MADELE IN E. (A Tale of Procida.) It was on a lovely day in June that, with a Neapolitan sea under our prow, and a Neapolitan sky over our heads, we glided along the site of the far-famed Elysian fields, and the desolately beautiful shores of Puzzuolo and Baiæ, on an excursion to the romantic and beautiful islands in the Bay of Naples. My readers must have travelled as far as I have, ere fancy can conjure up the images brought before my mind's eye by these few simple words. How much, both of sorrow and of joy, do they bring back to my recollection! But to my story. The magic of names is no dream of modern classical enthusiasm. Two thousand years ago the grief of a father (no less a one than the famous Cicero) for an only and much-beloved daughter found its gentlest but most efficacious rebuke in the letter of a friend, who, whilst sailing like ourselves on a short summer voyage, had seen Megara and Corinth, Piræus and Egina, four of the most renowned cities of Greece, lying in ruins, and unhonoured (as he remarked) in their desolation by a tithe of the tears which the death of one absent, but amiable individual, had wrung from the bosom of a Roman and a philosopher. And so it is, dear reader, in the cases of many who, without being either the one or the other, possess for the decaying glories of Greece and Rome a classical and hereditary reverence. We sailed, as I have just said, along "Misenum's towering steeps," our boat touched the quay of the little town, and the gay groups of women, as they poured forth from behind the dull leathern curtain, which in Italian churches supplies the place of doors, were absolutely dazzling, with their bright-coloured skirts and bodices, and the profusion of gold lace and braid, which form too often the only wealth of an otherwise starving population. How the women of Italy, and of Procida in particular, manage to totter under the weight of bullion, and not faint under the mass of drapery which fashion has made indispensable to their pride and respectability, has often been a source of much wonderment to me. Anxious to see, whilst yet decorated in its holiday pomp of flowers and tapers, and silver images of saints and Madonnas, the high altar of the " Chiesea Madre" of Procida, we lifted aside the ponderous curtain, and slipped in, before the greater part of the female congregation-lost either in rustic admiration, or sincere though mistaken devotion-had quitted the church. It was a touching, nay, even to a Protestant, a pleasing sight, to see every pair of women, as they went out, hand in hand, pause upon the threshold, and apply the finger, reverently dipped in holy-water, each to her chosen partner's forehead. Many of these pairs were evidently sisters; some were probably yet more endeared by the sweet ties of friendship, but all fell short in fervour and impressiveness of the emotion, strangely compounded, of pride and sorrow-though the latter, alas! visibly predominated-with which a young and handsome mother led out her gentle fair-haired, but darkeyed child, and applied to her innocent brow the symbol of a faith all Christians must alike revere. I shall not forget the mute prayer to heaven for a blessing beyond even that of an earthly parent, with which the maternal piety was accompanied; or the upturned gaze of the meek young girl, that seemed in return to invoke on the head (which even now, though prematurely bowed by some apparently deep grief, her tiny hands would scarcely on tiptoe reach) the consolation, of which it required no K sibyl to reveal to us, a probably widowed pa- | now descrying the very pair who had so in rent stood in need. I followed the couple with my eyes down the steps of the church, and marked their silent, pensive course through the crowded, glittering piazza, and then lost sight of them, with an indefinable regret one often gives to objects seen but a moment, yet remembered for a life-time. We passed a delightful day in strolling about the beautiful and highly-cultivated island, where the European chestnut and tropical aloe mingle in kindred luxuriance; while the sweetness of our afternoon's repast was heightened by being eaten at the commanding windows of the castle, which gave us a fine view of the Bay of Naples; while the vesper hymn "Eustace" so feelingly describes, rose in untaught harmony on the orange-scented breeze, from many a vine-clad porch below. My friend and I had intended returning to Naples that evening, but the charms of the scenery made us gladly avail ourselves of the pretext of a light contrary wind to pass the night on the island. It was well we did so, as the gale in the course of it freshened to a tempest, which might, if encountered at sea, have gone far to eclipse all the pleasing remembrances of the day, whilst we owed to its occuran incident the enjoyment of which would have been cheaply purchased by a share of the danger which caused it. It was, indeed, a day of good fortune, and so we soon considered it. While crossing with our guide-a fine young man belonging to the village-the narrow ridge which divides two deeply indented bays in the centre of the island, we were inquiring into the manners of the peasantry, and expressing a wish to examine more closely one of the magnificent female costumes before-mentioned. He turned aside a little from the beaten path, and bade us follow him to the dwelling of the handsomest and most classicallyhabited Contadina in the whole paese. rence "I could easily take you," he said, "to La Nicola, whom all the signori forestieri go to see; but she is so intolerably greedy: there is no satisfying her. And besides," added our guide, drawing himself up with somewhat of the pride of Achilles, and the filial piety of Æneas, "I cannot bear to see the dress my mother wore at her marriage, and left at her death — having no daughter to my Lucia, who would let you see her's herself, had not Idelio, this blessed giorno di festa, sent her a bel bambino-shown for money to every passing stranger. And yet," said he, as if reproaching himself for the probable effect of his burst of pride, "Madeleine Morelli, whom you see sitting there with her little Clarine, will be much the better for any trifle your excellenzas may please to bestow, for she is as deserving as she is poor, and in all human probability she is a widow as well. Poor soul! she is not used to make a spettacalo of herself; but I'll tell her you are kind Inglesi, and love Italy, and that will make all smooth." "Don't disturb her, pray!" exclaimed we, terested us at the church. The mother was seated on a ledge of rock, with her child leaning pensively at her knee, in a little dell below our position, whence we could, unobserved, sketch at our leisure the costume and attitude, and at the same time overhear snatches of the conversation which too deeply engrossed both to allow them to perceive even so near an intrusion. The little girl, as she clung around her parent, turned her dark, wistful eyes, as if for the last time, on her gorgeous purple vest, on which the evening sun threw its still bright rays, and played thoughtfully with the gold beads which hung from her mother's bosom nearly to her knees. "Addio! caro abito di festa!" said she, kissing alternately her mother and her wellknown holiday-suit. "And will it really bring back my father if I never see it more?" "God only knows, my Clarine. If He will please to accept and bless our sacrifice But if by selling these ornaments (which to keep for you, my child, I would myself die a lingering death) we could find out, and perhaps bring back thy father "Oh! take them, take them, mother dear! One kiss from him would make me happier than all the jewels we saw to-day on the Santissima Madonna! Let us go to him now—" And the child pulled, with an impatient gesture, at the gaily-embroidered robe which her mother wore. "Where is he, mother mine?" "Heaven only can answer thee," sadly replied her mother. "Three years since, when thou wast too young to weep, he went out fishing in his little bark; and since that sad day nothing has been heard of him." Convulsive sobs shook her frame as Madeleine uttered these words, and, for a moment, her grief appeared uncontrollable. After a few moments she continued: "The wind rose as, Santissima Vergine! it does now, and whether he was carried out to sea and drowned, or taken captive by the red-flagged Algerine his comrades saw next morning in the offing, none can tell. Now, Nicola, who gets so much from the Inglesi for standing like an image to let them sketch her (here my heart smote me for thus stealing her own likeness), has long coveted this true Greek dress of my grandmother Zoe's (it should have been thine, Clarine!), and offered me yesterday a hundred sequins for it, when, Heaven knows, I knew not where to get thee bread-though for bread alone I would not part with it. But, dear child, there are good friars at Rome (here both crossed themselves devoutly), who ransom poor Christians whom the cruel Turks have made slaves of. If your father were amongst these-if with one hundred sequins we could go to Rome, and seek the good Padri Keddensori دو "Mother, we will hasten there now," exclaimed Clarine, her sweet face lighted up with unspeakable joy at the (even faint) prospect of again seeing her dear father. She pulled at her mother's laced apron, in which fancy already |