What a happy band we were!—alas! there are but two survivors! What delightful excursions we had (the pleasure enhanced by the presence of our respective parents) to Pompeii, to Sorrento and Amalfi and Paestum, and what delicious evenings we spent in the little garden of Villa Craven which overhung the sea! What a trip to the island of Ischia, where the Boddingtons and I danced tarantellas on the terrace of the pretty inn under the tuition of a dark-eyed young Ischiate. How enchanting was the scenery of that sweet little island, the pleasure only marred to our friends’ English maid by the fact that we had to cross the sea to get there. Harvey (for that was her name), the hysterical friend of Lucca days, expostulated with her mistress on the inconvenience of coming in an open boat— “Lord and Lady Sydney, ma’m,” she said, “preferred coming by land, and found it much more comfortable.” Poor Harvey! she was one of those people who remain faithful to their first idea. It was in vain her young ladies explained to her that it was very difficult, they might say impossible, to reach an island by land! Harvey maintained stoutly that Lord and Lady Sydney had achieved this feat, for she had it from the best authority, that of the lady’s maid; and in that belief Harvey went down to her grave. Vesuvius vouchsafed three separate eruptions to us during our sojourn at Naples, and we made a pilgrimage up the mountain while the fire-stones were falling and the lava flowing in all directions, much to the consternation and disgust of our guides. [Sidenote: OUR DOCTOR RECITES DANTE] But to return from Nature to human nature, and to speak first of our beloved physician. Michael Giardano was the son of an Italian by an English woman, and combined in his own person the best characteristics of both nations. He was eminently handsome, well skilled in his profession, a scholar, a sportsman, and an artist. He nursed me and my sister, and our faithful Henry, through bad attacks of fever, and as far as I was concerned, assisted in my recovery by the opiates he administered in the form of long recitals from favourite passages in Dante as he sat by my bedside. Poetry is a medicine which I have always found efficacious in my own case, either to a body or mind diseased, and I was reminded of my Neapolitan friend not long ago, when another distinguished member of the same profession, and another valued friend of my own, administered the same remedy, only then the tonic was Goethe instead of Dante. Giardano was a favourite with man, woman, child, and dog, for he set the paw of our Scotch terrier when run over by the carriage. “Boch-Dhu” was very much pleased with the care he bestowed on her, and, I grieve to say, showed some dissimulation in order to attract his notice. Long after she had become sound, the instant the door opened, and the Doctor appeared, this deceitful individual would limp to the chair and, sitting beside her medical attendant, offer him her paw!