Pozzuoli in recent years has been much neglected by strangers, so much so that no inn worthy to be called an hotel now exists, and such _trattorie_ as the place offers are all equally extortionate and detestable. Some time ago there was a comfortable _pension_ at the edge of the town on the road to the Amphitheatre, but its English landlady has long since migrated elsewhere, and the comfortable “Hotel Grande Bretagne” is no more; whilst nowadays there are to be found no visitors hardy enough to endure a prolonged sojourn in the wretched hostelries of the town itself. The electric tram and the rail-road have in fact killed Pozzuoli as a winter resort, more’s the pity, for it is not only a spot of singular interest in itself but its climate is certainly superior to that of Naples, for the great headland which shuts off the city from the Phlegrean Fields serves also to act as a buffer against the icy _tramontana_ that sweeps along the Chiaja in winter and early spring. Invalids used at one time to inhabit Pozzuoli on account of its mild atmosphere, and even to visit the Solfatara daily on mule-back, in order to inhale its sulphureous fumes, which were then believed to be good for weak chests. But medical fashions vary like all others, and consumptive patients now seek other places than Pozzuoli for their cure. Many are the walks outside the town, and none are without beauty or interest, for, the neighbourhood of Syracuse excepted, we can think of no place in Italy wherein one is brought so closely into touch with the classical past. Nature has long clothed the ruined area of the ancient city with her kindly drapery of foliage and flowers, so that the crumbling masses of tawny brick that we come across in our rambles are all swathed in garlands of clematis, myrtle, honey-suckle and coronella. It is a delight to speculate upon the original use and appearance of these shapeless blocks of creeper-clad masonry, which attract the eye on all sides amidst the vineyards and orange groves, where the peasants delving in the rich soil frequently alight upon treasures of the antique world. What a delight it is to wander through the Street of Tombs—alas, long rifled of their contents!—where the gay valerian and the pink silene sprout from every fissure of the soft tufa rock, and lizards of unusual size and brilliancy play games of hide-and-seek in the warm sunshine. We moderns are afraid of graveyards and the paraphernalia of the dead: many a stout-hearted Englishman objects to passing through a church-yard at night; not so the pagan Romans, who placed their cemeteries in public places and were wont to proceed through lines of tombs as they entered the city of the living: a very salutary and practical reminder of the transitory nature of life itself. The whole neighbourhood in short is sprinkled with these memorials of Imperial Rome; there is not an orange or lemon orchard but stands above some forgotten villa, not an acre of tilth