d not be otherwise, and is
evidently delighted to have me enjoy his fruit. I fill capacious pockets
with the choicest; and, if I have friends with me, they do the same.
I give our silent but most expressive entertainer half a franc, never
more; and he always seems surprised at the size of the largesse. We
exhaust his basket, and he proposes to get more.

When I am alone, I stroll about under the heavily-laden trees, and pick
up the largest, where they lie thickly on the ground, liking to hold
them in my hand and feel the agreeable weight, even when I can carry
away no more. The gardener neither follows nor watches me; and I think
perhaps knows, and is not stingy about it, that more valuable to me than
the oranges I eat or take away are those on the trees among the shining
leaves. And perhaps he opines that I am from a country of snow and ice,
where the year has six hostile months, and that I have not money enough
to pay for the rich possession of the eye, the picture of beauty, which
I take with me.

FASCINATION

There are three places where I should like to live; naming them in the
inverse order of preference,--the Isle of Wight, Sorrento, and Heaven.
The first two have something in common, the almost mystic union of
sky and sea and shore, a soft atmospheric suffusion that works an
enchantment, and puts one into a dreamy mood. And yet there are decided
contrasts. The superabundant, soaking sunshine of Sorrento is of very
different quality from that of the Isle of Wight. On the island there is
a sense of home, which one misses on this promontory, the fascination
of which, no less strong, is that of a southern beauty, whose charms
conquer rather than win. I remember with what feeling I one day
unexpectedly read on a white slab, in the little inclosure of Bonchurch,
where the sea whispered as gently as the rustle of the ivy-leaves, the
name of John Sterling. Could there be any fitter resting-place for that
most, weary, and gentle spirit? There I seemed to know he had the rest
that he could not have anywhere on these brilliant historic shores. Yet
so impressible was his sensitive nature, that I doubt not, if he had
given himself up to the enchantment of these coasts in his lifetime, it
would have led him by a spell he could not break.

I am sometimes in doubt what is the spell of Sorrento, and half believe
that it is independent of anything visible. There is said to be a
fatal enchantment about Capri. The influen