118 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



nion beauty has flowed around her like a perverse 

 stream, and left her such an exception 1 It is hard 

 to he the exception to stand whipping-hoy for the 

 world, and teach the fair and glad to be thankful for 

 their advantages by the spectacle of one's own de- 

 formity or sorrow. But thou and I, good Santella, 

 will shake hands on that ; and I wish we all bore our 

 burdens half as meekly and sweetly as does that hand- 

 maiden of the good God. It is pleasant at the Villa 

 Quisisana, ledore carissima, where our host speaks 

 pure Italian with an Edinburgh accent, and knows 

 everybody one knew in the early ages when one was 

 young and lived among one's own people. Go there, 

 and bring us word how the vines are growing, and 

 be good to Santella ; and look at the cottage on the 

 hill under the sweetest shade of the olive-trees, from 

 which you can see the sun set, as it were by stealth, 

 in that unthought-of break round the lower shoulder 

 of Monte Solaro. If I were ever rich and secure and 

 happy, and had no longer any dread in my heart of 

 this dearest, saddest, murderous Italy, it is there I 

 would go and build my tower of vision : but that 

 time can only be when Italy and Capri have celestial 

 names, and the City of God has come down out of 

 the skies, and that hard division is done away with 

 which parts heaven and earth ; for I cannot think 

 the great Creator, even to outdo it, could destroy, 

 clean out of knowledge, the loveliest labours of His 

 almighty hands. 



