is really no spring anywhere except in the imagination of poets.  For the first week was an exact copy of the miseries of a New England spring; a bright sun came for an hour or two in the morning, just to coax you forth without your cloak, and then came up a villanous, horrible wind, exactly like the worst east wind of Boston, breaking the heart, racking the brain, and turning hope and fancy to an irrevocable green and yellow hue, in lieu of their native rose.

However, here at Naples I have at last found my Italy; I have passed through the Grotto of Pausilippo, visited Cuma, Baiae, and Capri, ascended Vesuvius, and found all familiar, except the sense of enchantment, of sweet exhilaration, this scene conveys.

  “Behold how brightly breaks the morning!”

and yet all new, as if never yet described, for Nature here, most prolific and exuberant in her gifts, has touched them all with a charm unhackneyed, unhackneyable, which the boots of English dandies cannot trample out, nor the raptures of sentimental tourists daub or fade.  Baiae had still a hid divinity for me, Vesuvius a fresh baptism of fire, and Sorrento—­O Sorrento was beyond picture, beyond poesy, for the greatest Artist had been at work there in a temper beyond the reach of human art.

Beyond this, reader, my old friend and valued acquaintance on other themes, I shall tell you nothing of Naples, for it is a thing apart in the journey of life, and, if represented at all, should be so in a fairer form than offers itself at present.  Now the actual life here is over, I am going to Rome, and expect to see that fane of thought the last day of this week.

At Genoa and Leghorn, I saw for the first time Italians in their homes.  Very attractive I found them, charming women, refined men, eloquent and courteous.  If the cold wind hid Italy, it could not the Italians.  A little group of faces, each so full of character, dignity, and, what is so rare in an American face, the capacity for pure, exalting passion, will live ever in my memory,—­the fulfilment of a hope!

We started from Leghorn in an English boat, highly recommended, and as little deserving of such praise as many another bepuffed article.  In the middle of a fine, clear night, she was run into by the mail steamer, which all on deck clearly saw coming upon her, for no reason that could be ascertained, except that the man at the wheel said he had turned the right way, and it never seemed to occur to him that he could change when he found the other steamer had taken the same direction.  To be sure, the other steamer was equally careless, but as a change on our part would have prevented an accident that narrowly missed sending us all to the bottom, it hardly seemed worth while to persist, for the sake of convicting them of error.