CAPRI. I. We can hardly wonder at the love of artists for Capri, for of all the winter resorts of the South Capri is beyond question the most beautiful. Physically indeed it is little more than a block of limestone which has been broken off by some natural convulsion from the promontory of Sorrento, and changed by the strait of blue water which now parts it from the mainland into the first of a chain of islands which stretch across the Bay of Naples. But the same forces which severed it from the continent have given a grandeur and variety to its scenery which contrast in a strangely picturesque way with the narrowness of its bounds. There are few coast-lines which can rival in sublimity the coast-line around Capri; the cliff wall of sheer rock broken only twice by little dips which serve as landing-places for the island, and pierced at its base by "blue grottoes" and "green grottoes" which have become famous from the strange play of light within their depths. The reader of Hans Andersen's 'Improvisatore' will remember one of these caverns as the scene of its closing adventure; but strange as Andersen's description is it is far less strange than the scene which he sketches, the deep blue light which turns the rocks into turquoise and emerald or the silvery look of the diver as he plunges into the waves. Twice in their course the cliffs reach a height of thirteen hundred feet above the sea, but their grandeur is never the barren grandeur of our Northern headlands; their sternest faces are softened with the vegetation of the South; the myrtle finds root in every cranny and the cactus clings to the bare rock front from summit to base. A cliff wall hardly inferior in grandeur to that of the coast runs across the midst of the island, dividing it into an upper and a lower plateau, with no means of communication save the famous rock stairs, the "Steps of Anacapri," now, alas, replaced by a daring road which has been driven along the face of the cliff.