for the purpose of acquiring exact knowledge, nor do we show that systematic holding-on to subjects which you men display; for even in your leisure reading you always keep your spécialité in view."

"Few women have spécialités," I said. Reading, with us, is often a mere pursuit of food for our imaginations, which are ever rising hungry from the meagre meal that realities make of life's table; many times also it is, as I have heard Philip say cruelly, to soothe our everafflicted sensibilities."

"Then," asked Janet, "when clever women show that fierce book-hunger which they sometimes do, startling men with the quantity of books they are able to read, I suppose they are seizing on reading as a sort of mental or spiritual opium, to give them relief from thought and memory?"

"Exactly so," I answered; "and this reading very often excites the energies and rouses into action the creative powers. A lot of rubbish is gathered together by us, I admit; but in this rubbish are rough mineral stones, as it were, against whose iron of suggestion the flint of the feminine fancy strikes out a bright spark, which pleases even though it may not enlighten a great deal.”

"Realities make life's table meagre, do they, Ottilie?' asked Philip, in a gentle, kind tone. "But you are right," he continued, without waiting for an answer. "You women endure realities because you are instinctively – nay, divinely-patient; but you have no love or even respect for them. There is one thing, however, which puzzles me in women, — your prejudices and preferences color all things; hence your judgments ought to be imperfect, and yet they are not. Why is this, Mrs. Dale? I ask you instead of Ottilie, because I know her of old;

-

she never gives reasons for her opinions: it is always 'because,' nothing else."

"It arises from a mysterious power we possess, Mr. Edelhertz," answered Janet, "which eludes all analysis, and which has no name, unless we call it instinct, as Ottilie does; but that is too poor a name, to my thinking, for these divine

'Impulsions, God-supplied,'

which are the best gifts of women, and worth all your reason."

"I call it instinct," I said, "because instinct has a swifter flight than logical reflection. It is, in fact, a sort of unconscious inspiration."

"Call it, rather, genuine conscience," observed Luigi, "which, according to Goethe, 'knows only feeling and no logic, and goes straightforward to its object, which it tries lovingly to comprehend, and, when comprehended, never lets go again.' This agrees best, I fancy, with your views of your sex."

"Prends le premier conseil d'une femme, et non le second,' is a French proverb," remarked Philip: "Take the first advice of a woman, and not the second.' Trench, in his Lessons in Proverbs, agrees with you, Ottilie, and old Montaigne too. The English Dean calls it moral intuition, and the wise old Frenchman l'esprit primesautier, the reckless, unthinking leap which gains all or none at the first bound."

"Instinct, conscience, or intuition, whatever it may be called," said Janet, "we women certainly show great cleverness and quickness through its aid, that is, when we act on the first warm impulse; for the French proverb is few women have 'sober second thoughts.' We seem to be filled with those perceptions aveugles (blind perceptions), pensées sourdes (deaf thoughts), which Leib

true,

nitz speaks of, and compares beautifully to the thousand little noises produced by the shock of a wave on the seashore, and which compose, in their whole, the grand diapason of ocean melody."

"And this melody of the sea, too," I added, "is very like the workings of a woman's mind, — wild, sometimes wayward, confused, and vague, but having a mysterious meaning which attracts forcibly, and is filled with a neverwearying charm."

The two men looked in silence, and half unconsciously, on the two beautiful women whom they were loving, and I fancied they both agreed with us. A few short weeks ago, Philip would have turned into playful ridicule all this feminine sensiblerie, as he would have called it; but now Love, that divine messenger, who heals all differences between poor blind Adams and Eves, was brooding down over him, and filling his solitary, silent heart with sweet murmurs of hope and happiness.

At Baiæ we mounted our horses again for the last time, and Janet, Mrs. Folham, and Venetia returned to the barouche. We rode swiftly and silently on; the sweet moon shone down on us, and our horses' hoofs beat a martial measure on the hard lava-paved road; they kept as accurate time as if the dumb beasts, like their riders, had musical ears, and understood all the sweet subtleties of rhythm and accent.

The air was filled with the odor of orange-blossoms and the grape-flower; the glowing west had grown purple and wine-hued, while a ruddy glow flashed here and there most unaccountably over the heavens; but, as we doubled the point and came out on Posilippo, we discovered the cause of it, — Vesuvius was in flames!

"An eruption!" cried Philip; "at last, we shall see Vesuvius in its glory."

We had been hoping for this event during all our stay in Naples. There had been every sign of an eruption for months, and now, to our great joy, it had come; for, as it was unaccompanied by any destructive earthquakes, and seemed a peaceable display of the mountain's glorious powers, we felt no compunctions at rejoicing over it. Vesuvius looked grandly, as we rode briskly along the road facing it. Heavy columns of fiery vapor arose, touched on the edges by the moonlight, and streams of fire glided, snake-like, down the mountain-sides.

There was no terrifying darkness, no fearful explosions, none of the horrible attendants on preceding eruptions. The mountain seemed simply like a huge overflowing vase of fire; a beautiful and glorious spectacle, rather than a thing of terror and ruin; and so unlike the ordinary idea of Vesuvius in action, that we almost forgot its power to do harm. The flames and lava-streams did not pour from the summit, but from the sides. We afterwards learned that new craters have formed around it, and from these came streaming down the fiery rivers; there were two beautiful currents, which we could see, of the most exquisite fire-color, not sulphureous-hued, but mellow and almost rosy.

After the first expressions of gratification we said little, but looked on the beautiful mountain with indescribable, half-bewildered feelings, such as one has in a vivid dream; it seemed like some scene from a fairy tale of gnomes and mountain spirits, some gorgeous, impossible vision of childhood, made real and possible.

Great phenomena of any kind are rarely seen under favorable circumstances; but surely our first sight of Vesuvius in flames could not have been more happily arranged.

SKY-ROCKETS.

AST evening, being Trinity Sunday and the Queen's birthday, the whole town was superbly illuminated. To form a complete idea of the extent to which town illuminations can be carried, and their frequency, it is necessary to visit Naples. I have never seen so many or such interesting ones as during the few months I have been here. Partial illuminations of some quarter of the town take place several times a week.

The decoration of buildings for illuminations is quite a lucrative business in Naples, they tell me. On the fêteday of a church, that is, the day devoted to the saint whose name it bears, its whole front is covered with hastily-erected scaffoldings, and several men can be seen running up and down ladders, from tower to roof, and roof to basement, suspending strings of small parti-colorea glass cups, and arranging them skilfully, so as to form various symbolical figures when lighted; for each cup is half-filled with oil, on which floats a taper. Sometimes the houses and stores on the sides of the open square in front of the church are decorated in a like manner. At nightfall these lamps are lighted and the scaffoldings removed, with a celerity that seems hardly possible. The church façade then looks like a fairy scene, with its