and through this passage the simoom reaches the Mediterranean; then, after pouring its hot breath on the Peninsula, it sweeps up the Rhone valley as through a tunnel, and spreads over Switzerland. It is the saving wind of the Suisse; for, without its gracious presence, the snows on the Alps would never melt, and the glaciers, constantly increasing, would in time invade the valleys, and make an ice kingdom as fearful as Dante's description of Lucifer's abode in the lowest depth of Hell,

'Where all the shades beneath the frozen tide

Transparent shone, like straws in crystal clear.'"

After this little episode on the scirocco's wanderings, its good and evil doings, we returned to the other children of the Titan who visit Naples. The notus, or mezzogiorno, south wind, first cousin to the scirocco, blows oftenest in autumn. It is gentle, but oppressive. The libeccio, or southwest wind, is stormy. The northwest, or maestro, is not a pleasant wind in Naples: its passage over the sea makes it damp. Our palazzo is so situated on the Mergellina that we shall not feel it, nor do those suffer who live near the Villa Reale; but around the Chiatamone this wind is very unpleasant, and causes such a lively effect on the skin and nerves as to prevent some persons from living there. It is a noisy, glacial, squally wind, which makes dolce Napoli as disagreeable as any common vulgar town"; in autumn and winter it visits this place about one day in four.

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The tramontana, or north wind, is cold, but dry and invigorating, and serves as an antidote to the scirocco (southeast) and mezzogiorno (south). But the most

pleasant wind in Naples is the west, or ponente. It is .the conciliatory one, for it softens the cold and tempers the hot blasts; under its sweet influences the Cantasto

rie, or street-singers, pour out their mediæval melodies, the women dance the Tarantella, and everything goes as merry as a marriage bell. It is blowing now, making the bright, sunshiny morning delicious; and Venitia is standing at my room window informing me of it, repeating at the same time snatches of Owen Meredith's "Seaside Song."

Now she walks away, paying the sweetest compliment to this young poet that he could receive, — reciting his beautiful poetry in the soft morning air, and she as lovely as the poetry. I wish she had a lover for whom she felt, as this song says, "this joy of life." She is walking with all the gentle dignity of a graceful young empress up and down the terrace; her step is queenly, and yet without any affectation of dignity or consciousness of its fine air; it is a simple, natural motion, resulting from her wellformed limbs and perfectly proportioned body. She is just pronouncing these words, with a sweet beat and rhythm as musical as her gait:

"For o'er faint tracks of fragrance wide

A rapture pouring up the tide, ·

A freshness through the heat, a sweet
Uncertain sound, like fairy feet, —

The west wind blows my love to me."

We spent a day at Capri last week, in company with the Rochesters and some other friends. On reaching the island, we visited first the far-famed Grotto Azzurra, or Blue Grotto, one of the old haunts of Roman luxury. Who does not remember Hans Christian Andersen's lovely story of the "Improvvisatore," with its Blue Grotto episode? Venitia, who had never read this book, sat up all the preceding night to finish it; but brows never ache, nor eyes grow heavy, at twenty, so she looked

nearly as fresh as usual, the next day at noon, when we entered the Grotto.

The opening of the cavern is so low and narrow that we had to lie flat in the boat to enter. It is to the form and peculiar position of this opening that some heliographers attribute the faëry-like atmosphere of the Grotto. They say the sea is deeply imbued with light at this entrance, and emits it at every flow inside the cavern. The best hour for seeing the cave is "at silent midday," "The hush of noontide quiet";

then the waters are sapphire-hued, the walls of the purest blue, - that India shade which the Chinese call "the blue of the heavens after a rain,” — and the ceiling is like the empyrean. It was at this hour we went, and seemed suddenly transported to a land of dreams.

We dipped our hands in the magic stream, and they became as alabaster, with a blue light playing through them. With these spectre-like fingers we dashed up the waters playfully; we seemed to be tossing up liquid gems, sapphires, and bluish pearls.

There was a sparkle on everything, as if a blue flame was lighting up and playing upon the glittering surface of crystal. The whole atmosphere seemed charged with blue, and the vaulted ceiling looked as if made of some azure-hued, transparent substance as clear as crystal, lighted by fire-rays from above, shining down on it.

After leaving the Grotto, we loitered up the steep walk to the hotel, stopping from time to time to enjoy the divine bits of landscape which came in at the spaces made by the lowering of vineyard walls. After luncheon, I did not accompany the rest of the party to Lo Capo, where are to be seen the remains of the famous twelve palaces of Tiberius. The noon-day visit to that enchanted Grotto,

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followed by the long walk, had caused total physical prostration; but the repose which I took while they were gone, and the full goblet of amber-hued, fragrant Capri wine,

“With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,”

which I drank, restored me so completely, that I was able to be up and walking on the terrace of the hotel, when they came back from their sight-seeing.

The party returned full of the subject of Tiberius and his history, each one with a learned speculation. As I sat listening to their various opinions, I remembered Jean Paul's words, "Sphinx-like Capri, lying on the broad plain of the Mediterranean, as a beautiful sphinx, forever offering up to man the solving of her Tiberius and Blue-Grotto riddles."

"It is a beautiful spot," said Mr. Rochester, leaning on the terrace-rail, and looking off into the distance. "From the heights of this island, on a clear day, can be taken in at one view the whole Italian coast, from the promontory of Circe to the temple of Pæstum. There, on one side, stretch out the Apennines, away back to the Lucanian Mountains, while Vesuvius stands fronting the eye, an ever-smoking altar. Here to the south lies the Mediterranean, and, with a little exertion of the imagination, one can almost see the fair coast of Sicily. I was reading yesterday a glowing description of Capri in Merivale's 'Rome.' He speaks of the island as fronting the Sorrentine promontory with bold beauty, advancing forward, as some lovely nymph proud of her charms."

I

"Yes," replied Janet, "I remember the passage. recalled it as I stood at Lo Capo, and the same associations he writes of came to my memory. On these exquisite heights the pedantic but scholarly Tiberius must

have thought over many a grand old heathen legend, as he gazed on the various points in the landscape which told of Circe and Ulysses, the old poem of the 'Odyssey,' and the new one of his uncle's laureate, Virgil, the 'Eneid,' which sang the works and exploits of his own fabled ancestor, Æneas. Recalling all these tales, he could well perplex his parasites with his favorite insoluble questions on the subjects of the sirens' songs and the name of Hecuba's mother."

so called from the

This beautiful island of Capri wild goats which inhabit it, capreæ -produces many excellent things. Its olives and white figs are far-famed; its wines, both red and white, are luscious, — the red smells and tastes of raspberries, but the white wine has the taste and aroma of violets, and is a drink fit for the gods and goddesses of Hellas. While talking of the productions of the island, Mr. Rochester observed,

"In our frigid climates we can form no conception of the delight of simple living and breathing in this part of Europe. The earth yields its fruits a hundred-fold: for example, there are three vintages a year, in December, March, and August; a very little suffices for existence, even for the poorest, and such an existence as cannot be found elsewhere."

"In our Northern countries," I said, "physical necessities being great, we have to throw out all our strength to meet them, and the superfluous force spends itself on those painful and fatiguing subjects, human liberty and human progress. Here the people trouble themselves little, and purchase pleasure, or rather accept it. What do they care for freedom and the march of mind? Happy souls they leave that illusion, that Sisyphus labor of life, eternal progress, to nations whose rugged, inhospitable soils force them to advance."