drought and stillness in which the very cicala dies, and the cypress
seems to rust; and scorpions drop and crawl from the peeling walls ...
and where "a bare-footed girl tumbles green melons on to the ground
before you, as she gives news of the last attack on the Bourbon king."


"HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD" is a longing reminiscence of an English
April and May, with their young leaves and their blossoms, their
sunshine and their dew, their song of the chaffinch and their rapturous
music of the thrush. Appreciation is heightened by contrast; and the
buttercup--England's gift to her little children--is pronounced far
brighter than the "gaudy melon-flower" which the exiled Englishman has
at this moment before him.


"THE ENGLISHMAN IN ITALY" is a vivid picture of Italian peasant-life on
the plain of Sorrento: the occasion being an outbreak of the well-known
hot wind--the "scirocco"--which, in this case, has brought with it a
storm of rain. A little frightened peasant girl has taken refuge by the
side of the Englishman, who is apparently lodging in her mother's
cottage. And he is diverting her attention by describing his impressions
of the last twenty-four hours: how everything looked before the rain;
how he knew while yet in bed that the rain had come, by the rattling
down of the quail-nets,[93] which were to be tugged into shelter, while
girls ran on to the housetops to fetch the drying figs; how the black
churning waters forbade the fishermen to go to sea (what strange
creatures they bring home when they do go, and how the brown naked
children, who look like so many shrimps, cling screaming about them at
the sight); how all hands are now employed at the wine-making, and her
brother is at this moment dancing bare-legged in a vat half as high as