The neighborhood of Naples has improved very much since I was a girl.

I remember pickpockets used to be quite common on the quay at Santa Lucia, and nobody troubled to interfere.

You can walk to the boat nowadays and carry a hand-bag without fearing every moment it will be snatched." But the driver was urging the necessity of pushing on, so all took their seats again, and in due course reached Paestum.

The girls had, of course, seen photographs of the place beforehand, yet even these had hardly prepared them for the stately magnificence of the three great temples that suddenly broke upon their vision.

Their immense size, their loneliness, far from town or city, and their glorious situation betwixt hill and blue sea, almost took the breath away, and filled the mind with glowing admiration for the genius of Greek architecture.