p to you from the pavement. Their own postilion reminded
the whole party of the _Suonatore di Violino_ of Raphael--whose
fiddlestick, by the way, being that of a bass viol, might at first sight
be mistaken for a folded riding-whip.

On they pass by the beautiful church of St. Giovanni, the statues on the
roof and over the portico of which have at least one point of
resemblance with their saintly prototypes--they are standing out there
in the clear blue heavens, to which, and not to the earth, they seem to
belong. At the Port Sebastian they are detained by a string of
wine-carts, each drawn by one horse, with his plume of black feathers on
his head, and each cart furnished with its goatskin umbrella, under the
shade of which the driver lies fast asleep. Then follow a long cavalcade
of peasants, mounted on mules or asses--_mounted_ of a truth, for they
sit on a high wooden saddle, their arms folded under their long brown
cloaks, and a black pointed hat upon their heads. Strange figures!

"A flower in _that_ hat!" exclaimed Mildred, as one passed her with a
beautiful carnation stuck into a beaver, which, except that it retained
its pyramidal form, and was there upon a human head, could not have been
recognised as _hat_ at all. "And he wears it seriously," she continued,
"serenely--without the least feeling of incongruity. Oh, I like that!"

Getting clear of this train, they advanced through the gate into the
open country. To their left the old aqueduct extended on the horizon its
long line of ruined arches; to the right the plain was dotted with mere
massive fragments of undistinguishable ruin, looking like what the
geologists call boulders. The trace of man's labour was lost in them;
the work of the artificer had come to resemble the rudest accident of
Nature.

And so Rome was left behind.

* * * * *

"Is that smoke or a cloud," asked Miss Bloomfield, "that rests so
constantly upon that mountain?"

"It is Vesuvius! Vesuvius!" exclaimed the rest of the party.

But they found themselves in a position, at that moment, the least of
all favourable to enthusiastic emotions. Their carriage was delayed at
the entrance into Naples, in the middle of a wide road, the hottest and
the dustiest that can be imagined. There they were arrested to undergo
the examination and the extortions of the custom-house gentry. Poor Mr.
Bloomfield was in a fever. His passport had been asked for six several
time