forth as clear as cider. This was stowed away in huge barrels, which were finally bunged up, after a small quantity of strong acrid matter squeezed from the refuse grape-skins had been introduced without this last the wine will not ferment.

It is to be drinkable in two months, and will cost about one-fourth of what "small beer" would in merry England: it is not, however, nearly so good.

Having said thus much of the regular wine of Ischia, I shall add that a French merchant who is settled here, and has built the largest house in the island, and on one of the most beautiful spots, grows the Falernian grape, both white and red, and makes a delicious wine from it, quite equal to Burgundy, and at one-sixth of the cost. He has also taught the white to effervesce like Champagne, a result achieved by a twofold process in addition to the usual steps. The bunches, after being plucked from the tree, must lie a whole night on a bank exposed to the heavy dews, to charge them with carbonic acid gas; and the bottles when filled must be plunged, previous to corking, neck downwards, into a pail of fresh spring water.

At fifteen pence a bottle this beverage is delicious; and, what is more, "sincero."

Whoever passes a month in Ischia should scale the Epomeo. I have been up it twice; once alone, when I was favoured with paradise weather and saw the wonderful prospect from San Nicolo's Convent; and again in company, some seven of us besides a cook, servants, donkey-men and dogs. On this last occasion, as will sometimes happen, we were unlucky in our day — a fog escorted by a sweeping blast overtook us at Pansa, and by the time we reached the summit we were children of the mist. There was nothing for it but to dry our dresses, dine, and then descend, how we might, over ankle-breaking crags and banks of slippery clay, to a cup of tea and a nightcap.

The "giro" of the whole island in an open boat is both agreeable and instructive. For the twentieth time in my life I was within an ace of becoming a zealous geologist, but escaped it. We had many adventures in the course of the day; one was disturbing a wasp's nest, when our boatman was stung by one of these insects on the cheek; this man, a brave and hardy sailor, and

built like a wrestler, cried like a child, and we all had to set to and comfort him!

:

On the long sandy reach facing Capri we made acquaintance with a natural cuisine well known to the contadini and fishermen, and large enough to dress the victuals of a regiment. Here you need neither fuel nor fire, pots nor pans you have only to scoop a hollow in the boiling sand, wrap your viands in clean paper, and bury them; twenty minutes will cook a fowl, four or five an egg; "pomi-d'oro" and such like are done to a turn before you can say Jack Robinson. The row in an open boat was delightful; and, rounding the last headland, we came on the ruins of the old palace of the Bolgars, very interesting to those who have heard the story of the fair Restituta, a daughter of that house.

sun.

PALERMO.

November.

NATURE and art combined never produced a more beautiful result than this city; masses of travertine masonry mingled with groves of orange and citron, cover the vast "pianura; " behind the hills sweep in a semicircle; in front the ocean runs up with a delicate loop of blue on bright sands; and far away, a hundred miles as the crow flies, the white cone of Etna reflects the ray of the setting It would be difficult to describe Belmonte, the villa where we are lodged, a mile distant from the city. The peerless prospect in front of us, the garden laid out round the mansion, the crested rockwork and red cliff rising one above the other at the back of the pleasure-ground, lower down in the vale hundreds of acres bushy with the cactus, and as the eye wanders further, to every palace an old buttressed wall, and clustering on every wall the dark foliage and golden fruit of the orange tree, a fairy-tinted sky above, and an air like balm, though November's breeze is sighing through the olives. It is a spot too beautiful to stay long

in; so it is fortunate that we are birds of passage. In the city all is novel and picturesque. Walk up the Via del Toledo and you will get an idea of Moorish architecture; here balconies hang in clusters like birds'-nests, and every cornice and support is carved with grotesque faces in the stone. The sides of the trottoir are dappled with shopfronts proclaiming bright colours to be the rage; widespread stalls fill every possible and impossible place, proffering hot chestnuts to warm you, and icy-cold cactus-figs to cool you, with some twenty species of pulse, and fish and tobacco; sunburnt men in red and yellow caps lie sprawled in the streets; at every window protrudes a woman's bust; around are buildings reared by forgotten princes, and inhabited by beggars; the duomo with Saracenic towers without, and the appointments of a whitewashed barn within; churches gleaming with shrines of agate and gold, a pretty botanical garden, a raised terrace by the seaside, dirty lodgings, bad hotels; it is Naples again, but Naples in an Arab dress, bedizened with jewels, but without bread to eat. The population appears even a grade lower than the half-clothed, quarter-fed adventurers who lounge in the Chiaja.