ern, through fields of dew-drenched barley and folded
poppies, to a farmhouse overshadowed by four spreading pines.
Exceedingly soft and grey, with rose-tinted weft of steam upon its
summit, stood Vesuvius above us in the twilight. Something in the recent
impression of the dimly-lighted supper-room, and in the idyllic
simplicity of this lantern-litten journey through the barley, suggested,
by one of those inexplicable stirrings of association which affect tired
senses, a dim, dreamy thought of Palestine and Bible stories. The
feeling of the _cenacolo_ blent here with feelings of Ruth's cornfields,
and the white square houses with their flat roofs enforced the illusion.
Here we slept in the middle of a _contadino_ colony. Some of the folk
had made way for us; and by the wheezing, coughing, and snoring of
several sorts and ages in the chamber next me, I imagine they must have
endured considerable crowding. My bed was large enough to have contained
a family. Over its head there was a little shrine, hollowed in the
thickness of the wall, with several sacred emblems and a shallow vase
of holy water. On dressers at each end of the room stood glass shrines,
occupied by finely-dressed Madonna dolls and pots of artificial flowers.
Above the doors S. Michael and S. Francis, roughly embossed in low
relief and boldly painted, gave dignity and grandeur to the walls. These
showed some sense for art in the first builders of the house. But the
taste of the inhabitants could not be praised. There were countless
gaudy prints of saints, and exactly five pictures of the Bambino, very
big, and sprawling in a field alone. A crucifix, some old bottles, a
gun, old clothes suspended from pegs, pieces of peasant pottery and
china, completed the furniture of the apartment.

But what a view it showed when Christian next morning opened the door!
From my bed I looked across the red-tiled terrace to the stone pines
with their velvet roofage and the blue-peaked hills of Stabiae.

SAN GERMANO.

No one need doubt about his quarters in this country town. The Albergo
di Pompeii is a truly sumptuous place. Sofas, tables, and chairs in our
sitting-room are made of buffalo horns, very cleverly pieced together,
but torturing the senses with suggestions of impalement. Sitting or
standing, one felt insecure. When would the points run into us? when
should we begin to break these incrustations off? and would the whole
fabric crumble at a touch into chaotic he