s a natural question which it must require a deep insight into the
mysteries of Italian existence to solve. Whatever may be the secret, the
less Englishmen know on these subjects the better; communion with
foreign habits only deteriorates the integrity and purity of our own. On
the Continent, vice is systematized--virtue is scarcely more than a
name; and no worse intelligence has long reached us than the calculation
just published in the foreign newspapers, that there were 40,000 English
now residing in France, and 4000 English families in that especial sink
of superstition and profligacy, Italy.

The sail from the Sicilian straits to Naples is picturesque. The
Liparis, with their volcanic summits, on one side--the Calabrian
highlands, on the other--a succession of rich mountains, clothed with
all kinds of verdure, and of the finest forms; and around, the perpetual
beauty of the Mediterranean. The travellers hove to at Pizza, in the
gulf of Euphania, the shore memorable for the gallant engagement in
which the English troops under Stuart, utterly routed the French under
Regnier--a battle which made the name of Maida immortal. Pizza has
obtained a melancholy notoriety by the death of Murat, who was shot by
order of a court-martial, as an invader and rebel, in October 1815.
Murat's personal intrepidity, and even his _fanfaronade_, excited an
interest for him in Europe. But he was a wild, rash, and reckless
instrument of Napoleon's furious and remorseless policy; the commandant
of the French army in Spain in 1808 could not complain of military
vengeance; and his death by the hands of the royal troops only relieved
Europe of the boldest disturber among the fallen followers of the great
usurper.

The finest view of Naples is the one which the mob of tourists see the
last. Its approaches by land are all imperfect--the city is to be seen
only from the bay. Floating on the waters which form the most lovely of
all foregrounds, a vast sheet of crystal, a boundless mirror, a tissue
of purple, or any other of the fanciful names which the various hues and
aspects of the hour give to this renowned bay, the view comprehends the
city, the surrounding country, Posilipo on the left, Vesuvius on the
right, and between them a region of vineyards and vegetation, as poetic
and luxuriant as poet or painter could desire.

The wonders of Pompeii are no longer wonders, and people go to see them
with something of the same spirit in which the cit