cturesqueness of the place and people were only
equalled by the stinks. It was like a modern realistic novel. We went a
great deal to the opera, also to the Blue Grotto of Capri, and ascended
Mount Vesuvius, and sought Baiae, and made, in fact, all the excursions.
As there were three, and sometimes half-a-dozen of our friends on these
trips, we had, naturally, with us quite a _cortege_. Among these was an
ill-favoured rascal called "John," who always received a dollar a day.
One evening some one raised the question as to what the devil it was that
John did. He did not carry anything, or work to any account, or guide,
or inform, yet he was always there, and always in the way. So John,
being called up, was asked what he did. Great was his indignation, for
by this time he had got to consider himself indispensable. He declared
that he "directed, and made himself generally useful." We informed him
that we would do our own directing, and regarded him as generally
useless. So John was discarded. Since then I have found that "John" is
a very frequent ingredient in all societies and Government offices. There
are Johns in Parliament, in the army, and in the Church. His children
are pensioned into the third and fourth and fortieth generation. In
fact, I am not sure that John is not the great social question of the
age.

There was in Philadelphia an Academy of Fine Arts, or Gallery, of which
my father had generously presented me with two shares, which gave me free
entrance. There were in it many really excellent pictures, even a first-
class Murillo, besides Wests and Allstons. Unto this I had, as was my
wont, read up closely, and reflected much on what I read, so that I was
to a certain degree prepared for the marvels of art which burst on me in
Naples. And if I was, and always have been, _rather_ insensible to the
merits of Renaissance sculpture and architecture, I was not so to its
painting, and not at all blind to the unsurpassed glories of its classic
prototypes. Professor Dodd had indeed impressed it deeply and specially
on my mind that the revival of a really pure Greek taste in England, or
from the work of Stewart and Revett, was contemporary with that for
Gothic architecture, and that the appreciation of one, if _true_, implies
that of the other. As I was now fully inspired with my new resolution to
become an architect, I read all that I could get on the subject, and
naturally examined all remains of the p