I can find but little in the streets of Castellammare which invites me to linger in them. There are mineral baths just outside the town, but Providence gave me no occasion for visiting them, and I dislike the apparatus of ill-health. I went past the baths, therefore, and strolled on through the crowded, evil-smelling streets till I came out again at the foot of the hill leading to the woods of Quisisana, and went up once more beneath the green arches of the budding leaves, till I saw from time to time a snatch of sea above the houses and the wide sunlit plain revealed itself stretching far and distant round the base of the great volcano. As I went through the little village of which I spoke before, I noticed hanging on a wire which crosses the road a doll made in the likeness of an old grey-haired woman, adorned with a tuft of feathers growing somewhat bare. As it swung to and fro in the light wind it had the aspect of a child's plaything which had fallen there by chance; but I had seen a similar doll hanging from a balcony in Castellammare, and knew the thing to be no toy. Such dolls are seen commonly hanging in the air at this season in the Sorrento peninsula. The old woman is Quaresima, or Lent, and she is provided with as many hen's feathers as there are weeks in that period of fasting. Every Sunday one feather is plucked out; and when the last is gone Quaresima is torn down with rejoicing. On the first Sunday of her exaltation a playful diversion is carried on at the cost of poor Quaresima. A boy or girl, chosen by lot, is blindfolded and armed with a long stick, with which he strikes in the air, groping after the swinging figure. At last he finds it, and a sharp blow breaks a concealed bottle, letting out a red fluid--the blood of Lent; the ceremony is diversified by a good deal of horseplay. I know not how ancient these superstitious ceremonies may be. Italy, perhaps southern Italy in particular, is crowded with usages handed down from days so old that it sometimes causes me a shudder to remember how many ages of mankind have passed by them in procession off the earth. The toy, the trivial folly persisting still, more than half meaningless, century after century, while the bright eyes and laughing lips, all that we call life, pass on like shadows when the sun goes in. It is the doll, the grotesque Quaresima, which has life and endures, not we, however distasteful it may be to realise it.