with a delight no language can describe."

[Illustration: NAPLES.]

At Leghorn Cooper engaged a Genovese felucca, "_La Bella Genovese_,--a
craft of thirty tons, beautiful mould, lateen-rigged, carrying two of
that sail and a jib, and ten men for her crew." Aboard this small vessel
the author and his family spent six days of pure pleasure, yet "somewhat
bitten by fleas." They touched at Elba and other islands, and skirted
the coasts of Tuscany, the Roman States, and so on to Naples, of which
Cooper wrote: "Oh Napoli! glorious, sunny, balmy Napoli!" This cruising
along the western coast of Italy in the _Bella Genovese_ suggested to
the author one of his favorite stories, "Wing-and-Wing," which was
published twelve years later. In Naples several weeks were passed at a
hotel; thence to a short-time home of their own on the cliffs of
Sorrento. The very air of Italy was a delight to this sunny-hearted
sailor, who so deeply felt the charm of all Italian nature. "The house
we have taken," he wrote, "is said to be the one in which Tasso was
born. It stands on the brow of the cliffs, within the walls of the town,
and in plain sight of every object of interest on the bay. We occupy the
principal floor only, though I have taken the entire house. There is a
chapel beneath the grand _sala_, and kitchens and offices somewhere in
those lower regions. We enter by a porte-cochere into a court which has
a well with a handsome marble curb and a flight of broad, marble steps
fit for a palace." Seaward several rooms led to the _sala_, fifty feet
long, and facing the water. Cooper tells of its tiled floor, gilded
couches, chairs, and marble busts. The great charm of the house was its
terrace, fifty feet long by twenty-five wide, and protected by a stone
balustrade, massive and carved, hanging over the blue Mediterranean, and
giving to view Vesuvius, Ischia, and all the coast of glorious sea.
Hearing an outcry from his son Paul one day, his father found the boy
with his head fast between two of these great spindles--"in a way that
frightened me as well as the youngster himself. It was like being
imbedded in a rock. Below the terrace runs a narrow beach, where our
children delight to play, picking up shells and more than
shells,--ancient mosaics. There is a little room off from the terrace I
use for writing," and where he could watch the beauty of the sea. Much
of "The Water Witch" was rapidly written in this study on the inspiring
terrace of