in diameter, and twenty in height above the water. We have a little difficulty in landing sometimes, on account of the sea; but it is not one day in ten that we cannot effect it. Carriages here are nearly useless. There is but a single wheel-track, of a few miles in extent; and that runs, the whole distance, through villages, or between high dead walls. When we wish to make excursions on the land, we walk in the ravines that form the ditches of the place, a most picturesque and remarkable promenade, or we take to the adjacent hills. Sometimes donkeys are commanded, but we usually prefer our own feet. On the water we do better still. I have a good and safe boat, that one man can manage with ease, and in which W---- or myself commonly pull the family for an hour or two, under the cliffs, of an afternoon, or when the bay near us is in shadow. Then there is a handsome pinnace with two lug sails and six oars, that can be had any day for a dollar. In this we cross the bay, or go to Pompeii. For longer excursions, I get the _Divina Providenza_, one of the crafts that ply to Naples. This vessel, in which we have weathered a heavy gale, is pulled by twenty oars in a calm, sails fast, and costs me just five Neapolitan dollars a day! Our daily excursions under the cliffs are peculiarly Italian. We cannot move until the day is drawing towards a close; but about four, the shadows of the rocks are thrown so far on the water as to form a complete protection against the rays of a fierce sun. At that hour, too, it is commonly a flat calm, and we glide along sometimes with a boatman, but oftener by ourselves, as far as a rocky point, where are the ruins of a palace, or of a temple, (tradition has it both ways,) and were, by rowing through a rocky arch, we can enter a little haven of a very extraordinary character. At this place the boat is almost in a cavern. Here we land and get new views of the unrivalled bay. Every excursion that we make, we return more and more delighted with the region in which we dwell, and deriding the opinions of those who pass eight or ten days on the Chiaja, or in Santa Lucia, running from sight to sight at any season of the year that may offer, and then go away fancying they have seen the country of Naples! There is a good deal of the “_dolce far niente_” in all this; but it is a feeling admirably suited to this luxurious climate, and to a country of recollections. In other places one is obliged to submit to much toil and some privation, in order to see many objects of curiosity; but they are assembled around the noble amphitheatre of this bay in such numbers, that one is only obliged to turn his head to get a view of them. If more curious, he can approach them in a boat, shaded by an awning, without at all deranging the “_far niente_.”