day—so far as it concerned her—was got at;
the maiden was a wife, and was led out of
church between the sister and the groom's-
man of her husband.

Outside the porch we found the mountain.
All the mountain had not put on its best
clothes for nothing. The people, with their
black eyes full of fun, were shrieking, laughing,
dancing, round the porch. The bride
appeared; there was a merry shout. The
bridegroom followed with his friends; and
instantly he and his friends began to throw,
over the bride's head, among the assembled
folk a storm of comfits. Woe to the bridegroom
who is mean on such occasions, and
economises in his dealings with the comfit
merchant! No sweetmeats, no acclamation—
for such is the custom of the country.
Through a chaos of scrambling, rolling, fighting,
laughing, and of all the passions that
inhabit an Italian breast, we followed the
impeded half-affrighted bride to her new
habitation. In the days of the old Romans,
on occasions like this, the scrambling
ceremony was precisely similar. If not comfits,
there were nuts to scatter, as says Virgil in
his eclogues, "While they bring you a wife—
husband, scatter the nuts."

The door of the bridegroom's house had
been prepared for our arrival. It was
adorned with myrtle and evergreen, while
in the courts, arches of evergreens were built;
again, a custom that, like nearly all the others,
has descended from the old Augustan days.
We find it in the verses of Catullus. At the
door the newly-married wife was met by the
nearest female relation of her husband—a
sister in this case—who, having put comfits
into her mouth and into her bosom, bade her
enter with her right foot foremost. This
done, she embraced her, and the wife was so
installed in her new dwelling.

Sweetmeats, rosolio, and such refreshments,
were then handed round as the first offering
of the new housekeeper to her friends; but,
what next? The awkward half-hour before
dinner was, in this case, an awkward three
hours and a half. It was then eight o'clock,
a.m.—for your Italian villager begins the
day betimes—and it was not until the dreadfully
late hour of half-past eleven, that the
husband was to give the customary dinner—
customary, also, in the old classic times—to
his wife's friends. What were we to do
with ourselves in the meantime? Dinner
was preparing in the house for sixty people,
and we were of course quite in the way until it
should be ready. We set out, therefore, in file,
still keeping to the form of a procession, to
enjoy a morning walk under the hot June sun
and make a series of calls. We called first
on a priest, an uncle of the bride, entitled in
every respect to the honour of the first call;
he treated us all with rosolio, and gave to
me, as the foreigner and stranger, a bouquet.
From him, too, I received, with other talk, a
little information. He told me that the
villagers of Anacapri had all become related
so closely to each other by continual
intermarriage, that it was very seldom that a
marriage took place which was not within the
prohibited degrees of affinity. For most
marriages, therefore, among his parishioners,
there was required, by way of license,
dispensation from the Pope. On one occasion,
when this dispensation was refused, the lovers
voted on their own behalf marriage unnecessary.
Dispensation was then granted at once;
on the sensible condition that, by way of
penance, they should carry lighted torches at
their wedding, and lick the floor of their
chamber on the wedding night. Having paid
our visit to the priest and trailed off our
procession to the houses of some other relatives,
getting ourselves, by the way, thoroughly
roasted against dinner-time, we at length all
turned our noses in the direction of the
bridegroom's smoking chimney.

Outside the door of the house of feasting
there was a crowd still on the look-out for
sweetmeats; inside there was a crowd of busy
people playing at cooks, hurrying to and fro—
too many certainly—but, if our noses were
to be relied upon, the broth had not been
spoilt. I, being a foreigner, was treated with
distinction, and ushered into the state-room—
which on this occasion was the bed-room
—there, among the honoured few, were
to be found the village Syndic and the
notary, the conductor of the telegraph, and
other members of the fashionable world of
Anacapri.

This, let me tell the world of England, was
no common wedding, and great efforts had
been made to get it up with a becoming
dignity. The chief motive for producing an
impressive demonstration was a feud existing
in the village, which was divided into parties
who went with and against the vicar. The
bridegroom who was Anti-vicarite was backed
therefore by the Mayor and his clique—heads
of the Anti-vicaritic section—for the purpose
of producing, out of the gorgeousness of this
wedding, an impressive demonstration of
the respectability of the Anti-vicaritic, and, by
consequence, the meanness of the Vicaritic,
party. The Mayor and the great dignitaries
kept their corner of the room quite select,
conversing only with each other. I recognised
his worship at once, as having been formerly
the keeper of a village coffee-house well
known to me, and subsequently steward on
board the Palermo steamer; having retired
upon his earnings, he had been able to add
dignity to his leisure by becoming Syndic of
Anacapri. Although they had commenced
their talk in whispers, the great men as they
proceeded grew a little loud, and communicated
some part of their wisdom to our friends in
other corners of the room. They would talk
politics, while they were waiting in groups
for their dinner; and they felt a little proud
of being able to do that, aloud, in a land where
spies and worms are equally abundant. The