in the hall whirrs and sputters out the hour of ten, everybody withdraws with a goodnight to everybody else. We spend the next morning restfully, about the grounds. The air, at this early hour, indeed all day long, is at once a tonic and a balm. The long windows of the albergo and those of the villas around, all stand open wide, calling Felice giorno! to one another. "A beauteous morning, madam," says the widow of Erin, leaning over her balcony, to my wife. "And not a breath of wynd!" Again, a sky all one happy blue; and a sea of blue, with a triangle of quivering silvery splendor broadening out to the horizon. The sky of Rome and Naples differs from our own at home, as the flute from the trumpet; but this blue above the Riviera can thrill as well as soothe. out at sea, where the Tramontana, after passing high above our heads, dips to the Far of wood crackling upon the big brass andirons, the rocking-chairs and lazy lounges and arm-chairs left carelessly around, the piano with candles beside the music-book, the center-table with its green cloth and soft astral lamp, and the ladies' little workbaskets tipping over into the medley of magazines and books, made you wonder, for a moment, if you had ever left home. And the ways of the company do little to break the illusion. All but the dark baron and his blonde bride, and perhaps one other, are English or noble-born Irish. Near the fire, an elderly Oxford don, tall and handsome, is stammering and hawing, between his sips of tea, to a portly Irish widow. He has just trumped her best card, and her eyes twinkle with conscious roguery as she lays her hand in gentle remonstrance on his arm. At the piano, with one hand feeling out idly some chords, and the pale, Madonna face,―more beautiful than that of Raphael's Saint Cecilia,-turned up in conversation with the Doctor, is a young Wal-water, some crafts are rocking lively; but lachian wife, whom the cold winds of her steppes have driven from home and husband. The young Irish Honorable has brought out his worsted-work under the astral lamp. It will keep his tongue still, and his red, but well-shaped hands busy, til bed-time. The copper-colored Indian officer, retired on half-pay and a liver-complaint, and the fresh, happy Irish lass, who have taken the tête-à-tête behind the door, are falling fast in love, so surely as eyes here talk the same tongue they do beyond the sea. As the music begins, the pleasant old admiral limps up the room, with his jolly "girl," as he calls his wife, upon his arm. A quartette at the piano is opening the evening with a German song; then half a dozen rally to the glee of "Three little kittens, -the special favorite, apparently, of the best of England's blood, for we have that among us just now. Young America follows a reverie of Chopin with "The elephant now goes round," to the irrepressible encores of all the company; and he stars it, in that rôle, every evening till his departure. The musical people by and by drop away, groups gather for chat over the excursions of the day and plans of to-morrow; and as the old clock the bay is still; and the little fisher-fleet, trying since daylight to make their way from Bordighera, lie becalmed, pointing their prows at one another. The orangetops are still. The little birds among the lemons and the quiet voices of the folk of the Albergo make you feel the stillness. all the more. Pretty soon, for it is about ten, a clatter and rattle on the gravel road and a deep voice crying "Su! Su!" tell us that Antonio and the donkeys are coming. Then the maids bring out their ladies' " things and the yellow lunch-baskets trimmed with red; and after some tumbles and more fun among themselves and especially among the lookers-on, one donkey scuttling off with his rider to join a party of strangers, another defying pull, push or moral suasion,— the different companies straggle slowly out of sight. A lady or two remain, enjoying their camp-chairs in the shade, with worsted-work or book, or writing letters; and perhaps one old gentleman in his dressinggown shuffles up and down among the flowers in the sun. After lunch, we stroll away toward the old town. You may take any one of forty little paths to it, all up among the olives and gardens, and all fragrant with wild. violets, the blue hyacinth, the white lonely lily, the scarlet anemone; all giving pictures, framed in leaves, of the bright sea, some gray bare headland, the gray town; and all the paths are easier to lose than to keep. They brought us always around to our Albergo again. Ma che? Has not the old town waited there twelve hundred years for us? And will it not be there to-morrow afternoon as well? And so we said, after a week of afternoons. But at last, with the widow and the young innamorata of the parlor sketch, we find ourselves, almost to our own surprise, in the little piazza and before the church-door. "I leave you, ladies, for a moment," I said, shaking my pocket-compass, to set the needle free. And where is he going, then?" asked the lady. "O, it's his way. I've no peace with him in a new place, till he has adjusted himself' on the church-tower with map and compass. He says it's like reading the table of contents before beginning the book." 'Ah then, bother your table of contents. Box the compass and stay with us." "But, mamma, we can go into the church till the Professor returns." "That I like,” said I. "The art of traveling in company, as your countrymen might say, is letting every one leave the company when he likes ;" and Mary and I walked off, not to the church-tower, but to the breakwater which curves out into the bay. Here you can sit, as in a boat, and take the little town at a glance. It is like a silver-gray fan, dropped upon a cloth of green-broadest near the shore, rising steep and clear-cut against the olives of the hill, narrowing rapidly till it dwindles to the little blue dome of the Sanctuary and disappears with the tips of the pinnacle a-top of it. The whole town might seem the home of some patriarchal family -of old father Priam, with his hundred sons for not a street or square is seen, to separate the houses or blocks. It looks out due south, and basks in the sunshine from rising to setting. These buildings near us that border the sea, and even those a little farther up along the great white Cornice road, are not original settlers, as you know at a glance. The old town never dared to stray down so far from the castle, which stood in old times where the Sanctuary now stands. Once it seems, the Moorish corsairs came in such force that all the San Remesi who escaped massacre or were not hurried off as slaves, fled away over the mountains; and their grandchil in dren ventured back only after a century. The Greek pirates, and the Genoese their wars with Pisa, disturbed often the peace of the fathers. To right and left of the town, the landscape sweeps round in a fine amphitheater of green, whose arena is this noble bay, reaching four miles from cape to cape. Few travelers who have lived in Rome think of it as lying on the line of Poughkeepsie. This land of San Remo, whose February sun smiles on roses and parasols, lies as far north as Portland and Toronto. Nice is seven hours by vettura towards the west, and Genoa is fourteen on the road to Rome. And as that bit of geography suggests a thought of climate, I may say of the latter, with our Irish friend, that all the Riviera is about as far north as it is south-Nice and Cannes particularly so; for their days of chill are nearly as frequent as those of comfortable warmth. They lack the protection of such high hills as enclose Mentone and San Remo. Mentone, on the other hand, the most completely defended on the north, lacks movement in its air and produces often a sensation of closeness. But San Remo enjoys a warmth which nourishes the finest palms of all the coast, and is tempered by breezes which brace you for hours of walk. In Nice and Cannes, sudden and considerable changes of temperature attack you on the spot. While they occur here also sometimes, if you want a whiff of winter, you generally have to take a donkey and go up the gorges in search of it. The exasperating Mistral blew but once during all our month and it is always rare. is among the natural curiosities. The prevalent winds are gentle and dry. Winter wreaked his bad humors on us, all at once, in three days and nights, and left every other hour of March and February to sunshine and the delight of being. Snow But we remember our deserted friends and start to join them, and soon resume our stroll together. In the little market-place right before the church, without a tree, flagged from side to side and surrounded by tall, irregular houses of all shades of gray, the good folk are keeping festa, while the musical bells clang and hum from tower to tower through the town. The people are not at all boisterous; indeed hardly lively. They gather in little groups to gossip. Some sit in rows, silent, on the balustrade of a terrace, and enjoy the sun and the sight of the rest. One crowd has made a ring around a mountebank, spangled and slashed, tumbling with his thin sad-eyed little boy, while the tired mother passes her tambourine for soldi. The school-children are all loose to-day and frolicking; some dodging at tag around the little booths or the squatting market-women with their heaps of onions; some-for all the world! -hopping and straddling through the very hop-scotch of our boyhood; a trio against the wall, jerking out fingers and shouts together in the Roman morra. Little girls in close white caps or bare-headed, with bright black eyes, cheeks of claret red and plump little arms and legs, "hippity-hop," with arms about each other's neck, in and out through the crowd. You meet some handsome women, generally with faces of sentiment and gravity and even a tinge of sadness. You meet many more from whom the parching sun and the sweat of toil have surely stolen a certain dower of beauty. All of them walk well and carry handsome WINKAMESHOLD ly the head and shoulders. The typical face, however, in men and women of San Remo, loses something by a lack of breadth across the eyes. Sweetheart and grandmother wear skirts stopping at the ankle and a neckerchief of some lively color. The former never forgets, on a festa, to thrust the silver arrow through her heavy blue-black hair behind, or the big-headed silver pins with swinging, glittering festoons of silver chain. The men take on an air with the red-and-black bonnet, dropping its blue tassel at the side of the ear; and the red-brown jacket is always slung upon one shoulder. Men and women wear gilt ear-rings. From the market-place, the, little streets stagger off in the most bewildering zigzags, between houses so tall and lank that they seem to be hurrying up to catch the sunshine. Often, they dive under a building and leave it a-straddle. Then they squeeze round a projecting tower where a loaded donkey could hardly wriggle through. Some are so steep as to be ridged across with curbs, to give man and beast a grip for the foot. All are flagged or cobbled. The houses range through all shades of gray to lamp-black; through all sizes, all sizes, shapes, and attitudes; leaning in or out, or sideways, or all ways at once, as if a goodnatured earthquake had just knocked their heads together and passed on. Here and there a flying-buttress crosses the street, high in air, helping at once to keep the houses apart and to bring the neighbors together; for it sometimes has a hand-rail for safe passage; and sometimes it makes a little hanging-garden just tipped by the sun, where plumy tufts of grass and drooping maiden's-hair seem like a gush or a trickle of gold-green light. Now and then we find ourselves in a dilapidated, moss-grown gateway, with a fragment of one of its gates rotting from the hinge. It marks off some quarter of the city. It is a relic of the grim old days when men's homes were indeed their castles, when the people here intersected their town with walls, to defend it against besiegers, ward by ward. The windows of the houses are as eccentric in position and proportion as the houses themselves, but they are always small. Italians like small windows, as the Irish peasant loves her cloak. They say they keep out the heat and keep out the cold. This notion ends in poor results for health, as half the dwellings in the town have no rear openings and hence no more ventilation than a bottle. But the families cultivate the luxury of an open street-door. We ventured into one where the interior seemed a fair sample of a working-man's home. We found a bare, uneven floor of red tiles, dull walls hung with coarse, bright pictures of the Madonna and the Stations, a little shrine high up in a corner, a few soiled books upon the table, a high bed and a chest. Presently a young man came from the room behind and looked silently at me, with an expression of offended pride. 66 Scusi," I said. "I am a stranger and want to see how all you good folk here are getting on." He measured me for a moment. Signore wishes to know how we poor fellows grub along-ecco!" And he stepped upon the chest to close the shutter before leaving. "Ma no. I am an American. We all love you Italians." He gave a slight, half-sad smile and ofVOL. VIII.-46 Ah, signore, "Twelve, fourteen cents. we are all poor. But the emigration to your country may help us. Signore has seen villages along the Cornice emptied. of every family-all gone to your country, the Brazil. And then we send out a good many good sailors. Our poor boys can't stay at home and starve. Garibaldi began the sea here." I knew the self-respect of these San Remesi too well to offer him money and would not any longer take his time. So we parted pleasantly. 66 No Turning the corner of a little church we found ourselves upon a characteristic sight-the distribution to the poor. beggars tease the traveler in San Remo for piccola moneta." All the penniless poor seem to be regular pensioners of the church. They clamor around the priest, before the chapel door, on alms-day, as persistently as though they had coupons to cash. They are as cleanly and tidy as the best of their class in any other country. One black-eyed dame, of the rounded mould of Grisi, missed a few centesimi from her usual dole and burst into a run of tragic tableaux-flapped the coppers over in her hand, curled her lip at them, invoked the crowd, with outstretched arms, to take witness of the outrage, rushed to the padre, thrust them under his chin and screamed, "Siamo sei, Madre di Dio! Saremo tosto sette!" The padre was immovable and her fury collapsed as suddenly as it began. A blind old man, with gray hair falling down his bronze cheeks and neck, who had told his soldi carefully from one hand into the other and found himself "short," stood haranguing the air, for two minutes, all alone on the spot where the priest and crowd had quietly left him. His oration broke up in the middle of a word, as he suddenly noticed the stillness; and he too, started after the padre to impertune him. And this picture calls up another of the sort. We were strolling one noon under the trees, when a heavy, shuffling sound, evidently the step of some aged person, drew us to look behind. A very old man was trying to come up to us. His sharp-crowned, narrow-rimmed, ribboned hat and the sandals of hide, showed him to be a stranger from the south. Along, broadening, milk-white beard waved downward from his dark cheeks. His thin hands reached out a little in front, and his face was thrown upward, as the blind so strangely direct theirs. A thick cataract had completely closed his sight. I waited and asked him what I could do. 66 Signore," he said, "I am old and poor and blind. Per l'amore di Dio, give me a little something, and Santa Lucia will preserve the beautiful sight to you." The pathos of this appeal was heightened by its homely honesty, for he pronounced the word for preserve as our unlettered countrypeople do presarve. table and absurdly unreasonable, we find the whole company of the Albergo,―certainly all the delicate ones,-gathered home from their drives and tramps, wandering up and down the hall and drawing-room, a-hungered for the padrone's diurnal veal. We made a pilgrimage, one afternoon, to the shrine of our Lady of the Borgo. The narrow mountain path wound all its way among terraces of olives and figs and lemons; often through the warm sunshine, where many pretty flowers glisten, and the brave little snap-dragon, in his golden helmet, stands guard before the violet; then where the dear old dandelions laugh up from the grass, and the buttercups and the daisies sit in comfort together. The trill of the birds, flitting in picnic company through the olives, felt as fresh and cool as the shimmer of the leaves. The butterflies and the bees go glinting and booming here and here. We pass a little creamcolored villa, where doves are cooing and preening themselves on the warm umber roof and along the balustrade of the loggia. We pause sometimes upon some small Our little party stray along slowly, now meadow that overhangs the gorge, to look losing sight of one another, and then rally- down and far behind us, at the gold-green ing again; and at last, with tacking and palms and the cypresses breathing their beating, we work our way up to the Sanctu- holy legend,-To Glory through the Grave, ary. The path, still within the town, zig--and at the sea beyond, shining as the zags close along the edge of tall rocks. It is guarded by a low wall, and much more,as any pious soul in San Remo will tell you-by Our Lady, who stares out from her blue shrine, with eyes and face like two beads set in a lady-apple. Three sweet children had brought her flowers that afternoon, and were pushing one another up in turn, with sprawls and quiet merriment, to kiss her feet. Our outlook over shore and wave is'superb-crest beyond crest of mountain range, sloping more and more gently to the sea; the white line of surf, curve beyond curve, sweeping away into the shimmering mirage which is its own exhalation; the vast semi-circle of the sea, with one great dark steamer moving slowly on toward the land of the pyramids and the Pharaohs; westward and eastward, everywhere, everywhere, the pale-green groves of olive, with tall, gray, lonely towers rising high above them, and the red or blue roofs of villas looking through. crystal sea of Revelation. Little Giovanni, who had stopped for a confidential chat with another black-haired rogue, came panting up, giving the signora's donkey a tattoo of punches and "Su! Su! Su!" and hurried to my side. "Signore knows that Madonna has done us three graces-tre grazie?" he panted out. "Veramente!" I said, encouragingly. "Veramente, si! Signore sees the round well there in the grass? The mother of my Francisco tumbled in, and before she reached the bottom Madonna came and caught her by the dress and drew her out." "Did you see Madonna do it, my boy?" "I? No, signore, but my father says so and all the folk; and when signore comes to the chapel, he will see a picture all about it, and then he will see!" High up, where the precipice drops straight for hundreds of feet, there is a jut of rock upon its face; and on this bracket they have perched the little chapel. It By twenty-three o'clock, as our San Re- covers every foot of its rocky shelf, hardly mesi count it, that is, just before sunset, fifteen feet by twenty. Before the open before the sudden chill of the air which door, in the still sunshine, a toil-worn, makes everybody, except yourself, so irri-wrinkled peasant woman was kneeling, |