world is in than bees in their cells.

THE VILLA NARDI

The Villa Nardi hangs over the sea. It is built on a rock, and I know
not what Roman and Greek foundations, and the remains of yet earlier
peoples, traders, and traffickers, whose galleys used to rock there
at the base of the cliff, where the gentle waves beat even in this
winter-time with a summer swing and sound of peace.

It was at the close of a day in January that I first knew the Villa
Nardi,--a warm, lovely day, at the hour when the sun was just going
behind the Capo di Sorrento, in order to disrobe a little, I fancy,
before plunging into the Mediterranean off the end of Capri, as is his
wont about this time of year. When we turned out of the little piazza,
our driver was obliged to take off one of our team of three horses
driven abreast, so that we could pass through the narrow and crooked
streets, or rather lanes of blank walls. With cracking whip, rattling
wheels, and shouting to clear the way, we drove into the Strada di San
Francisca, and to an arched gateway. This led down a straight path,
between olives and orange and lemon-trees, gleaming with shining leaves
and fruit of gold, with hedges of rose-trees in full bloom, to another
leafy arch, through which I saw tropical trees, and a terrace with a low
wall and battered busts guarding it, and beyond, the blue sea, a white
sail or two slanting across the opening, and the whiteness of Naples
some twenty miles away on the shore.

The noble family of the Villa did not descend into the garden to welcome
us, as we should have liked; in fact, they have been absent now for
a long time, so long that even their ghosts, if they ever pace the
terrace-walk towards the convent, would appear strange to one who should
meet them; and yet our hostess, the Tramontano, did what the ancient
occupants scarcely could have done, gave us the choice of rooms in the
entire house. The stranger who finds himself in this secluded paradise,
at this season, is always at a loss whether to take a room on the sea,
with all its changeable loveliness, but no sun, or one overlooking the
garden, where the sun all day pours itself into the orange boughs, and
where the birds are just beginning to get up a spring twitteration. My
friend, whose capacity for taking in the luxurious repose of this region
is something extraordinary, has tried, I believe, nearly every room
in the house, and has at length gone up to a solitary room on the to