night in Naples. We have had a crowded, talkative evening; all our friends calling to say good by. We shall miss many of them a great deal, for our social surroundings here have been very agreeable. The Rochesters, who have been our most pleasant acquaintances, we hope to meet again in America, and keep up unbroken the intercourse which has ripened an acquaintanceship into a very deep feeling of regard.

a

But we shall miss most of all our beautiful surroundings, this lovely home, for home it has been, home that has seen the birth and growth of pure, deep love, a strong temptation resisted, the brave facing of bitter sorrow, and the triumph of honor and true feeling.

Beautiful, golden, glorious Naples! with thy rich sunlight, pure moonbeams, pulsating blue sky, and atmosphere filled with delicious life-drops and exquisite odors. Often in the future, while far off in my American home, my heart shall stretch out tender, yearning memories to this enchanting place.

Angelini the sculptor, who also called to bid us good by to-night, said to me, in his soft, melodious Italian voice, “Ah, in Naples one needs so little. The simple act of living, the breath Nature gives us here, is a priceless luxury in itself. Here sight and sense are fed most gloriously by the good God."

They have all left, and I have come to my room to be alone with my fast-rushing thoughts. Janet and I have been walking up and down the terrace silently together, looking over at Vesuvius, whose lava streams still flow, though sluggishly. The beautiful lichen-hung hill above the terrace is buried in sombre shadows, although the sky is glowing with stars, the hundred-eyed Argus watching for the lost Io,- for the moon is gone. It is near

midnight, and this living whirlpool, this noisy, shrieking Naples, is comparatively quiet; around us all is still, but from the more densely inhabited part of the town arises a hum and beat like the roar of a distant ocean or the fevered throb of a factory.

Venitia is in the drawing-room, "holding commune sad and sweet” with her lovely Erard, from which she is to be parted forever. Now her hands sweep voluptuously over the ivory rocks, like the grand swell of some shining wave holding aloft on its dashing crest a divine seanymph. That most delicious of all nocturnes, Chopin's "Murmurs of the Seine," floats on the air, a true music mist and spray. The plaint and descending gamut in the motivo, sparkle just as I have seen the shafts of moonlight, when standing out on the terrace in the Villa Reale, fling themselves passionately down on the innocent bosom of the sea, and break into golden spears and arrows of light, while the waters washed up against the stone foundations of the terrace, as if in sweet pain and sorrow.

Venitia is in a true playing mood to-night. Now she is improvising. She seizes the music-grapes, and, Bacchuslike, crushes out the purple and golden flood of musicwine. Her fingers seem dripping with the rare, priceless juice; and as they rise and fall on the keys the rich, invisible liquid sounds gather around me like a delicious flood of many waters, and bathe my suffering senses in the sweet intoxication of

"Desires and Adoration,

Winged Persuasions, and veiled Destinies,

Splendors and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations

Of hopes and fears, and twilight fantasies,

And Sorrow with her family of sighs,

And Pleasure blind with tears, led by the gleam

Of her own dying smile instead of eyes."

O, this potent rhetoric of music that stealeth away all weapons of pain and steepeth the whole being in a wave of exquisite rapture, soothing the sting of "wounds that will never heal, and silencing the pangs that tempt the spirit to rebel”!

But, alas! just as this gloomy pageantry of "Winged Persuasions" had quieted all unrest with their Lotus draught, there comes creeping on the ear a despairing interrogatory, solemn, dumb, questioning chords, followed with wildering, maddening doubt, -pure Wanhope! And with these sorrowful chords the music

And now to bed and to sleep, but not to partake of sleep's sweet refreshment; for it spreads no banquet for the heavily laden, but sits down a solemn veiled ghost beside the sepulchre of our buried hopes, like Buonarotti's spectre, watching over the dead Duke Lorenzo.

"In our hearts

There is a vigil, and these eyes but close

To look within.”

"CONCA D'ORO."

E arrived quite early at Palermo yesterday morning. On approaching the town we were charmed with its loveliness. Putting Vesu

vius out of the question, it is as beautiful as Naples in its ravishing surroundings. It rests on the bosom of a sloping plain, which plain is called, on account of its luxuriance and fine situation, Conca d' Oro, — Shell of Gold.

First, the city spreads graciously out; back of it are rich forests of orange and lemon trees, and here and there the curious nut-tree with tufted top; these form a rich framework; then around and above this foliage arise sloping mountains, ascending in terraces four thousand feet high, whose bold edges lie clear against the soft blue of the heavens.

This lovely island was the home of ancient mythology, the throne of the gods of Hellas. Jupiter reigned on Etna, and held chained under its fiery feet the giant Enceladus. On its plains of Enna, Proserpine was roaming, when Pluto carried her off to his dread abode. The whole land was Ceres' kingdom. In its forests, Diana and Minerva rambled in their girlhood. Here Vulcan forged his thunderbolts, hence the name of the island Vulcania Tellus; and here also the terrible Cyclops

lived. The story of Acis and Galatea, the myth of Polyphemus, with old Homer's songs, all bubbled up in our memories, as we fell stormily into port under the raging, shrieking sound of our steamer.

"Arethusa arose

From her couch of snows

In the Acroceraunian mountains,"

I chanted half to myself and half to Janet as we stood in the end of the boat looking with eager eyes on this island, which spoke like a huge, many-leaved illuminated book

to us.

"You are thinking of that delicious story and poem of Alpheus's pursuit of Arethusa, which the poet Read has painted with as much inspiration and beauty as Shelley's verse tells it," said Janet; "but the memory roused in me is a more strange, mysterious one. The shrieking noise of this steamer, the various things around me which tell of man's strength, remind me of that weird myth of Polyphemus. Do you remember, or did you never hear, the old Norwegian version of this Polyphemus myth?"

I nodded my head affirmatively, and she continued :— "The child, through adroitness, not strength, you know, deprived the Trold, the northern Polyphemus, - of his eye, and thus not only took from him a divine power, but held him in subjection. He made the Trold give him gold and silver, and also two bows, the arrows of which were unfailing in their aim and flight.

"So it is with man the pygmy. He has cunningly seized on the eye of Nature, and is wresting from her all her secrets. She gives him the treasures of the earth, the steel bows of lightning, and that unknown power called magnetism, on whose viewless current fly with unerring aim the swift arrows of intercourse. Then the