on our left, the rocky, bare side of St. Angelo,
against which the sunshine dashes in waves; below us, sheer down two
thousand feet, the city of Positano, a nest of brown houses, thickly
clustered on a conical spur, and lying along the shore, the home of
three thousand people,--with a running jump I think I could land in
the midst of it,--a pygmy city, inhabited by mites, as we look down
upon it; a little beach of white sand, a sailboat lying on it, and
some fishermen just embarking; a long hotel on the beach; beyond, by
the green shore, a country seat charmingly situated amid trees and
vines; higher up, the ravine-seamed hill, little stone huts, bits of
ruin, towers, arches. How still it is! All the stiller that I can,
now and then, catch the sound of an axe, and hear the shouts of some
children in a garden below. How still the sea is! How many ages has
it been so? Does the purple mist always hang there upon the waters
of Salerno Bay, forever hiding from the gaze Paestum and its temples,
and all that shore which is so much more Grecian than Roman?

After all, it is a satisfaction to turn to the towering rock of St.
Angelo; not a tree, not a shrub, not a spire of grass, on its
perpendicular side. We try to analyze the satisfaction there is in
such a bald, treeless, verdureless mass. We can grasp it
intellectually, in its sharp solidity, which is undisturbed by any
ornament: it is, to the mind, like some complete intellectual
performance; the mind rests on it, like a demonstration in Euclid.
And yet what a color of beauty it takes on in the distance!

When we return, the bandits have all gone to their road-making: the
suspicious landlord is nowhere to be seen. We call the woman from
the field, and give her money, which she seemed not to expect, and
for which she shows no gratitude. Life appears to be indifferent to
these people. But, if these be brigands, we prefer them to those of
Naples, and even to the innkeepers of England. As we saunter home in
the pleasant afternoon, the vesper-bells are calling to each other,
making the sweetest echoes of peace everywhere in the hills, and all
the piano is jubilant with them, as we come down the steeps at
sunset.

"You see there was no danger," said the giant to his wife that
evening at the supper-table.

"You would have found there was danger, if you had gone," returned
the wife of the giant significantly.

THE MYTH OF THE SIRENS

I like to walk upon the encircling