ve Luz by the
Barege road,' the text goes on to say. Reflections and picturesque word-
painting are left for Mr. Maurice Hewlett, Mr. Arthur Symons, and Murray.

In _Southern Italy_, Baedeker yields to softer and more Virgilian
influences. The purple patches are longer and more frequent. On page 99
we learn not only how to get to Baiae, but that

Luxury and profligacy, however, soon took up their abode at Baiae, and
the desolate ruins, which now alone encounter the eye, point the usual
moral!

And from the preface to the same guide we obtain this remarkable advice:--

The traveller should adopt the Neapolitan custom of rejecting fish
that are not quite fresh.

But it is certain educational works, popular in my childhood, that have
yielded the more exotic Elethian blossoms for my Anthology. There are
passages I would not willingly let die. In one of these books general
knowledge was imparted after the manner of Magnall: 'What is the world?
The earth on which we live.' 'Who was Raphael?' 'How is rice made?'
After such desultory interrogatives, without any warning, came Question
15: 'Give the character of Prince Potemki':--

Sordidly mean, ostentatiously prodigal, filthily intemperate and
affectedly refined. Disgustingly licentious and extravagantly
superstitious, a brute in appetite, vigorous though vacillating in
action.

Until I went to the University, a great many years afterwards, I never
learnt who Potemki was. At the age of seven he stood to me for what
'Timberio' still is for Capriote children. My teacher obviously did not
know. She always evaded my inquiries by saying, 'You will know when you
are older, darling.' Suspecting her ignorance, I became pertinacious.
'When I am as old as you?' was my ungallant rejoinder. I had to write
the character out a hundred times. Then one Christmas Day I ventured to
ask my father, who said I would find out about him in Gibbon. But I knew
he was not speaking the truth, because he laughed in a nervous, peculiar
way, and added that since I was so fond of history I must go to Oxford
when I was older. I loathed history, and inwardly resolved that
Cambridge should be my University. My mother admitted entire ignorance
of Potemki's identity; and on my sketching his character (for I was proud
of the knowledge), said he was obviously a 'horrid' man. His personality
shadowed my childhood with a deadly fascination, which has not entirely
w