-seamed hill, little stone huts, bits of ruin, towers, arches. How
still it is! All the stiller that I can, now and then, catch the sound
of an axe, and hear the shouts of some children in a garden below. How
still the sea is! How many ages has it been so? Does the purple mist
always hang there upon the waters of Salerno Bay, forever hiding from
the gaze Paestum and its temples, and all that shore which is so much
more Grecian than Roman?

After all, it is a satisfaction to turn to the towering rock of
St. Angelo; not a tree, not a shrub, not a spire of grass, on its
perpendicular side. We try to analyze the satisfaction there is in such
a bald, treeless, verdureless mass. We can grasp it intellectually, in
its sharp solidity, which is undisturbed by any ornament: it is, to the
mind, like some complete intellectual performance; the mind rests on it,
like a demonstration in Euclid. And yet what a color of beauty it takes
on in the distance!

When we return, the bandits have all gone to their road-making: the
suspicious landlord is nowhere to be seen. We call the woman from the
field, and give her money, which she seemed not to expect, and for which
she shows no gratitude. Life appears to be indifferent to these people.
But, if these be brigands, we prefer them to those of Naples, and
even to the innkeepers of England. As we saunter home in the pleasant
afternoon, the vesper-bells are calling to each other, making the
sweetest echoes of peace everywhere in the hills, and all the piano is
jubilant with them, as we come down the steeps at sunset.

"You see there was no danger," said the giant to his wife that evening
at the supper-table.

"You would have found there was danger, if you had gone," returned the
wife of the giant significantly.

THE MYTH OF THE SIRENS

I like to walk upon the encircling ridge behind Sorrento, which commands
both bays. From there I can look down upon the Isles of the Sirens. The
top is a broad, windy strip of pasture, which falls off abruptly to the
Bay of Salerno on the south: a regular embankment of earth runs along
the side of the precipitous steeps, towards Sorrento. It appears to be
a line of defence for musketry, such as our armies used to throw up:
whether the French, who conducted siege operations from this promontory
on Capri, under Murat, had anything to do with it, does not appear.

Walking there yesterday, we met a woman shepherdess, cowherd, or
siren--standing guard ov