this point, he rolled the map-table to the balcony of his library window, and pointed across the broad Riviera di Chiaja, on which his palazzo fronts, to a villa, or park, filled with a variety of shade-trees.

"There," said he, "is the Villa Reale. It is about five thousand feet long by two hundred in width, and on the sea side it has a fine wall and parapet. You see sentinels standing at the gates of the iron railing which separates it from the Riviera di Chiaja. Only the gentry and nobility are allowed to use it. It is the only spot in Naples into which the lower classes are not permitted to enter. They may invade your court-yard, and even the steps of your palazzo; keep house literally out on the sidewalks of the finest streets; cook, eat, wash, live, and sleep in front of the noblest palace; but into the Villa Reale they cannot enter, except one day in the year, the eighth of September, at the great festival of Santa Maria di Piedigrotta. It is an agreeable lounging-place, with pleasant winding paths and fine broad walks, a terrace running out into the sea, some grottos with statuary, two small handsome temples to Virgil and Tasso, and pleasant fountains. The trees are mostly acacias and oaks, with some few Oriental shrubs.

"Now we will come back to the Riviera di Chiaja. After you pass the Villa Reale, you will observe that it divides into two branches; the left, or lower one, running by the sea-shore, is called Strada Mergellina, - that is

where your palazzo stands. The right, or upper branch, is the Strada di Piedigrotta; follow it some distance, and you will arrive at Virgil's tomb, which stands at the entrance of the celebrated Grotto of Posilippo, the one Petrarch and Corinne made famous, — called also Grotto di Pozzuoli. This is a tunnel, over two thousand feet

long, and twenty-one feet wide. In the after part of the day this Grotto is lighted by the western sun, but during the morning and midday, you will find it pretty much as Seneca describes it, 'Darkness made visible'; and to foot-passengers it seems a terrifying place, for it is nearly always crowded with two streams of people going and coming, screaming donkey-drivers, carriages, and peasants. But once through the Grotto, the road leads off to Pozzuoli, where it finds the little bit of Mergellina that has been straying gracefully around by the sea. At Pozzuoli the two join, and then, as the old song sings, it goes,

'Over the hills and far away';

out, if you please to follow it, Mrs. Dale, to that Euboean coast of Cumæ, where 'the anchor with tenacious fluke moored the ships of Eneas, and the bending sterns fringed the margin of the shore.'"

When we returned to the carriage, on leaving the palazzo of the embassy, Venitia, with a playful, knowing air, directed the driver to take us to "Detkens," as if quite at home in this new city.

"The truth is," she said, "that although I cannot help feeling as Goethe did in Sicily, when you and Ottilie will persist, like the Sicilian guide, in marring, by your illtimed erudition, my refreshing feelings of peace, calling up departed spectres, and reviving tumults and horrors,' I must, in self-defence, do as the contradictory German poet did at Palermo, rush off to purchase a Homer and Virgil; for I find I am to be persecuted with learned allusions on all sides, in these eternally classic heights of the ancient world. So, while you and Mr. Rochester were dancing stately tongue minuets à la cour, I learned from his agreeable wife that this place, Detkens,'

-

to which we are now driving, is where bookish strangers most do congregate, finding there all manner of nice things."

To "Detkens" accordingly we drove, and Venitia who has not Janet's cleverness in old tongues, never having been willing to study any but modern languages and music, which have needed but little application on her part - supplied herself with translations of all the old poets and historians she could find.

V

ELECTRA.

ENITIA is playing fugues. How positive the dear girl is, but very clever and original. She has just finished a fugue of Bach, with a throbbing beat in it like a full heart. It is the one in the Chromatic Fantasia, that Fantasia so soft and tender and flowing in its modulations, that one would scarcely imagine a single deviation had been made from its fundamental harmony. He was, indeed, a great master, this same John Sebastian Bach. While listening to his fugues I forget that they are exercises of deep thought, great intellectual power, and profound knowledge, - mental musical feats, - for he throws into them a rhythmical life that is full of freedom; they are not mere themes transposed into different keys, one hand following the other slavishly, but independent, reasoning

poems.

Of a totally different nature are Handel's fugues, and yet, to my ears and taste, not less masterly. They are not so self-contained or persistent, but quite as free and strong. Some few of them give me more pleasure than Bach's even, especially the one Venitia has just commenced, the superb fugue in E minor (mi); it sounds like the concentrated roll of mid-ocean.

But I do not like her execution of fugues. She thinks

they must be rigid, because they are exact. While she executes other compositions freely, stamping them with the sharp impress of her unmistakable genius, she shows the student in these; you can hear the beat of the metronome through every measure. She needs emancipating, as it were, in almost everything. Not that she is bound by Janet, or me, or any one; on the contrary, her opinions are independent enough. She is a little dogmatical and obstinate once in a while; at such times we combat her, but are very careful not to repress her in any way. But she is angular, and hard, and too devoted to technical minutiae. I feel discouraged sometimes, and fancy that this enchantment results from the fairy-like spell which extreme culture and exquisite surroundings of social refinement exercise over some natures. There have never been any rough points in her life since her recollection; no heavy shadows to bring out rich, strong lights; it is this smoothness of existence which deprives her of comprehending some things in Art as well as in Life, seeing only the cold, bald, matter-of-fact side of the crystal, entirely losing sight of the beautiful prismatic play of Fancy and Poesy. She would fain touch, hold, weigh, and measure all things, never dreaming that the sweetest, dearest, loveliest emotions in this existence are but the shadows of a dream,- intangible, inexpressible, like the faint odor of a rare fruit or flower, the delicate droplet of a luscious grape, the perishable down on Psyche's wing.

But to return to Handel's fugue.

There are some creations of Art which can never be comprehended until one has been anchored as far out in the deep waters of sorrow as the master who created them; therefore I will not complain that Venitia is not