The island of Capri is the most delightful spot in the Mediterranean. Blessed with a fine climate, a comparatively fertile soil, and a contented population, it is one of the best places accessible to the ordinary traveller in which to spend a quiet season. In this refuge life does not sparkle, but stagnates. Tired nerves recover their tone in the eventless succession of lazy days. Overtaxed digestion regains its normal strength through the simple diet, the pure air, and the repose of mind and body which are found in this paradise. Of late years the island has become a great resort for artists of all nationalities. Many good studios are to be had there; plenty of trained models of both sexes and all ages are eager to work for trifling wages; living is cheap, rents are by no means exorbitant, and subjects for pictures abound at every step. A few modern buildings of some pretensions to size and architectural style have been erected within the last twenty or thirty years, but the greater part of the houses on the island, both in the town of Capri and in the village of Anacapri, are very old and exceedingly simple in construction. The streets of the town are narrow and crooked, and twist about in a perfect maze of tufa walls and whitewashed façades, straggling away in all directions from the piazza. The dwellings of the poorer classes are jumbled together along these narrow streets as if space were very valuable. They overhang and even span the roadway at intervals, and frequently the flat roof of one house serves as a _loggia_, or broad balcony, for the one above it. Small gardens are sometimes cultivated on these housetops, and the bleating of goats and cackling of hens are often heard in the shrubbery there. Not the least among the many attractions of Capri are its historical relics. Ruined Roman villas and palaces abound all over the hills; traces of ancient baths and grottos of the nymphs may be seen along the water’s edge; and fragments of Roman architecture are built into every wall, and into almost every house. The peculiar geological formation of the island furnishes the excuse for a variety of short and pleasant excursions; for there are numbers of interesting caves, strange rock forms, and grandly picturesque cliffs and cañons within easy reach by sea or by land.