Naples, Italy

“ I also rode to the Vomero, on which are erected the king’s pleasure-palace and a small convent. A glorious prospect here unfolds itself: Naples with its bay, Puzzoli, and a number of beautiful islands, the lake Agnaro, the extinct craters of Solfatara, Baiæ, Vesuvius with its chain of mountains, and the stupendous ocean, lie grouped, in varied forms and gorgeously blending colours, before the gaze of the astonished spectator. This is the place of which the Neapolitans say, with some justice, “Hither should men come, and gaze, and die!” ”

“ That the city of Naples can prove very delightful, very amusing, and very instructive for a week or ten days no one will attempt to dispute. There are long mornings to be spent in inspecting the churches scattered throughout the narrow streets of the old town,—harlequins in coloured marble and painted stucco though they be, they are yet treasure-houses containing some of the most precious monuments of Gothic and Renaissance art that all Italy can display. ”

“ Down on the Piliero, whither I have been to take my passage for Paola, I catch but an echo of the jubilant uproar which used to amaze me. Is Naples really so much quieter? If I had time I would go out to Fuorigrotta, once, it seemed to me, the noisiest village on earth, and see if there also I observed a change. It would not be surprising if the modernization of the city, together with the state of things throughout Italy, had a subduing effect upon Neapolitan manners. In one respect the streets are assuredly less gay. ”

“ The superiority of the sky and climate of Italy is no fable in any part of this delicious land—but in Naples, if the day I have spent here is a fair specimen, it is matchless even for Italy. There is something like a fine blue veil of a most dazzling transparency over the mountains around, but above and between there seems nothing but viewless space—nothing like air that a bird could rise upon. ”

“ There cannot be a stronger contrast than between Rome and Naples. In the former city every thing breathes repose; the streets are not deserted, but you meet only with persons going soberly about on their several occasions; and except perhaps, for about an hour in an evening in the Corso, there is no crowd, no bustle. If you pass beyond the walls, you may walk for miles along the silent and open roads of the Campagna, and see only a few shepherds tending their flocks. ”

“ Independent of its happy situation, Naples is a very beautiful city. The style of architecture, it must be confessed, is inferior to what prevails at Rome; but though Naples cannot vie with that city in the number of palaces, or in the grandeur and magnificence of the churches, the private houses in general are better built, and are more uniformly convenient; the streets are broader and better paved. No street in Rome equals in beauty the Strada di Toledo at Naples; and still less can any of them be compared with those beautiful streets which are open to the bay. ”

“ Naples is the city of fascination. Rome is stately and impressive; Florence is all beauty and enchantment; Genoa is picturesque; Venice is a dream city; but Naples is simply—fascinating. There is the common life of the streets and the [228] populace continually en scène; the people who are at home on the sunny side in winter, or the shady side in summer; there is the social life of the nobility, which is brilliant and vivacious. ”

“ Buttons and Dick obtained lodgings in the Strada di San Bartollomeo. The Senator and the other two engaged pleasant rooms on the Strada Nuova, which overlooked the Bay.
Certainly Naples is a very curious place. There are magnificent edifices--palaces, monuments, castles, fortresses, churches, and cathedrals. There are majestic rows of buildings; gay shops, splendidly decorated; stately colonnades, and gardens like Paradise. There are streets unrivalled for gayety, forever filled to overflowing with the busy, the laughing, the jolly ”

“ Buttons headed his boat so as to meet the other on its return tack.
It was a magnificent scene. After exhausting every shore view of Naples, there is nothing like taking to the water. Every thing then appears in a new light. The far, winding cities that surround the shore, the white villages, the purple Apennines, the rocky isles, the frowning volcano.
This is what makes Naples supreme in beauty. The peculiar combinations of scenery that are found there make rivalry impossible. For if you find elsewhere an equally beautiful bay, you will not have so liquid an atmosphere ”

“ At Turin and at Genoa there are no such stoppages at all; but in any other part of Italy, give me an Austrian in preference to a native functionary. At Naples it is done in a beggarly, shambling, bungling, tardy, vulgar way; but I am strengthened in my old impression that Naples is one of the most odious places on the face of the earth. The general degradation oppresses me like foul air. ”

“ Naples, March 5, 1787.
That no Neapolitan will allow the merits of his city to be questioned, that their poets should sing in extravagant hyperbole of the blessings of its site, are not matters to quarrel about, even though a pair of Vesuviuses stood in its neighbourhood. Here one can almost cast aside all remembrances, even of Rome. As compared with this free, open situation, the capital of the world, in the basin of the Tiber, looks like a cloister built on a bad site.
The sea, with its vessels, and their destinations, presents wholly new matters for reflection. ”

“ Colossal figures in marble of the most famous rulers of Naples occupy niches on the façade of the Royal Palace, and here Roger the Norman, Frederick II., the Swabian, who founded the university, Charles of Anjou, Alfonso of Arragon, Charles III., Joachim Murat, and Victor Emmanuel II. gaze stonily from their retreats at the noisy tram and rushing motor-car.
The Spanish Bourbons were the last to rule in Naples before Italy was united towards the close of the last century. They did much to improve the city but nothing to help its people. ”

“ In his own room upstairs, Bosio Macomer sat staring at the ashes of the burnt-out fire on his hearth. Only Veronica was asleep, dreamless, young, and restful.
CHAPTER III. Naples, more than any other city of Italy, is full of the violent contrasts which belong to great old cities everywhere, and the absence of which makes new cities dull, be they as well built, as well situated, as civilized and as beautiful as they can be made by art handling nature for the greater glory of modern humanity. ”

“ It is the fairest portion of Italy. The greater part of it is an unbroken plain, celebrated in ancient as well as in modern times for its extraordinary beauty and fertility. The Bay of Naples—formerly called Sinus Cumanus and Puteolanus, from the neighboring cities of Cumæ and Puteoli—is one of the most lovely spots in the world; and the softness of its climate, as well as the beauty of its scenery, attracted the Roman nobles, who had numerous villas along its coasts. ”

“ But all this grandeur was, in my eyes, disgraced by the galley-slaves, whose condition both there and in other parts of Italy is truly piteous and wretched. After we had staid there some weeks, during which we bought many different things we wanted, and got them very cheap, we sailed to Naples, a charming city, and remarkably clean. The bay is the most beautiful I ever saw; the moles for shipping are excellent. ”

“ No skill can catch the changing hues of the distant mountains, the star-points of the playing waves, the films of purple and green which spread themselves over the calm waters, the sunsets of gold and orange, and the aerial veils of rose and amethyst which drop upon the hills from the skies of morning and evening. The author of the book of Ecclesiasticus seems to have described Naples, when he speaks of ‘the pride of the height, the clear firmament, the beauty of heaven, with his glorious show.’ ‘See Naples and then die,’ is a well-known Italian saying ”

“ Naples is no longer the Naples of old. The curse of the billycock hat, which has spread over Europe, has not spared Southern Italy. The common people wear the castoff clothes of the well-to-do, and the well-to-do dress in the London fashion. As a natural consequence, the Neapolitan porters and fishermen and lazzaroni have little to distinguish them from the London labourer and the London costermonger. Naples has also in a great measure been ruined by the rich{192} foreigner, who insists on carrying his own manners and customs with him. ”

“ Among those whom he deeply influenced may be mentioned Pietro Martire Vermigli, Bernardino Ochino, Marcantonio Flaminio, Pietro Carnesecchi, Vittoria Colonna, Isabella Manrique, Giulia Gonzaga and Costanza d’Avalos—names which reveal to us how Naples became a centre from which radiated throughout Italy the reformatory influences of the age. ”

“ Naples has either been very much misrepresented as to its prevailing manners and customs, or else it has changed within the past decade, for, as a rule, the gentle courtesy and kindness of the people are especially appealing. ”

“ The inhabitants of this town are computed at three hundred and fifty thousand. I make no doubt of their amounting to that number; for though Naples is not one third of the size of London, yet many of the streets here are more crowded than the Strand. In London and Paris, the people who fill the streets are mere passengers, hurrying from place to place on business; and when they choose to converge, or to amuse themselves, they resort to the public walks or gardens: at Naples, the citizens have fewer avocations of business to excite their activity ”

“ Naples—Bristol Hotel—Via Roma—King Bomba's time—Deterioration of the Neapolitans—Museum—Churches—The Opera-house—English and Italian beauty—Aquarium—Vesuvius—Excursion to Pompeii—Portici—A novel mode of grooming—The entombed city—Its disinterment—Museum, streets, and buildings—Remarks—A cold drive.
The first thing we experienced on reaching Naples was the inveterate habit of begging and cheating among the lower classes. ”

“ Our next port was Naples, one of the largest cities of Italy,
212 BIOGRAPHY AND
and the seat of the Neapolitan government, containing about three hundred and sixty thousand inhabitants. Its celebrity may be judged from the old proverb, "See Naples and die." Upon entering the bay, the ever smoking brow of Mount Vesuvius is seen on the right like a demon watching for the destined hour when again he can pour forth desolation upon the surrounding country. ”

“ CHAPTER XVIII With the first coming of the armies of revolutionary France to Italy, the establishment of republics in the peninsula, and the talk of Italian unity, even Rome and Naples began to move in their shrouds. Probably two systems of government more utterly wretched than those of the Pope and the Neapolitan Bourbons never existed. While changes for the better were taking place in the immediate neighborhood of these misruled states, it was natural that certain elements at Rome and Naples should begin to hope for reforms. ”

“ The people look full of life, gay, independent, even lawless.
Thus we reached Naples and its charming bay, over which Vesuvius seems to rule like a gloomy despot with judgment and death upon his lips. The city however looks gay, far more so than Rome. The houses shine out white, amongst the verdant gardens, beside the bright blue sea, towards which the coast of Naples extends itself like an opened embrace, the rocky arms of which are richly adorned with towns, country-houses, and pleasure grounds!—splendid bracelets! ”

“ To the south of the bay the scenery is not less magnificent, and scarcely less dear to memory: Naples, rising from the sea like an amphitheatre of white palaces, and towers, and glittering domes: beyond, Mount Vesuvius, with the smoke curling from its summits like a silver cloud, and forming the only speck upon the intense blue sky; along its base Portici, Annunziata, Torre del Greco, glitter in the sun ”

“ The ancient quadrangle of streets and alleys, the old Greek city which held out so stoutly generation after generation when besieged by Lombard or Imperialist, lies open now to strangers of every nation. On entering its precinct one appears to have found a new world, albeit an unsavoury one. For here, in place of the irregular and curved vistas in which the builders of modern Naples have delighted, is a long narrow street of exceeding straightness, cleaving like an arrow-flight through the close-packed houses. ”

“ Seen at midday from the height, under the glare and scorch of the noonday sun, with the discordant, jangling sounds of busy life rising harshly to one, like the cries from some pit of torment, Naples seems a hell ”

“ In this ancient street one is at the heart of Naples. This strong pulse of life, this eager, abounding vitality has throbbed along this thoroughfare for more ages than one can count; and the sight on which we look to-day, the seething crowd, the straight house-fronts, the long street dropping to the east, is different in no essential from that which has been seen by every ruler of the city—Spaniard, Angevin, or Norman, yes, even by Greek and Roman governors—from days when the fires of Vesuvius were a forgotten terror, and the streets of Pompeii surged with just such another crowd as this. ”

“ I saw Naples from the Castle of Saint Elmo—setting aside the sea and Mount Vesuvius, those unequalled features in that radiant picture—the view of the city of Naples is not so fine as the view of Rome: it is, comparatively, deficient in sentiment, in interest, and in dignity. Naples wears on her brow the voluptuous beauty of a syren—Rome sits desolate on her seven-hilled throne, "the Niobe of Nations." ”