THE TITAN'S CHILDREN AND CAPRI

I

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.

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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.

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

rie, or street-singers, pour out their medieval melodies, the women dance the Tarantella, and everything goes as merry as a marriage bell. It is blowing now, making the bright, sunshiny morning delicious; and Venitia is standing at my room window informing me of it, repeating at the same time snatches of Owen Meredith's "Seaside Song."

Now she walks away, paying the sweetest compliment to this young poet that he could receive, reciting his beautiful poetry in the soft morning air, and she as lovely as the poetry. I wish she had a lover for whom she felt, as this song says, "this joy of life." She is walking with all the gentle dignity of a graceful young empress up and down the terrace; her step is queenly, and yet without any affectation of dignity or consciousness of its fine air; it is a simple, natural motion, resulting from her wellformed limbs and perfectly proportioned body. She is just pronouncing these words, with a sweet beat and rhythm as musical as her gait:—

"For o'er faint tracks of fragrance wide

A rapture pouring up the tide,
A freshness through the heat,

Uncertain sound, like fairy feet,

a sweet

The west wind blows my love to me."

We spent a day at Capri last week, in company with the Rochesters and some other friends. On reaching the island, we visited first the far-famed Grotto Azzurra, or Blue Grotto, one of the old haunts of Roman luxury. Who does not remember Hans Christian Andersen's lovely story of the "Improvvisatore,” with its Blue Grotto episode? Venitia, who had never read this book, sat up all the preceding night to finish it; but brows never ache, nor eyes grow heavy, at twenty, so she looked

nearly as fresh as usual, the next day at noon, when we entered the Grotto.

The opening of the cavern is so low and narrow that we had to lie flat in the boat to enter. It is to the form and peculiar position of this opening that some heliographers attribute the faëry-like atmosphere of the Grotto. They say the sea is deeply imbued with light at this entrance, and emits it at every flow inside the cavern. The best hour for seeing the cave is "at silent midday," "The hush of noontide quiet";

then the waters are sapphire-hued, the walls of the purest blue, that India shade which the Chinese call “the blue of the heavens after a rain," and the ceiling is like the empyrean. It was at this hour we went, and seemed suddenly transported to a land of dreams.

We dipped our hands in the magic stream, and they became as alabaster, with a blue light playing through them. With these spectre-like fingers we dashed up the waters playfully; we seemed to be tossing up liquid gems, sapphires, and bluish pearls.

There was a sparkle on everything, as if a blue flame was lighting up and playing upon the glittering surface of crystal. The whole atmosphere seemed charged with blue, and the vaulted ceiling looked as if made of some azure-hued, transparent substance as clear as crystal, lighted by fire-rays from above, shining down on it.

After leaving the Grotto, we loitered up the steep walk to the hotel, stopping from time to time to enjoy the divine bits of landscape which came in at the spaces made by the lowering of vineyard walls. After luncheon, I did not accompany the rest of the party to Lo Capo, where are to be seen the remains of the famous twelve palaces of Tiberius. The noon-day visit to that enchanted Grotto,