EUROPA.

I.

THE VOYAGE.

"VISIT NAPLES, AND THEN DIE," is a saying of which every traveler is reminded, as he pursues his way down through sunny France, and along the shores of the deep blue Mediterranean, to that city of wonders, and to that region of buried wealth, fashion, and beauty, where God has chosen to exhibit himself in awful forms of grandeur and power, and where he speaks to man in the thunder of volcanoes, and in the eloquent silence of deserted cities. I well remember, when a child, to have found an old, musty book, containing a traveler's account of his pleasures and perils in the south of Europe. His description of old, hoary Vesuvius, which had smoked and blazed, bellowed and thundered, there for ages; of Rome, the city of seven hills; of massive piles, and grand old ruins, stirred up smouldering fires, and awakened an intense desire to see what had been so graphically portrayed.

The studies of later years have increased the desire. I have scarcely been content with reading of battle fields, monumental piles, old ruined towers and cities, palaces of dead and living kings, crowned monarchs, and a