favored regions.  In the region about Sorrento one may be said to have found the land where beauty is the rule and not the exception.  The singularity there is not to see handsome points of physical proportion, but rather to see those who are without them.  Scarce a man, woman, or child you meet who has not some personal advantage to be commended, while even striking beauty is common.  Also, under these kindly skies, a native courtesy and gentleness of manner make themselves felt.  It would seem as if humanity, rocked in this flowery cradle, and soothed by so many daily caresses and appliances of nursing Nature, grew up with all that is kindliest on the outward,—­not repressed and beat in, as under the inclement atmosphere and stormy skies of the North.

The town of Sorrento itself overhangs the sea, skirting along rocky shores, which, hollowed here and there into picturesque grottoes, and fledged with a wild plumage of brilliant flowers and trailing vines, descend in steep precipices to the water.  Along the shelly beach, at the bottom, one can wander to look out on the loveliest prospect in the world.  Vesuvius rises with its two peaks softly clouded in blue and purple mists, which blend with its ascending vapors,—­Naples and the adjoining villages at its base gleaming in the distance like a fringe of pearls on a regal mantle.  Nearer by, the picturesque rocky shores of the island of Capri seem to pulsate through the dreamy, shifting mists that veil its sides; and the sea shimmers and glitters like the neck of a peacock with an iridescent mingling of colors:  the whole air is a glorifying medium, rich in prismatic hues of enchantment.

The town on three sides is severed from the main land by a gorge two hundred feet in depth and forty or fifty in breadth, crossed by a bridge resting on double arches, the construction of which dates back to the time of the ancient Romans.  This bridge affords a favorite lounging-place for the inhabitants, and at evening a motley assemblage may be seen lolling over its moss-grown sides,—­men with their picturesque knit caps of scarlet or brown falling gracefully on one shoulder, and women with their shining black hair and the enormous pearl earrings which are the pride and heirlooms of every family.  The present traveller at Sorrento may remember standing on this bridge and looking down the gloomy depths of the gorge, to where a fair villa, with its groves of orange-trees and gardens, overhangs the tremendous depths below.

Hundreds of years since, where this villa now stands was the simple dwelling of the two women whose history we have begun to tell you.  There you might have seen a small stone cottage with a two-arched arcade in front, gleaming brilliantly white out of the dusky foliage of an orange-orchard.  The dwelling was wedged like a bird-box between two fragments of rock, and behind it the land rose rocky, high, and steep, so as to form a natural wall.  A small ledge or terrace of cultivated land here hung in air,—­below