Grant Allen

NAPLES

The Bay of Naples—Vesuvius—Characteristic scenes of street life—The alfresco restaurants—Chapel of St. Januarius—Virgil’s Tomb—Capri, the Mecca of artists and lovers of the picturesque—The Emperor Tiberius—Description of the Blue Grotto—The coast-road from Castellamare to Sorrento—Amalfi—Sorrento, “the village of flowers and the flower of villages”—The Temples of PÆstum.

Naples in itself, apart from its surroundings, is not of surpassing beauty. Its claim to be “the most beautiful city in Europe” rests solely on the adventitious aid of situation. When the fictitious charm which distance gives is lost by a near approach, it will be seen that the city which has inspired the poets of all ages is little more than a huge, bustling, commonplace commercial port, not to be compared for a moment, Æsthetically speaking, with Genoa, Florence, Venice, or many other Italian towns equally well known to the traveller. This inherent lack is, however, more than compensated for by the unrivaled natural beauties of its position, and of its charming environs. No town in Europe, not Palermo with its “Golden Shell,” Constantinople with its “Golden Horn,” nor Genoa, the “Gem of the Riviera,” can boast of so magnificent a situation. The traveller who approaches Naples by sea may well be excused for any exuberance of language. As the ship enters the Gulf, passing between the beautiful isles of Ischia and Capri, which seem placed like twin outposts to guard the entrance of this watery paradise, the scene is one which will not soon fade from the memory. All around stretches the bay in its azure immensity, its sweeping curves bounded on the right by the rocky Sorrentine promontory, with Sorrento, Meta, and a cluster of little fishing villages nestling in the olive-clad precipices, half hidden by orange groves and vineyards, and the majestic form of Monte Angelo towering above. Farther along the coast, Vesuvius, the tutelary genius of the scene, arrests the eye, its vine-clad lower slopes presenting a startling contrast to the dark cone of the volcano belching out fire and smoke, a terrible earnest of the hidden powers within. On the left the graceful undulations of the Camaldoli hills descend to the beautifully indented bay of Pozzuoli, which looks like a miniature replica of the parent gulf with the volcano of Monte Nuovo for its Vesuvius. Then straight before the spectator lies a white mass like a marble quarry; this, with a white projecting line losing itself in the graceful curve of Vesuvius, resolves itself, as the steamer draws nearer, into Naples and its suburbs of Portici and Torre del Greco. Beyond, in the far background, the view is shut in by a phantom range of snowy peaks, an offshoot of the Abruzzi Mountains, faintly discerned in the purple haze of the horizon. All these varied prospects unite to form a panorama which, for beauty and extent, is hardly to be matched in Europe.

This bald and inadequate description may perhaps serve to explain one reason for the pre-eminence among the many beautiful views in the South of Europe popularly allowed to the Bay of Naples. One must attribute the Æsthetic attraction of the Bay a good deal to the variety of beautiful and striking objects comprised in the view. Here we have not merely a magnificent bay with noble, sweeping curves (the deeply indented coasts of the Mediterranean boast many more extensive), but in addition we have in this comparatively circumscribed area an unequaled combination of sea, mountain, and island scenery. In short, the Gulf of Naples, with its islands, capes, bays, straits, and peninsulas, is an epitome of the principal physical features of the globe, and might well serve as an object lesson for a child making its first essay at geography. Then, too, human interest is not lacking. The mighty city of Naples, like a huge octopus, stretches out its feelers right and left, forming the straggling towns and villages which lie along the eastern and western shores of the bay. A more plausible, if prosaic, reason for the popularity of the Bay of Naples may, however, be found in its familiarity. Naples and Vesuvius are as well known to us in prints, photographs, or engravings as St. Paul’s Cathedral or the Houses of Parliament. If other famous bays, Palermo or Corinth, for instance, were equally well known, that of Naples would have many rivals in popular estimation.

The traveller feels landing a terrible anticlimax. The noble prospect of the city and the bay has raised his expectations to the highest pitch, and the disenchantment is all the greater. The sordid surroundings of the port, the worst quarter of the city, the squalor and filth of the streets, preceded by the inevitable warfare with the rapacious rabble of yelling boatmen, porters, and cab-drivers, make the disillusionized visitor inclined to place a sinister interpretation on the equivocal maxim, Vedi Napoli e poi mori; and Goethe’s aphorism, that a man can never be utterly miserable who retains the recollection of Naples, seems to him the hollowest mockery and the cruellest irony.

The streets of Naples are singularly lacking in architectural interest. Not only are there few historic buildings or monuments, which is curious when we consider the important part Naples played in the mediÆval history of the South of Europe, but there are not many handsome modern houses or palaces of any pretensions. Not that Naples is wanting in interest. The conventional sight-seer, who calls a place interesting in proportion to the number of pages devoted to its principal attractions in the guide-books, may, perhaps, contemptuously dismiss this great city as a place which can be sufficiently well “done” in a couple of days; but to the student of human nature Naples offers a splendid field in its varied and characteristic scenes of street life. To those who look below the surface, this vast hive of humanity, in which Italian life can be studied in all its varied phases and aspects, cannot be wholly commonplace.

It is a truism that the life of Naples must be seen in the streets. The street is the Neapolitan’s bedroom, dining-room, dressing-room, club, and recreation ground. The custom of making the streets the home is not confined to the men. The fair sex are fond of performing al fresco toilettes, and may frequently be seen mutually assisting each other in the dressing of their magnificent hair in full view of the passers-by.

As in Oriental cities, certain trades are usually confined to certain streets or alleys in the poorer quarters of the town. The names at street corners show that this custom is a long-established one. There are streets solely for cutlers, working jewelers, second-hand bookstalls, and old clothes shops, to name a few of the staple trades. The most curious of these trading-streets is one not far from the Cathedral, confined to the sale of religious wares; shrines, tawdry images, cheap crucifixes, crosses, and rosaries make up the contents of these ecclesiastical marine stores. This distinctive local character of the various arts and crafts is now best exemplified in the Piazza degli Orefici. This square and the adjoining streets are confined to silversmiths and jewelers, and here the characteristic ornaments of the South Italian peasant women can still be bought, though they are beginning to be replaced by the cheap, machine-made abominations of Birmingham. Apart from the thronging crowds surging up and down, these narrow streets and alleys are full of dramatic interest. The curious characteristic habits and customs of the people may best be studied in the poor quarters round the Cathedral. He who would watch this shifting and ever-changing human kaleidoscope must not, however, expect to do it while strolling leisurely along. This would be as futile as attempting to stem the ebb and flow of the street currents, for the streets are narrow and the traffic abundant. A doorway will be found a convenient harbor of refuge from the long strings of heavily laden mules and donkeys which largely replace vehicular traffic. A common and highly picturesque object is the huge charcoal-burner’s wagon, drawn usually by three horses abreast. The richly decorated pad of the harness is very noticeable, with its brilliant array of gaudy brass flags and the shining repoussÉ plates, with figures of the Madonna and the saints, which, together with the Pagan symbols of horns and crescents, are supposed to protect the horses from harm. Unfortunately these talismans do not seem able to protect them from the brutality of their masters. The Neapolitan’s cruelty to animals is proverbial. This characteristic is especially noticeable on Festas and Sundays. A Neapolitan driver apparently considers the seating capacity of a vehicle and the carrying power of a horse to be limited only by the number of passengers who can contrive to hang on, and with anything less than a dozen perched on the body of the cart, two or three in the net, and a couple on the shafts, he will think himself weakly indulgent to his steed. It is on the Castellamare Road on a Festa that the visitor will best realize the astonishing elasticity of a Neapolitan’s notions as to the powers of a beast of burden. A small pony will often be seen doing its best to drag uphill a load of twelve or fifteen hulking adults, incited to its utmost efforts by physical suasion in the form of sticks and whips, and moral suasion in the shape of shrill yells and oaths. Their diabolical din seems to give some color to the saying that “Naples is a paradise inhabited by devils.”

The al fresco restaurants of the streets are curious and instructive. That huge jar of oil simmering on a charcoal fire denotes a fried-fish stall, where fish and “oil-cakes” are retailed at one sou a portion. These stalls are much patronized by the very poor, with whom macaroni is an almost unattainable luxury. At street corners a snail-soup stall may often be seen, conspicuous by its polished copper pot. The poor consider snails a great delicacy; and in this they are only following ancient customs, for even in Roman times snails were in demand, if we may judge from the number of snail-shells found among the Pompeii excavations. A picturesque feature are the herds of goats. These ambulating dairies stream through the town in the early morning. The intelligent beasts know their customers, and each flock has its regular beat, which it takes of its own accord. Sometimes the goats are milked in the streets, the pail being let down from the upper floors of the houses by a string, a pristine type of ascenseur. Generally, though, the animal mounts the stairs to be milked, and descends again in the most matter-of-fact manner.

The gaudily painted stalls of the iced-water and lemonade dealers give warmth of color to the streets. There are several grades in the calling of acquaiolo (water-seller). The lowest member of the craft is the peripatetic acquaiolo, who goes about furnished simply with a barrel of iced water strapped on his back, and a basket of lemons slung to his waist, and dispenses drinks at two centesimi a tumbler. It was thought that the completion of the Serino aqueduct, which provides the whole of Naples with excellent water at the numerous public fountains, would do away with the time-honored water-seller; but it seems that the poorer classes cannot do without a flavoring of some sort, and so this humble fraternity continue as a picturesque adjunct of the streets. These are only a few of the more striking objects of interest which the observer will not fail to notice in his walks through the city. But we must leave this fascinating occupation and turn to some of the regulation sights of Naples.

Though, in proportion to its size, Naples contains fewer sights and specific objects of interest than any other city in Italy, there are still a few public buildings and churches which the tourist should not neglect. There are quite half-a-dozen churches out of the twenty-five or thirty noticed by the guide-books which fully repay the trouble of visiting them. The Cathedral is in the old part of the town. Its chief interest lies in the gorgeous Chapel of St. Januarius, the patron saint of Naples. In a silver shrine under the richly decorated altar is the famous phial containing the coagulated blood of the saint. This chapel was built at the beginning of the seventeenth century, in fulfilment of a vow by the grateful populace in honor of the saint who had saved their city “from the fire of Vesuvius by the intercession of his precious blood.” St. Januarius is held in the highest veneration by the lower classes of Naples, with whom the liquefaction ceremony, which takes place twice a year, is an article of faith in which they place the most implicit reliance. The history of the holy man is too well known to need repetition here. The numerous miracles attributed to him, and the legends which have grown round his name, would make no inconsiderable addition to the hagiological literature of Italy.

Of the other churches, Sta. Chiara, S. Domenico Maggiore, and S. Lorenzo are best worth visiting. In building Sta. Chiara the architect would seem to have aimed at embodying, as far as possible, the idea of the church militant, the exterior resembling a fortress rather than a place of worship. In accordance with the notions of church restoration which prevailed in the last century, Giotto’s famous frescoes have been covered with a thick coating of whitewash, the sapient official who was responsible for the restoration considering these paintings too dark and gloomy for mural decoration. Now the most noteworthy objects in the church are the Gothic tombs of the Angevin kings.

The two churches of S. Domenico and S. Lorenzo are not far off, and the sightseer in this city of “magnificent distances” is grateful to the providence which has placed the three most interesting churches in Naples within a comparatively circumscribed area. S. Domenico should be visited next, as it contains some of the best examples of Renaissance sculpture in Naples as Sta. Chiara does of Gothic art. It was much altered and repaired in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but still remains one of the handsomest of the Neapolitan churches. Its most important monument is the marble group in relief of the Virgin, with SS. Matthew and John, by Giovanni da Nola, which is considered to be the sculptor’s best work. The Gothic church of S. Lorenzo has fortunately escaped in part the disfiguring hands of the seventeenth century restorer. This church is of some literary and historical interest, Petrarch having spent several months in the adjoining monastery; and it was here that Boccaccio saw the beautiful princess immortalized in his tales by the name of Fiammetta.

In order to appreciate the true historical and geographical significance of Naples, we must remember that the whole of this volcanic district is one great palimpsest, and that it is only with the uppermost and least important inscription that we have hitherto concerned ourselves. To form an adequate idea of this unique country we must set ourselves to decipher the earlier-written inscriptions. For this purpose we must visit the National Museum, which contains rich and unique collections of antiquities elsewhere absolutely unrepresented. Here will be found the best treasures from the buried towns of CumÆ, Herculaneum, and Pompeii. The history of nearly a thousand years may be read in this vast necropolis of ancient art.

To many, however, the living present has a deeper interest than the buried past, and to these the innumerable beautiful excursions round Naples will prove more attractive than all the wealth of antiquities in the Museum. Certainly, from a purely Æsthetic standpoint, all the best things in Naples are out of it if the bull may be allowed. To reach Pozzuoli and the classic district of BaiÆ and CumÆ, we pass along the fine promenade of the Villa Nazionale, which stretches from the Castello dell’ Ovo (the Bastille of Naples) to the Posilipo promontory, commanding, from end to end, superb unobstructed views of the Bay. Capri, the central point of the prospect, appears to change its form from day to day, like a fairy island. Sometimes, on a cloudless day, the fantastic outlines of the cliffs stand out clearly defined against the blue sea and the still bluer background of the sky; the houses are plainly distinguished, and you can almost fancy that you can descry the groups of idlers leaning over the parapet of the little piazza, so clear is the atmosphere. Sometimes the island is bathed in a bluish haze, and by a curious atmospheric effect a novel form of Fata Morgana is seen, the island, appearing to be lifted out of the water and suspended between sea and sky.

The grounds of the Villa Nazionale are extensive, and laid out with taste, but are disfigured by inferior plaster copies, colossal in size, of famous antique statues. It is strange that Naples, while possessing some of the greatest masterpieces of ancient sculptors, should be satisfied with these plastic monstrosities for the adornment of its most fashionable promenade. The most interesting feature of the Villa Nazionale is the Aquarium. It is not merely a show place, but an international biological station, and, in fact, the portion open to the public consists only of the spare tanks of the laboratory. This institution is the most important of its kind in Europe, and is supported by the principal European Universities, who each pay for so many “tables.”

At the entrance to the tunneled highway known as the Grotto di Posilipo, which burrows through the promontory that forms the western bulwark of Naples, and serves as a barrier to shut out the noise of that overgrown city, is a columbarium known as Virgil’s Tomb. The guide-books, with their superior erudition, speak rather contemptuously of this historic spot as the “so-called tomb of Virgil.” Yet historical evidence seems to point to the truth of the tradition which has assigned this spot as the place where Virgil’s ashes were once placed. A visit to this tomb is a suitable introduction to the neighborhood of which Virgil seems to be the tutelary genius. Along the sunny slopes of Posilipo the poet doubtless occasionally wended his way to the villa of Lucullus, at the extreme end of the peninsula. Leaving the gloomy grotto, the short cut to Pozzuoli, on our right, we begin to mount the far-famed “Corniche” of Posilipo, which skirts the cliffs of the promontory. The road at first passes the fashionable Mergellina suburb, fringed by an almost uninterrupted series of villa gardens. This is, perhaps, one of the most beautiful drives in the South of Europe. Every winding discloses views which are at once the despair and the delight of the painter. At every turn we are tempted to stop and feast the eyes on the glorious prospect. Perhaps of all the fine views in and around Naples, that from the Capo di Posilipo is the most striking, and dwells longest in the memory. At one’s feet lies Naples, its whitewashed houses glittering bright in the flood of sunshine. Beyond, across the deep blue waters of the gulf, Vesuvius, the evil genius of this smiling country, arrests the eye, from whose summit, like a halo,

“A wreath of light blue vapor, pure and rare,
Mounts, scarcely seen against the deep blue sky;
········
... It forms, dissolving there,
The dome, as of a palace, hung on high
Over the mountains.”

Portici, Torre del Greco, and Torre del’ Annunziata can hardly be distinguished in this densely populated fringe of coast-line, which extends from Naples to Castellamare. Sometimes at sunset we have a magnificent effect. This sea-wall of continuous towns and villages lights up under the dying rays of the sun like glowing charcoal. The conflagration appears to spread to Naples, and the huge city is “lit up like Sodom, as if fired by some superhuman agency.” This atmospheric phenomenon may remind the imaginative spectator of the dread possibilities afforded by the proximity of the ever-threatening volcano towering in terrorem over the thickly populated plain. There is a certain weird charm born of impending danger, which gives the whole district a pre-eminence in the world of imagination. It has passed through its baptism of fire; and who knows how soon “the dim things below” may be preparing a similar fate for a city so rashly situated? These dismal reflections are, however, out of place on the peaceful slopes of Posilipo, whose very name denotes freedom from care.

The shores of this promontory are thickly strewed with Roman ruins, which are seldom explored owing to their comparative inaccessibility. Most of the remains, theaters, temples, baths, porticoes, and other buildings, whose use or nature defies the learning of the antiquary, are thought to be connected with the extensive villa of the notorious epicure Vedius Polio. Traces of the fish-tanks for the eels, which Seneca tells us were fed with the flesh of disobedient slaves, are still visible. Descending the winding gradients of Posilipo, we get the first glimpse of the lovely little Bay of Pozzuoli. The view is curious and striking. So deeply and sharply indented is the coast, and so narrow and tortuous are the channels that separate the islands Ischia, Procida, and Nisida, that it is difficult to distinguish the mainland. We enjoy a unique panorama of land and sea, islands, bays, straits, capes, and peninsulas all inextricably intermingled.

Continuing our journey past the picturesque town of Pozzuoli, its semi-oriental looking houses clustered together on a rocky headland, like Monaco, we reach the hallowed ground of the classical student. No one who has read his Virgil or his Horace at school can help being struck by the constant succession of once familiar names scattered so thickly among the dry bones of the guide-books. The district between CumÆ and Pozzuoli is the sanctum sanctorum of classical Italy, and “there is scarcely a spot which is not identified with the poetical mythology of Greece, or associated with some name familiar in the history of Rome.” Leaving Pozzuoli, we skirt the PhlegrÆan Fields, which, owing to their malaria-haunted situation, still retain something of their ancient sinister character. This tract is, however, now being drained and cultivated a good deal. That huge mound on our right, looking like a Celtic sepulchral barrow, is Monte Nuovo, a volcano, as its name denotes, of recent origin. Geologically speaking, it is a thing of yesterday, being thrown up in the great earthquake of September 30th, 1538, when, as Alexandre Dumas graphically puts it, “One morning Pozzuoli woke up, looked around, and could not recognize its position; where had been the night before a lake was now a mountain.” The lake referred to is Avernus, a name familiar to all through the venerable and invariably misquoted classical tag, facilis descensus Averni, etc. This insignificant-looking volcanic molehill is the key to the physical geography of the whole district. Though the upheaval of Monte Nuovo has altered the configuration of the country round, the depopulation of this deserted but fertile country is due, not to the crater, but to the malaria, the scourge of the coast. The scarcity of houses on the western horn of the Bay of Naples is very marked, especially when contrasted with the densely populated sea-board on the Castellamare side. Leaving Monte Nuovo we come to a still more fertile tract of country, and the luxuriant vegetation of these Avernine hills “radiant with vines” contrasts pleasingly with the gloomy land “where the dusky nation of Cimmeria dwells” of the poet. The mythological traditions of the beautiful plain a few miles farther on, covered with vineyards and olive-groves and bright with waving corn-fields, where Virgil has placed the Elysian Fields, seem far more appropriate to the landscape as we see it. Perhaps a sense of the dramatic contrast was present in the poet’s mind when he placed the Paradiso and the Inferno of the ancients so near together.

Quite apart from the charm with which ancient fable and poetry have invested this district, the astonishing profusion of ruins makes it especially interesting to the antiquary. A single morning’s walk in the environs of BaiÆ or CumÆ will reveal countless fragmentary monuments of antiquities quite outside of the stock ruins of the guide-books, which the utilitarian instincts of the country people only partially conceal, Roman tombs serving as granaries or receptacles for garden produce, temples affording stable-room for goats and donkeys, amphitheaters half-concealed by olive-orchards or orange-groves, walls of ancient villas utilized in building up the terraced vineyards; and, in short, the trained eye of an antiquary would, in a day’s walk, detect a sufficient quantity of antique material almost to reconstruct another Pompeii. But though every acre of this antiquary’s paradise teems with relics of the past, and though every bay and headland is crowded with memories of the greatest names in Roman history, we must not linger in this supremely interesting district, but must get on to the other beautiful features of the Gulf of Naples.

Capri, as viewed from Naples, is the most attractive and striking feature in the Bay. There is a kind of fascination about this rocky island-garden which is felt equally by the callow tourist making his first visit to Italy, and by the seasoned traveller who knew Capri when it was the center of an art colony as well known as is that of Newlyn at the present day. No doubt Capri is now considered by super-sensitive people to be as hopelessly vulgarized and hackneyed as the Isle of Man or the Channel Isles, now that it has become the favorite picknicking ground of shoals of Neapolitan excursionists; but that is the fate of most of the beautiful scenery in the South of Europe, if at all easy of access. These fastidious minds may, however, find consolation in the thought that to the noisy excursionists, daily carried to and from Naples by puffing little cockle-shell steamers, the greater part of the island will always remain an undiscovered country. They may swarm up the famous steps of Anacapri, and even penetrate into the Blue Grotto, but they do not, as a rule, carry the spirit of geographical research farther.

The slight annoyance caused by the great crowds is amply compensated for by the beauties of the extraordinarily grand scenery which is to be found within the island desecrated by memories of that “deified beast Tiberius,” as Dickens calls him. What constitutes the chief charm of the natural features of Capri are the sharp contrasts and the astonishing variety in the scenery. Rugged precipices, in height exceeding the cliffs of Tintagel, and in beauty and boldness of outline surpassing the crags of the grandest Norwegian fiords, wall in a green and fertile garden-land covered with orange-orchards, olive-groves, and corn-fields. Cruising round this rock-bound and apparently inaccessible island, it seems a natural impregnable fortress, a sea-girt Gibraltar guarding the entrance of the gulf, girdled round with precipitous crags rising a thousand feet sheer out of the sea, the cliff outline broken by steep ravines and rocky headlands, with outworks of crags, reefs, and Titanic masses of tumbled rocks.

These physical contrasts are strikingly paralleled in the history of the island. This little speck on the earth’s surface, now given up solely to fishing, pastoral pursuits, and the exploitation of tourists, and as little affected by public affairs as if it were in the midst of the Mediterranean, instead of being almost within cannon-shot of the metropolis of South Italy, has passed through many vicissitudes, conquered in turn by Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans; under Rome little known and used merely as a lighthouse station for the benefit of the corn-galleys plying from Sicily to Naples, till the old Emperor Augustus took a fancy to it, and used it as a sanatorium for his declining years. Some years later we find this isolated rock in the occupation of the infamous Tiberius, as the seat of government from which he ruled the destinies of the whole empire. Then, to run rapidly through succeeding centuries, we find Capri, after the fall of Rome, sharing in the fortunes and misfortunes of Naples, and losing all historic individuality till the beginning of the present century, when the Neapolitan Gibraltar became a political shuttlecock, tossed about in turn between Naples, England, and France; and now it complacently accepts the destiny Nature evidently marked out for it, and has become the sanatorium of Naples, and the Mecca of artists and lovers of the picturesque.

One cannot be many hours in Capri without being reminded of its tutelary genius Tiberius. In fact as Mr. A. J. Symonds has forcibly expressed it, “the hoof-print of illustrious crime is stamped upon the island.” All the religio loci, if such a phrase is permissible in connection with Tiberius, seems centered in this unsavoury personality. We cannot get away from him. His palaces and villas seem to occupy every prominent point in the island. Even the treasure-trove of the antiquary bears undying witness to his vices, and shows that Suetonius, in spite of recent attempts to whitewash the Emperor’s memory, did not trust to mere legends and fables for his biography. Even the most ardent students of Roman history would surely be glad to be rid of this forbidding spectre that forces itself so persistently on their attention. To judge by the way in which the simple Capriotes seek to perpetuate the name of their illustrious patron, one might almost suppose that the Emperor, whose name is proverbial as a personification of crime and vice, had gone through some process akin to canonization.

Capri, though still famous for beautiful women, whose classic features, statuesque forms, and graceful carriage, recall the Helens and the Aphrodites of the Capitol and Vatican, and seem to invite transfer to the painter’s canvas, can no longer be called the “artist’s paradise.” The pristine simplicity of these Grecian-featured daughters of the island, which made them invaluable as models, is now to a great extent lost. The march of civilization has imbued them with the commercial instinct, and they now fully appreciate their artistic value. No casual haphazard sketches of a picturesque group of peasant girls, pleased to be of service to a stranger, no impromptu portraiture of a little Capriote fisher-boy, is now possible. It has become a “sitting” for a consideration, just as if it took place in an ordinary Paris atelier or a Rome studio. The idea that the tourist is a gift of Providence, sent for their especial benefit, to be looked at in the same light as are the “kindly fruits of the earth,” recalls to our mind the quaint old Indian myth of Mondamin, the beautiful stranger, with his garments green and yellow, from whose dead body sprang up the small green feathers, afterwards to be known as maize. However, the Capriotes turn their visitors to better account than that; in fact, their eminently practical notions on the point appear to gain ground in this once unsophisticated country, while the recognized methods of agriculture remain almost stationary. The appearance of a visitor armed with sketch-book or camera is now the signal for every male and female Capriote within range to pose in forced and would-be graceful attitudes, or to arrange themselves in unnatural conventional groups: aged crones sprout up, as if by magic, on every doorstep; male loungers “lean airily on posts”; while at all points of the compass bashful maidens hover around, each balancing on her head the indispensable water-jar. These vulgarizing tendencies explain why it is that painters are now beginning to desert Capri.

But we are forgetting the great boast of Capri, the Blue Grotto. Everyone has heard of this famous cave, the beauties of which have been described by Mr. A. J. Symonds in the following graphic and glowing picture in prose: Entering the crevice-like portal, “you find yourself transported to a world of wavering, subaqueous sheen. The grotto is domed in many chambers; and the water is so clear that you can see the bottom, silvery, with black-finned fishes diapered upon the blue-white sand. The flesh of a diver in this water showed like the face of children playing at snap-dragon; all around him the spray leaped up with living fire; and when the oars struck the surface, it was as though a phosphorescent sea had been smitten, and the drops ran from the blades in blue pearls.” It must, however, be remembered that these marvels can only be perfectly seen on a clear and sunny day, and when, too, the sun is high in the sky. Given these favorable conditions, the least impressionable must feel the magic of the scene, and enjoy the shifting brilliancy of light and color. The spectators seem bathed in liquid sapphire, and the sensation of being enclosed in a gem is strange indeed. But we certainly shall not experience any such sensation if we explore this lovely grotto in the company of the noisy and excited tourists who daily arrive in shoals by the Naples steamer. To appreciate its beauties the cave must be visited alone and at leisure.

Those who complain of the village of Capri being so sadly modernized and tourist-ridden will find at Anacapri some of that Arcadian simplicity they are seeking, for the destroying (Æsthetically speaking) fingers of progress and civilization have hardly touched this secluded mountain village, though scarcely an hour’s walk from the “capital” of the island.

We will, of course, take the famous steps, and ignore the excellently engineered high-road that winds round the cliffs, green with arbutus and myrtle, in serpentine gradients, looking from the heights above mere loops of white ribbon. Anacapri is delightfully situated in a richly cultivated table-land, at the foot of Monte Solaro. Climbing the slopes of the mountain, we soon reach the Hermitage, where we have a fine bird’s-eye view of the island, with Anacapri spread out at our feet, and the town of Capri clinging to the hillsides on our right. But a far grander view rewards our final climb to the summit. We can see clearly outlined every beautiful feature of the Bay of Naples, with its magnificent coast-line from Misenum to Sorrento in prominent relief almost at our feet, and raising our eyes landwards we can see the Campanian Plain till it is merged in the purple haze of the Apennines. To the south the broad expanse of water stretches away to the far horizon, and to the right this incomparable prospect is bounded by that “enchanted land” where

“Sweeps the blue Salernian bay,
With its sickle of white sand.”and on a very clear day we can faintly discern a purple, jagged outline, which shows where “PÆstum and its ruins lie.”

In spite of the undeniable beauties of Capri, it seems so given up to artists and amateur photographers that it is a relief to get away to a district not quite so well known. We have left to the last, as a fitting climax, the most beautiful bit of country, not only in the neighborhood of Naples, but in the whole of South Italy. The coast-road from Castellamare to Sorrento, Positano, and Amalfi offers a delightful alternation and combination of the softest idyllic scenery with the wildest and most magnificent mountain and crag landscape. In fact, it is necessary to exercise some self-restraint in language and to curb a temptation to rhapsodize when describing this beautiful region. The drive from Naples to Castellamare is almost one continuous suburb, and the change from this monotonous succession of streets of commonplace houses to the beautiful country we reach soon after leaving the volcanic district at Castellamare is very marked. In the course of our journey we cannot help noticing the bright yellow patches of color on the beach and the flat house-tops. This is the wheat used for the manufacture of macaroni, of which Torre dell’ Annunziata is the great center. All along the road the houses, too, have their loggias and balconies festooned with the strips of finished macaroni spread out to dry. All this lights up the dismal prospect of apparently never-ending buildings, and gives a literally local color to the district. There is not much to delay the traveller in Castellamare, and soon after leaving the overcrowded and rather evil-smelling town we enter upon the beautiful coast-road to Sorrento. For the first few miles the road runs near the shore, sometimes almost overhanging the sea. We soon get a view of Vico, picturesquely situated on a rocky eminence. The scenery gets bolder as we climb the Punta di Scutola. From this promontory we get the first glimpse of the beautiful Piano di Sorrento. It looks like one vast garden, so thickly is it covered with vineyards, olive groves, and orange and lemon orchards, with an occasional aloe and palm tree to give an Oriental touch to the landscape. The bird’s-eye view from the promontory gives the spectator a general impression of a carpet, in which the prevailing tones of color are the richest greens and gold. Descending to this fertile plateau, we find a delightful blending of the sterner elements of the picturesque with the pastoral and idyllic. The plain is intersected with romantic, craggy ravines and precipitous, tortuous gorges, resembling the ancient stone quarries of Syracuse, their rugged sides covered with olives, wild vines, aloes, and Indian figs. The road to Amalfi here leaves the sea and is carried through the heart of this rich and fertile region, and about three miles from Sorrento it begins to climb the little mountain range which separates the Sorrento plain from the Bay of Salerno.

We can hardly, however, leave the level little town, consecrated to memories of Tasso, unvisited. Its flowers and its gardens, next to its picturesque situation, constitute the great charm of Sorrento. It seems a kind of garden-picture, its peaceful and smiling aspect contrasting strangely with its bold and stern situation. Cut off, a natural fortress, from the rest of the peninsula by precipitous gorges, like Constantine in Algeria, while its sea-front consists of a precipice descending sheer to the water’s edge, no wonder that it invites comparison with such dissimilar towns as Grasse, Monaco, Amalfi and Constantine, according to the aspect which first strikes the visitor. After seeing Sorrento, with its astonishing wealth of flowers, the garden walls overflowing with cataracts of roses, and the scent of acacias, orange and lemon flowers pervading everything, we begin to think that, in comparing the outlying plain of Sorrento to a flower-garden, we have been too precipitate. Compared with Sorrento itself, the plain is but a great orchard or market-garden. Sorrento is the real flower-garden, a miniature Florence, “the village of flowers and the flower of villages.”

We leave Sorrento and its gardens and continue our excursion to Amalfi and Salerno. After reaching the point at the summit of the Colline del Piano, whence we get our first view of the famous Isles of the Syrens, looking far more picturesque than inviting, with their sharp, jagged outline, we come in sight of a magnificent stretch of cliff and mountain scenery. The limestone precipices extend uninterruptedly for miles, their outline broken by a series of stupendous pinnacles, turrets, obelisks, and pyramids cutting sharply into the blue sky-line. The scenery, though so wild and bold is not bleak and dismal. The bases of these towering precipices are covered with a wild tangle of myrtle, arbutus, and tamarisk, and wild vines and prickly pears have taken root in the ledges and crevices. The ravines and gorges which relieve the uniformity of this great sea-wall of cliff have their lower slopes covered with terraced and trellised orchards of lemons and oranges, an irregular mass of green and gold. Positano, after Amalfi, is certainly the most picturesque place on these shores, and, being less known, and consequently not so much reproduced in idealized sketches and “touched up” photographs as Amalfi, its first view must come upon the traveller rather as a delightful surprise. Its situation is curious. The town is built along each side of a huge ravine, cut off from access landwards by an immense wall of precipices. The houses climb the craggy slopes in an irregular ampitheater, at every variety of elevation and level, and the views from the heights above give a general effect of a cataract of houses having been poured down each side of the gorge. After a few miles of the grandest cliff and mountain scenery we reach the Capo di Conca, which juts out into the bay, dividing it into two crescents. Looking west, we see a broad stretch of mountainous country, where

“... A few white villages
Scattered above, below, some in the clouds,
Some on the margins of the dark blue sea,
And glittering through their lemon groves, announce
The region of Amalfi.”

To attempt to describe Amalfi seems a hopeless task. The churches, towers, and arcaded houses, scattered about in picturesque confusion on each side of the gigantic gorge which cleaves the precipitous mountain, gay with the rich coloring of Italian domestic architecture, make up an indescribably picturesque medley of loggias, arcades, balconies, domes, and cupolas, relieved by flat, whitewashed roofs. The play of color produced by the dazzling glare of the sun and the azure amplitude of sea and sky gives that general effect of light, color, sunshine, and warmth of atmosphere which is so hard to portray, either with the brush or the pen. Every nook of this charming little rock-bound Eden affords tempting material for the artist, and the whole region is rich in scenes suggestive of poetical ideas.

When we look at the isolated position of this once famous city, shut off from the rest of Italy by a bulwark of precipices, in places so overhanging the town that they seem to dispute its possession with the tideless sea which washes the walls of the houses, it is not easy to realize that it was recognized in mediÆval times as the first naval Power in Europe, owning factories and trading establishments in all the chief cities of the Levant, and producing a code of maritime laws whose leading principles have been incorporated in modern international law. No traces remain of the city’s ancient grandeur, and the visitor is tempted to look upon the history of its former greatness as purely legendary.

The road to Salerno is picturesque, but not so striking as that between Positano and Amalfi. It is not so daringly engineered, and the scenery is tamer. Vietri is the most interesting stopping-place. It is beautifully situated at the entrance to the gorge-like valley which leads to what has been called the “Italian Switzerland,” and is surrounded on all sides by lemon and orange orchards. Salerno will not probably detain the visitor long, and, in fact, the town is chiefly known to travellers as the starting-place for the famous ruins of PÆstum.

These temples, after those of Athens, are the best preserved, and certainly the most accessible, of any Greek ruins in Europe, and are a lasting witness to the splendor of the ancient Greek colony of Poseidonia (PÆstum). “Non cuivis homini contingit adire Corinthum,” says the poet, and certainly a visit to these beautiful ruins will make one less regret the inability to visit the Athenian Parthenon. Though the situation of the PÆstum Temple lacks the picturesque irregularity of the Acropolis, and the Temple of Girgenti in Sicily, these ruins will probably impress the imaginative spectator more. Their isolated and desolate position in the midst of this wild and abandoned plain, without a vestige of any building near, suggest an almost supernatural origin, and give a weird touch to this scene of lonely and majestic grandeur. There seems a dramatic contrast in bringing to an end at the solemn Temples of PÆstum our excursion in and around Naples. We began with the noise, bustle, and teeming life of a great twentieth-century city, and we have gone back some twenty-five centuries to the long-buried glory of Greek civilization.