and my companions began to employ themselves in measuring the circumference of one of the Doric columns, when they suddenly called my attention to a stranger who was sitting on a camp-stool behind it.  The appearance of any person in this place at this time was sufficiently remarkable, but the man who was before us from his dress and appearance would have been remarkable anywhere.  He was employed in writing in a memorandum book when we first saw him, but he immediately rose and saluted us by bending the head slightly though gracefully; and this enabled me to see distinctly his person and dress.  He was rather above the middle stature, slender, but with well-turned limbs; his countenance was remarkably intelligent, his eye hazel but full and strong, his front was smooth and unwrinkled, and but for some grey hairs, which appeared silvering his brown and curly locks, he might have been supposed to have hardly reached the middle age; his nose was aquiline, the expression of the lower part of his countenance remarkably sweet, and when he spoke to our guide, which he did with uncommon fluency in the Neapolitan dialect, I thought I had never heard a more agreeable voice, sonorous yet gentle and silver-sounded.  His dress was very peculiar, almost like that of an ecclesiastic, but coarse and light; and there was a large soiled white hat on the ground beside him, on which was fastened a pilgrim’s cockle shell, and there was suspended round his neck a long antique blue enamelled phial, like those found in the Greek tombs, and it was attached to a rosary of coarse beads.  He took up his hat, and appeared to be retiring to another part of the building, when I apologised for the interruption we had given to his studies, begged him to resume them, and assured him that our stay in the building would be only momentary, for I saw that there was a cloud over the sun, the brightness of which was the cause of our retiring.  I spoke in Italian; he replied in English, observing that he supposed the fear of contracting the malaria fever had induced us to seek the shelter of the shade:  but it is too early in the season to have much reasonable fear of this insidious enemy; yet, he added, this bottle which you may have observed here at my breast, I carry about with me, as a supposed preventive of the effects of malaria, and as far as my experience, a very limited one, however, has gone, it is effectual.  I ventured to ask him what the bottle might contain, as such a benefit ought to be made known to the world.  He replied, “It is a mixture which slowly produces the substance called by chemists chlorine, which is well known to be generally destructive to contagious matters; and a friend of mine who has lived for many years in Italy, and who has made a number of experiments with it, by exposing himself to the danger of fever in the worst seasons and in the worst places, believes that it is a secure preventive.  I am not convinced of this; but it can do no harm; and in waiting for