eum, and descended
into the cell, all green with damp, under the basilica, and lay down,
fettered and manacled in the place of those found there beside the big
bronze kettle in which the prisoners used to cook their dinners. How
ghastly the thought of it was! If we had really seen this kettle and
the skeletons there--as we did not--we could not have suffered more
than we did. They took all the life out of the House of Perseus, and
the beauty from his pretty little domestic temple to the Penates, and
this was all there was left in Herculaneum to see.

"Is there nothing else?" we demand of the custodian.

"Signori, this is all."

"It is mighty little."

"Perdoni, signori! ma----."

"Well," we say sourly to each other, glancing round at the walls of
the pit, on the bottom of which the bit of city stands, "it is a good
thing to know that Herculaneum amounts to nothing."

X.

CAPRI AND CAPRIOTES.

I.

I have no doubt

"Calm Capri waits,"

where we left it, in the Gulf of Salerno, for any traveller who may
choose to pay it a visit; but at the time we were there we felt that
it was on exhibition for that day only, and would, when we departed,
disappear in its sapphire sea, and be no more; just as Niagara ceases
to play as soon as your back is turned, and Venice goes out like a
pyrotechnic display, and all marvelously grand and lovely things make
haste to prove their impermanence.

We delayed some days in Naples in hopes of fine weather, and at last
chose a morning that was warm and cloudy at nine o'clock, and burst
into frequent passions of rain before we reached Sorrento at noon
The first half of the journey was made by rail, and brought us to
Castellamare, whence we took carriage for Sorrento, and oranges, and
rapture,--winding along the steep shore of the sea, and under the
brows of wooded hills that rose high above us into the misty weather,
and caught here and there the sunshine on their tops. In that heavenly
climate no day can long be out of humor, and at Sorrento we found
ours very pleasant, and rode delightedly through the devious streets,
looking up to the terraced orange-groves on one hand, and down to the
terraced orange-groves on the other, until at a certain turning of the
way we encountered Antonino Occhio d'Argento, whom fate had appointed
to be our boatman to Capri. We had never heard of Antonino before, and
indeed had intended to take a boat from one of the hotels; but when
this cors