It has been the home of saints and of scholars; of soldiers a few, of statesmen a-many, of some of the most beautiful characters that ever walked the earth, and of some of the very worst that ever polluted the world with their presence. At the top of the list stands St. Januarius, Bishop of Benevento, who with six of his companions came to Naples during the ninth persecution to comfort and strengthen the Faithful, and who being seized with his companions was taken to Pozzuoli, and there flung to the wild beasts; who, when they refused to harm him, was plunged into a blazing furnace, out of which he came intact, and was thereafter beheaded; but who stands at the bottom, I should be afraid to say. At this point there is an “embarras de richesses!” Of all the landmarks of history with which the Kingdom of Naples is dotted none, perhaps, is more rich in Romance or more imbued with the spirit of Tragedy than a certain straggling, half-ruined castle near the little village of Pizzo, upon the coast of Calabria. A round tower, grey and sullen with age, faces the sea; in the wall of it is set a small, heavily barred window, through which one of the very few comparatively good Kings of Naples looked his last upon a world which had seen him rise from a peasant to a monarch. There is neither space nor need to recapitulate here the life of Murat. Italy, Russia, Germany, Austria, Egypt had felt the tread of his all-shattering squadrons, whose onset no horse or foot of continental Europe had ever been able to withstand. The Dictator of Europe had given him his sister for a wife. Naples had been proud to own him for her King. Glory, wealth, splendour had been his, and he could have kept them—I think it is safe to say that he could have kept them—had he been able to stand firm. But he had not the strength, even when he joined the Coalition in 1814. While he was still fighting Eugène, he could not resist the temptation to intrigue with the Viceroy, who of course instantly saw to it that the Allies were notified of the fact. In those stormy days nobody trusted his neighbour, nor did any one blame his neighbour particularly for trying to keep his political balance in any way that he could; so that Murat’s—inconsistency, let us call it—was not held against him afterwards. The Bourbons were not popular, either, and Ferdinand, that perfect product of the hapless, helpless race, was generally detested. It must be said for the Bourbons that their sins are, as a rule, of the negative sort, and cruelty is not one of them. Ferdinand, however, besides being a spineless king, was a brute and a coward, which again are not Bourbon traits.