s morning
all things, in sea, earth, and sky, were so delicately tinted and bathed
in pearly light that it was difficult to be critical.

In the afternoon we took the other side of the island, driving through
Lacca to Forio. One gets right round the bulk of Epomeo, and looks up
into a weird region called Le Falange, where white lava streams have
poured in two broad irregular torrents among broken precipices. Florio
itself is placed at the end of a flat headland, boldly thrust into the
sea; and its furthest promontory bears a pilgrimage church, intensely
white and glaring.

There is something arbitrary in the memories we make of places casually
visited, dependent as they are upon our mood at the moment, or on an
accidental interweaving of impressions which the _genius loci_ blends
for us. Of Forio two memories abide with me. The one is of a young
woman, with very fair hair, in a light blue dress, standing beside an
older woman in a garden. There was a flourishing pomegranate-tree above
them. The whiteness and the dreamy smile of the young woman seemed
strangely out of tune with her strong-toned southern surroundings. I
could have fancied her a daughter of some moist north-western isle of
Scandinavian seas. My other memory is of a lad, brown, handsome,
powerfully-featured, thoughtful, lying curled up in the sun upon a sort
of ladder in his house-court, profoundly meditating. He had a book in
his hand, and his finger still marked the place where he had read. He
looked as though a Columbus or a Campanella might emerge from his
earnest, fervent, steadfast adolescence. Driving rapidly along, and
leaving Forio in all probability for ever, I kept wondering whether
these two lives, discerned as though in vision, would meet--whether she
was destined to be his evil genius, whether posterity would hear of him
and journey to his birthplace in this world-neglected Forio. Such
reveries are futile. Yet who entirely resists them?

MONTE EPOMEO.

About three on the morning which divides the month of May into two equal
parts I woke and saw the waning moon right opposite my window, stayed in
her descent upon the slope of Epomeo. Soon afterwards Christian called
me, and we settled to ascend the mountain. Three horses and a stout
black donkey, with their inevitable grooms, were ordered; and we took
for guide a lovely faun-like boy, goat-faced, goat-footed, with gentle
manners and pliant limbs swaying beneath the breath of impulse. He w