“The grace of the speaker may well excuse the irony!  Sorrento is a village on the southern shore of the renowned Naples bay.  Fire has wrought many changes in that soft but wild country, and if, as religionists believe, the fountains of the great deep were ever broken up, and the earth’s crust disturbed, to permit its secret springs to issue on the surface, this may have been one of the spots chosen by him whose touch leaves marks that are indelible, in which to show his power.  The bed of the earth, itself, in all that region, appears to have been but the vomitings of volcanoes; and the Sorrentine passes his peaceable life in the bed of an extinguished crater.  ’Tis curious to see in what manner the men of the middle ages have built their town, on the margin of the sea, where the element has swallowed one-half the ragged basin, and how they have taken the yawning crevices of the tufo, for ditches to protect their walls!  I have visited many lands, and seen nature in nearly every clime; but no spot has yet presented, in a single view, so pleasant a combination of natural objects, mingled with mighty recollections, as that lovely abode on the Sorrentine cliffs!”

“Recount me these pleasures, that in memory seem so agreeable, while I examine further into the contents of the bale.”

The gay young free-trader paused, and seemed lost in images of the past.  Then, with a melancholy smile, he soon continued.  “Though many years are gone,” he said, “I can recall the beauties of that scene, as vividly as if they still stood before the eye.  Our abode was on the verge of the cliffs.  In front lay the deep-blue water, and on its further shore was a line of objects such as accident or design rarely assembles in one view.  Fancy thyself, lady, at my side, and follow the curvature of the northern shore, as I trace the outline of that glorious scene!  That high, mountainous, and ragged island, on the extreme left, is modern Ischia.  Its origin is unknown, though piles of lava lie along its coast, which seems fresh as that thrown from the mountain yesterday.  The long, low bit of land, insulated like its neighbor, is called Procida, a scion of ancient Greece.  Its people still preserve, in dress and speech, marks of their origin.  The narrow strait conducts you to a high and naked bluff!  That is the Misenum, of old.  Here Eneas came to land, and Rome held her fleets, and thence Pliny took the water, to get a nearer view of the labors of the volcano, after its awakening from centuries of sleep.  In the hollow of the ridge, between that naked bluff and the next swell of the mountain, lie the fabulous Styx, the Elysian fields, and the place of the dead, as fixed by the Mantuan.  More on the height and nearer to the sea, lie, buried in the earth, the vast vaults of the Piscina Mirabile—­and the gloomy caverns of the Hundred Chambers; places that equally denote the luxury and the despotism of Rome.  Nearer to the vast pile of castle, that is visible so many leagues, is the graceful and winding