and pay their respects. It was ten before we were under way, the General and party in the advance, with our courier, whom we have called the Marquis, on the box, and Mrs. Grant's maid bringing up the rear. We drove all the way. You will understand our route when I remind you that the Bay of Naples is something like a horseshoe. On one side of the shoe is the city, on the other is Vesuvius. Therefore to reach the mountain we have to drive around the upper circle of the shoe. The shores of this bay are so populous that our route seemed to be one continuous town. We only knew that we were passing the city limits when the guard stopped our carriage to ask if there was anything on which we were anxious to pay duty. As there was nothing but a modest luncheon, we kept on, rattling through narrow, stony streets. Beggars kept us company, although from some cause or another there were not as many as we supposed. Perhaps it was the new government, which we are told is dealing severely with beggars; or more likely it was the weather, which is very cold and seems to have taken all ambition out of the people. Still we were not without attentions, and from streets and by-roads a woman or a man, or sometimes a blind man led by a boy, would start up and follow us with appeals for money. They were starving or their children were starving, and lest we might not understand their distress, they would pat their mouths or breasts to show how empty they were. For starving persons they showed great courage and endurance in following our carriage. The General had an assortment of coins, and, although warned in the most judicious manner against encouraging pauperism, he did encourage it, and with so much success that before he was halfway up the mountain he was a pauper himself to the extent of borrowing pennies from some of his companions to keep up the demands upon his generosity.

What we observed in this long ride around the horseshoe was that Naples was a very dirty, a very happy, and a very picturesque town. We learned that the supply of rags was inexhaustible. I never knew what could be done with rags until I saw these lazzaroni. They seem to have grown rags, as a

sheep grows his fleece, and yet there was no misery in their faces. Happy, dirty, idle, light-eyed, skipping, sunny-you looked in vain for those faces, those terrible faces of misery and woe, which one sees so often in London. I take it, therefore, that begging is an amusement, an industry, and not a necessity -that the Naples beggar

goes out to his work like any other laborer. He is not driven to it by the gaunt wolves hunger and disease. One scamp—a gray-bearded scamp, toowho followed us, was a baker, who made and sold loaves. He was standing at his counter trading when our carriage hove in sight. At once he threw down his loaves and started after us in full chase, moaning and showing his tongue

and beating his breast, and

telling us he was starving.

LAZZARONI OF NAPLES.

Well, when he received his coin he went to his store, and I

pre

sume began to haggle over his bread. That coin was clear gain. He was not a beggar, but a speculator. He went into the street and made a little raise, just as brokers and merchants at home go into the "street" and try an adventure in stocks. The Neapolitan speculator was a wiser man than his New York brother. ran no risk. Even if he did not gain his coin the run did him good, and his zeal gave him the reputation of an active business man.

He

In the meantime our horses begin to moderate their pace and the streets to show an angle, and horsemen surround our carriage and tell us in a variety of tongues that they are guides, and, if we require it, will go to the summit. Women come to cabin doors, and hold up bottles of white wine-the wine called Lachrymæ Christi, by some horrible irreverence-and ask us to

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stop and drink. And already the houses begin to thin, and we have fields around us and glimpses of the sea; and although the lazy volcano, with its puffs of smoke, looks as far distant as when we were on the deck of the "Vandalia" miles away, we know that the ascent has begun, and that we are really climbing the sides of Vesuvius.

While we are making this slow ascent let me recall some facts about Vesuvius, which are the results of recent reading

reading made with a view to this journey. In the times of fable these lava hills were said to have been the scene of a battle between the giants and the gods, in which Hercules took part. Here was the lake Avernus, whose exhalations were so fatal that the birds would not fly over its surface. Here, also, was the prison house of Typhon, although some critics assign him to Etna. But Etna, Vesuvius, and Stromboli are a trinity of volcanoes, evidently outlets to the one sea of fire, and any one would do for the prison house of a god. It was here that Ulysses came, as you will find in the eleventh book of the

THE ASCENT OF VESUVIUS.

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Odyssey. Three centuries before the Christian era a great battle was fought at Vesuvius between the Romans and the Latins, the battle in which Decius lost his life. It was on Vesuvius that Spartacus encamped with his army of gladiators and bondsmen, in his magnificent but unavailing blow for freedom. Just now there are two cones or craters-one passive, the other active. We read in Dion Cassius of an eruption which does not speak of the present crater. The great eruptions are placed in the years 79, 203, 472, 512, 685, and 993. The eruption in 472 seems to have been the severest known since the shower of ashes that destroyed Pompeii. In the early eruptions there was nothing but ashes and stones. The first mention of lava was in 572. Sometimes the volcano has done nothing but smoke for a century or two. About three centuries ago a new peak, 440 feet in height, was formed in twenty-four hours, and there it is now before us as Monte Nuovo. There was no eruption, however, and the hill is as placid as one of your Orange hills in New Jersey. In the last century there was a good deal of movement, as we have, from the pen of Sir William Hamilton, the British Minister at Naples, accounts of eruptions in 1776, 1777, and 1779. There are also pictures in the Museum of two eruptions in the later part of the century, which must have been terrible enough to suggest the last day if the artist painted truly. In one of these eruptions the liquid lava, mixed with stones and scoriæ, rose 10,000 feet. At times Sir William saw a fountain of liquid transparent fire, casting so bright a light that the smallest objects could be clearly distinguished within six miles of the mountain. There was another eruption in 1793, which Dr. Clarke described-volleys of immense stones. The doctor went as near the crater as possible, and was nearly suffocated by the fumes of sulphur. The lava poured down the sides in a slow, glowing, densely flowing stream. Thousands of stones were in the air. The clouds over the crater were as

white as the purest snow. In a week the lava stopped, and columns of light red flame, beautiful to the view, illuminated the top. Millions of red-hot stones were thrown into the air, and after this came explosions and earthquakes, shocks louder than

cannon, terrible thunder, with a "noise like the trampling of horses' feet." The next eruption was in 1822, when the crater fell, reducing the mountain's height about eight hundred feet. Since 1822 there have been several eruptions, the most important happening in 1861. Vesuvius is now a double mountain upon an extended base from thirty to forty miles in circumference, not more than one third the base of Etna. Its height varies. In 1868 it was 4,255 feet; but since 1872 it has slightly diminished. Stromboli is 3,022 feet, but, although in constant motion, the stones nearly all fall back into the crater. Etna is 10,870 feet in height, but slopes so gradually and has so broad a base that it looks more like a tableland than a mountain. I did not see Stromboli, for although we sailed near it the mist and rain hid it from view. I have seen Etna, however, and think it far less imposing and picturesque than Vesuvius.

In the meantime we are going up steadily. The horses go slower and slower. Some of us get out and help them by walking part of the way and taking short cuts. The few houses that we see on the roadside have evidently been built with a view to eruptions, for the roofs are made of heavy stone and cement. General Grant notes that where the lava and stones have been allowed to rest and to mingle with the soil good crops spring up, and here and there we note a flourishing bit of vineyard. Soon, however, vineyards disappear, and after the vineyards the houses, except an occasional house of shelter, into which we are all invited to enter and drink of the Tears of Christ. Our convoy of horsemen, who have been following us for a mile or two, begin to drop off. The Marquis has been preaching to them from the box in various languages upon their folly in wasting time, and they heed his warnings. There are no beggars. It is remarked that beggars always prefer a dead level. One brighteyed boy keeps at our side, a lad with about as dirty a suit of clothes and as pretty a pair of eyes as you could see even in squalid, smiling Naples. Well, there is something in the eyes. or it may be in the boyishness of their possessor, which quite wins one of the party, for when the Marquis insists that he shall join his fellow mendicants in the valley below, a gracious