were severally discarded, and the consumption of Marsala rapidly increased, especially as the crew, at the instance of Girolamo, insisted upon payment of "footing." The time however, wore away, and we had as yet made but little progress. The dilettanti dropped off one by one; Igins, however, worked to the last, on the ground of his having once been, as he alleged, a good pair of sculls on the river.

colours of the water, and an occasional | It was very hard work, however, and as the jabble, apprized us we were on the borders morning got warm, waistcoats and cravats of Charybdis. Several vessels, and among the rest a neat, white-sailed English brig, were, like ourselves, making for the nar rowest part of the strait. It was curious to see them, now shooting forward with the wind and current in their favour, now catching the opposing eddy and turning slowly round, leaving the race for the time to some more lucky competitor, who in his time enjoyed but a brief triumph, but came sauntering back, stern foremost, past the very one so lately vanquished.

We were finally obliged to approach the shore and disembark our crew, who towed us along the beach until we got beyond the Point of Faro. By this time the breeze had freshened, and once more hoisting our sail, we sped gaily on towards Stromboli.

In this way we dawdled about the straits for a considerable time, beguiled by the flickering breeze that came capriciously from the south, and every now and then filled our sail with the deceitful promise of an accelerated voyage. Twice or thrice we passed within hail of our compatriot, and were able, through the doctor, to make numerous kind inquiries after his health and his domestic arrangements, among others, as to whether his mamma knew he was out -all this to the great delight of the tarry rascals who were leaning over the bulwarks, and grinned from ear to ear when we ap-swept up the channel that intervenes beproached them.

These were all the terrors of our Charybdis; a sea of capricious eddies turned into one another, wandering cast, and west, and north, and south, as if at play, but fraught with few of those terrors with which poetry in ancient as well as modern times has surrounded its name. It was not easy-as we sat in the sunshine on the top of the little wooden canopy that covered the stem, tipping a glass of Marsala with a biscuit by way of breakfast, watching our sail, now flapping in the calm, now lazily stretching to the breeze, now gibing as we caught the opposing current-to recognise the whirlpool described by Virgil, alternately drinking in and belching forth an ocean from its horrid jaws :

Atque imo barathri ter gurgite vastos, Sorbet in abruptum fluctus, rursusque sub auras Erigit alternos, et sidera verberat unda."

Or the picture of Schiller

The breeze was favourable_throughout the day, and we swept through the water at a great rate, the speronaro reeling along under the pressure of her huge sail," and plunging occasionally "gunnel in" when she caught a short chopping wave, that did not give her room to rise fairly over it. It was, however, verging towards evening, when we reached the island and

tween its eastern side and Strombolino, a steep crag of puzzolana rising sheer out of the water to an enormous height, and presenting, apparently, no trace of a path by which it would be possible to reach the summit. On our left was the little village that forms the metropolis of this tiny territory; low vine-trelliced cottages, scattered along the shore; the church standing on an eminence to the southward, as if watching over the flock below. Behind rose the volcano, presenting, from this side, the appearance of a pretty regular cone, of little height, however, in propor tion to the extent of its base; its sides furrowed by the channels which the rain has by degrees cut to a great depth in the soft ashy materials of which the mountain is composed. Over the summit hovered the constant black cloud-the banner of the volcano, ever unfurled. We cast anchor close inshore, the water all round the coast deepening so suddenly as to show

"It seethed and it wallowed, it roared and it that the island is but the extreme summit

rushed,

As when water commingles with fire,
While the foaming yeast to the heavens gushed,
And still, as they ne'er would tire,
Billow on billow forth there rolled

Like a new sea born from the womb of the old."*
Wearied at length with the slowness of
our progress, the long sweeps were got out,
and, taking off our coats, we proceeded, in
conjunction with the crew, to tug at the
shorter end of these huge pieces of timber.

* Und es wellet und siedet und brauset und zischt,

Wie wenn Wasser mit Feuer sich mengt.
Bis zum Himmel sprützet der dampfende Gischt,
Und Flush auf Flush sich ohn' Eude dräugt
Und will sich nimmer erschöpfen und leeren
Als wollte das Meer noch ein Meer gebären.

SCHILLER, DER TAUCHER.

of a huge submarine mountain. On the northern side especially, the sea, a short way from the shore, is said to be unfathomable, and the unceasing rain of fiery stones that rolls down the slope diswithout extending the limits of the shore. appears, year after year, in the waves

Whether it arose from the unwonted ex

ertions of the morning, or from the Marsala, I was for my part so afflicted with headache, as to be obliged to forego the prospect of a too, not having yet acquired le pied marin, visit to the summit of the volcano. Igins, had been somewhat incommoded by the decidedly tipsy manner in which our speronaro had made the journey, and his ambition for sight-seeing, never very great, had been completely annihilated by the sea

sickness, a thing which, among the evils sitting down on a stone, with the air of a which it brings, has one advantage, that of man who has had enough of it, and filling rendering the patient most delightfully indif- a bumper of Malvasia, "you wine-bibbing, ferent to all sublunary concerns. Nil ad- supper-eating, unromantic couple of savages. mirari, that receipt for universal happiness Here you have been-fruges consumere nati,' which Horace has prescribed, seems hardly -as if you had been born merely to eat to be realised on any other occasion. and drink. Eating your eatables, and drinking your drinkables-very good by the way(here the doctor took a long swig, by way of a pause in his criticism,)-while we have been toiling up the steep in the pursuit of

the most magnificent spectacle that ever was unveiled to mortal eyes. Earth-(and the doctor waved his fat fist in the direction of the mountain top)-earth has but one Strom- . boli."

"And one Dr. Danks," said I.

"Fact!" said the doctor, with modest confidence; "but seriously, boys, (and here the doctor took another swig at the Malvasia,) you've missed the finest thing in all our tour."

Danks and Dawson had therefore to go alone, and, being provided with a guide, set out on their expedition. Our sailors prepared to cook their supper, and bringing a huge black pot from the hold, made a knowledge, and beholding as our reward fireplace with a few stones upon the beach. Giuseppe acted as cook, and having procured some herbs at the village, proceeded, with the assistance of a piece of mutton and some brown bread, to the manufacture of a zuppa. This was soon ready, and the flavour that ascended from the reeking caldron was so tempting, that we jumped at the invitation to take a share. We sat in a circle round the pot, in thorough gipsy fashion, and proceeded to do full honour to the viands which had been prepared, brown earthen basins "Of course," said Igins, applying himself and wooden spoons serving as knife, fork, and once more, with an unsteady hand, to the trencher. In the course of our repast Pietro bottle, "of course;" and he looked at the eulogised, at great length, the Malvasia of doctor with a kind of undulatory air of wagthe island. It was nectar-tanto buono-so gery as if he had some difficulty in regulatsuperexcellent, that-that-in short, I coming the foci of his organs of optical percepmissioned Giuseppe to bring from a house tion. at a short distance, where the never-failing bush announced the goodness of the beverage within, a sample from which we might be enabled to judge for ourselves. He soon returned, bearing a huge earthen bottle, with a long and taper neck, containing a fair modicum of tipple for seven moderate men. It proved to be tolerably good, though, like almost all the Sicilian wines, bearing traces of imperfect fermentation, and so sweet, that my potations were necessarily exceedingly moderate. Giuseppe, Pietro, and the rest, however, absorbed it like so many sandbags; Igins, too, did it full honour; so that before the doctor and Dawson returned from their tour, the whole ship's company was pretty "Now be quiet, Ned," said the doctor. nearly half seas over. Giuseppe especially, "We went up by a winding path through a never very wise at the best of times, was long succession of vineyards, then through frantic in his merriment, chanting out the a little forest of little bushes, and then over "membra disjecta" of some Sicilian songs, a great expanse of stones and ashes, until we with the cadence of a screech owl, and giving emphasis to the more impressive parts by slapping Igins, who sat next him, on the back, in a manner that considerably deranged the dignity as well as the cravat of "Il piccolo Signor Inglese."

"Why, you scoffing little disbeliever," replied the doctor, looking at him with sternness that fixed Igins' eyes at once, “do you doubt it?"

"Doubt it? O dear no," murmured Igins, in that lisping kind of dialect which is only known after supper. "Doubt it-O no-I daren't."

"No, you'd better not," said the doctor. "Well, I know that," said Igins, in the same devil-may-care tone, "else I would. What did you see now after all?”

་་

Why, we went up-"

"Up, up, and then you came down, down, downey," said Igins.

got beyond the highest summit you see yonder. Our guide then told us that this was the usual spot from which the forestieri were in the habit of viewing the eruptions, but, in point of fact, I couldn't see any thing worth looking at-nothing but the flaming stones The sun had gone down in the west before when they had reached the highest point of Dawson and the Doctor returned, their nether the elevation; so we scrambled to the westgarments abimés with dust, their shoes full ern side, and at last coming round from of cinders, and their mouths full of the behind a great hump of the mountain, lo, praises of the glorious spectacle of which there we were on a level with the orifice from they had been witnesses. It is a singular which the stones were emitted, and could see fact, that any scene which is beheld by one them on our left, rolling over and over down or two only of a travelling party, is invari- the slope, until they went hissing into the ably more magnificent than that which they see together. This is very singular, but there is no doubt of its being a fact. The rationale must be left to the decision of the Royal Society.

66

O-you-you-language has not an epithet bad enough for you," said the doctor,

sea. The view was rendered more piquant by the idea of a little danger, inasmuch as the stones, 'jolly, ruddy fellows,' some of 'em, fell at no great distance from us, giving us a vivid idea of what would be the probable results of a nearer approach on their part. In point of fact, (there's no use condescend.

ing to particulars,) but you've been fairly 'out' in not going with us."

66

"O, of course," said Igins, once more. "Well," said the doctor, after a quizzical attempt to look Igins down," there's no use quarrelling with you; so I think we'd better get on board, as all seems ready for our departure, and the black pot is stowed below." Once more on the quarter deck of Il Delfino, our crew, with a rollicking chant, of which I vainly tried to discover the meaning, hoisted our sails, and, in a magnificent moonlight that dimmed the phosphoric ripple in our wake, we proceeded on our voyage.

As we cleared the eastern side of the island, we came fairly in view of the volcano on the north; and Igins and myself, determined to be even with the doctor, insisted on our bark bearing westward, so as to give us a fair view of the feux de joie, which, except on one memorable occasion, it ceaselessly displays. We tacked across in the lee of the island, through a series of puffs and lulls produced by the eddies round its base. The view was certainly magnificent. At intervals of a few minutes, accompanied by a deep and sullen thunder, that seemed to vibrate even to our speronaro, notwithstanding the watery medium in which she was placed, a gush of red-hot stones proceeded from a flaming mouth near the summit of a wide slope that went unbroken to the water's edges, and, rolling over and over, plunged into the waters at its base. The lurid light which these explosions, taking place at short intervals, flung on all objects around, the roar of the subterranean artillery, and the idea of the fathomless abyss over which our little cockleshell was floating, combined to produce an effect capable of impressing the most unimaginative of possible spectators.

Satiated at last, we once more turned our prow to the northward, and, with a light breeze on our quarter, swept rapidly through the glowing waters. It was after midnight, and the fires of Stromboli began to fade in the distance, when we thought of retiring to rest, and the services of Domenico were put in requisition to prepare beds for four.

An old sail, with a pretty assortment of ventilating apertures, was thrown over the top of our wooden canopy, and hung down aft, so as in some measure to intercept the breeze. Underneath, on the deck, was spread a mattress that extended from side to side, and apparently, formed out of the same materials with our curtain, was stuffed, obviously, with an assortment of knotted ropes. The arrangement did not look very tempting, and I feared Morpheus would scatter but few poppies upon such a couch. However, casting a longing look at the glorious moonlight we were leaving, we crept into our little cabin. It was placed, we found, under the immediate protection of the Madonna, a pasteboard figure with a huge gilt crown, (in

* The vessel that conveyed Byron to the Levant lay off the island a great part of the night, but the volcano, like the lion of a party in the suĺks, was obstinate, and would not show off.

the style of the theatrical costumes, in spangles and tinsel, that are exhibited in the windows of such print shops as haunt the neighbourhood of the minor theatres,) being attached to each side for the purpose of insuring Il Delfino against "the perils of the seas.'

"Curious!" said the doctor, as he wrapped himself in his cloak, and we proceeded to pack, like herrings in a barrel, for our night's slumbers-"curious! to find these little traces of metamorphosed paganism, the pietre puppes' that sailed these seas in Roman times, revived in these pasteboard effigiesthe tutelare numen transmogrified into this Madonna. Empires fade, dynasties decay, the successor of Peter sits upon the throne of the Cæsars, but there is Pietro copying, as nearly as the church will allow him, the manners and customs of his pagan ancestors thousands of years ago. God help poor Ambition!-a superstition-a humbug-dependent for its daily life upon the whisper of one fool to another, will live after it is dead and buried, and has ceased to exist, even as an odour. The very games of childhood outlive the immortality of a conqueror. Semiramis is a phantom, Napoleon Buonaparte a drunken dream-cricket and hopskotch are eternal."

"O doctor dear," said Dawson, interrupting this rhapsody, "what an onrasonable rotundity to travel with in a speronaro! I'll be flattened out before morning so thin, you'll not be able to see me sideways. Why, you're like the young cuckoo with the hedgesparrows; there's no room for any body but yourself. O, doctor, dear, sing small, for my contiguity to this deal board is more close than agreeable."

"That's always the way with you Irish," said the doctor; "unless you have the whole world to yourselves, you're always grumbling."

"Pon my life," said Igins, "I don't think Dawson is unreasonable. The pressure here, as at the pit-door of the Opera, is very great; and if the mind's the standard of the man,' as some poet or other says, you have a confounded deal more than your share."

"Well, I can't help it, Ned," said the doctor; "laugh and grow fat is the last of the proverbs of Solomon, and if I have laughed more than I have a right to, you must take the consequence."

It was in vain I tried to sleep under this pressure from within. The quarter deck of Il Delfino was never built to carry more than four of any reasonable dimensions; and as Dr. Danks was equal to any reasonable two, there was of course a superfluity of one. We tried first with our faces, simultaneously turned to the larboard, to go to sleep spoonfashion; but alas! some one was sure, sooner than his neighbours, to get weary of lying on his left-arm, and his uneasiness rendered imperative a revolution to the starboard. There was no room, any more than in the House of Commons, for an independent party who could go to sleep as they liked. Larboard or starboard, one side or the other,

was the only choice open to us. It was ne- Sant Antonio and Sant Elmo, and other pacessary to turn about and wheel about all to-tron saints, who take a special care of sailors, gether, or not at all.

intermingling his pious invocations with exBesides all this, Giuseppe, whose right it clamations of a. somewhat more profane was to turn in, and who accordingly exer- character, directed to the different members cised his privilege by lying down beside the of his bewildered crew. The combined rebulwarks at our feet, snored tremendously, sult, however, of a great deal of pulling, and and the helm grating close to our ears had a pushing, and shouting, and swearing, and droll "chirrup, chirrup," that invariably putting the helm hard up and then hard awoke our whole party every time it was down half a dozen times, was, that necessary to turn it to one side or the other. the vessel's bow was finally directed Many an "O dear!" many a maledetto, eastward, and for some time we had one many an "umph!" and many a groan, were of these strange visiters on each side, unuttered before we were sufficiently exhaust- certain what degree of propinquity they ed to go to sleep in desperation, heedless of might in their caprice think fit to indulge in. the locality of our neighbours; but at last They slowly, however, fell astern, and nearwe succeeded, and did not awake until the ly simultaneously began to fade away, being morning was pretty well advanced, when gradually drawn up, as it were into the cloud we crept out, each the personification of a above, and leaving us to enjoy the remainder cram, cold and benumbed, like one of the of our dejeuner at leisure. seven sleepers fresh awakened.

It was some time before we shook off that plethoric lethargy which a sleep in one's clothes produces, and found our speronaro nearly becalmed, lying to as if to enjoy the rich sunshine of the Mediterranean. We were out of sight of land--Stromboli had disappeared-nothing but sea, sea, as far as the eye extended-white clouds, snowy white, resting hither and thither in the clear sky, their shadows lying like dark shoals on the blue

With the exception of this little alarm, which did not tend to give us any very high opinion of the courage or presence of mind of our worthy captain, the remainder of our voyage, until we arrived off the coast at Pæstum, had hardly an incident. Calms alternating with light breezes made our voyage rather a lengthy one, and it was three days after leaving Stromboli before we arrived at the little village from which, according to our previous arrangements, we were to make an excursion to see these famous temples. "Tis sweet to think," said the doctor at I had already visited them from Naples, but last, drawing out a leg of mutton, still invio-to the rest of our party the spectacle was a late, from the straw basket,

waves around us.

"""Tis sweet to think that where'er we rove,
We are sure to find something blissful and dear.'"

And with one plunge of his clasp knife, "a twa-fauld jockteleg," he plunged into the middle of his dejeuner à la fourchette. While we were thus engaged, a sudden bustle, mixed with some alarm, made itself manifest among our crew. The sweeps were put in requisition, the boat put about, and the whole ship's company using their utmost exertions to impel us back again towards Stromboli.

"Cosa è Pietro?" said the doctor, getting on his feet, and looking in the direction towards which our valiant captain pointed with a trembling hand.

"O signor," he replied, fa male, fa male, signor—eccolo, eccolo !”

A heavy mass of cloud at a little distance to the northward presented a very singular appearance. Hanging down in the middle, it lengthened out into a long trunk, communicating with the agitated sea beneath. It had a slow waving motion, undulating slightly from side to side, like some huge serpent bending from the clouds to drink. It was a waterspout.

new one.

We were glad to disembark, the scanty accommodations of Il Delfino rendering the usual annoyances of a sea voyage even more annoying than usual, and giving us a morbid longing for a bit of green grass, a strip of bar. ren sand-anything, in short, ashore. We cast anchor in a little rocky bay, the town of Acropoli being romantically perched on the heights above, and presenting, at a distance, an appearance of neatness and comfort which a nearer inspection proved with melancholy certainty it did not possess. We succeeded, however, in mounting our whole party on very tolerable mules, and set off along the shore towards the temples, standing in majestic solitude in the wide plain, like the grim ghosts of the departed edifices.

The latter part of our ride was through a succession of thickets with strips of bright green grass among them, on which, however, there lay here and there pools of water, produced by rain of the night before, and which, stagnating under the beams of the glowing sun, gave us some idea of the cause of the malaria that renders the once rosy Pæstum little better than a grave.

The inmates of the small farm-house which While we gazed on this remarkable, and stand near the temple, were melancholy exto us novel apparition, and speculated, not amples of the effects of breathing this poisonwithout some little alarm, on the course it ous atmosphere. One especially, a lad of was likely to take, to the amazement and seventeen years of age, who officiated as terror of Pietro a second was developed right our guide over the ruins, and displayed in in our track. The captain ran to the bow, the discharge of this office an intelligence then to the stern, gave a dozen contradictory that quite surprised us, was in the last stage orders, and wound up by whillalooing to of disease. The swollen abdomen, the

shrunk and decrepit members, the pale sallow skin, and the lustreless grey eye, made him an object from which one felt inclined to turn with a shudder.

We remained several hours at Pæstum, without, however, making any new discoveries in antiquarian lore relating to its often-described temples, or meeting with any incident ever so little out of the usual routine of Pæstum sight-seeing. However, we made amends by riding a steeple-chase back to our boat, dashing along like Arabs through the interstices of the thickets, now on the turf, now in the water, leaving our guide, the owner of the mules, far behind, whooping and hurraing among the bushes, and intimating in no very measured terms, and in barbarous Italian, his entire disapproval of the pace at which we thought proper to travel.

"But since, alas! ignoble age must come,
Disease and death's inevitable doom,
The life that others pay let us bestow,
And give to fame what we to nature owe;
Brave though we fall, and honoured if we live,
Or let us glory gain, or glory give."

These lines are noble, but I know not what right Homer had to stigmatise agethat natural consequence of manhood and of youth-that inevitable gradation of our pilgrimage from this world to the nextthe fulness of years to which we look with hope, as the extension of life itself-as if it were a disgrace, and as if grey hairs carried their own dishonour.

Shakspeare portrays "the lean and slippered pantaloon" in colours that almost make a man sigh to be cut off in the flower of his bloom; and, to speak reverently, Holy Writ itself warns us to "remember our Creator in the days of our youth, ere the dark days arrive when my soul shall say, I have no pleasure in them."

As the wind had set in from the southwest, and it would have been necessary for us to beat out of the Bay of Salerno right in its teeth, Pietro thought it better, But age is not all gloomy, all dark, all as the night was approaching, to remain ignoble-nay, it has its pleasures and its where he was, until the next morning should more pleasurable recollections,-it enjoys enable him to start under perhaps more fa- not merely reverence and honour, but advourable auspices, and at any rate with an miration and love. I have seen age not unbroken day before him. We in vain, tolerated merely, but desired-not borne however, sought for a resting-place on with as an evil shortly and for ever to be shore; the desolation and the filth were removed, but loved with the touching tensickening, so that we were obliged once derness that mingles with our affection for more to woo coy sleep on the quarter-deck that which is speedily and for ever to vanof Il Delfino. We cheated the night, how-ish from our eyes.

sooner or later, no longer be. Yet was not Sir Lancelot old-there was nothing about him either of the decrepitude of age or of its querulousness, and he was as young in constitution yesterday as he was five-andthirty years ago.

ever, of many of its hours, sitting on the Sir Lancelot was once young, as you top of the canopy, smoking cigars, and may be now; but he is no longer young, passing round the song to a brandy-and- as, if God spare your life, you yourself will, water accompaniment. The moonlight was magnificent-the air like balm, and thick with fire-flies, flitting round in myriads, and exhibiting at briefintervals their tiny lamps. The next morning the wind was more favourable, and suited with the impatience which all our party now felt to be again, Again, you could not with propriety say after so long an absence, amid the com- the worthy baronet was middle-aged, for forts and the luxuries of Naples. Away Sir Lancelot had long passed the meridian we went, gaily and prosperously. Leaving of life. Sir Lancelot was neither young, Salerno and Amalfi to our right, we swept nor middle-aged, nor old. What was he past the Punto della Campanella, and were then? Impatient reader, Sir Lancelot was once more in that glorious bay. There elderly. He was elderly, but his shadow were Capri--Sorrento-Castel-a-mare- of life did not seem to lengthen as its sun Vesuvius, and Naples itself.

Longe finis chartæque viæque.

STUDY OF AN ELDERLY GENTLE-
MAN.

BY JOHN FISHER MURRAY.
"Laudator temporis acti."

I KNOW not why it should be so, but so it is, that age is uniformly portrayed by poets, painters, and essayists, as something disgraceful in itself as if our decay were our dishonour. The father of poets brands years with disgrace when he says

declined-elderly he was, and elderly to all outward appearance he was likely to remain. His step, less elastic, is no less firm than in youth, and his laugh-for Sir Lancelot is not above a laugh-may be less loud, but is no less hearty than it was half a century ago.

I observe, upon these symptoms of youth at the age of Sir Lancelot, which, by-theby, I would state to the accurate reader, if I were in possession of the information my. self, in confirmation of a theory I have long entertained, that age has nothing to do with years. Who that has lived at all has failed to observe the premature decrepitude that waits on idleness and vice; who is unable to select from the number of his acquaintance hale boys of eighty and decrepit old gentle. men in their teens ?