performed before him by one of the
cardinals. There was nothing in this ceremony that was novel or
interesting; it was the same monotonous chant from the choir, the same
numberless bowings, and genuflections, and puffings of incense, and
change of garments, and fussing about the altar. All that was new was the
constant bustle about the Pope, kissing of his toe and his hand, helping
him to rise and to sit again, bringing and taking away of cushions and
robes and tiaras and mitres, and a thousand other little matters that
would have enraged any man of weak nerves, if it did not kill him. After
two hours of this tedious work (the people in the mean time perfectly
inattentive), the ceremony ended, and the Pope was again borne through
the church and the crowd returned."

On July 7, Morse, with four friends, left Rome at four o'clock in the
morning for Naples, where they arrived on the 11th after the usual
experiences; beggars continually marring the peaceful beauty of every
scene by their importunities; good inns, with courteous landlords and
servants, alternating with wretched taverns and insolent attendants. The
little notebook detailing the first ten days' experiences in Naples is
missing, and the next one takes up the narrative on July 24, when he and
his friends are in Sorrento. I shall not transcribe his impressions of
that beautiful town or those of the island of Capri. These places are too
familiar to the visitor to Italy and have changed but little in the last
eighty years.

Prom Capri they were rowed over to Amalfi, and narrowly escaped being
dashed on the rocks by the sudden rising of a violent gale. At Amalfi
they found lodgings in the Franciscan monastery, which is still used as
an inn, and here I shall again quote from the journal:--

"The place is in decay and is an excellent specimen of their monastic
buildings. It is now in as romantic a state as the most poetic
imagination could desire. Here are gloomy halls and dark and decayed
rooms; long corridors of chambers, uninhabited except by the lizard and
the bat; terraces upon the brow of stupendous precipices; gloomy cells
with grated windows, and subterranean apartments and caverns. Remains of
rude frescoes stain the crumbling ceiling, and ivy and various wild
plants hang down from the opening crevices and cover the tops of the
broken walls.

"A rude sundial, without a gnomon, is almost obliterated from the wall of
the cloisters, but its motto, '_Dies nos