Nothing could be seen, for it was dark midnight; but a plash of heavy armor falling on the sullen waters was heard, a plunge, a short gurgle, that was all! The Fieschi pride had met its fall; and the long line of popes, cardinals, and great generals ended in this young nobleman of twenty-two, while his ill-fated ambition became a mere fact for history to mention and people to forget, until, three centuries after, a bold young German poet made it into a famous play; for although Schiller's Conspiracy of Fieschi may not be equal in literary merit to his other historical dramas, it is more popular on the German stage than anything he wrote, except the Robbers.

"It was the old political quarrel between Guelph and Ghibelline," observed Janet, "that struggle which had then been raging five hundred years. Doria was a Guelph.or Papal adherent; Fieschi, a Ghibelline or Imperialist. You should not be sympathizing with young Fieschi, Ottilie; he did not belong to your side of the question at all.”

"No; that is very true," I replied; "but Fieschi was bold, young, aimed high, and failed! Nine times out of ten that is the side on which women will be found, utterly regardless of all reason, principle, or opinion, simply from admiration for that which she does not possess, high courageous daring; and tender, loving pity for that which is so often her own fate, failure!"

The twilight deepened; the driver turned his horses' heads towards the hotel, and quickened their gait. In a short while after, we were enjoying a capital dinner, and å merry talk on the trifles of the present moment, quite forgetting for the while history's tales of mingled luck and wanluck.

E

PLANTING ROOTS.

I

NAPLES, Strada Mergellina.

HAVE no visit to Pisa or Civita Vecchia to

tell of, no sweet raptures over the voyage from Genoa to this place, on the beautiful Mediterranean, with historical memories aroused at every turn. During the whole period I was ill, ill in body and mind, heart and soul.

66

Apprehension stalked beside me like an evil genius, stretching out its long, spectral finger to deaden every pleasure. A crowd of forms surrounded me, all the shadowy beings that people the lands of presentiment and memory; and there arose before me those towering gates of the Past which seem to stand forever open." Once in a while the eager, hot breath of love and longing sweeps aside the sombre curtain, and discloses for one brief instant joys, hopes, and aspirations forever gone; then the black folds fall with dumb, appalling weight, and we move onward oppressed with the dreary thought, that forever in this life our hands are unclasped from the loved one's neck, our lips forever parted, our confidences forever stilled, for the ear of the fond, indulgent friend is filled with the dust and ashes of death !

But these sorrowful thoughts are quite out of place here; they sound like harsh dissonances in a beautiful

melody. It seems impossible to be sad under such a sky and breathing such an atmosphere. The simple play of light and shade over the heavens, and on the beautiful land and sea, produces on me the effect of sweet succeeding harmonies in some musical creations, Mozartian,

for it is joyful and fresh.

We are enchanted with this city; with its picturesque streets paved with lava; its beautiful surroundings; its buildings, telling so many legends of olden times; and its lovely bay, whose shores, from one arm to the other, are crowded with memories of poetic myths and historic facts.

I never shall forget the effect produced by the first sight of Vesuvius," that stall of the incessant stamping thunder-steeds." In front of us lies Capri, where Tiberius sinned, and suffered. Farther off to the right, a little hidden by those beautiful elm-crowned heights of Posilippo, lie "the heavenly hills," true mountains of azure, Ischia and Procida, each bearing a chaplet of memories; and Nisida too, where Brutus and Portia parted to meet no more.

Then follows Baix, with its ruins, telling of those old voluptuous days when Romans came to its baths in the "to enact the Greek," as they said. They gay season, had in their language one short word, Græcari, græcatus, græcanicus, which meant something pleasant but wrong, and this word they applied to the lives they led at Baiæ. They put aside with business all the stern personal habits of Rome, they loosened their robes, took off their sandals, and indulged in recreations which Roman eyes could hardly distinguish from vices.*

But Baiæ has another memory, a buried tomb, the earthly trace of which is lost; but not the tradition, for a

* Merivale's Rome.

poet has made it immortal. Petrarch visited the grave of the great Scipio Africanus at Baiæ, and leaning over read, “ Ingrate patrie," chiselled on the stone which has now crumbled to dust.

Between us and Baiæ, however, at Posilippo, stands a poet's grave, which is not yet levelled and lost in the bosom of mother earth. Though some antiquarians may call it a mere columbarium, Petrarch believed it to be Virgil's tomb, and planted a laurel on its green summit.

Naples, beautiful Naples, beneath whose burning breast sleeps the siren Parthenope! Here Virgil lived, drank deep of poesy, and gave "imp feathers to the wings of his fancy from harsher, stronger studies." Here Tasso was born, and held consoling converse with his demon. Here Petrarch feasted, and Boccaccio loved. Naples, the golden, the glorious, whose chalice of beauty is filled to overflowing!

"No more, no more

The worldly shore

Upbraids me with its loud uproar;

With dreamful eyes

My spirit lies

Under the walls of Paradise! " *

Our lodgings are pleasantly situated on the Mergellina, which is the western branch of the Riviera di Chiaja extension, that part which fronts this beautiful Vesuvian Bay,—just on the hem of the great city. We are in an old palazzo, a square solid mass of white stone several stories in height; its different floors run off irregularly, so as to form terraces for the various suites of apartments contained in it.

This palazzo, like all other buildings of the kind, has

* Read's Drifting.

in its centre an open square, called a court-yard, opening on the street with a huge gateway. This gateway is flanked on either side by the porteress's lodge and her dwelling rooms. At the window of the lodge is hung a large frame containing the cards of the different occupants of the palazzo. We amused ourselves looking over it this morning, when the porteress, a pretty, civil-spoken woman, put into it our cards. We found there a principezza and an excellenza, among other notorieties.

When we enter the court-yard we find a motley group and strange occupants, according to American ideas of the entrance to a palace containing an ambassador and a princess. The place is as crowded and probably more noisy than it was in those "grand old times," when the count or baron to whom the palace belonged assembled in it his retainers. There are poultry, yelping curs, and dirty children rolling in the mud-puddles, - for our courtyard is an untidy place, as are most of them, and noisy men and women screaming out this shrill Neapolitan dialect.

ments.

The place is so novel to us that we often stop a few moments in the morning, as we are stepping into our carriage from the broad white marble slab at the foot of the handsome stone stairway leading to our suite of apartThere are the men hard at work, and the women busy gossiping. These Neapolitan women of the lower class are a lazy, listless set, and remind us of what Thackeray said of "every Irish gentleman needing another Irish gentleman to wait on him," for every Neapolitan woman seems to have at least one man, if not more, to wait on her; and they are not a pretty race either, but show their mixed blood of Moor and Spaniard, making an ugly, mongrel Italian.