comers on the arrival of the steamer at theMarina Grande, or chief landing-place of the island, farther on. Feeling hungry, I ordered my boatman to return to the ship. The exit was easily made. As soon as all the visitors to the grotto were safely on board, we proceeded to our other destination. The business energy of the man who chose so strange a place to advertise histable d’hôtebreakfast was not without reward. I patronized his hotel. His quail was nice, as it ought to have been, for the island is celebrated for the abundance and succulence of that bird. But that which he served as the wine of Capri would in New York be called water with a dash of vinegar. There are some ruins of a villa of Tiberius, which may be seen, per donkey, at the top of a high hill. But one ruin more or less is nothing in this land of wrecked greatness. So I contented myself with my Blue Grotto, and, when the steamer whistled for her truant passengers, bade a good-by to Capri.
It is interesting to watch the fishermen at work just underneath my windows. The Hôtel Tramontano stands 150 feet above the sea, on a rock that is lapped by its waves. The nets have been set the night before, and at daybreak the racket begins. Men in boats go out to regulate mattersand take the fish from the meshes. There is a crowd of people on shore hauling at the ropes and slowly dragging the nets and their prey out of the depths. They are mostly women, with bare legs and arms, as strong-looking as the men. They pull in unison, slowly and carefully. Presently they cease, in compliance with orders screamed to them from the captains of the boats. Then, from my height, I see one net raised to the surface with extreme caution. The harvest is about to be gathered in. The men out there tug at the seine as if it were heavy. They soon have it well in hand. Their joyous shouts tell the anxious women on shore that the catch is a good one. They lift the net now with the greatest possible care, and I begin to see its silvery contents. The fish, which almost cover its exposed surface, shine like new standard dollars. The men shake and strip them off, and they fall a glittering heap into the bottom of the boat. I should say there were bushels of them, and rejoice that the brave fishermen and their wives will have something to eat and much to spare for the market. In size and taste these smelts are exactly like those we eat in America. I shall relish them a little more at the table to-night after having “assisted,” as a Frenchman would say, in the operation of catching them.
I wonder how much of the sub-Treasury building in Wall Street will still be standing in the year 4372? This question occurred to me very forcibly as I gazed on the majestic ruins of the Greek temples at Pæstum. These are supposed to date back to about 600B. C.They are all in the same general state of decay as the Parthenon at Athens, which they much resemble. The largest and best preserved is the Temple of Neptune, which vividly recalls, by its dimensions and form, the Wall Street temple of quite another kind. The original thirty-six Doric columns, each about eight feet in diameter, are yet proudly erect, and, at a little distance, seem in perfect condition. Only when one comes near to them does he discover how the tooth of Time has gnawed into and marred their exquisite shape. The outline of the eastern front is yet so complete that it could be “restored” by the addition of a few great stones. Long rows of other fluted columns, not far off, are the remains of a structure to which the name Basilica is given for want of a better. A third ruin still farther away is called the Temple of Ceres, or of Vesta, just as one pleases. Thus uncertain is the most accurate knowledge we now possess about Poseidonia, which the Greeks dedicated to Neptune, on a lovely site near the Mediterranean, twenty-five centuries ago. It must have been a large andimportant settlement in their day. But, in the present year of grace, not a single stone or trace of any edifice (of the old Greek town) can be found, except of the three I have named, the massive construction of which has alone saved any part of them to astonish and delight the modern world with their noble and beautiful proportions. Bits of Roman antiquities lie around, but these are so very new in comparison with the glorious Greek fragments that one regards them without interest. Formerly a trip to Pæstum was attended with danger from brigands. Now your sole risk is malaria of the worst type. I am happy to inform any Americans who may desire to see the treasures of Pæstum that they may now be spared a long and fatiguing ride through a flat and monotonous country. A railway has been completed from Battipaglia to Pæstum, linking it directly and easily with Naples, Salerno, and La Cava. We made our journey from the latter point, starting about 10 A. M., spending two hours among the ruins, and getting back a little after six—a great improvement on any possible way of “doing” Pæstum before the rails were laid. But quinine is still as indispensable to the cautious visitor now as a pistol was thirty years ago.
It seems odd to speak of a dead city as a growing one. But that is exactly the case with Pompeii. There are many cities in Italy that do not grow half as fast as the one buried by the ashes of Vesuvius eighteen hundred years ago. A person visiting it at intervals of a year notices a marked enlargement of its boundaries. The Italians are the champion diggers. They make the shovel fly when they attack the grave of Pompeii. We saw a gang of them at work there. A government overseer watched them like a hawk. He wanted to be sure that they pocketed no jewelry, coins, or objects of art or utility yielded by the excavations. The only produce of their toil in that line, as we stood by, was a bit of iron, which the guide called a hinge, and the fragment of a small marble column. The spades, busily plied, were gradually bringing to light a beautiful house. The floorswere mosaic, with simple but graceful designs in scroll-pattern—nearly as fresh of color as if laid yesterday. The walls bore frescoes of fainter tints—grinning masks, fauns, Cupids, birds, fish, and fruit. It had evidently been the home of a well-to-do citizen of Pompeii. The nervous movements of the workmen betrayed their anxiety. They were hoping at every moment to make a valuable “find.” Perhaps they might hit upon a great iron chest—studded with round knobs like a boiler—and full of gold, money, or ornaments; or they might strike another wonder in marble or bronze; or they might be startled by coming suddenly upon a skull or other human remains. In the latter event the work is suspended till a careful inspection is made. The responsible and intelligent person in charge proceeds to ascertain if the dead Pompeiian has left a mold of himself or herself in the plastic ashes. If so, he prepares a mixture of plaster-of-Paris, breaks a hole in the crust and slowly pours in the liquid till the mold is full. When it has hardened, the casting is tenderly removed. Lo! there is a rough image, showing some poor creature in the agonies of death, prone on the floor, face downward.
Thus, most usually, were the inhabitants of the doomed city caught by the destroying angel. The skull, or leg, or arm, or whatever other part of the skeleton has not relapsed into its original dust, mayattach itself to the plaster cast in the proper place, or may require to be joined on by a pardonable “restoration.” In either case the effect is thrilling in its horrible reality. Nothing in painting or sculpture can shock the beholder more than these self-produced and truthful statues exhibited in the museum, which is the first and most interesting thing shown to visitors. But, though neither gold nor silver, nor the minutest scrap of a skeleton, nor anything else of importance was unearthed for my benefit, I quitted the new excavations with reluctance to examine those parts of Pompeii with which the world is already familiar through the medium of books and pictures. I found myself quite at home in the bakery, the wine-shop, at the oil-merchant’s, at the houses of Pansa, of Sallust, of the “tragic poet,” and the rest. The high stepping-stones across the streets looked familiar, as if I had trodden them before. The deep ruts cut by the carts as they groaned up the hill, coming from ancient Stabia, were like friendly landmarks. So fully have literature and art made us acquainted with this disinterred city.
The guide tells me that only about one third of Pompeii has yet been uncovered. I take his word for it. He is also of the opinion that the best parts of the city have already been dug out. He evidently wishes that the work would stop. He isvery human in this, for he finds it tiresome to show people about the present Pompeii. Treble its size, and his labor would be threefold. And he is forbidden to accept money. But I imagine that this very stern prohibition does not prevent some persons from offering him quantities, quite privately, or him from accepting them. It may be true, as our guide insists, that the temples, forums, baths, theatres, and fine houses now above-ground surpass anything of the kind that may hereafter be discovered at Pompeii. But the Italian Government is not disposed to take that for granted. Liberal sums are yearly appropriated to push on the work. It bears fruits. A new temple or amphitheatre may not be struck every year, but something is constantly being turned up to instruct the world in the manners and customs of the old Romans, so well reflected in the representative city of Pompeii. Of bronze or stone statues, household implements, and tools of trades, the yield is immense and steady. These may be counted by the thousand in the splendid museum at Naples. One can see so many articles of luxury and use exactly similar to those he buys nowadays, that he is fain to pause and try to remember what besides the steam-engine, the photograph, and the electric telegraph, we moderns have invented. There being no more room at Naples to store these treasures,the excess of them is huddled together in the courtyards and houses of Pompeii herself. It is estimated that, at the present rate, this mine of antiquities will not be worked out in fifty years.
Vesuvius is the most deceptive of mountains. We know how treacherous and cruel he is. But as we see him gently smoking, in the haze of this soft, enervating atmosphere, we think him very much maligned. The chimney of a well-regulated house could not be steadier of behavior. His sides look sleek in the distance. One would never suspect that all that brown softness is lava, fifty feet deep, and covering thousands of acres. When I ascended the volcano, I realized how illusory are impressions when formed afar off. After traversing Portici and Resina (old Herculaneum), the carriage climbed a steep slope between country villas with “plenty of fruit and shade,” as the advertisement of a country-house to let would say. Presently a sharp turn in the road brought me face to face with the head of a lava-stream which had been mercifully stayed at that point years ago. The road had been cut through it, showing its depth, and that was enough to have buried in its path any of the villas I had seen below. From this point on to the station of the Funicular Railway the road for the most part passes between gray-black walls of lava, the tops ofwhich are curled like waves or twisted into capricious spiral forms, and then forever stilled. Not a flower or blade of grass grows there, except in crevices where dust may have fallen and the wind has scattered seeds.
The desolation, mile after mile, is oppressive to behold. One seeks relief by looking back over the blue Mediterranean and the reddish-white cities of the plain. Or else he looks ahead and up to Vesuvius, whose terrible majesty now begins to appear. I now see that where the sea of lava ends the ashes begin. The vapor, which seemed to curl so peacefully and thinly, from the standpoint of Naples, is mounting to the sky in a great volume, and whirling as if in a cyclone. One imagines a roar as that hot steam rushes from the crater. He sees specks tossed into the air. These are stones flung aloft two hundred to three hundred feet, and dropped back into the yawning pit to be presently ejected again. He has been told that Vesuvius is a little more active than usual. He can now readily understand of what frightful deeds the volcano is capable when in the maddest humor. Not only all the little cities near his base, which have been rebuilt in the childlike faith that they will never again be destroyed, but proud Naples, which has so far been spared, are at his mercy.
After I had ascended by railway to a nearerview of the monster, and completed my acquaintance with him as far as it was safe, familiarity did not lessen my respect for his power. It seemed impudently inquisitive for a party of tiny mortals to be throwing stones into his enormous mouth, poking canes into his ribs and stirring up the red fire there, and laughing as the dense, sulphurous fumes rose in our faces. The guides roasted eggs for us, and we ate them with a pinch of salt, chucking the shells into the crater, which answered back with a shower of red-hot stones. These luckily missed their mark. I incline to think that some of the fun made by our company of visitors was like whistling to keep up one’s courage; for I noticed that the noisiest of them clung hard to the guides and gave a wide berth to the crater’s edge, and looked most pleased when the signal was given to return. Just as we started on the downward path, Vesuvius made a noise between a sob and a shriek, and belched forth a farewell volley of stones, which might have spoiled some hats, and even heads, if they had been shot accurately.
For the information of those who have never ascended Vesuvius but hope to do so some day, I add that the trip by carriage from Naples is three and one-half hours long to the foot of the Funicular Railway. Thence to the upper station is a ride of twelve minutes, by a line muchresembling that of Mount Washington or the Righi, in ease and safety. From there to the top of the crater is a steep climb of fifteen or twenty-five minutes, according to the age and wind of the climber. Persons with weak lungs or shaky legs, or in any respect infirm, should not attempt the latter feat. For them is provided thechaise-porte. Two strong young fellows carry this like a bier—their customer sitting composedly (unless he or she is badly scared) in the chair which is swung in the middle of two long poles. The bearers are like goats in sure-footedness, strength, and agility. It is wonderful to see them pick their way among the huge, jagged pieces of smoking lava and up the steep slope of hot ashes, ankle-deep, without slipping. In an hour one may do reasonable justice to the cone and crater, and in two hours and a half more be back in Naples.
On my way down the mountain I profited by a little spare time to do what most tourists omit: I visited the observatory. This building is securely placed on a spur of Vesuvius where the lava-wave parts in its destructive course. Here dwell day and night, all the year round, an accomplished scientist and an able staff, whose duty it is to note all the phenomena of eruptions and earthquakes. In reality most of the work is done for them by instruments of almost inconceivabledelicacy and precision, and they have only to keep these in perfect order. This exquisite automatic apparatus reports everything the world wants to know about earthquakes except their cause. They give the direction of the movement, its speed and intensity and duration. Though the man who climbs to the crater does not observe the faintest throb beneath his feet when the volcano is most active, there is a little tell-tale machine down in the observatory which vibrates passionately at that precise moment. It is not at rest five minutes together during the whole day. If the motion of the trembling is horizontal, then a hollow brass ball swings toward the north, south, east, and west, as the case may be. This indicates unerringly the direction of the earthquake-wave. If the motion is vertical, then a spiral coil of fine wire visibly shortens and springs back again. Every discharge of stones from the crater above causes an extraordinary agitation of the wire. You see the shower and the sympathetic action of this sensitive coil at the same instant. The director invites you to dance a jig on the floor, within a foot of the wire, to show that its movements correspond only to actual tremblings of old Mother Earth. You do so, jumping as high as you can. But the apparatus makes no sign. The heavy rumbling of a wagon in the road outside does not disturb it.The “seismograph,” as it is called, does only the work for which it was designed. The director, however, was good enough to switch off its connection from the bowels of the earth to my pulse. No doctor with hand on wrist could have counted the beats more accurately. They were more regular than those of Vesuvius, if not quite as fierce. Out of the millions of observations taken here in the course of years, it is hoped that some time an exact science of earthquakes may be constructed, with possible usefulness to mankind. For three or four days before the appalling calamity in Ischia (just off this coast) in 1883, all the apparatus of the observatory was greatly excited. Something frightful was brewing. That was evident to the watchers up there. The world knows the result. If it could have been foretold in time to save hundreds of lives on that unhappy island, that would indeed have been a triumph of science.
At the center of the old volcanic district west of Naples is the great crater of Solfatara, not yet quite extinct. Eight centuries ago it was active and destructive; now it is full of stunted bushes and tall grass. The sulphurous vapor rising from a hole about three feet in diameter, on one side of the vast bowl, shows that a fire still burns in its bosom. One can not see the red-hot lava in the crevices, as on Vesuvius. But if the handis held in the ascending steam for a moment, a scalding heat is felt. The guide who conducted me about the crater actually crawled into this hole at a point where it could be entered horizontally. To escape suffocation he covered his mouth with his hand and kept close to the ground. After about a minute of anxiety on my part, he returned with fine specimens of sulphuric deposits exactly like those I had seen fringing some of the chinks in the burning flank of Vesuvius. The offensive smell and acrid taste of the vapor which poured forth incessantly from this subterranean passage were the same that make an ascent of the Vesuvian cone so trying to many persons. The guide assured me that the connection between Solfatara and the great volcano on the Bay of Naples was intimate and instant. Whenever Vesuvius is inactive, Solfatara “works” quite fiercely. Whenever Vesuvius is very active, Solfatara is disappointing. It would seem from this statement that, though the mountains are miles apart, they both communicate with a common reservoir of molten matter.
There is no certainty that Solfatara will not break out again. There have been periods of centuries between the eruptions of Vesuvius; and it is a recorded fact that at times its crater has been lined inside with foliage, so reduced was itscapacity for mischief. As there is no present prospect that tourists can descend in safety to the floor of its crater and study minutely the phenomena which can not be fairly seen from the rim, they should not fail to visit Solfatara. They will not burn the soles of their boots, and yet they can, if they please, roast eggs by digging down about a foot in places indicated by the guide. They can realize the thinness of the crust over which they walk by raising a large stone and throwing it down violently. The ground gives back a hollow sound. It is true that Solfatara does not eject red-hot stones, even the smallest. But that is a point in its favor, enabling the visitor to look on with a sense of perfect safety. There is but one Vesuvius. No other volcano is as accessible, or offers as many advantages for all kinds of observations. But if one is at Naples, and does not care to incur the fatigue or other discomforts of an ascent of Vesuvius, Solfatara is a good substitute excursion and is hereby recommended; and, as something supplementary to the greater event, it is also of much interest.
If, by a stroke of this pen, I could banish every beggar from Italy, I should hesitate to do so. They may deserve the punishment. But they are amusing rascals. Life here would be duller without them. The other day when a span of tired horses were dragging me up Vesuvius, three men sprang out of the ground in front of the carriage. I do not know how else to explain their sudden appearance. They were beggars of the musical variety. One carried a fiddle, the second a mandolin, the third a guitar. Bowing to me, they formed a line on my right and marched up the mountain, Indian file, playing as they went. I was just then trying to realize in imagination the terrible splendor of the eruption that had caused the flow of lava fifty feet deep, through which the carriage-road was cut. These threefellows with their lively Neapolitan airs disturbed me greatly. But the absurdity of the situation soon overcame my resentment. I laughed heartily and permitted them to escort me about a mile before dismissing them with a few soldi. We parted friends, and they proceeded to levy tribute on the carriage behind me. It takes philosophy to extract amusement out of these seeming pests. But happy is the man who can do it, for Southern Italy swarms with them.
At Baiæ where we were taking a bad lunch at a wretched little inn, four women entered the room, and, without asking our leave, began to dance the tarantella. They were probably the wife of the landlord and three servants. Their dancing was a fitting accompaniment to the lunch they had provided for us. One of the women strummed a tambourine as big as an old-fashioned kitchen sieve. This supplied the only music, except that the other three kept time with castanets. They made a horrible din, and, being ill-favored and shabbily dressed, were anything but pleasant companions, as they flirted their skirts almost in our faces. But after a few minutes we found them with all their faults more interesting than the lunch, and made them a present altogether too large for their deserts. This was a serious mistake, for they all rushed off and speedily returned, with bouquets,coral jewelry, and antiquities that must have been at least forty-eight hours old. All these they wanted us to buy at exorbitant prices. Our refusal to do so angered the whole party. This, of course, put an end to the fun. So I settled the tavern score hastily and we returned to Naples. But the incident, unsatisfactorily as it terminated, remains to-day the pleasantest memory of a visit to ruins that were not worth seeing.
On my visit to the Blue Grotto at Capri, it required the utmost obstinancy to refuse the demand of my boatman for a two-franc piece. He wanted me to throw it into the water, and see him dive and bring it up from the bottom. If I had accepted his offer, he would have whisked off his coat and shirt (if he had one), and gone down fifty feet for the piece, and recovered it for himself without fail. But I was anxious to get back to the steamer which was waiting for us, and resolutely declined to be amused at that price. At Sorrento, the hotel guests standing out on the balconies overlooking the sea were constantly importuned for “pennies” by boys in the boats below. When the money was thrown down, the little fellows would watch its course through the air, and, the moment it struck the water, they would dive into the pellucid depths and in a flash reappear with it, holding it aloft between thumband finger. These are but a few out of the hundred methods in which money is extracted from you, under the pretense of some service rendered or amusement supplied. And still I say that it pays to humor all these people to a moderate extent. And, furthermore, I would not refuse a very modest coin to the ragged but picturesque creature who stands at every church-door and lies in wait for me at every bit of rising ground. He does not pretend to give any equivalent for the money received. He is a beggar pure and simple. He has been begging for thirty, forty, or fifty years. In all that time he imagines that he has acquired “rights,” and I confess I almost feel ashamed of myself when I drop my insignificant alms into his dirty hand.
“Shelley?” asked the man in charge of the Protestant Cemetery at Rome, when we appeared at the gate, one beautiful afternoon in May. It is the only English word except “Keats” that he can pronounce correctly. Three years before the same man put the same question to us. We again answered “Yes.” For, with many others of the English-speaking race, we took a sad pleasure in visiting the graves of those two most gifted and unhappy beings. Shelley’s heart alone rests in the cypress-shaded inclosure, which is now full ofgraves. The rest of his body, we remember, was reduced to ashes on a funeral-pyre, in the presence of Byron and some others, at that spot on the shore of Spezzia Bay where the drowned poet had been cast up by the waves. As this is an age of monuments to neglected genius, I was curious to see if anything had been done for Shelley by his ardent admirers since 1883. No! there is the old small stone flat on the earth, looking moldier than ever. The inscription “Cor Cordium” is filled in with dirt. A weed, looking like burdock, grows rankly about the grave. There is not a flower near it, unless one should count in a withered and blackened rose which some pitying soul had thrown down on the center of the dingy marble slab. This may have been lying there for two or three months. I dare say fragments of it will be found there a year hence, unless the wind blows them away. For it is evident that Shelley’s tombstone is never swept and cleaned except by the elements. Trelawney, the life-long friend and stanch defender of the poet, rests beside him. He died at the age of eighty-eight, and Shelley at thirty. In standing beside these two graves, equally destitute of human care, one pays a tribute to friendship as well as to genius.
Another old man—Severn—sleeps alongside of young Keats. Their graves, situated in a free andwind-swept place, outside of the stuffed cemetery, are well cared for. The same good people who put up the exquisite portrait of Keats inalto-rilievoagainst the wall of the portal and erected the tombstone in memory of Severn, doubtless provided for proper attention to the graves. The wall near by is thick with climbing roses. Daisies, buttercups, and some flowers not so familiar to us, star the lush grass on every side. A trim hedge incloses the two who, in death, as in life, were not divided. Keats sleeps under the shadow of a laurel-tree, which has grown much in the last three years, and still supplies leaves in abundance to be plucked and pressed as souvenirs. As we stood there and watched the sharp shadow of the venerable pyramid of Cestius slowly creeping toward us, the spell was broken by the harsh voice of a man at my elbow. “What a shame,” he said, “that such an epitaph should be allowed to stand above a grave!” I turned and saw an Englishman. He referred, of course, to the bitterness of the inscription, alluding to the savage criticisms which, doubtless, hastened the death of the consumptive, broken-hearted Keats. The Englishman thought it was high time to erase this memorial of a by-gone literary feud. “True,” I replied, “the epitaph does seem out of place now, when the position of Keats among the English immortals isassured. But, after all, should it not be kept there as a warning to future critics? It should teach them to be more tolerant of young authors, with their new and daring styles.” The other man could not accept that view of the case. I did not care to discuss it. So we touched hats and parted.
It is not easy to find out the exact sanitary value of the eucalyptus, or blue-gum tree. Americans who inhabit malarial districts, and are waiting for Italy to test the tree thoroughly before planting it in their own grounds, will be sorry to learn that a blight has fallen on a great many promising groves of the eucalyptus in this country. At most of the railway-stations in South Italy the trees are withered, if not yet dead. Their leaves are yellow and curled up, and have only a faint resinous smell. Many of the trees, whose leaves are still green and balmy, are stunted. They do not grow here with the rapidity and vigor of the eucalyptus in Australia. The trouble is less with the climate than the soil, for I observed at some stations every sign of health in some trees. A specimen would show robustness in every leaf, and fill the air with its peculiar odor, while another one not two hundred feet away would be drooping and scentless. In those few places where the tree hasdone justice to itself, as one may say, men speak well of it. They regard it as a preventive, to some extent, of malarial fever; they ought to know. The good fathers at the Abbey of Tre Fontaine, near Rome, have the highest opinion of the eucalyptus. It is an undoubted fact that the very free planting of the tree in and about the abbey-grounds has made them habitable. It takes kindly to that particular locality. The monks have mastered the art of raising it to perfection. They have a vast nursery where it is grown by the hundreds of thousands, and sold cheaply. The trees which I had noticed at so many railway-stations all came from Tre Fontaine. The monks make a handsome revenue out of this product. It would not be quite fair to say that their interests prejudice them in its favor, though one could hardly expect them to underrate something the cultivation of which is so gainful for them. To sum up the matter, according to my present light, I should say that where the eucalyptus can be made to thrive it is a check on malaria.
The old town, Perugia, is well worth visiting on many accounts. Traveling by rail from Rome to Florence, one sees large clusters of houses perched high on the hill-side. They are crowned with campaniles and domes, surrounded by highwalls, and provoke one’s curiosity to make their closer acquaintance. But on consulting his guide-book, the tourist finds that these elevated settlements contain few objects of interest, better examples of which can be found elsewhere. He also learns, which is as much to the purpose, that they have no good hotels. Now, Perugia is very old, very quaint, full of venerable historical associations, a center of Etruscan tombs, and other antiquities, seventeen hundred feet above the sea, and has a first-class hotel. This modern structure, the “Grand,” occupies the highest ground of the town, and commands a magnificent view of the Umbrian Valley. East, south, and west I survey all the details of a landscape of variety and beauty unsurpassed. It is intersected by the Tiber and some smaller rivers, which flash in the morning sun. Many villages are visible as brown patches, among them Assisi, famous as the birthplace of St. Francis. Mountains bound the view on all sides. Some of them are still tipped with snow, and their summits would easily be mistaken for clouds if these were not scurrying past in the south wind. As I write a haze is beginning to blot out the more distant villages. A heated term is threatening. But Americans are not to be frightened by that. Only I wish the roads were not so white and dusty.
This country is a vast cemetery. No one can say how many races were buried here before the Etruscans passed away in their turn and left the ground honey-combed with their tombs. When one sinks a well or digs a cellar for a house, he is apt to strike his spade against a rock, which gives back a hollow sound. It is the roof of an Etruscan burial-vault. From this subterranean chamber the air has been excluded for more than two thousand years. I am told that strange things are sometimes seen in the tombs at the moment when they are opened, and then vanish forever. They say that glimpses are caught of old Etruscan lords and ladies sitting at banquets, and that these disappear the instant the outer air touches them. When the finder proceeds to open and examine the tomb, he discovers nothing but a heap of dust in place of the vision that had startled him. These are obviously fables, for the most part. Though I believe it is true that an Etruscan knight, in full armor, collapsed to dusty nothingness in precisely this way when his tomb was invaded a few years ago. We have been to see the Sepulchre of the Volumnii, about five miles below Perugia, and found it and its contents very strange and interesting. It is supposed to date back to the third centuryB. C.A descent of some thirty steps leads down to it from the road-side. First, a chamber,about twenty-five feet square, is entered, and from this smaller apartments branch to right and left. The sepulchre is hewn out of the tufa-rock. It is very damp and cold. Heads of Medusa, dolphins, and serpents are carved with much skill on the top and sides of this tomb. All around stand small stone urns, each one bearing inalto-rilievothe representation of a fight. One man is always killing another, unless the scene is varied by the sacrifice of a bound and helpless woman or child on an altar. The covers of these urns are higher works of art. They are surmounted with recumbent figures of men and women. These are dressed in the costume of their age and sex, and each has in his or her hand a bowl for tears. Lifting off a cover, I find inside the urn about a hatful of ashes. I run my fingers through this mass and feel fragments of burned bones. But I am rudely stirring up all that remains of some gallant warrior or some haughty beauty, and withdraw my hand with a sense of remorse. A great many personal ornaments of exceeding richness and grace have been taken from these receptacles, and are separately exhibited by the custodian. But if one wishes to realize the full extent of the arts and sciences familiar to the old Etruscans, he should inspect the splendid collection in the University Museum at Perugia.