STREET OF GOOD FORTUNE-POMPEII

A strange name, this, for a city street that met such a disastrous end. And yet the traveler who treads the pavements of this once buried city finds evidence on every hand that the inhabitants were a carefree, happy people, who little realized that "they danced over a volcano."

Bulwer Lytton's The Last Days of Pompeii tells the story, but when the traveler has seen with his own eyes the temples of Apollo and Jupiter, the Forum, the stepping stones, the gladiatorial barracks, the great theatre and the homes of many a wealthy citizen, he gets a deeper conception of the greatness, the wealth and power of that mighty people that measured its empire from the golden milestone of the Roman Forum.

For future generations it was a Street of Good Fortune, for here, in 1784, Charles III, the first Bourbon king of Naples, began the excavations which, in the years to follow, were to uncover the entire city and disclose the singular splendors of bronze, precious marbles and exquisite paintings that filled the doomed city.

The day was gray-a film of misty rain.

Blew on a gentle wind through unroofed home, Temple and marble bath. The stony lane

That once had been a street and looked toward Rome,

Was ghostly-still and broken and bereft;

The weeds had grown, a lizard crawled in fright
Across a rut by some swift chariot left,

Hastening in panic through that flame-shot night.
The cool rain fell-we spoke of molten rock
Half-carelessly of sudden death and fear,
We who were still so blithe and quick to mock,
Who baked our loaves, thinking to-morrow near;
While down Good Fortune Street, before our eyes,
A green hill hissed white spirals to the skies.

HORTENSE FLEXNER.

We who have driven by carriage or motor along the Amalfi Drive, will remember the delightful luncheon hours at the Capucini Monastery high above the Salernian Bay.

As we looked out from the vine-clad pergola over Amalfi, once a republic vying with Venice, Florence, Pisa and Genoa, but now sleepy and almost forgotten, we experienced emotions closely akin to those of the poet Longfellow as he penned these lines.

Sweet the memory is to me

Of a land beyond the sea,

Where the waves and mountains meet;
Where, amid her mulberry-trees

Sits Amalfi in the heat,

Bathing ever her white feet

In the tideless summer seas.

In the middle of the town,
From its fountains in the hills,
Tumbling through the narrow gorge,
The Canneto rushes down,

Turns the great wheels of the mills,
Lifts the hammers of the forge.

'Tis a stairway, not a street,
That ascends the deep ravine,
Where the torrent leaps between
Rocky walls that almost meet.
Toiling up from stair to stair
Peasant girls their burdens bear;
Sunburnt daughters of the soil,
Stately figures tall and straight,
What inexorable fate

Dooms them to this life of toil?

Lord of vineyards and of lands,
Far above the convent stands.

Amalfi

On its terraced walk aloof

Leans a monk with folded hands.
Placid, satisfied, serene,

Looking down upon the scene
Over wall and red-tiled roof;
Wondering unto what good end
All this toil and traffic tend,
And why all men cannot be
Free from care and free from pain
And the sordid love of gain,
And as indolent as he.

Where are now the freighted barks
From the marts of east and west?
Where the knights in iron sarks
Journeying to the Holy Land,
Glove of steel upon the hand,
Cross of crimson on the breast?
Where the pomp of camp and court?
Where the pilgrims with their prayers?
Where the merchants with their wares,
And their gallant brigantines

Sailing safely into port

Chased by corsair Algerines?

Vanished like a fleet of cloud,
Like a passing trumpet-blast,
Are those splendours of the past,
And the commerce and the crowd!
Fathoms deep beneath the seas
Lie the ancient wharves and quays,
Swallowed by the engulfing waves,
Silent streets, and vacant halls,
Ruined roofs and towers and walls;
Hidden from all mortal eyes
Deep the sunken city lies:

Even cities have their graves!

377

This is an enchanted land!
Round the headlands far away
Sweeps the blue Salernian bay
With its sickle of white sand:
Further still and furthermost
On the dim discovered coast
Paestum with its ruins lies,
And its roses all in bloom
Seem to tinge the fatal skies
Of that lonely land of doom.
On his terrace, high in air,
Nothing doth the good monk care
For such wordly themes as these.
From the garden just below
Little puffs of perfume blow,
And a sound is in his ears
Of the murmur of the bees
In the shining chest-nut trees;
Nothing else he heeds or hears.
All the landscape seems to swoon
In the happy afternoon;
Slowly o'er his senses creep
The encroaching waves of sleep,
And he sinks as sank the town,
Unresisting, fathoms down,
Into caverns cool and deep!

Walled about with drifts of snow,
Hearing the fierce north-wind blow,
Seeing all the landscape white,
And the river cased in ice,
Comes this memory of delight,
Comes this vision unto me
Of a long-lost Paradise

In the land beyond the sea.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

MONTE CASSINO

TERRA DI LAVORO

In journeying between Rome and Naples the traveler obtains a view of the huge pile of the abbey of Monte Cassino. This famous monastery, founded by St. Benedict in the sixth century, was a center of mediaeval learning. It was built by the followers of St. Benedict who kept the torch of learning lighted during the Dark Ages.

If you climb the monumental staircase of the church, you will enter a portico of antique columns that came from a temple of Apollo. The bronze doors of the church will recall to you the beautiful craftsmanship of those workmen in far off Constantinople, who cast these portals when the city on the Bosphorus was still a Christian city.

Beautiful valley! through whose verdant meads
Unheard the Garigliano glides along;-

The Liris, nurse of rushes and of reeds
The river taciturn of classic song.

The Land of Labor and the Land of Rest,
Where mediaeval towns are white on all
The hillsides, and where every mountain's crest
Is an Etrurian or a Roman wall.

There is Alagna, where Pope Boniface

Was dragged with contumely from his throne; Sciarra Colonna, was that day's disgrace The Pontiff's only, or in part thine own?

There is Ceprano, where a renegade

Was each Apulian, as great Dante saith, When Manfred by his men-at-arms betrayed Spurred on to Benevento and to death.