unately we are
all, as were the Greeks, ministered unto by both these groups, but can
fortunately, on the other hand, choose which group we will listen to the
singing of, though the strains are somewhat mingled; as, for instance,
in the modern opera, where the music quite as often wastes life away,
as gives to it the energy of pure desire. Yet, if I were to locate the
Sirens geographically, I should place the beneficent desires on this
coast, and the dangerous ones on that of wicked Baiae; to which group
the founder of Naples no doubt belonged.

Nowhere, perhaps, can one come nearer to the beautiful myths of Greece,
the springlike freshness of the idyllic and heroic age, than on this
Sorrentine promontory. It was no chance that made these coasts the home
of the kind old monarch Eolus, inventor of sails and storm-signals.
On the Telegrafo di Mare Cuccola is a rude signal-apparatus for
communication with Capri,--to ascertain if wind and wave are propitious
for entrance to the Blue Grotto,--which probably was not erected by
Eolus, although he doubtless used this sightly spot as one of his
stations. That he dwelt here, in great content, with his six sons and
six daughters, the Months, is nearly certain; and I feel as sure that
the Sirens, whose islands were close at hand, were elevators and not
destroyers of the primitive races living here.

It seems to me this must be so; because the pilgrim who surrenders
himself to the influences of these peaceful and sun-inundated coasts,
under this sky which the bright Athena loved and loves, loses, by and
by, those longings and heart-sicknesses which waste away his life, and
comes under the dominion, more and more, of those constant desires
after that which is peaceful and enduring and has the saving quality of
purity. I know, indeed, that it is not always so; and that, as Boreas is
a better nurse of rugged virtue than Zephyr, so the soft influences
of this clime only minister to the fatal desires of some: and such are
likely to sail speedily back to Naples.

The Sirens, indeed, are everywhere; and I do not know that we can go
anywhere that we shall escape the infinite longings, or satisfy them.
Here, in the purple twilight of history, they offered men the choice
of good and evil. I have a fancy, that, in stepping out of the whirl of
modern life upon a quiet headland, so blessed of two powers, the air and
the sea, we are able to come to a truer perception of the drift of
the eterna