en and women into
a charnel-house at Sant' Alessio al Lavinaio. Who it was that placed this
quaint little memorial to the murdered prelate in his cathedral church we
know not; but here the speechless yet eloquent cherub tells Natale's sad
story of brutality and injustice to all who care to listen. Happily the
spell of silence is at length broken, and the true history of that hateful
era of crime, cruelty, lying, and intrigue is gradually being revealed;
and the enemies of the Church in Italy learn with an astonishment, which
is perhaps feigned, that in that glorious army of martyrs of 1799 more
than one ecclesiastic of high rank suffered in the ill-starred and
premature cause of Neapolitan liberty.

Crossing the little river Arco, we proceed uphill through the region of
vines and olives, until we have passed the Punta di Scutolo, where begins
our descent into that famous tract of country, the Piano di Sorrento, a
plateau above the cliffs, some four miles in length by one in breadth.
Poets of antiquity and bards of the Middle Ages alike have sung the
delights of the Sorrentine Plain, and have painted in glowing colours of
inspired verse its race of happy peasants, its fruitful fields and
orchards, its luscious vines, its excellent flocks. Galen, the cunning old
physician, recommended to his nervous patients what would now be termed a
"rest cure" in these favoured regions; whilst the grateful Bernardo Tasso,
father of the immortal Torquato, speaks of the capital of this district as
"l'Albergo della Cortesia," and in an ecstasy of delighted appreciation,
goes on to add: "l'aere e si sereno, si temperato, si salutifero, si
vitale, che gli uomini che senza provar altero cielo ci vivono sono quasi
immortali." And though praise from Torquato's courtly sire must not be
taken too seriously, yet few will deny that the beautiful plain deserves
many of the eulogies that have been showered upon it. At the small town of
Meta, the next place of importance after Sorrento itself, the road divides
at the Church of the Madonna of the Laurel: our way to Amalfi leading
southward over the opposing ridge--the "Sorrentini Colles" of Ovid--whilst
the other traverses the length of the plain by way of Pozzopiano and Sant'
Agnello, until it reaches Sorrento.

One prominent feature of this district has already attracted our
attention; the number of deep ravines with which the whole plain is
intersected. These natural clefts are marvellously lovely