er we have given the unfortunate
admiral is so much in accordance with Italian practices that no wrong is
done to the _morale_ of Naples, whatever may be the extent of the
liberty taken with the individual.

Nelson seems to have lived and died under the influence of the
unprincipled woman who then governed him with the arts of a siren. His
nature was noble, and his moral impressions, even, were not bad; but his
simple and confiding nature was not equal to contending with one as
practised in profligacy as the woman into whose arms he was thrown, at a
most evil moment for his reputation.

There is nothing more repugnant to the general sense of rights, than the
prostitution of public justice to the purposes of private vengeance.
Such would seem to have been the reason of the very general odium
attached to the execution of Admiral Prince Caraccioli, who was the
victim of circumstances, rather than the promoter of treason. The whole
transaction makes a melancholy episode in the history of modern Europe.
We have made such use of it as is permitted to fiction, neither
neglecting the leading and known facts of the event, nor adhering to the
minuter circumstances more closely than the connection of our
tale demanded.

WING-AND-WING.

CHAPTER I.

"Filled with the face of heaven, which from afar
Comes down upon the waters; all its hues,
From the rich sunset to the rising star,
Their magical variety diffuse:
And now they change: a paler shadow strews
Its mantle o'er the mountains; parting day
Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues
With a new color as it gasps away,
The last still loveliest, till--'tis gone--and all is grey."

_Childe Harold._

The charms of the Tyrrhenian Sea have been sung since the days of Homer.
That the Mediterranean generally, and its beautiful boundaries of Alps
and Apennines, with its deeply indented and irregular shores, forms the
most delightful region of the known earth, in all that relates to
climate, productions, and physical formation, will be readily enough
conceded by the traveller. The countries that border on this midland
water, with their promontories buttressing a mimic ocean--their
mountain-sides teeming with the picturesque of human life--their heights
crowned with watch-towers--their rocky shelves consecrated by
hermitages, and their unrivalled sheet dotted with sails, rigged, as it
might be, expressly to produce effect in