is still most
graceful and poetic. This wonderful atmosphere softens even its
ruggedness, and drapes it with hues of enchanting beauty. Sometimes
the haze plays fantastic tricks with it,--a cloud-cap hangs on Monte
Solaro, or a mist obscures the base, and the massive summits of rock
seem to float in the air, baseless fabrics of a vision that the
rising wind will carry away perhaps. I know now what Homer means by
"wandering islands." Shall we take a boat and sail over there, and so
destroy forever another island of the imagination? The bane of
travel is the destruction of illusions.

We like to talk about Capri, and to talk of going there. The
Sorrento people have no end of gossip about the wild island; and,
simple and primitive as they are, Capri is still more out of the
world. I do not know what enchantment there is on the island; but
--whoever sets foot there, they say, goes insane or dies a drunkard. I
fancy the reason of this is found in the fact that the Capri girls
are raving beauties. I am not sure but the monotony of being
anchored off there in the bay, the monotony of rocks and precipices
that goats alone can climb, the monotony of a temperature that
scarcely ever, winter and summer, is below 55 or above 75 Fahrenheit
indoors, might drive one into lunacy. But I incline to think it is
due to the handsome Capri girls.

There are beautiful girls in Sorrento, with a beauty more than skin
deep, a glowing, hidden fire, a ripeness like that of the grape and
the peach which grows in the soft air and the sun. And they wither,
like grapes that hang upon the stem. I have never seen a handsome,
scarcely a decent-looking, old woman here. They are lank and dry,
and their bones are covered with parchment. One of these
brown-cheeked girls, with large, longing eyes, gives the stranger a
start, now and then, when he meets her in a narrow way with a basket
of oranges on her head. I hope he has the grace to go right by. Let
him meditate what this vision of beauty will be like in twenty ears.

The Capri girls are famed as magnificent beauties, but they fade like
their mainland sisters. The Saracens used to descend on their
island, and carry them off to their harems. The English, a very
adventurous people, who have no harems, have followed the Saracens.
The young lords and gentlemen have a great fondness for Capri. I
hear gossip enough about elopements, and not seldom marriages, with
the island girls,--bright girls, with the Gre