The last days of Vittoria, which were chiefly spent within the walls of the Convent of Sant’ Anna at Rome, were clouded by ill-health and sorrow. The death of the young Marchese del Vasto, “her moral and intellectual son,” was an irreparable loss, for which her boundless fame and popularity could offer little real consolation. At length the poetess, feeling death approaching, moved to the house of Giulia Colonna, her relative, and there expired in February 1547, in the fifty-seventh year of her age. To the last her death-bed was surrounded by sorrowing and adoring friends, amongst them being Michelangelo, who is said to have witnessed with his own eyes the last moments of his beloved Lady. And the famous sculptor, painter and poet—perhaps the most stupendous genius the world has yet produced—is reported to have bitterly regretted in after years that on so solemn an occasion he had not ventured to imprint one chaste kiss upon the forehead of the woman he had adored so ardently, yet so purely during life. By her expressed wish the body of the poetess was buried in San Domenico Maggiore at Naples, the finest and least spoiled of all the Neapolitan churches, where a velvet-covered coffin containing the ashes of the Divine Vittoria and her “Bel Sole,” and surmounted by the sword, banner and portrait of Fernando d’Avalos, is still pointed out to the stranger, resting on a shelf in the sacristy of the church. We cannot but regret that Vittoria’s body did not find a final resting-place in her _superbo scoglio_, where all her happiest years were spent and where her memory still survives so fresh. Sadly deserted appear to-day the historic buildings, which are fast falling into hopeless decay; even the large domed church of the Castle has been desecrated and turned into a stable. “Tocsins from yon bleak turrets never ring; No knight or pages pace those galleries, So sombre and so silent: ever cling To that cold church and palace draperies Of glaucous fume-weed; sea-birds ever sing The vanished glories with low mournful cries.” Ischia itself is a quaint, dirty, straggling town, possessing a small cathedral of ancient foundation, but modernised within and without, its sole object of interest being a curious font resting on marble lions. The charm of the city lies chiefly in the busy scenes to be witnessed daily on its sandy beach and on the stone causeway that leads to the Castle, where a large part of the population seems to spend most of its time in mending the deep brown fishing nets or in attending to the gaudily painted boats.