nd the order before we sit
down to breakfast. The good-natured mistress of affairs, the head of
the bureau of domestic relations, is at her wits' end, with guests who
always promise to go and never depart. There are here a gentleman and
his wife, English people of decision enough, I presume, in Cornwall, who
packed their luggage before Christmas to depart, but who have not gone
towards the end of February,--who daily talk of going, and little by
little unpack their wardrobe, as their determination oozes out. It is
easy enough to decide at night to go next day; but in the morning, when
the soft sunshine comes in at the window, and when we descend and walk
in the garden, all our good intentions vanish. It is not simply that we
do not go away, but we have lost the motive for those long excursions
which we made at first, and which more adventurous travelers indulge
in. There are those here who have intended for weeks to spend a day on
Capri. Perfect day for the expedition succeeds perfect day, boatload
after boatload sails away from the little marina at the base of the
cliff, which we follow with eves of desire, but--to-morrow will do as
well. We are powerless to break the enchantment.

I confess to the fancy that there is some subtle influence working this
sea-change in us, which the guidebooks, in their enumeration of the
delights of the region, do not touch, and which maybe reaches back
beyond the Christian era. I have always supposed that the story of
Ulysses and the Sirens was only a fiction of the poets, intended to
illustrate the allurements of a soul given over to pleasure, and deaf to
the call of duty and the excitement of a grapple with the world. But a
lady here, herself one of the entranced, tells me that whoever climbs
the hills behind Sorrento, and looks upon the Isle of the Sirens, is
struck with an inability to form a desire to depart from these coasts. I
have gazed at those islands more than once, as they lie there in the
Bay of Salerno; and it has always happened that they have been in a
half-misty and not uncolored sunlight, but not so draped that I could
not see they were only three irregular rocks, not far from shore, one of
them with some ruins on it. There are neither sirens there now, nor any
other creatures; but I should be sorry to think I should never see them
again. When I look down on them, I can also turn and behold on the
other side, across the Bay of Naples, the Posilipo, where one of the
enc