CHAPTER XIII.

     “If ever you have looked on better days,
     If ever been where bells have knolled to church;
     If ever sat at any good man’s feast! 
     If ever from your eyelids wiped a tear,
     And know what ’tis to pity, and be pitied,
     Let gentleness my strong enforcement be.”

     SHAKESPEARE.

It is now necessary to advance the time, and to transfer the scene of our tale to another, but not a distant, part of the same sea.  Let the reader fancy himself standing at the mouth of a large bay of some sixteen or eighteen miles in diameter, in nearly every direction; though the shores must be indented with advancing promontories and receding curvatures, while the depth of the whole might possibly a little exceed the greatest width.  He will then occupy the spot of which we wish to present to him one of the fairest panoramas of earth.  On his right stands a high, rocky island of dark tufa, rendered gay, amid all its magnificent formations, by smiling vineyards and teeming villages, and interesting by ruins that commemorate events as remote as the Caesars.  A narrow passage of the blue Mediterranean separates this island from a bold cape on the main, whence follows a succession of picturesque, village-clad heights and valleys, relieved by scenery equally bold and soft, and adorned by the monkish habitations called in the language of the country Camaldolis, until we reach a small city which stands on a plain that rises above the water between one and two hundred feet, on a base of tufa, and the houses of which extend to the very verge of the dizzy cliffs that limit its extent on the north.  The plain itself is like a hive, with its dwellings and scenes of life, while the heights behind it teem with cottages and the signs of human labor.  Quitting this smiling part of the coast, we reach a point, always following the circuit of the bay, where the hills or heights tower into ragged mountains, which stretch their pointed peaks upward to some six or seven thousand feet toward the clouds, having sides now wild with precipices and ravines, now picturesque with shooting-towers, hamlets, monasteries, and bridle-paths; and bases dotted, or rather lined, with towns and villages.  Here the mountain formation quits the margin of the bay, following the coast southward or running into the interior of the country; and the shore, sweeping round to the north and west, offers a glimpse into a background of broad plain ere it meets a high, insulated, conical mountain, which properly forms the head of the coast indentation.  The human eye never beheld a more affluent scene of houses, cities, villages, vineyards, and country residences than was presented by the broad breast of this isolated mountain, passing which a wider view is obtained of the rich plain that seems to lie behind it, bounded as it is by a wall of a distant and mysterious-looking, yet bold range