of pearls on a regal mantle. Nearer by, the picturesque rocky shores of
the island of Capri seem to pulsate through the dreamy, shifting mists
that veil its sides; and the sea shimmers and glitters like the neck
of a peacock with an iridescent mingling of colors: the whole air is a
glorifying medium, rich in prismatic hues of enchantment.

The town on three sides is severed from the main land by a gorge two
hundred feet in depth and forty or fifty in breadth, crossed by a bridge
resting on double arches, the construction of which dates back to
the time of the ancient Romans. This bridge affords a favorite
lounging-place for the inhabitants, and at evening a motley assemblage
may be seen lolling over its moss-grown sides,--men with their
picturesque knit caps of scarlet or brown falling gracefully on one
shoulder, and women with their shining black hair and the enormous pearl
earrings which are the pride and heirlooms of every family. The present
traveller at Sorrento may remember standing on this bridge and looking
down the gloomy depths of the gorge, to where a fair villa, with its
groves of orange-trees and gardens, overhangs the tremendous depths
below.

Hundreds of years since, where this villa now stands was the simple
dwelling of the two women whose history we have begun to tell you. There
you might have seen a small stone cottage with a two-arched arcade
in front, gleaming brilliantly white out of the dusky foliage of an
orange-orchard. The dwelling was wedged like a bird-box between two
fragments of rock, and behind it the land rose rocky, high, and steep,
so as to form a natural wall. A small ledge or terrace of cultivated
land here hung in air,--below it, a precipice of two hundred feet down
into the Gorge of Sorrento. A couple of dozen orange-trees, straight
and tall, with healthy, shining bark, here shot up from the fine black