dash and discord through the darkness, till we 'stop to liquor," as Jonathan would say, before the Posilippo Grotto, where I hand my buono-mano to the driver, and depart on foot; not ill pleased to avoid the Saturnalia, and yet have had the experience, without bodily maiming-of Neapolitan car-driving by the Bay of Naples.

VI.-Between Midnight and Morn.

Well, we have got home and may go to bed, whilst the moon is shining. It is time. The streets of Naples, like the streets of London, shew you enough of uproarious mirth, of reckless folly and wretchedness side by side. But where, indeed, do we ever find the one without the other close at hand? When we are told, on beholding our public amusements and festivities, that this is the way in which people enjoy themselves, the remark would not be unnatural, that if in their pleasure they act such miserable parts, how inconceivably terrible must be their tragedy!

Not that from festive meetings, any more than from familiar intercourse, should mirth or cheerfulness be banished. Some folly may be tolerated, whether in Naples or even in a University. There is so much of sadness in life that we have need of laughter to smooth out the wrinkles from our brows, and whilst it is kindly humour who shall dare deny his neighbour's pleasantries? We are all the better for a smile at times, so long as it does not degenerate into a sneer. Little use is there in dwelling on painful topics, recapitulating how many ounces, pounds, or cwts. we are trying to upheave: chronicling the advent or departure of an aching tooth, or laying bare a sorrow that may be darkening all Nature. If we cannot lay the phantom in the Red Sea of self-forgetfulness, let us be content that it stay in its own corner, making mouths at us, with its grisly finger pointing as in mockery or warning; it is scarcely fair to bid our friends come hither and share the unquiet company. Certainly not! says the World. "If no other way is easy, plait your garlands in its face, newly string with bells your cap of Folly, and if you cannot wear it with a jaunty air, at least your very trembling may thus yield some music. If you cannot be Philosopher, the part of mountebank is always open to you." Sometimes the wages tempt adventurers, but generally the labours are gratuitous. And the more of folly that we have to-day, so much the heavier is the reckoning claimed by melancholy to-morrow.

Most of us have felt in hours of bitter retrospection, that of all the melancholy things in this world, which takes its colour from our own glasses, the most intensely melancholy is that which we mistakenly regard as Fun.

It was well enough for the young Dane to draw comparison between the grinning skull of Yorick and the olden jokes which "set the table in a roar." Some of ourselves, at the "A. D. C." and elsewhere, have seen the muscles twitch beneath the whitening on the face of Scaramouch, with other spasms than the audience noticed. Billy Barlow may pretend to stagger in drunken hilarity, while little Joe, his first-born, lies coffined on the bed at home; and Lord Lovel in the wildest antics of his mock-heroics, describing the funeral of Ladye Nancie Bell, may have a dismal recollection foreign to the foot-lights and the howls within his tattered handkerchief. Very grim in his buffoonery is Thackeray; and Swift, inditing Tales of Tubs, Yahoos, and Houyhnhnms, or the keen-edged Voltaire with Candide and with Cunegunde, is but a sorry sight. Punch, in our British streets, perhaps is relished chiefly for the eccentric lawlessness of his mirth, travestying that freedom from control which the spectators long for, but possess not; and the jaded tumblers, and the girls on stilts, the "Ethiopian Serenaders," and even the musicians who are hired to attend our out-college supper-parties, give us no sunny laughter when reflective. For my own part, I feel inclined to put in sober earnest that enquiry which Dickens mentions scornfully of Nickleby's Mr. Curdle, as to whether the husband of Juliet's Nurse were really or not "a merry man." Not very merry to our thinking. In his few recorded words, told by his widow, there is a vein of melancholy knowledge of the hypocrisies and failings that he had found in human nature, and dictating his fore-shadowings of futurity. The Fool in King Lear, moreover, is wild and mournful in his snatches,-the Melancholy of Fun everywhere to be seen. Enobarbus, the jester, dies of a broken heart for his own ingratitude to Antony; and Falstaff, the butt, who is ever so ready to ridicule himself and assume the guise of braggart for amusement of others (for, observe! he does not boast in solitude, but shews a painful observance of his companions' weaknesses, and a consciousness of his own)-he even pines away and dies remorsefully, with his sincere though whimsical affection for Prince Hal rebuked and made the scourge for his own punishment. Whether is the fantastic brave Mercutio or the boastful "Fiery Tybalt," the man of deepest feelings? And

may we not read in their author's Sonnets some confessions of one who "made himself a motley to the view"? And is it not true that in life, as in our College groves, when the trees wear party-coloured foliage, like Touchstone's vestments, they are nighest the cold sterility of winter? Was it altogether Fun, and of a lively character that dictated the epitaphs of Gay and of Churchill; or made Mephistopheles more worldly wise and dangerous than Milton's Lucifer? And is not the sight of what is termed "Fast life" merriment a little fraught with sadness? The Chinese mourn in white, and some of us in Harlequin-like patchery, as though believing motley to be the only wear. What would you have? It is the tribute which hypocrisy must pay to Gesler's cap, conventionality being thereby satisfied. Let us go to our sleep then, not with the loud shout of ribald laughter in our ears, but with tender memories and humble trustful thoughts in our hearts. Is it Naples or St. John's that shall be seen at awakening? Or does it matter much what the outside is, so long as inside there is peacefulness and faith? So Farewell!

THE ALPINE CLUB MAN.

"Up the high Alps, perspiring madman, steam,
To please the school-boys, and become a theme."
Cf. Juv. Sat. x. v. 166.

YE who know not the charms of a glass before Zero,
Come list to the lay of an Alpine Club Hero;

For no mortal below, contradict it who can,
Lives a life half so blest as the Alpine Club man.

When men of low tastes snore serenely in bed,
He is up and abroad with a nose blue and red;
While the lark, who would peacefully sleep in her nest,
Wakes and blesses the stranger who murders her rest.

Now blowing their fingers, with frost-bitten toes,
The joyous procession exultingly goes;

Above them the glaciers spectral are shining,
But onward they march undismay'd, unrepining.

Now the glacier blue they approach with blue noses,
When a deep yawning Schrund' further progress opposes ;
Already their troubles begin: here's the rub!

So they halt, and nem. con. call aloud for their grub.

From the fountain of pleasure will bitterness spring,
Yet why should the Muse aught but happiness sing?
No! let me the terrible anguish conceal

Of the Hero whose guide had forgotten the veal!*

Cf. Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers, 1st. Series. p. 296.

Now "all full inside" on the ice they embark:
The moon has gone down, and the morning is dark,
Dreary drizzles the rain, O, deny it who can,
There's no one so blest as the Alpine Club man!

But why should I dwell on their labours at length?
Why sing of their eyelids' astonishing strength?
How they ride up "arêtes" with slow, steady advance,
One leg over Italy, one over France.

Now the summit is gained, the reward of their toil:

So they sit down contentedly water to boil:

Eat and drink, stamp their feet, and keep warm if they can, O who is so blest as the Alpine Club man?

Now their lips and their hands are of wonderful hue,
And skinless their noses, that 'erst were so blue:
And they find to their cost that high regions agree
With that patient explorer and climber-the flea.

Then they slide down again in a manner not cozy,
(Descensus haud facilis est Montis Rose)
Now spread on all fours, on their backs now descending,
Till broad-cloth and bellows call loudly for mending.

Now harnessed together like so many-horses,
By bridges of snow they cross awful crevasses;
So frail are these bridges that they who go o'er 'em
Indulge in a perilous "Pons Asinorum."

Lastly weary and jaded, with hunger opprest,

In a hut they chew goat's flesh, and court gentle rest:
But Entomological hosts have conspired

To drive sleep from their eyelids, with clambering tired.

O thou who with banner of strangest device
Hast never yet stood on a summit of ice,
Where "lifeless but beautiful" nature doth show
An unvaried expanse of rock, rain, ice, and snow.