the body
was that of the old man, the father of our host, whom we had seen the
evening before in perfect health. He had the dangerous habit of walking
in his sleep and had jumped, it is supposed, in that state out of his
chamber window which was directly beneath us; at what time in the night
was uncertain. His body must have been beneath me while I was looking
from my window in the night.

"Our host, but particularly his brother, seemed for a time almost
inconsolable. The lamentations of the latter over the bloody body (as
they were laying it out in the room where we had the evening before
dined), calling upon his father and mingling his cries with a chant to
the Virgin and to the saints, were peculiarly plaintive, and, sounding
through the vacant halls of the convent, made a melancholy impression
upon us all.... Soon after breakfast we went downstairs; several priests
and funeral attendants had arrived; the poor old man was laid upon a bed,
the room darkened, and four wax-lights burned, two each side of the bed. A
short time was taken in preparation, and then upon a bier borne by four
bearers, a few preceding it with wax-lights, the body, with the face
exposed, as is usual in Italy, was taken down the steep pathway to its
long home.

"I could not help remarking the total want of that decent deportment in
all those officiating which marks the conduct of those that attend the
interment of the dead in our own country. Even the priests 'seemed to be
in high glee, talking and heartily laughing with each other; at what it
perplexed me to conjecture.

"I went into the room in which the old man had slept; all was as he had
left it. Over the head of the bed were the rude prints of the Virgin and
saints, which are so common in all the houses of Italy, and which are
supposed to act as charms by these superstitious people. The lamp was on
the window ledge where he had placed it, and his scanty wardrobe upon a
chair by the bedside. Over the door was a sprig of laurel, placed there
since his death.

"The accident of the morning threw a gloom over the whole day; we,
however, commenced our sketches from different parts of the convent, and
I commenced a picture, a view of Amalfi from the interior of the grotto."

Several of the notebooks are here missing, and from the next in order we
find that the travellers must have lingered in or near Sorrento until
August 30, when they returned to Naples.

The next entry of interest, while