Italian Journeys

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Capri

hibition for that day only, and would, when we departed, disappear in its sapphire sea, and be no more; just as Niagara ceases to play as soon as you

ws of wooded hills that rose high above us into the misty weather, and caught here and there the sunshine on their tops. In that heavenly climate no day can long be out of humor, and at Sorrento we found ours very pleasant, and rode delightedly through the devious streets, looking up to the terraced orange-groves on one hand, and down to the terraced orange-groves on the other, until at a certain turnin

ed upon for the service, which is returned with the amount due him, at the end, if the service has been satisfactory; and I demanded of Antonino this caparra, as it is called. "What caparra?" said he, lifting the lid of his wicked eye with his forefinger, "this is the best caparra," meaning a face as honest and trustworthy as the devil's. The stroke confirmed my subjection to

re gulf. On the way thither there was little interest but that of natural beauty in the bold, picturesque coast we skirted for some distance; though on one mighty rock there were the rui

answered Antonino compassionately, "for I have sinned much. But the lie doesn't go ahead" (non va avanti), added this Machiavelli of boatmen; yet I think he was mistaken, for he deceived us with perfect ease and admirable success. All along, he had pretended that we could see Capri, visit the Blue Grotto, and return that day; but as we drew

Antonino, as I shall always believe,) put on a face of tender solemnity, threw back his head a little, brought his hand to his cheek, expanded it, and said, "No; to-day, no! To-morrow, yes!" Antonino leaped joyously ashore, and delivered us over to the old man, to be guided to the Hotel di Londra, while he drew his boat

s and of a portly habit of body; her daughter, a mere child; and her niece, a very pretty girl of eighteen, with a voice soft and sweet as a bird's. They placed the ladies, one on each mule, and then, while the mother and daughter devoted themselves to the hind-quarters of the foremost animal, the lovely niece brought up the rear of the second beast, and the patriarch went before, and T. and I trudged behind. So the cavalcade ascended; first, f

teliest of the edifices as belonging to a certain English physician who had come to visit Capri for a few days, and had now been living on the island twenty years, having married (said the muletress) the prettiest and poorest girl in the town, from this romance-something like which the muletress seemed to think might well happen concerning herself-we passed lightly to speak of kindred things, the muletress re

is you

a, little si

old are you

hteen, l

ou are b

h, who has dropped behind to listen to our dis

! little si

e. I think there must be some good-

ing. We are four sisters, and we have only the buonam

n't believe her;

isn't true. He

just as the Northern Italians always talk of polenta. She was a true daughter of the isle, and had never left it but once in her life, when she went to Naples. "Naples was beautiful, yes; but one always loves one's own country the best." She

ressed by taxes, and the strict enforcement of the conscriptions, and they had little love for the Italian Government, and wished the Bourbons back again. The Piedmontese, indeed, misgoverned them horribly. There was the Blue Grot

d the landlord-a white-toothed, brown-faced, good-humored peasant-gallantly ran forward and presented the ladies with bouquets of roses. We thought it a pretty and graceful act, but found later that it was to be paid for, like all pretty and gr

women were barefooted and hoopless, and they gave us the Tarantella with all the beauty of natural movement and free floating drapery, and with all that splendid grace of pose which animates the antique statues and pictures of dancers. They swayed themselves in time with the music; then, filled with its passionate impulse, advanced and retreated and whirled away;-snapping their fingers above their heads, and looking over their shoulders with a gay and a laughing challenge to each other, they drifted through the ever-repeated figures of flight and wooing, and wove for us pictures

th was too dizzying to look into. So we looked instead toward Amalfi, across the Gulf of Salerno, and toward Naples, across her bay. On every hand the sea was flushed with sunset, and an unspeakable calm dwelt upon it, while the heights rising from it softened and softened in the distance, and withdrew themselves into dreams of ghostly solitude and phantom city. His late majesty the Emperor Tiberius is well known to have been a man of sentiment, and he may often have sought this spot to enjoy the evening hour. It was convenient to his palace, and he could here give a fillip to his jaded sensibilities by

ve seen the Tarantella danced here; for he has daughters and friends to dance it for strangers, and gets a deal of money by it. So, if he asks you to see it, do me the pleasure to say, lest he should take on (pigliarsi)

e turned away, "Her husband ought to be here; but this is a festa, and he is drinking and gaming in the village," while the woman protested that he was sick at home. There was also a hermit living in great publicity among the ruins, and the patriarch did not spare him a sneering comment. [This hermit I have heard was not brought up to the profession of anchorite, but was formerly a shoemaker, and according to his own confession

nothing besides the uninteresting foundations of the building, except a subterranean avenue leading from one part of the palace to another: this is walled with delicate brickwork, and exquisitely paved with white marble mosaic; and this was all that witnessed of the splendor of the wicked emperor. Nature, the all-forgetting, all-forgiving, that takes the red battle-field into her arms and hides it with blossom and harvest, could

for us by the patriarch, and went in to dinner, where there were two Danish gentlemen in dispute with as many rogues of boatmen, who, having contracted to take them back that night to Naples, were now trying to fly their bargain and remain at Capri till the morrow. The Danes beat them, however, and then sat down to dinner, and to long stories of the imposture and villany of the Italians. One of them chiefly bewailed himself that t