a beautiful seaport town, and it is, as it were, wrapt in an Italian cloak hanging round the limbs, or, to speak common sense, the new streets which they are rebuilding.  We made no stop at Salerno, but continued to traverse the great plain of that name, within sight of the sea, which is chiefly pastured by that queer-looking brute, the buffalo, concerning which they have a notion that it returns its value sooner, and with less expense of feeding, than any other animal.

At length we came to two streams which join their forces, and would seem to flow across the plain to the bottom of the hills.  One, however, flows so flat as almost scarcely to move, and sinking into a kind of stagnant pool is swallowed up by the earth, without proceeding any further until, after remaining buried for two or three [miles?] underground, it again bursts forth to the light, and resumes its course.  When we crossed this stream by a bridge, which they are now repairing, we entered a spacious plain, very like that which we had [left] and displaying a similar rough and savage cultivation.  Here savage herds were under the guardianship of shepherds as wild as they were themselves, clothed in a species of sheepskins, and carrying a sharp spear with which they herd and sometimes kill their buffaloes.  Their farmhouses are in very poor order, and with every mark of poverty, and they have the character of being moved to dishonesty by anything like opportunity; of this there was a fatal instance, but so well avenged that it is not like to be repeated till it has long faded out of memory.  The story, I am assured, happened exactly as follows:—­A certain Mr. Hunt, lately married to a lady of his own age, and, seeming to have had what is too often the Englishman’s characteristic of more money than wit, arrived at Naples a year or two ago en famille, and desirous of seeing all the sights in the vicinity of this celebrated place.  Among others Paestum was not forgot.  At one of the poor farmhouses where they stopped, the inhabitant set her eyes on a toilet apparatus which was composed of silver and had the appearance of great value.  The woman who spread this report addressed herself to a youth who had been [under] arms, and undoubtedly he and his companions showed no more hesitation than the person with whom the idea had originated.  Five fellows, not known before this time for any particular evil, agreed to rob the English gentleman of the treasure of which he had made such an imprudent display.  They were attacked by the banditti in several parties, but the principal attack was directed to Mr. Hunt’s carriage, a servant of that gentleman being, as well as himself, pulled out of the carriage and watched by those who had undertaken to conduct this bad deed.  The man who had been the soldier, probably to keep up his courage, began to bully, talk violently, and strike the valet de place, who screamed out in a plaintive manner, “Do not injure me.”  His master,