The Capri girls are famed as magnificent beauties, but they fade like their mainland sisters. The Saracens used to descend on their island, and carry them off to their harems. The English, a very adventurous people, who have no harems, have followed the Saracens. The young lords and gentlemen have a great fondness for Capri. I hear gossip enough about elopements, and not seldom marriages, with the island girls,--bright girls, with the Greek mother-wit, and surpassingly handsome; but they do not bear transportation to civilized life (any more than some of the native wines do): they accept no intellectual culture; and they lose their beauty as they grow old. What then? The young English blade, who was intoxicated by beauty into an injudicious match and might, as the proverb says, have gone insane if he could not have made it, takes to drink now, and so fulfills the other alternative. Alas! the fatal gift of beauty. But I do not think Capri is so dangerous as it is represented. For (of course we went to Capri) neither at the marina, where a crowd of bare-legged, vociferous maidens with donkeys assailed us, nor in the village above, did I see many girls for whom and one little isle a person would forswear the world. But I can believe that they grow here. One of our donkey girls was a handsome, dark-skinned, black- eyed girl; but her little sister, a mite of a being of six years, who could scarcely step over the small stones in the road, and was forced to lead the donkey by her sister in order to establish another lien on us for buona mano, was a dirty little angel in rags, and her great soft black eyes will look somebody into the asylum or the drunkard's grave in time, I have no doubt. There was a stout, manly, handsome little fellow of five years, who established himself as the guide and friend of the tallest of our party. His hat was nearly gone; he was sadly out of repair in the rear; his short legs made the act of walking absurd; but he trudged up the hill with a certain dignity. And there was nothing mercenary about his attachment: he and his friend got upon very cordial terms: they exchanged gifts of shells and copper coin, but nothing was said about pay.