le, sous le jupon dore,
La mule blanche--

in spite of these lines I did not find the Ischia women eminent, as
those of Capri are, for beauty. But the young men have fine, loose,
faun-like figures, and faces that would be strikingly handsome but for
too long and prominent noses. They are a singular race, graceful in
movement.

Evening is divine in Ischia. From the topmost garden terrace of the inn
one looks across the sea toward Terracina, Gaeta, and those descending
mountain buttresses, the Phlegraean plains and the distant snows of the
Abruzzi. Rain-washed and luminous, the sunset sky held Hesper trembling
in a solid green of beryl. Fireflies flashed among the orange blossoms.
Far away in the obscurity of eastern twilight glared the smouldering
cone of Vesuvius--a crimson blot upon the darkness--a Cyclop's eye,
bloodshot and menacing.

The company in the Piccola Sentinella, young and old, were decrepit,
with an odd, rheumatic, shrivelled look upon them. The dining-room
reminded me, as certain rooms are apt to do, of a ship's saloon. I felt
as though I had got into the cabin of the _Flying Dutchman_, and that
all these people had been sitting there at meat a hundred years, through
storm and shine, for ever driving onward over immense waves in an
enchanted calm.

ISCHIA AND FORIO.

One morning we drove along the shore, up hill, and down, by the Porto
d'Ischia to the town and castle. This country curiously combines the
qualities of Corfu and Catania. The near distance, so richly cultivated,
with the large volcanic slopes of Monte Epomeo rising from the sea, is
like Catania. Then, across the gulf, are the bold outlines and snowy peaks
of the Abruzzi, recalling Albanian ranges. Here, as in Sicily, the old
lava is overgrown with prickly pear and red valerian. Mesembrianthemums--I
must be pardoned this word; for I cannot omit those fleshy-leaved creepers,
with their wealth of gaudy blossoms, shaped like sea anemones, coloured
like strawberry and pine-apple cream-ices--mesembrianthemums, then, tumble
in torrents from the walls, and large-cupped white convolvuluses curl
about the hedges. The Castle Rock, with Capri's refined sky-coloured
outline relieving its hard profile on the horizon, is one of those
exceedingly picturesque objects just too theatrical to be artistic. It
seems ready-made for a back scene in _Masaniello_, and cries out to
the chromo-lithographer, "Come and make the most of me!" Yet thi