spot; the smoke now bursts out in many places; -the whole area is hollow;—and the ground vibrates when you stamp with your foot. Water is found at the depth of thirty feet.

Alum works are also carried on here. Earth and water are put into a large earthen vessel, which is sunk up to the brim in the soil, the heat of which causes the water to boil, and, as this evaporates, the alum is deposited in a crystallized state on the sides of the vessel.

It is from the waters of Solfatara, that the baths of Pozzuoli are supplied; which are said to be very efficacious in cutaneous and rheumatic disorders.

3d. The weather continuing fine, we drove to the lake of Agnano; situated in a delightfully retired valley, surrounded by hills. On the border of this lake is the Grotta del Cane. Travellers

have made a great display of sensibility in their strictures upon the spectacle exhibited here; but, to all appearance, the dog did not care much about it. It may be said with truth of him, that he is used to it; for he dies many times a day, and he went to the place of execution wagging his tail.

He became insensible in two minutes;-but upon being laid on the grass, he revived from

his trance in a few seconds, without the process of immersion in the lake, which is generally mentioned as necessary to his recovery. From the voracity with which he bolted down a loaf of bread which I bought for him, the vapour does not appear to injure the animal functions.

Addison seems to have been very particular in his experiments upon the vapour of this cavern. He found that a pistol would not take fire in it ; but, upon laying a train of gunpowder, and igniting it beyond the sphere of the vapour, he found, "that it could not intercept the train of fire when it had once begun flashing, nor hinder it from running to the very end." He subjected a dog to a second trial in order to ascertain whether he was longer in expiring the first than the second time: and he found there was no sensible difference. A viper bore it nine minutes the first time he put it in, and ten minutes the second :—and he attributes the prolonged duration of the second trial to the large provision of air that the viper laid in after his first death, upon which stock he supposes it to have existed a minute longer, the second time.

4th. Read the Italian in a French translation; and afterwards explored the church of S. Nicolo,

where Mrs. Radcliffe has laid the scene of that admirable interview between the Marchesa and Schedoni, at Vespers; during which they plot the death of Ellena. I went afterwards to the church of S. Severo,where there are some statues of great celebrity. One represents a female covered with a veil, which is most happily executed in marble, and has all the effects of transparency. This new effect of sculpture was the invention and the work of Corradini, a Venetian.

There is another statue of the same kind, in the same church, by the same workman;-a dead Christ-covered with the same marble imitation of a thin gauze veil, which appears as if it were moist with the cold damp of death.

There is also a statue of a figure in a net, the celebrated work of Queirolo, a Genoese; which is a model of pains and patience. It is cut out of a single block: yet the net has many folds, and scarcely touches the statue.

5th. Explored the scenery of the Italian. Went to vespers at the church of Spirito Santo; but the places themselves are as different from Mrs. Radcliffe's romantic description, as the fat unmeaning faces of the present monks are from the sublime portrait of her stern and terrible Sche

doni. But it is ever thus. Life is only tolerable in a romance, where all that is common-place and disgusting is kept out of sight;-for what is the reality but, as Mr. Shandy says, to shift about from side to side, and from sorrow to sorrow-to button up one vexation, only to unbutton another! 6th. Seized with an acute pain in the side.

9th. Decided pleurisy-summoned an English surgeon to my assistance. High fever-Copious bleeding.-Owe my life, under Heaven, to the lancet; whose repeated application was necessary to relieve me from the intolerable distress under which I had been gasping for some days. I find pleurisy is the endemic of Naples.

14th. Egri Somnia-If a man be tired of the slow lingering progress of consumption, let him repair to Naples; and the dénouement will be much more rapid. The sirocco wind, which has been blowing for six days, continues with the same violence.

The effects of this south-east blast, fraught with all the plagues of the deserts of Africa, are immediately felt in that leaden oppressive dejection of spirits, which is the most intolerable of diseases. This must surely be the "plumbeus Auster" of Horace.

Neapolitan gossips. It seems there is a great dispute at present between the Pope and the King of Naples. His Holiness claims feudal superiority over the kingdom, as a fief of the popedom; and, indeed, it would appear, that he has always exercised the right of investiture to every sovereign of Naples, since the foundation of the monarchy by Roger the Norman.

Murat, who, in the days of his prosperity, laughed at the papal pretensions, after the downfall of Napoleon, thought it prudent to make his submission to his Holiness, and was about to obtain the papal investiture.

It is incontestable, that a certain tribute has always been paid annually by the King to the Pope. The Pope receives this as an acknowledgment of his feudal superiority; the King would fain consider it as a charitable contribution of Peter's Pence. The question is still left open, and here the matter rests.

In another branch of the dispute, the King has gained his point, and established his claim to appoint his own Bishops;-subject to the papal confirmation.

The King of Naples is the oldest reigning sovereign in Europe, having ascended the throne