Of the climate different travellers have given very different representations. Moore calls it the native country of the zephyrs, where the heat is tempered by the seabreeze, and by gales wafting the perfumes of the Campagna. Mathews tells you that the winter is much colder here than at Rome, notwithstanding the latitude; that the sea-breeze is keen and biting; that frequently with a hot sun there is a winter wind of the most piercing bitterness; and that a pulmonary invalid had better avoid Naples at any time, but certainly during the winter, unless he wish to illustrate the proverb, " Vedi Napoli, e po' mori."

If such be the case, I was fortunate in the time of my visits. To me it seemed the veritable land of zephyrs; nor do I think that Forsyth's picture of it, whether as regards the climate, the country, or the inhabitants, is at all overdrawn. "What variety of attractions!" he exclaims;" a climate where heaven's breath smells sweet and wooingly-the most beautiful interchange of sea and land—wines, fruits, provisions, in their highest excellence-a vigorous and luxuriant nature, unparalleled in its productions and processes-all the wonders of volcanic power spent or in action-antiquities different from all antiquities on earth-a coast which was once the fairy-land of poets, and the favourite retreat of the great. Even the tyrants of the creation loved this alluring region, spared it, adorned it, lived in it, died in it. This country has subdued all its conquerors, and continues to subvert the two great sexual virtues, guar

dians of every other virtue- the courage of men and the modesty of women*."

Regionem, quam sapiens vir, aut ad sapientiam tendens declinet, tanquam alienam bonis moribus . . . . Effœminat animos amœnitas nimia: nec dubiè, aliquid ad corrumpendum vigorem potest regio.-Seneca, Ep. 51.

Littora quæ fuerant castis inimica puellis:

Such are the terms in which Propertius speaks of this enervating region

VOYAGE TO SICILY.

Et Trinacriâ lentandus remus in undâ.-VIRG.

INTENDING to visit the island of Stromboli in my way to Sicily, I took, in conjunction with five others, a boat called a Sparonara, which happened to be about to return to Messina.

In sailing out of the Bay of Naples we had full time to contemplate the beauty of its shores. This part of our earth seems already to have undergone the sentence pronounced upon the whole of it; but, like the phenix, has risen more beautiful from its ashes:

For here the mighty Monarch underneath,
He in his palace of fire, diffuses round

A dazzling splendour. Here, unseen, unheard,
Opening another Eden in the wild,

He works his wonders; save, when issuing forth

In thunder, he blots out the sun, the sky,

And, mingling all things earthly as in scorn,
Exalts the valley, lays the mountain low,
Pours many a torrent from his burning lake,
And in an hour of universal mirth,

What time the trump proclaims the festival,
Buries some capital city.-ROGERS.

The Bay is shut off from the main sea by the island of Capri, so infamous for the abode of Tiberius. We had left the harbour of Naples with a light breeze, in

tending to make this island, but the wind freshening, the surf was too great for our frail bark to venture near the shore. We therefore doubled the Promontory of Minerva*, and steering across the Gulf of Salerno, which the Italians call their Bay of Biscay, and which seemed to us to merit the epithet-for

Dire was the tossing, deep the groans—

we put in for the night at the Punta della Licosa, the southern extremity of the bay. As the boisterous state

* This promontory, which separates the Bay of Naples from the Gulf of Salerno, has been denominated, from its romantic scenery, the Switzerland of Italy. It affords many delightful excursions; as the neighbourhood of Castel-a-Mare—the Punta di Conca- the Syrenusæ islands, the fabled haunts of the Syrens, and still called Galli, perhaps with a traditional allusion to the form of the Syrens-and above all "the fishing town, and region of Amalfi," now reduced to a few white villages, scattered among the rocks, or along the margin of the sea. Yet

The time has been

When on the quays along the Syrian coast,
'Twas asked and eagerly, at break of dawn,
'What ships are from Amalfi?' when her coins,
Silver and gold, circled from clime to clime;
From Alexandria southward to Sennaar,

And eastward thro' Damascus and Cabul
And Samarcand, to thy great wall, Cathay.
When at length they fell,

Losing their liberty, they left mankind

A legacy, compared with which the wealth
Of Eastern kings—what is it in the scale?
The mariner's compass.-ROGERS.

of the weather prevented us from sailing on the following morning, we made an excursion to the temples of Pæstum, situated at the head of the bay, and about fifteen miles from Licosa. In the evening we again put to sea with a favourable wind, and hoped to reach Stromboli in four-and-twenty hours; but we were destined to be unfortunate. The wind gradually died away, and during the whole of the following day we either lay to, or glided over the glassy surface of the Mediterranean at the rate of two or three miles an hour, by force of oars.

To propel their boats, the mariners of Italy and Sicily, like the Venetian gondoliers, stand and push forward the handle of the oar. That this method has high antiquity to recommend it is evident, not only from one of the Herculanean pictures; but from the very expression "incumbere remis," which seems clearly to indicate such a practice as this. It is evident, however, from the frequent occurrence of the word "transtra" in Latin authors, as well as from the representations on coins, that the more usual method of sitting and pulling the oar towards them was not less commonly adopted.

The Sparonara is a decked boat, provided with an awning, and affording room for about twenty persons. The crew of that in which we sailed consisted of ten men and a boy, who were busily employed at the oar whenever the wind died away.

The present mariners of Italy exhibit the same timidity, the same ignorance of navigation and abhorrence of enterprize as the Latin seamen of old. They also display the same superstition, the same scrupulous care