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, lighteyed, skipping, sunny-you looked in vain for 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, too, who 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. Well, when he received his coin he went to his store, and I presume began to naggle 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. He 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. I learned also on this trip to repress my appetite for maccaroni. We saw maccaroni in all forms and under all circumstances, dangling in the wind catching the dust. Give me a dish with the most suspicious antecedents rather than this maccaroni from Naples.

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 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 Mount 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 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, one 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, 912, 685,

and 993. The eruption in 472 seems to have been the severest known since the shower of ash's 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, about 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 view, illuminated the top. Millions of redhot 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