Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: BOOK II. NAPLES. CHAPTER I. CLIMATE AND COUNTRY—THE STREETS OF NAPLES CHURCHES THE CONVENT OF SAN MARTINO. Naples: February 20.—Another climate, another sky, almost another world. On approaching the bay this morning, as the view expanded and the horizon disclosed itself, a sudden brightness and splendour was all that was visible. In the distance, under a vapoury veil overhanging the sea, the mountains arose one above another, and spread out as luminous and as soft as clouds. The eca advanced in white rolling billows, and the sun, pouring down its flaming rays, converted it into a trackway of molten metal. I passed half an hour in the Villa Eeale, a promenade skirting the shore, planted with oaks and evergreens. A few young trees, transpierced with light, open their tender little leaves, and are already blooming with yellow blos- oms. Statues of beautiful nude youths—Europa on the Bull- incline their white marble forms amidst the light green verdure. Sunshine and shadow vary the surface of the grass, and climbing vines interlace themselves around the columns. Here and there glows the bright blue of fresh flowers, their delicate velvety cups trembling in thebalmy breeze that comea to them through the trunks of the oaks. Both sea and atmosphere are beneficent. What a contrast, when one recalls the ocean and its coasts, our cliff's of Gascony and Normandy beaten by winds and lashed by storms, with stunted trees sheltering themselves in the hollows, and bushes and the shorn grass clinging so miserably to the hillsides ! Here vegetation is nourished by the neighbouring waves; you feel the freshness and mildness of the atmosphere which caresses and expands it. You forget yourself as you listen to the murmur of the whispering leaves and contemplate their moving shadow...