of it. Pompeius could deceive, and rob, and slay the mass by thousands; but deliberately to lie to great Cæsar, and turn dark traitor at his own table, would be an act at which the World would cry out "SHAME." "Ah, this thou should'st have done, And not have spoke on't! In me 'tis villainy; In thee it had been good service. Thou must know, This queer distinction in morals must have puzzled old Menas sadly, and we wonder he did not immediately add, "Never mind, Pompey, I'll never tell any one you knew any thing about it; so here goes the rope." And yet we do not exactly see how Pompey could have reconciled it with his delicate conscience to have killed his guests after he had got out to sea, even if the rope had been cut without his knowledge. The Sybil's Cave is not so much of a sham. The extent of this grotto or cavern is unknown; but doubtless the whole mountain is bored through, and was used formerly as a means of communication between different portions of these ancient strongholds. From the side that looks directly on the sea, and near where Æneas landed, one sees but little of the immense cavern that dives into the mountain. Our guide, however, lighted his torches, and led us through long and dark passages until the ruins blocked the arches and stopped our progress. The entrance from the other side of the hill is on the shore of Virgil's Tartarus. A beautifully shaded walk leads to it, which opens dark and gloomily in the mountain. Here our torches were again lighted, and we entered from the shores of the very same Tartarus where Æneas entered in his 'descensus facile' into hell. You pass along a level gallery for some time illuminated only by the glare of your torches, and then reach an abrupt descent into a dark and narrow passage. My guide here put the torch into my hand Holding it in one hand and grasping his neck with the other, I mounted his brawny shoulders, and the and bade me mount. next moment found my feet dragging through the water. My torch would light up here and there a projecting point of rock, and fling its red light on the black-smeared visage of the fellow that carried me, till I began to think I really was on the road to the lower world and had fairly straddled the Devil's neck. We soon emerged into a room half filled with water, which we went splashing through into another, on the farther side of which my grim carrier set me down on a flight of steps that rose from the water. I really began to suspect, as I stood and gazed off into the darkness and saw the reflection of the light, now on the arched cavern, and now on the water, that Virgil was dealing somewhat in facts when he described this road to the Infernal World. Indeed, I should not have been surprised to have heard the bark of old Cerberus or the roar of the Cocytus. In another chamber decorated with Mosaics, are what are termed the Sybil's Baths, and also little recesses in which the guide said she was accustomed to cool herself after her warm ablutions. Coming from a land of steamboats and railroads, where everything is practical and real, it seemed odd enough to hear men run over these traditions as matters of fact. Before you are aware, you find yourself following the narrator as if he were relating real occurrences; and, as he points out the particular localities and relates some incident belonging to each, you for the moment believe him. Being all told in a foreign tongue, and that Italian, adds to the delusion: and I found myself looking into the baths, where the beautiful limbs of the Sybil reposed, and around on her chambers, as if it all were a fact and not a fiction. But when I was shown the narrow hole into which she crawled to cool herself after the bath, the beautiful vision vanished. This was too much for even my imagination; and I roused the echoes of the Sybil's home by one of those long and hearty laughs that does the soul good. My cicerone had run on with increasing volubility, distancing Virgil miles out of sight, and adding such notes and comments on the way as would have staggered the poet to have heard. As he waved the torch to and fro, and splashed the water around him, he saw my eyes glaring on him like one completely gulled as I most assuredly was for the time, though not by him so much as by my own imagination—and, taking the hint, he piled up the marvels,' as a Western man would say, 'a little too high.' My hearty, incredulous laugh acted like a condenser on his steam, and he began to mistrust I was a sensible man. He stopped short, and asked if I did not wish to mount. An English lady had entered as far as one could without being carried, and, impelled by a woman's curiosity, asked to be taken into the Sybil's chambers. Without thinking how she was to be carried, she was just adjusting her dress, when the guide, stooping down, suddenly inserted her carefully astraddle of his neck, and plunged into the water. The squeal that followed would have frightened all the sybils of the mountains out of their grottoes. It was too late, however, to retreat;-the passage was too narrow to turn round in, and she was compelled to enter the first chamber before she could be relieved from her predicament. When she came again into the open day-light, a more astonished and pitiable looking object I never beheld. Her elegant bonnet was blackened and crushed, and she stood fingering it with an absent look, uttering now and then an expression of horror at what she had passed through. This entire shore is a heap of ruins, and each ruin a history. Fagged out and weary as ever, we drove slowly home in the mild evening air. Truly yours. LETTER XX. A Visit to Salerno-Ruins of Pæstum. SALERNO, April, 1843. DEAR E.-I have just returned from Pæstum. My New York friends and myself made a party, and, selecting a beautiful morning, started for the deserted city. Our road lay for many miles along the Bay, that spread away brightly in the morning sun, and through the towns that skirt the base of Vesuvius, and along the barren lava-tract near Pompeii, and finally opened into the cultivated plains,-when we trotted quietly off towards Salerno. Vineyards came up to the road as far as the eye could reach, interspersed with open cultivated grounds, in which the peasants, in their picturesque costume, were gaily at work. The vines in this region are trained on tall poplars, that give the vineyards the appearance of a wood, and do not produce so fine an effect as those farther north. The fields being without fences have an open look, and the mingling of men and women together in their cultivation give them a chequered appearance, and render them very picturesque. In the middle of a large green wheat-field would be a group of men and women weeding the grain, the red petticoats and blue spencers of the latter contrasting beautifully with the color of the fields. In one plat of ground I saw a team and a mode of ploughing quite unique, yet withal very simple. The earth was soft as if already broken up, and needed only a little mellowing. To effect this, a man had harnessed his wife to a plough, which she dragged to and fro with all the patience of an ox, he the mean time holding it behind, as if he had been accustomed to drive and she to go. This was literally "ploughing with the heifer.' She, with a strap around her breast, leaning gently forward, and he, bowed over the plough behind, presented a most curious picture in the middle of a field. The plough here is a very simple instrument, having but one handle and no share, but in its place a pointed piece of wood, sometimes shod with iron, projecting forward like a spur, and merely passes through the ground like a sharp-pointed stick, without turning a smooth furrow like our own. As we approached the Mountains the scenery changed and assumed a wilder and more varied aspect. We stopped at Nocera, a place founded it is supposed by the Pelasgi-once taken by the Saracens, and once bravely and successfully defended against Hannibal. Here is an old Cathedral, about which antiquarians have differed much; and the only safe result finally reached is, that it is of great antiquity, and whether originally a Church or not, was built when Nocera was a far richer and more important place. A small collection of houses is near it, from which swarmed children and young women to beg for a few grani. Though dirty and ragged, their features were much finer than those near Naples. You would have laughed to have seen me fairly blocked in by babies and urchins, and young women clamoring for money. Wishing to look in their houses to see how they lived, I scattered some small change among them, which immediately made them my warm friends; and the invitations I had to their dwellings, especially from those who had not yet received any money, were excessively warm and urgent. I walked into one house from which I had seen no one come forth to beg. In the centre of the room was a cradle with a sick infant in it, while the mother sat at the side of it at work. She was a fine-looking woman, and seemed quite superior to the herd that dogged my footsteps. She looked up as I entered, and muttered something of my impoliteness. I thought she was about half right; but stepping up to the cradle, I inquired after the child and laid some money in its hand. Mercy! what a change! The sullen look with which she had greeted me passed away, and she addressed me with all the blandness of an Italian woman. But oh! what dwellings for human beings! I have been into the quarterings of slaves at the South, but they are comfortable apart. ments compared with these. A miserable bed and an old loom, with a few chickens and a pig, complete the entire furniture. I passed in and out followed by the same ragged gang, till all at |