rising. Was it on such a night that
Ferdinand of Aragon fled from his capital before the French, with
eyes turned ever to the land he loved, chanting, as he leaned from
his galley's stern, that melancholy psalm--'Except the Lord keep the
city, the watchman waketh but in vain'--and seeing Naples dwindle to
a white blot on the purple shore?

Our journey takes the opposite direction. Farewell to Capri, welcome
to Sorrento! The roads are sweet with scent of acacia and orange
flowers. When you walk in a garden at night, the white specks
beneath your feet are fallen petals of lemon blossoms. Over the
walls hang cataracts of roses, honey-pale clusters of the Banksia
rose, and pink bushes of the China rose, growing as we never see
them grow with us. The grey rocks wave with gladiolus--feathers of
crimson, set amid tufts of rosemary, and myrtle, and tree-spurge. In
the clefts of the sandstone, and behind the orchard walls, sleeps a
dark green night of foliage, in the midst of which gleam globed
oranges, and lemons dropping like great pearls of palest amber dew.
It is difficult to believe that the lemons have not grown into
length by their own weight, as though mere hanging on the bough
prevented them from being round--so waxen are they. Overhead soar
stone-pines--a roof of sombre green, a lattice-work of strong red
branches, through which the moon peers wonderfully. One part of this
marvellous _piano_ is bare rock tufted with keen-scented herbs, and
sparsely grown with locust-trees and olives. Another waves from sea
to summit with beech-copses and oak-woods, as verdant as the most
abundant English valley. Another region turns its hoary raiment of
olive-gardens to the sun and sea, or flourishes with fig and vine.
Everywhere, the houses of men are dazzling white, perched on natural
coigns of vantage, clustered on the brink of brown cliffs, nestling
under mountain eaves, or piled up from the sea-beach in ascending
tiers, until the broad knees of the hills are reached, and great
Pan, the genius of solitude in nature, takes unto himself a region
yet untenanted by man. The occupations of the sea and land are blent
together on this shore; and the people are both blithe and gentle.
It is true that their passions are upon the surface, and that the
knife is ready to their hand. But the combination of fierceness and
softness in them has an infinite charm when one has learned by
observation that their lives are laborious and frugal, and t