St. Peter's is a peculiarly appropriate place of sepulture for the line of tyrannical kings who tried so hard to fasten the yoke of Romanism upon Great Britain. They went to their own place. England and Scotland will do well to remember that the same forces which the Stuarts represented, and which endangered their liberties then, still constitute the gravest menace to the true freedom of their island empire.
One other book I must mention before finishing what I have to say about the literature of this vast subject: the volume entitled Ave Roma Immortalis, by Francis Marion Crawford, son of the sculptor to whom we are indebted for the superb equestrian statue of Washington at Richmond, with its circle of illustrious Virginians in bronze. Let no one be deterred by the Latin title. The book itself is written in the most delightful English. It is not to be commended without qualification, for this prolific author who bears the name of the immortal Huguenot partisan of South Carolina, and ought by every consideration, so far as we know, to be a sturdy Protestant, has suffered somewhat in his religious faith by his Italian birth and rearing. But his book is full of good things culled from wide and discriminating reading, the feature that is really of most value in a book of travel.
But I must not forget that, while there is no limit to such a subject as Rome, there is a limit to the patience of my readers. So we will now take leave of Rome abruptly, and pass at once to Naples and its environs, where we spent the concluding days of our sojourn in Italy.
CHAPTER XXXV.
Naples, Capri, Vesuvius, Amalfi and Pompeii.
Naples is the largest, dirtiest and most beautiful city in Italy. From the balconies of our hotel, which stands high on the thickly-built hillside, we have a matchless view—the cream-colored city at our feet, with its red roofs and blue domes, rising from the water's edge and climbing the embayed mountain like half of a vast amphitheatre; the volcano of Vesuvius beyond, lifting its white plume of warning smoke by day, and sometimes glaring red at night; the brown ruins of overwhelmed but disentombed Pompeii a little to the right; then the cliffs of Sorrento; and, stretching between us and them, the bay itself, with its incomparable crescent of contiguous cities running like a fringe of snow round its blue waters. There—
"The bridegroom Sea is toying with the shore,
His wedded bride; and in the fullness of his marriage joy