the curved white line of Naples stretches far along the shore, while Vesuvius broods fatefully over the villages at its feet. Mr. Crawford is an early riser, being usually at his writing-table between six and seven o’clock. If it is winter he lights his own fire, and in any season begins the day, like most people who have lived much in southern countries, with a small cup of black coffee and a pipe. About nine o’clock he goes down-stairs to spend an hour with his wife and children, and then returns to his study and works uninterruptedly until luncheon, which in summer is an early dinner. In warm weather the household goes to sleep immediately after this meal, to re-assemble toward five o’clock; but the author often works straight through this time, always, however, giving the late afternoon and evening to his family. The common impression that the south of Italy is unbearably hot in summer is due to the fact that the guide-books in general use are written by Germans or Englishmen, whose blood boils at what seems to us a very tolerable temperature. Inland cities like Milan and Florence often suffer from oppressive heat, but records show that neither at Naples nor at Palermo does the thermometer mark so high as in New York, and at Sorrento it rarely goes above 84°. On Sundays, after early church, parents and children go off in a boat to some one of the many lovely spots which are to be found among the rocks along the shore, taking with them fire-wood, a kettle, and all that is necessary for a “macaronata,” or macaroni picnic. The sailors do the cooking, while the children look on or go in swimming with their father, and when the simple feast is over the rest of the afternoon is spent in sailing over the bay, perhaps as far as Capri if the breeze holds. While every one acknowledges Marion Crawford’s talent as a story-teller, he is sometimes reproached with inventing impossible situations, or at least straining probability, which is only another illustration of the old saying about fact and fiction, for in each of the cases usually referred to he has set down what actually happened. The triple tragedy in “Greifenstein” was a terrible fact in a noble German family before the middle of the present century, and the son of the house, the last of his race, entered the Church and died a Cardinal. In “Casa Braccio,” the elopement of the nun and the burning of the substituted body took place in South America exactly as described, and the story was told to the author by a person who had met the real Gloria. The incident of Don Teodoro in “Taquisara,” who, although not ordained, acted as a priest for many years, occurred in the neighborhood of Rome, and there have been two well-known cases in which priests kept the secret of the confessional as Don Ippolito does in “Corleone,” but with the difference that they were both convicted of crimes which they had not committed, one being sent to the mines of Siberia, the other to a French penal colony.