for her is as Prince Adeb's Imam,* she must forego all hope of it, and yield "the Imam for her own soul's sake.”

Characters of delicate make and subtile stamp should not, cannot contend; they must endure with patience and courage, and look with sorrow and pity, not scorn and anger, on their oppressors. Truly unto woman were the words of Gospel law addressed: "Resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also."

Woe unto that feminine nature that is forced by necessity, as was Hamlet, to right a great wrong. Intense mental anguish must result; and even when the assistance of the Most High seems vouchsafed by the gift of courage and the mysterious power of holding the poor bewildered mind well balanced, even then she is fated, as Electra, to a solemn state, dedicate as it were to sadness. All glad, joyful feelings are hushed, and she will be as an angel who has lost its way from heaven, and its wings also, looking perpetually up, with a sigh and a longing to return.”

Why did I touch on this nerve, and set it to aching so fiercely? Venitia's music is ended. She and Janet have gone to their calm, quiet sleep. On the still, soft spring air comes the noisy throb of a steamer passing near the coast, sounding like the throes of some huge animal in mortal anguish. But physical pain is weak when compared with this agony of the lonely heart stung with the necessity to perform a stern duty, and filled with wild, passionate memories of a past forever gone, past which planted no seed for a future in this life! Beat, beat, beat, comes that sorrowful steam-throb on my ears, and to its melancholy sough my heart replies

*Boker's" Prince Adeb."

a

sullenly back a dull, slow pulse. Poor heart! It sits, like Electra, mourning rebelliously over its griefs.

The steamer has passed, and I now hear the cool, passionless ripple of this tideless sea breaking on a shore strewn with mysterious fragments of a long lost past! "And the stately ships go on

To the haven under the hill;

But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

"Break, break, break

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me."

THE TITAN'S CHILDREN AND CAPRI

THE SPHINX.

HIS delicious climate of Naples is to work wonders upon me; so says Mrs. Rochester, the agreeable wife of the Minister. She paid us a visit last evening, and gave us much clever information on the character of the atmosphere, and the various winds that blow over and around this beautiful boot-like promontory of Europe. The climate, from its lively action on the skin, and the variety of impressions it makes on the body and mind, is capitally suited for alleviating the suffering arising from all sorts of melancholy, and every kind of neurotic intermittent produced by mental causes.

Naples, more than any other place in Italy, is strongly influenced by two great powers, - the volcanic soil and the wind. The atmosphere is constantly filled with various gaseous emanations, sulphuric and the like, and carbonic acid is spread throughout the air.

The account Mrs. Rochester gave me of the winds of Naples interested me exceedingly. The gulf or bay is open to the west and southwest. The hills of Posilippo, extending around to Capodimonte, protect the city from the north wind, and Monte Somma is a shelter against the east; but the northeast, southeast, west, southwest,

and south meet with little obstruction, especially the west and southwest, which come in from the sea. The south and southeast winds, called mezzogiorno and scirocco by Italians, are the most disagreeable and injurious, especially to the natives; they are hot and damp, favorable to vegetation, but enervating and exhausting.

66

They are, in truth,' winds of idleness' in every sense of the word," said Mrs. Rochester. "You can feel them most sensibly at the entrance of the Toledo, and near the Royal Palace. I have often stood there during the blowing of a scirocco, and noticed with curiosity the warm, half-visible vapor which seemed to bathe everything; it permeated, like a subtile fluid, not only my whole physical nature, but also my mental, — prostrating muscular energy, and even vivacity of thought. I have often believed that this wind might be the unrecognized cause of Neapolitan indolence and Oriental fatalism, for these people are much more affected by it than we forestieri, or strangers. During its blowing the sky is of a dark leaden hue."

"This scirocco, which is so overwhelming here," remarked Janet, "is our old friend the föhn of Switzerland. There, however, it is of great service."

"Yes," said Venitia, "I remember, when I was a little girl, and we were living for a season or two in the Grisons, hearing the peasants there saying, 'that without the föhn neither the good God nor a golden sun could do anything.""

"This scirocco of Italy, and föhn of Switzerland,” continued Janet, "is the same thing as the simoom of Africa; it springs up in those immense sand-plains of the Sahara, which lie exposed to the rays of a tropical sun, and are easily heated. Just opposite Sicily and Italy the Atlas Mountains of Africa lower their peaks,

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.

66

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