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columns and remnant of an architrave remained to tell us, in their mysterious stone tongue, which thrills every fibre of our being, the tradition of that heathen faith and that heathen day. Then, mingling with the crowd of visible mortals, in my fancy arose a ghostly multitude, fleeting fast along, like the water-shadows racing swiftly over the bushes beside a running stream, and there sounded a dim distant chant which uttered,

"There to the Great Twin Brethren

Vow thou thy vows and pray,
That they in tempest and in fight
Will keep thy head alway.” *

I went afterwards into the cloister, looked at its twentyfour granite pillars, and remembered that there had stood the Theatre, on the stage of which Nero had played. Three hundred years my memory had swiftly stepped over in passing from the platform of the great entrance of the church into the cloister. I leaned dreamily against one of the columns, imagining the scene so graphically described by the historian, Nero, the poor crazy Emperor,"mounting the stage, tuning his lute with much care, and flourishing before he began his part. About him were his companions; the cohort of guards was also there, with tribunes and centurions, and Burrus, praising his master, but grieving for him.Ӡ

After lingering some time in the cloister we were taken into the Sacristy to see some pictures and frescoes. We found it thronged with clergymen, not priests of Castor and Pollux, “clad in purple and crowned with olive,” but

* "Battle of Lake Regillus. Lay sung at the Feast of Castor and Pollux on the Ides of Quintilis, in the year of the City CCCCLI.". Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome.

† Tacitus, Book XIV.

simply dressed men, whose long closely-buttoned black cassocks clung to their bodies from the throat to the foot, servants of that New Faith now near two thousand years old.

On a stand was a superb church vestment of cloth of gold, embroidered and studded with precious stones; little sapphires, rubies, emeralds, and diamonds flashed out from the gorgeous mass of work; over one corner of it had been flung a magnificent worked white linen alb, with a heavy broad fall of rich antique lace, whose creamyhued Spanish point told out well as it lay on the gold of the vestment.

At the head of the room some of the clergy, with some gentlemen, were assembled together admiring an exquisitely wrought gold chalice. Luigi was among them. Seeing us he stepped forward to show us the costly and beautiful thing, worthy in workmanship to have come from the skilful fingers of a Cellini. I held it in my hands while they told me its history, not one word of which did I hear; for I was thinking of the old worship of the proud Ides of Quintilis, and ringing in my ears came the verses,

"While flows the Yellow River,

While stands the Sacred Hill,

The proud Ides of Quintilis

Shall have honor still.

Gay are the Martian Kalends:

December's Trones are gay;

But the proud Ides, when the squadron rides,
Shall be Rome's whitest day."

And then flitted again before me the sorrowful Imperial displays of the poor degraded grandson of that proud, but pure, good Agrippina, Germanicus's wife, surrounded by

his Rosencrantzes and Guildensterns, with poor mortified Burrus, applauding but grieving for his royal master's shame, and I wondered what new faith shall be worshipped here after the tide of two thousand years to come had swept over this spot.

Now how can one return home and sit down leisurely, and in cold blood to hunt up dates and parcel out historical information from books to fit this church, or that statue, this palazzo or that fountain? The labor would be wearying in the extreme; moreover, I should not enjoy as I do now this delightful half-dreamy feeling which steals over me while listening to the conversation of such a man as Luigi Luini. In nervous, picturesque language he tells me the history of each spot or work of art which attracts my notice or admiration, and much better, too, than I could find it in books. Then he revives, as by a magical touch, all my own knowledge, and has that happy faculty, not often possessed by clever men, of drawing out from his companion, by his own suggestive remarks, the most delightful talk.

This is a feminine gift, by the way. Men generally are monologists, they deal only in large bills and notes of language. Some witty Frenchman has said that an intelligent woman can always seize the thoughts of a man, and give him back immediately the small change. Blessed little word-brokers it makes of us to be sure, but how could society get on without such bewitching bankers?

The streets of Naples are becoming so thickly thronged to me with old historical memories that sometimes, as I lean back in the barouche and gaze up at the palazzos or churches, I fancifully compare them, as the carriages sweep by, to the rapidly turning leaves of a gorgeously

illuminated missal, or some brilliantly decorated Pugin Glossary, whose vivid colorings of old diaperings and monograms flash on the eye with a painful pleasure; therefore it is a luxurious relief to have such a person as Luigi Luini beside me, to hold down as it were, one of these stone pages, and shade its brilliant past by the calm recital of its history, so that I can look and learn, or remember without bewilderment or confusion.

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"CASA DELLA SIRENA."

UST as we were starting out on our afternoon drive to-day, Luigi entered the court-yard. He helped us into the barouche, then stood for a few moments talking, and resting his delicate, graceful hand on the low door of the coach; for he is not large, nor is he under size, but he is slender,` and has all the patrician marks of form,- small hands and feet, suppleness of limb, and grace of motion.

"Why cannot you go with us, Mr. Luini ?" asked Janet, as he bid us good day, wishing us a pleasant drive, for, Janet attends to all the inviting and etiquette business of our little community, Venitia being too young, and I now-a-days am too dreamy and forgetful.

"Should you really like to have me?" he answered, with a bright smile, which lighted up finely his handsome face.

"I should not ask you, I am sure, if I did not,” replied Janet, with a natural abruptness, which is always softened by her musical laugh and cultured voice; “and as for Ottilie, I know I can answer for her gratification.”

He opened the door of the coach without saying another word, and took his seat beside Venitia, thus giving me a chance of enjoying the good looks of both, for he is as handsome for a man as she for a woman. I repeated to

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