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at daybreak, the prospect suddenly becoming expanded,
as if by a miracle, reveals - in the far distance, across the
Sea there! - Naples with its Islands, and Vesuvius spouting
fire. Within a quarter of an hour, the whole is gone as if it
were a vision in the clouds, and there is nothing but the
sea and sky.

The Neapolitan Frontier crossed, after two hours' tra-
velling; and the hungriest of soldiers and custom-house
officers with difficulty appeased; we enter, by a gateless
portal, into the first Neapolitan town - Fondi. Take note
of Fondi; in the name of all that is wretched and beggarly.

A filthy channel of mud and refuse meanders down
the centre of the miserable street: fed by obscene rivulets
that trickle from the abject houses. There is not a door, a
window, or a shutter; not a roof, a wail, a post, or a pillar, in
all Fondi, but is decayed, and crazy, and rotting away. The
wretched history of the town, with all its sieges and pillages
by Barbarossa and the rest, might have been acted last year.
How the gaunt dogs that sneak about the miserable street,
come to be alive, and undevoured by the people, is one of
the enigmas of the world.

A hollow-cheeked and scowling people they are! All
beggars; but that's nothing. Look at them as they gather
round. Some, are too indolent to come down stairs, or
are too wisely mistrustful of the stairs, perhaps, to ven-
ture: so stretch out their lean hands from upper win-
dows, and howl; others, come flocking about us, fighting
and jostling one another, and demanding, incessantly,

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