ple here abbreviate all names. With them Massa
is Mas, Meta is Met, Capri becomes Cap, the Grotta Azzurra is reduced
familiarly to Grott, and they even curtail musical Sorrento into Serent.

Shall we go to Capri? Should we dare return to the great Republic, and
own that we had not been into the Blue Grotto? We like to climb the
steeps here, especially towards Massa, and look at Capri. I have read in
some book that it used to be always visible from Sorrento. But now the
promontory has risen, the Capo di Sorrento has thrust out its rocky spur
with its ancient Roman masonry, and the island itself has moved so far
round to the south that Sorrento, which fronts north, has lost sight of
it.

We never tire of watching it, thinking that it could not be spared from
the landscape. It lies only three miles from the curving end of the
promontory, and is about twenty miles due south of Naples. In this
atmosphere distances dwindle. The nearest land, to the northwest, is the
larger island of Ischia, distant nearly as far as Naples; yet Capri has
the effect of being anchored off the bay to guard the entrance. It is
really a rock, three miles and a half long, rising straight out of the
water, eight hundred feet high at one end, and eighteen hundred feet at
the other, with a depression between. If it had been chiseled by hand
and set there, it could not be more sharply defined. So precipitous are
its sides of rock, that there are only two fit boat-landings, the
marina on the north side, and a smaller place opposite. One of those
light-haired and freckled Englishmen, whose pluck exceeds their
discretion, rowed round the island alone in rough water, last summer,
against the advice of the boatman, and unable to make a landing, and
weary with the strife of the waves, was in considerable peril.

Sharp and clear as Capri is in outline, its contour is still most
graceful and poetic. This wonderful atmosphere softens even its
ruggedness, and drapes it with hues of enchanting beauty. Sometimes the
haze plays fantastic tricks with it,--a cloud-cap hangs on Monte Solaro,
or a mist obscures the base, and the massive summits of rock seem to
float in the air, baseless fabrics of a vision that the rising wind will
carry away perhaps. I know now what Homer means by "wandering islands."
Shall we take a boat and sail over there, and so destroy forever another
island of the imagination? The bane of travel is the destruction of
illusions.

We like to ta