“Yes, dear reader, whenever I let these verses and their splendid truth vibrate again in my soul—and how often and how gladly I do it!—I have to say, Such days thou shalt never know again—such happy entrance into another’s heart. And what a heart it was that bared itself to me with all it hid and would soon reveal! We were in a café at Naples, a copy of the _Allgemeine Zeitung_ lying between him and me. It was in the best part of the spring of 1859. We both reached for it, and told our names, and the friendship was begun. ‘You must excuse me,’ Haeckel said, ‘I have to go to Ischia to-night by the market-boat.’ ‘To Ischia? That’s good: I am going there myself. ‘I am very glad, because I heard I was to be alone. It starts at nine o’clock.’ That was all that had passed between us before the crossing. What I have described in the above verses only began when we, the only Germans on board, made ourselves comfortable on the open deck. Before the journey was over we were intimate friends, and have remained friends in joy and sorrow to this moment, though the mental differences between us are enormous. However, Casamicciola brought us together in a wonderful way. We had common quarters, and always went out together for walks or botanising; we were never separated when we painted or drew, as Haeckel did with real passion. On the third morning, when we found some rare thermal plants in an almost broiling meadow and discovered nearly at the same spot the ruins of an ancient Roman bath, the remarkable coincidence affected us so much that we embraced each other joyously and dedicated the rest of our flask to them. We both felt that we could not do otherwise. So we pleasantly enjoyed the magnificent scene that lay at our feet from the height of Epomeo. We stripped off nearly the whole of our clothes, and dipped, in almost primitive nakedness, in the warm muddy streams that shot up out of the dark depths under a growth of tendrils and ferns. We shouted out, ‘How fine it is in these warm and beautifully shaded brooks! How delightful it must be in the ravines of Atlas! We must go there.’ We spent more than a whole day in the most marvellous ravines of Atlas, though neither of us had the least idea of them. But we determined to make the journey there, and sketched it out in detail, to be undertaken as soon as we left Italy. He contracted a perfect fever for travelling. We were four weeks in Pagano’s excellent inn at Capri with a few artists, and he completely lost himself with delight. He became intimate with the young artists; being hitherto surrounded by men of scientific interests, he had avoided them. The intermediary between Haeckel and them was myself. I liked no one better than genial artists. Now Haeckel was seized with a passion for painting landscapes day after day. He was especially interested in the most fantastically shaped rocks. On the other hand, he neglected his marine animals, and did not