n at the height of summer noon, is gray.

* * * * *

"Yet this was once a hero's temple, crowned
With myrtle boughs by lovers, and with palm
By wrestlers, resonant with sweetest sound
Of flute and fife in summer evening's calm,
And odorous with incense all the year,
With nard and spice and galbanum and balm."

The detour to Paestum is full of significance. The massive columns of the
temples stand like giants of the ages. "It is difficult," writes John
Addington Symonds, "not to return again and again to the beauty of
coloring at Paestum. Lying basking in the sun on a flat slab of stone,
and gazing eastward, we overlook a foreground of dappled light and
shadow; then come two stationary columns built, it seems, of solid gold,
where the sunbeams strike along their russet surface. Between them lies
the landscape, a medley first of brakefern and asphodel and feathering
acanthus and blue spikes; while beyond and above is a glimpse of
mountains, purple almost to indigo with cloud shadows, and flecked with
snow."

The sail from Amalfi to Paestum is one incomparable in loveliness. The
sunshine is all lurid gold. The faint, transparent blue haze fills all
the defiles of the mountains; the cliffs disclose yawning caverns where
vast clusters of stalactites hang; and as the boat floats toward Capri
from the Sorrento promontory its rocky headlands rise and flame into
purple and rose against the glowing sky. Across the Bay of Naples rises
the great city. It stands in some subtle way reminding one of the scene
where one

"... rowing hard against the stream,
Saw distant gates of Eden gleam."

Capri is the idyllic island of prismatic light and shade, of gay and
joyous life. Here Tiberius had his summer palace, and it was from these
shores that he sent the historic letter which revolutionized the life of
Sejanus. The letter--_verbosa et grandis epistola_--is still vivid in
the historic associations of Rome. Capri is one of the favorite resorts
both for winter and summer. Its former modest prices are now greatly
increased, like all the latter-day expenses of Italy; but its beauty is
perennial, and the artist and poet can still command there a seclusion
almost impossible to secure elsewhere in Italy. The distinguished
artist, Elihu Vedder of Rome, has a country house on Capri, and another
well-known artist, Charles Caryl Coleman, makes this island his home.
There ar