they were, and how hard it seemed that they should be priests and Croats!  They told us all about the city of Spalato, where they lived, and gave us such a glowing account of Dalmatian poets and poetry that we began to doubt at last if the seat of literature were not somewhere on the east coast of the Adriatic; and I hope we left them the impression that the literary centre of the world was not a thousand miles from the horse-car office in Harvard Square.

Here and there repairs were going forward on the railroad, and most of the laborers were women.  They were straight and handsome girls, and moved with a stately grace under the baskets of earth balanced on their heads.  Brave black eyes they had, such as love to look and to be looked at; they were not in the least hurried by their work, but desisted from it to gaze at the passengers whenever the train stopped.  They all wore their beautiful peasant costume,—­the square white linen head-dress falling to the shoulders, the crimson bodice, and the red scant skirt; and how they contrived to keep themselves so clean at their work, and to look so spectacular in it all, remains one of the many Italian mysteries.

Another of these mysteries we beheld in the little beggar-boy at Isoletta.  He stood at the corner of the station quite mute and motionless during our pause, and made no sign of supplication or entreaty.  He let his looks beg for him.  He was perfectly beautiful and exceedingly picturesque.  Where his body was not quite naked, his jacket and trousers hung in shreds and points; his long hair grew through the top of his hat, and fell over like a plume.  Nobody could resist him; people ran out of the cars, at the risk of being left behind, to put coppers into the little dirty hand held languidly out to receive them.  The boy thanked none, smiled on none, but looked curiously and cautiously at all, with the quick perception and the illogical conclusions of his class and race.  As we started he did not move, but remained in his attitude of listless tranquillity.  As we glanced back, the mystery of him seemed to be solved for a moment:  he would stand there till he grew up into a graceful, prayerful, pitiless brigand, and then he would rend from travel the tribute now go freely given him.  But after all, though his future seemed clear, and he appeared the type of a strange and hardly reclaimable people, he was not quite a solution of the Neapolitan puzzle.

XIII.

ROMAN PEARLS.

I.

The first view of the ruins in the Forum brought a keen sense of disappointment.  I knew that they could only be mere fragments and rubbish, but I was not prepared to find them so.  I learned that I had all along secretly hoped for some dignity of neighborhood, some affectionate solicitude on the part of Nature to redeem these works of Art from the destruction that had befallen them.  But in hollows below