Nauplia

“ Nauplia, which was the capital of the modern kingdom of Greece during the first few years of its existence, possesses the advantage of a {68} well-sheltered port; but its walls, its bastions, and its forts give it the character of a military town rather than of a commercial one.
The towns in the interior of the country, whatever glories may attach to them, are hardly more now than large villages. The most celebrated of all, Sparta, thanks to the fertility of its environs, promises to become one of the most prosperous cities of the interior of the Peloponnesus. ”

“ And they called the capital Messene, and they restored others of their towns. But the people of Nauplia were not turned out of Mothone, the Asinæi also were allowed to remain where they were, the latter out of gratitude because they had refused to join the Lacedæmonians against them. And the people of Nauplia, when the Messenians returned to the Peloponnese, had brought them as gifts whatever they had, and had continually prayed to the deity for their return, and had also made many requests to the Messenians for their own safety. ”

“ Water is scarce, and the air dry and hot. The inhabitants, however, contrive to cultivate patches of ground, supported by terraces, high up on the mountain sides. The contrast is great between this desolate and arid mountain-mass, and the rich and well-watered plain of Troezen which adjoins it on the south.
XXXII. Nauplia.—Nauplia, now a busy flourishing seaport, and one of the chief towns of Greece, occupies the northern side of a rocky peninsula which juts out westward into the Argolic Gulf, near the head of the gulf and on its eastern side. ”

“ Three sides of the mighty rock are precipitous, but on the south-eastern side it is accessible, being joined by a ridge to the hills. The ascent from Nauplia is by a long staircase at the north-western corner of the fortress; it begins close to the gate of the town. The name Palamidi is derived from Palamedes, the son of Nauplius. Palamedium was probably the ancient name of the fortress, though no classical writer mentions it. The prospect from the summit over the gulf and plain of Argos, with the background of mountains encircling the plain, is very fine. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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." ”

“ Roman emperors, Pagan statesmen and poets, Norman, French and Spanish princes, popes, saints and theologians, merchants and scientists of the Middle Ages, writers of the Renaissance and heroes of the Risorgimento, all have combined to shed a halo of historical romance upon Naples and its Riviera, where there is scarcely a sea-girt town or a crumbling fortress that is not redolent of the memory of some personage whose name is inscribed on the roll of European history. ”

“ For what city is like Naples? Beauty, life, laughter, gayety, all have their home here. The air itself is intoxication. The giddy crowds that whirl along in every direction seem to belong to a different and a more joyous race than sorrowing humanity. For ages Naples has been "the captivating," and still she possesses the same charm, and she will possess it for ages yet to come.
The scene upon which Zillah gazed was one which might have brought distraction and alleviation to cares and griefs even heavier than hers. ”

“ In Roman days, just as in our own, men looked up from Naples long before the grapes changed colour or the figs turned black, pining for the sweet breezes of Monte Sant'Angelo, and the whispering woods of Monte Coppola, where the shadows lie for half the day, and the only sounds are made by the busy hacking of the woodcutters. There is no caprice of fashion in this straining to the hills, but a natural impulse as strong as that which stops a hot and weary man beside a roadside well. Every generation of Neapolitans has come hither in the summer; everyone will do so to the end of time. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The sanctity of this great and ancient church, its propinquity to the Mercato and to the teeming populations of the old alleys of the city, has made it in all ages a central point of that turbulent hot life which fills the history of Naples with tales of blood and terror. The associations of the place are infinite, and would in themselves fill a portly volume were they all set down with the detail which their rich interest demands. One tale there is which must be 162 told in full, for its tragedy is too great to be forgotten, and has indeed rung round all the world. ”

“ The western or newer half of Naples is hidden by the hill, and I have before my eyes only the densely peopled ancient city, a rabbit warren of tortuous and narrow streets, unsavoury and not too safe, yet full of interest if not of beauty, and possessing a picturesqueness which is all their own. One salient feature only arrests the eye wandering over this intricate mass of balconies and house-fronts—the handsome steeple of the Carmine, a church sorely 14 injured and defaced, but still abounding in romance. ”

“ Naples seems to live only in the present, without a thought either of the past or of the future. A friend who came here a day or two before us, expressed the contrast between the two cities by saying energetically, "Naples is life: Rome is death!" Indeed, we have here a spectacle of extraordinary animation. I have seen somewhere a series of pictures of "Street Scenes in Naples," and surely no city in Europe offers a greater variety of figures and costumes, as rich and poor, princes and beggars, soldiers and priests, jostle each other in the noisy, laughing crowd. ”

“ 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!” ”

“ On returning from Vesuvius or Pompeii, you enter Naples through its most animated, its most Neapolitan quarter — through that quarter in which Modern life most closely resembles the Ancient; and in which, when, on a fair-day, the thoroughfare swarms alike with Indolence and Trade, you are impressed at once with the recollection of that restless, lively race from which the population of Naples derives its origin ”

“ But Naples, passionate for noise, is never long without it. Fast as the vetturini go the hawkers come, hoarse and raucous; men with strings of chestnuts, boys holding tiny Java sparrows on their finger-tips, women thrusting at you trays of "pastiere," without which no good citizen of Naples would dream of passing Easter, any more than he would go through Christmas without "capitoni." It is rarely wise to apply to local delicacies any other test than that of sight. The women push past me with their trays, knowing well that their market does not lie among the strangers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The sun was just setting over the beautiful Bay of Naples,—with its enchanted islands, its jewelled city, its flowery villages, all bedecked and bedropped with strange shiftings and flushes of prismatic light and shade, as if they belonged to some fairy-land of perpetual festivity and singing,—when Father Francesco stopped in his toilsome ascent up the mountain, and, seating himself on ropy ridges of black lava, looked down on the peaceful landscape. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ There, too, most marked of all, were the lazaroni, whose very existence in Naples is a sign of the ease with which life is sustained in so fair a spot, who are born no one knows where, who live no one knows how, but who secure as much of the joy of life as any other human beings; the strange result of that endless combination of races which have come together in Naples--the Greek, the Italian, the Norman, the Saracen, and Heaven only knows what else. ”

“ They are a more reserved and more dignified people. They make less noise, and are not so excitable. The land they live on is not volcanic, the vegetation is more luxuriant, and the people are more pastoral in their habits. The air is softer and less exciting than at Naples. Mary and I felt as if we had drifted into the land “where it is always afternoon,” and a lotos-eating calm and serenity seemed to come over us—a pleasant change after the nervous tension which Naples produces, and which is singularly inimical to sleep. ”

“ No one will want to die after seeing Naples. He will want to live the longer and come again, if not for Naples itself then for its surroundings, for Pompeii, Herculaneum, Sorrento, Capri, Amalfi, Vesuvius and Ischia. ”

“ Yet these people never fail to return and risk the ever-present chances of death and destruction. And little can we blame them for their fatalism, when we gaze upon the glorious views that reveal themselves at this spot, whence Naples rising proudly from the sea, the rocky islands of Ischia and Capri, the aerial heights of Monte Sant’ Angelo and all the features of the placid bay are seen spread around us in a panorama of unsurpassed loveliness. ”

“ The recollection of the mob through which one struggled to the quay, the noise, the extortion, and the smells had faded away into the limbo of bad dreams, and I was free to go whither I would in the small portion of the day remaining and taste whichever sight of Naples pleased me first. There is nothing more bewildering to a stranger than to be turned loose in a great city with which he is imperfectly acquainted. I looked east towards the Carmine; but the handsome campanile lay far from the centre of the city. ”

“ It is well to spend hours and days in the museum and aquarium, or in wandering from church to church, spoilt as is almost every one among those sacred buildings by the corrupt taste of the eighteenth century, which daubed over noble gothic arches with unmeaning Barocco ornament, and left Naples degraded among Italian cities by the loss of almost all that was once done nobly within her walls in stone or marble. But here is the very fount and centre of the sovereignty of Naples, the home of all its kings since Manfred, the Palace of Anjou and Aragon. ”