haded by a gigantic bay-tree, which is said to
have died on the death of Dante. Petrarch, who was brought hither by
King Robert, planted another, which existed in the time of Sannazaro,
but was destroyed by relic-collectors in the last century. A branch was
sent to Frederick the Great by the Margravine of Baireuth, with some
verses by Voltaire. If from no other cause, the tomb would be
interesting from its visitors; here Boccaccio renounced the career of a
merchant for that of a poet, and a well-known legend, that St. Paul
visited the sepulcher of Virgil at Naples, was long commemorated in the
verse of a hymn used in the service for St. Paul's Day at Mantua.

The tomb is a small, square, vaulted chamber with three windows. Early
in the sixteenth century a funeral urn, containing the ashes of the
poet, stood in the center, supported by nine little marble pillars. Some
say that Robert of Anjou removed it, in 1326, for security to the Castel
Nuovo, others that it was given by the Government to a cardinal from
Mantua, who died at Genoa on his way home. In either event the urn is
now lost.

It is just beneath the tomb that the road to Pozzuoli enters the famous
Grotto of Posilipo, a tunnel about half a mile long, in breadth from 25
to 30 feet, and varying from about 90 feet in height near the entrance,
to little more than 20 feet at points of the interior. Petronius and
Seneca mention its narrow gloomy passage with horror, in the reign of
Nero, when it was so low that it could only be used for foot-passengers,
who were obliged to stoop in passing through.

In the fifteenth century King Alphonso I. gave it height by lowering the
floor, which was paved by Don Pedro di Toledo a hundred years later. In
the Middle Ages the grotto was ascribed to the magic arts of Virgil. In
recent years it has been the chief means of communication between Naples
and Baiae, and is at all times filled with dust and noise, the
flickering lights and resounding echoes giving it a most weird effect.
However much one may abuse Neapolitans, we may consider in their favor,
as Swinburne observes, "what a terror this dark grotto would be in
London!"

TWO ASCENTS OF VESUVIUS[8]

BY JOHANN WOLGANG VON GOETHE

At the foot of the steep ascent, we were received by two guides, one
old, the other young, but both active fellows. The first pulled me up
the path, the other Tischbein[9]--pulled I say, for these guides are
girded round the waist with a l