I am sorry that we had not time to visit Scala. Amalfi in fact requires days: we gave it only an evening and a morning. It is beautifully situated, and is a striking exhibition of decayed power and wealth, but I did not find it so pre-eminently picturesque as I expected. Perhaps in summer when the vines and fig-trees are all green, it may be much more so than it is in winter. We returned to Sorrento in three hours and three quarters. The safest way to visit Amalfi is to sleep at La Cava, and then go on foot or on a donkey, for there is no carriage road, along the coast path through Vietri, Maiori, and Minori, which takes about four hours and a half. It must be wonderfully beautiful.

The course which we took is the shortest and easiest in fine weather, but either rain or wind would have made it intolerable. Since I have been here howeverindeed, since I left Sicily three weeks ago-we have had rain only twice, and then it ceased before noon.

This is, I suppose, the only country in Europe, calling itself civilised, in which a large and populous district has no carriage road to it or through it.

In the evening Tocqueville told us the story of Ben Ferrhat, an Arab chief, which was told to him in the chief's presence, over a bivouac fire in the desert.

The Duc d'Aumale was crossing the desert to the north of Algeria, at the head of a column consisting of one or two battalions of infantry, 500 French mounted Chasseurs d'Afrique, and 1,000 native cavalry led by Ben Ferrhat.

There was a want of water, and he went with all his

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Story of Ben Ferrhat's Bride.

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cavalry towards some wells on a plateau at some miles' distance. As they reached the foot of the plateau, about an hour after sunset, the advance guard rode back in great alarm, and reported that on the plateau they had discovered the Smala, or travelling town of Abd-elKader. It was known to contain at least 6,000 of his best troops.

The Duke said to retire was impossible, they should be discovered and pursued ; that the only thing to do was to attack it. This the Arab auxiliaries refused to do; they were sent back therefore to hasten up the infantry. Ben Ferrhat alone stood by his friends. The French rode up to the camp and dashed into it in one compact body.

The Arabs, surprised in their sleep, and ignorant what might be the number of the assailants, took to flight, leaving their women behind them. Among them was a very handsome girl, the daughter of Kharoubi, Abd-elKader's Prime Minister.

The Duc d'Aumale having performed one really heroic act, thought that he might go a little further, and, more heroico, bestowed the young lady on Ben Ferrhat. Kharoubi, her father, went to Algiers, submitted to the French authorities. and then required the Governor, Marshal Bugeaud, to restore to him his daughter. It was difficult to refuse. The French had solemnly promised to respect the Arab laws, according to which a girl cannot be married without her father's consent. And his consent to her marriage with Ben Ferrhat, Kharoubi declared that he never had given, and never would give.

On the other hand, Ben Ferrhat was a chief of importance, and had just performed a great service.

After much deliberation, Bugeaud resolved to obey the law, and sent an aide-de-camp to Ben Ferrhat's camp, forty-eight hours' ride from Algiers, to require him to surrender his wife. He was much attached to her, and she was pregnant: but he submitted: brought her to Algiers, delivered her to her father, and then retired, like Achilles, to sulk in his desert camp.

Kharoubi, however, did not keep faith with his new superiors. A treasonable correspondence between him and Abd-el-Kader was detected. Bugeaud offered him his life, if he would consent to the marriage. He hesitated for a day, but considering probably that his power of refusal would terminate with his life, at length submitted.

News was sent to Ben Ferrhat, who arrived two days after it reached him, having ridden for forty-eight hours without stopping; and when Tocqueville saw him they were supposed to be a happy couple. He was,' said Tocqueville, 'perhaps the handsomest man I ever saw, set off by a magnificent and picturesque dress.' 1

Sunday, February 9.-I walked before breakfast to the Cape.

1 In 1855, in Algiers, I heard from M. de Fénélon the subsequent history of Ben Ferrhat's wife. She was fourteen at the time of her marriage in 1842, and therefore twenty-seven in 1855, an age at which an Arab female is an old woman. Ben Ferrhat is a rich man, the Ben-Aga of his tribe. As rich Mussulmans usually do, he has taken younger wives, so that the romance of the life of the first wife is over.-N. W. SENIOR.

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Before the gate of Sorrento, as I went and as I returned, that is at nine and at ten, there was a busy market, in which pork, vegetables, fish, chestnuts, willow withes, crockery, wood, bread, old clothes, and all the abominations which Neapolitans sell in the streets, filled up the road. The wind was northeasterly, and cold; with us the sky was clouded, but Naples lay basking in the sunshine so distinct that it might be supposed to be five miles off instead of eighteen. About two, a thick cloud covered Vesuvius. It suddenly dispersed at three, leaving the mountain white with snow.

The papers brought us in the evening the meagre result of the 'interpellations' addressed to the new French Ministry on the the 25th.

'The Assembly,' said Tocqueville, 'has acted as a large heterogeneous body may be expected to act. It has made an attack and recoiled: shown its anger and perhaps its impotence. I have no fear that what may be called the liberties of France, such as they are, will be diminished. We have now enjoyed legal government for thirty-two years; and we shall retain it. But I fear that the monarchical element in our institutions will gain more strength, and that the representative body will be made weaker than has been the case with either of them since the Empire.

'As for the Assembly, the probability seems to be that until it is roused in May by the great question of the revision of the Constitution, it will sink into inactivity. It has indeed much to do if it chooses to employ itself.

There are the laws respecting mortgages to be almost remade. There is a poor-law to be invented. There are municipal institutions to be created. But I fear that after the excitement of this struggle, it will be disgusted by its ill success, be unable to act cordially with the President, or with Ministers whom it despises, and will fritter away the next two months on trifles, or in undignified disputes between the Royalist parties and the Montagne.'

'Will the revision of the Constitution,' I said, 'be a matter of earnest debate? I thought that everybody was agreed as to its necessity.'

'Everybody,' answered Tocqueville, 'is agreed as to the badness of the Constitution, and all sensible and all moderate men are anxious for its revision; not only will it be a matter vehemently debated, but I doubt whether the requisite majority, three-fourths, will be obtained. All the parties who fear that it will be altered in a manner unfavourable to themselves will oppose the revision.

'The Montagnards of course will oppose it; they know that the next Constitution will be less Republican than this is, and I am not sure what will be the conduct of either the Legitimists, the Orleanists, or the Imperialists if any of them should fear to be a loser.'

Monday, February 10.-We walked to the mountain over the Cape, and thence home by a sort of staircase cut or beaten out on the face of the precipice.

We talked of the great writers of the eighteenth