Beyond Torre del Greco we seem to escape to a certain extent from the enveloping network of human dwellings, so that we are at last enabled to gain some idea of the natural features of the country. The oriental character of the landscape, which marks more or less distinctly the whole of the Neapolitan coast-line, will at once be noticed in the domed farm buildings, not unlike Mahommedan _koubbas_, washed a glistening white, that stand out sharply against the lugubrious tints of the lava beds. Above us, crowning a bosky hillock that juts forth from the mountain flank, stands one of the many convents of the monks of Camaldoli, whose houses are scattered throughout the breadth of Southern Italy. The position of their Vesuvian settlement is certainly unique, for the rising ground on which it is perched appears like some verdant oasis amid the arid fields of sable lava. Secure in its commanding site, the monastery has many a time been completely surrounded by burning streams, which have invariably left the building and its woody demesne unscathed. More than once have the good brethren, who wear the white robe of St Romualdo of Ravenna, looked down from their convent walls upon the work of destruction below, and have watched the waves of liquid fire surging angrily but uselessly round the rocky base of their retreat. Hard manual labour, prayer, solitude and contemplation: these are the chief duties enjoined by the famous Tuscan order, and surely no more suitable place for carrying out such precepts could have been chosen by the pious founder of this Vesuvian convent. For what scenes on earth could be deemed more beautiful to contemplate, we wonder, than the wide stretches of heaven and ocean, of fertile plain and of rugged mountain, that are ever before the eyes of the brethren; or more instructive than the constant spectacle of disappointed human ambition and energy, which is afforded by the barren lava beds and the ruined cities close at hand!