On the tenth day of this month we arrived early at Naples, for I think it was about two o’clock in the morning; and sure the providence of God preserved us, for never was such weather seen by me since I came into the world; thunder, lightning, storm at sea, rain and wind, contending for mastery, and combining to extinguish the torches bought to light us the last stage: Vesuvius, vomiting fire, and pouring torrents of red hot lava down its sides, was the only object visible; and that we saw plainly in the afternoon thirty miles off, where I asked a Franciscan friar, If it was the famous volcano? “Yes,” replied he, “that’s our mountain, which throws up money for us, by calling foreigners to see the extraordinary effects of so surprising a phÆnomenon.” The weather was quiet then, and we had no notion of passing such a horrible night; but an hour after dark, a storm came on, which was really dreadful to endure; or even look upon: the blue lightning, whose colour shewed the nature of the original minerals from which she drew her existence, shone round us in a broad expanse from time to time, and sudden darkness followed in an instant: no object then but the fiery river could be seen, till another flash discovered the waves tossing and breaking, at a height I never saw before.

Nothing sure was ever more sublime or awful than our entrance into Naples at the dead hour we arrived, when not a whisper was to be heard in the streets, and not a glimpse of light was left to guide us, except the small lamp hung now and then at a high window before a favourite image of the Virgin.

My poor maid had by this time nearly lost her wits with terror, and the French valet, crushed with fatigue, and covered with rain and sea-spray, had just life enough left to exclaim—“Ah, Madame! il me semble que nous sommes venus icy exprÈs pour voir la fin du monde[1].”

The Ville de Londres inn was full, and could not accommodate our family; but calling up the people of the Crocelle, we obtained a noble apartment, the windows of which look full upon the celebrated bay which washes the wall at our door. Caprea lies opposite the drawing-room or gallery, which is magnificent; and my bed-chamber commands a complete view of the mountain, which I value more, and which called me the first night twenty times away from sleep and supper, though never so in want of both as at that moment surely.

Such were my first impressions of this wonderful metropolis, of which I had been always reading summer descriptions, and had regarded somehow as an Hesperian garden, an earthly paradise, where delicacy and softness subdued every danger, and general sweetness captivated every sense;—nor have I any reason yet to say it will not still prove so, for though wet, and weary, and hungry, we wanted no fire, and found only inconvenience from that they lighted on our arrival. It was the fashion at Florence to struggle for a Terreno, but here we are all perched up one hundred and forty two steps from the level of the land or sea; large balconies, apparently well secured, give me every enjoyment of a prospect, which no repetition can render tedious: and here we have agreed to stay till Spring, which, I trust, will come out in this country as soon as the new year calls it.

Our eagerness to see sights has been repressed at Naples only by finding every thing a sight; one need not stir out to look for wonders sure, while this amazing mountain continues to exhibit such various scenes of sublimity and beauty at exactly the distance one would chuse to observe it from; a distance which almost admits examination, and certainly excludes immediate fear. When in the silent night, however, one listens to its groaning; while hollow sighs, as of gigantic sorrow, are often heard distinctly in my apartment; nothing can surpass one’s sensations of amazement, except the consciousness that custom will abate their keenness: I have not, however, yet learned to lie quiet, when columns of flame, high as the mountain’s self, shoot from its crater into the clear atmosphere with a loud and violent noise; nor shall I ever forget the scene it presented one day to my astonished eyes, while a thick cloud, charged heavily with electric matter, passing over, met the fiery explosion by mere chance, and went off in such a manner as effectually baffles all verbal description, and lasted too short a time for a painter to seize the moment, and imitate its very strange effect. Monsieur de Vollaire, however, a native of France, long resident in this city, has obtained, by perpetual observation, a power of representing Vesuvius without that black shadow, which others have thought necessary to increase the contrast, but which greatly takes away all resemblance of its original. Upon reflection it appears to me, that the men most famous at London and Paris for performing tricks with fire have been always Italians in my time, and commonly Neapolitans; no wonder, I should think, Naples would produce prodigious connoisseurs in this way; we have almost perpetual lightning of various colours, according to the soil from whence the vapours are exhaled; sometimes of a pale straw or lemon colour, often white like artificial flame produced by camphor, but oftenest blue, bright as the rays emitted through the coloured liquors set in the window of a chemist’s shop in London—and with such thunder!!—“For God’s sake, Sir,” said I to some of them, “is there no danger of the ships in the harbour here catching fire? why we should all fly up in the air directly, if once these flashes should communicate to the room where any of the vessels keep their powder.”—“Gunpowder, Madam!” replies the man, amazed; “why if St. Peter and St. Paul came here with gunpowder on board, we should soon drive them out again: don’t you know,” added he, “that every ship discharges her contents at such a place (naming it), and never comes into our port with a grain on board?”

The palaces and churches have no share in one’s admiration at Naples, who scorns to depend on man, however mighty, however skilful, for her ornaments; while Heaven has bestowed on her and her contorni all that can excite astonishment, all that can impress awe. We have spent three or four days upon Pozzuoli and its environs; its cavern scooped originally by nature’s hand, assisted by the armies of Cocceius Nerva—ever tremendous, ever gloomy grotto!—which leads to the road that shews you Ischia, an old volcano, now an island apparently rent asunder by an earthquake, the division too plain to beg assistance from philosophy: this is commonly called the Grotto di Posilippo though; you pass through it to go to every place; not without flambeaux, if you would go safely, and avoid the necessity the poor are under, who, driving their carts through the subterranean passage, cry as they meet each other, to avoid jostling, alla montagna, or alla marina, keep to the rock side, or keep to the sea side. It is at the right hand, awhile before you enter this cavern, that climbing up among a heap of bushes, you find a hollow place, and there go down again—it is the tomb of Virgil; and, for other antiquities, I recollect nothing shewed me when at Rome that gave me as complete an idea how things were really carried on in former days, as does the temple of Shor Apis at Pozzuoli, where the area is exactly all it ever was; the ring remains where the victim was fastened to; the priests apartments, lavatories, &c. the drains for carrying the beast’s blood away, all yet remains as perfect as it is possible. The end of Caligula’s bridge too, but that they say is not his bridge, but a mole built by some succeeding emperor—a madder or a wickeder it could not be—though here Nero bathed, and here he buried his mother Agrippina. Here are the centum camera, the prisons employed by that prince for the cruellest of purposes; and here are his country palaces reserved for the most odious ones: here effeminacy learned to subsist without delicacy or shame, hence honour was excluded by rapacity, and conscience stupefied by constant inebriation: here brainsick folly put nature and common sense upon the rack—Caligula in madness courted the moon to his embraces—and Sylla, satiated with blood, retired, and gave a premature banquet to those worms he had so often fed with the flesh of innocence: here dwelt depravity in various shapes, and here Pandora’s chambers left scarcely a Hope at the bottom that better times should come:—who can write prose however in such places!—let the impossibility of expressing my thoughts any other way excuse the following

When one has exhausted all the ideas presented to the mind by the sight of Monte Nuovo, made in one night by the eruption of Solfa Terra, now sunk into itself and almost extinguished; by the lake Avernus; by the PhlegrÆan fields, where Jupiter killed the giants, with such thunderbolts as fell about our ears the other night I trust, and buried one of them alive under mount Ætna; when one has seen the Sybil’s grott, and the Elysian plains, and every seat of fable and of verse; when one has run about repeating Virgil’s verses and Claudian’s by turns, and handled the hot sand under the cool waves of Baia; when one has seen Cicero’s villa and Diana’s temple, and talked about antiquities till one is afraid of one’s own pedantry, and tired of every one’s else; it is almost time to recollect realities of more near interest to such of us as are not ashamed of being Christians, and to remember that it was at Pozzuoli St. Paul arrived after the storms he met with in these seas. The wind is still called here Sieuroc, o sia lo vento Greco; and their manner of pronouncing it led me to think it might possibly be that called in Scripture Euroclydon, abbreviated by that grammatical figure, which lops off the concluding syllables. The old Pastor Patrobas too, who received and entertained the Apostle here, lies interred under the altar of an old church at Pozzuoli, made out of the remains of a temple to Jupiter, whose pillars are in good preservation: I was earnest to see the place at least, as every thing named in the New Testament is of true importance, but one meets few people of the same taste: for Romanists take most delight in venerating traditionary heroes, and Calvinists, perhaps too easily disgusted, desire to venerate no heroes at all.

Some curious inscriptions here, to me not legible, shew how this poor country has been overwhelmed by tyrants, earthquakes, Saracens! not to mention the Goths and Vandals, who however left no traces but desolation: while, as the prophet Joel says, “The ground was as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness.”

These Mahometan invaders, less savage, but not less cruel, afforded at least an unwilling shelter in that which is now their capital, for the wretched remains of literature. To their misty envelopement of science, fatigued with struggling against perpetual suffocation, succeeded imposture, barbarism, and credulity; with superstition at their head, who still keeps her footing in this country: and inspires such veneration for St. Januarius, his name, his blood, his statue, &c. that the Neapolitans, who are famous for blasphemous oaths, and a facility of taking the most sacred words into their mouths on every, and I may say, on no occasion, are never heard to repeat his name without pulling off their hat, or making some reverential sign of worship at the moment. And I have seen Italians from other states greatly shocked at the grossness of these their unenlightened neighbours, particularly the half-Indian custom of burning figures upon their skins with gunpowder: these figures, large, and oddly displayed too, according to the coarse notions of the wearer.

As the weather is exceedingly warm, and there is little need of clothing for comfort, our Lazaroni have small care about appearances, and go with a vast deal of their persons uncovered, except by these strange ornaments. The man who rows you about this lovely bay, has perhaps the angel Raphael, or the blessed Virgin Mary, delineated on one brawny sun-burnt leg, the saint of the town upon the other: his arms represent the Glory, or the seven spirits of God, or some strange things, while a brass medal hangs from his neck, expressive of his favourite martyr: whom they confidently affirm is so madly venerated by these poor uninstructed mortals, that when the mountain burns, or any great disaster threatens them, they beg of our Saviour to speak to St. Januarius in their behalf, and intreat him not to refuse them his assistance. Now though all this was told me by friends of the Romish persuasion; and told me too with a just horror of the superstitious folly; I think my remarks and inferences were not agreeable to them, when expressing my notion that it was only a relick of the adoration originally paid to Janus in Italy, where the ground yielding up its frost to the soft breath of the new year, is not ill-typified by the liquefaction of the blood; a ceremony which has succeeded to various Pagan ones celebrated by Ovid in the first book of his Fasti. We know from history too, that perfumes were offered in January always, to signify the renovation of sweets; and this was so necessary, that I think Tacitus tells us Thrasea was first impeached for absence at the time of the new year, when in Janus’s presence, &c. good wishes were formed for the Emperor’s felicity; and no word of ill omen was to be pronounced.—Cautum erat apud Romanos ne quod mali ominis verbum calendis Januariis efferretur; says Pliny: and the strenÆ or new-years gifts, called now by the French “les etrennes,” and practised by Lutherans as well as Romanists, is the self-same veneration of old Janus, if fairly traced up to Tatius King of the Sabines, who sought a laurel bough plucked from the grove of the goddess Strenia, or Strenua, and presented it to his favourites on the first of January, from whence the custom arose; and Symmachus, in his tenth book, twenty-eighth epistle, mentions it clearly when writing to the Emperors Theodosius and Arcadius—“Strenuarum usus adolevit auctoritate Tatii regis, qui verbenas felicis arboris ex luco StrenuÆ anni.”

Octavius CÆsar took the name of Augustus on the first of January in Janus’s temple, by Plancus’s advice, as a lucky day; and I suppose our new-year’s ode, sung before the King of England, may be derived from the same source. The old Fathers of the Church declaimed aloud against the custom of new-years gifts, because they considered them as of Pagan original. So much for Les Etrennes.

As to St. Januarius, there certainly was a martyr of that name at Naples, and to him was transferred much of the veneration originally bestowed on the deity from whom he was probably named. One need not however wander round the world with Banks and Solander, or stare so at the accounts given us in Cook’s Voyages of tattowed Indians, when Naples will shew one the effects of a like operation, very very little better executed, on the broad shoulders of numberless Lazaroni; and of this there is no need to examine books for information, he who runs over the Chiaja may read in large characters the gross superstition of the Napolitani, who have no inclination to lose their old classical character for laziness—

says Ovid. I wonder however whether our people would work much surrounded by similar circumstances; I fancy not: Englishmen, poor fellows! must either work or starve; these folks want for nothing: a house would be an inconvenience to them; they like to sleep out of doors, and it is plain they have small care for clothing, as many who possess decent habiliments enough, I speak of the Lazaroni, throw almost all off till some holiday, or time of gala, and sit by the sea-side playing at moro with their fingers.

A Florentine nobleman told me once, that he asked one of these fellows to carry his portmanteau for him, and offered him a carline, no small sum certainly to a Neapolitan, and rather more in proportion than an English shilling; he had not twenty yards to go with it: “Are you hungry, Master?” cries the fellow. “No,” replied Count Manucci, “but what of that?”—“Why then no more am I:” was the answer, “and it is too hot weather to carry burthens:” so turned about upon the other side, and lay still.

This class of people, amounting to a number that terrifies one but to think on, some say sixty thousand souls, and experience confirms no less, give the city an air of gaiety and cheerfulness, and one cannot help honestly rejoicing in. The Strada del Toledo is one continual crowd: nothing can exceed the confusion to a walker, and here are little gigs drawn by one horse, which, without any bit in his mouth, but a string tied round his nose, tears along with inconceivable rapidity a small narrow gilt chair, set between the two wheels, and no spring to it, nor any thing else which can add to the weight; and this flying car is a kind of fiacre you pay so much for a drive in, I forget the sum.

Horses are particularly handsome in this town, not so large as at Milan, but very beautiful and spirited; the cream-coloured creatures, such as draw our king’s state coach, are a common breed here, and shine like sattin: here are some too of a shining silver white, wonderfully elegant; and the ladies upon the Corso exhibit a variety scarcely credible in the colour of their cattle which draw them: but the coaches, harness, trappings, &c. are vastly inferior to the Milanese, whose liveries are often splendid; whereas the four or five ill-dressed strange-looking fellows that disgrace the Neapolitan equipages seem to be valued only for their number, and have very often much the air of Sir John Falstaff’s recruits.

Yesterday however shewed me what I knew not had existed—a skew-ball or pye-balled ass, eminently well-proportioned, coated like a racer in an English stud, sixteen hands and a half high, his colour bay and white in large patches, and his temper, as the proprietor told me, singularly docile and gentle. I have longed perhaps to purchase few things in my life more earnestly than this beautiful and useful animal, which I might have had too for two pounds fifteen shillings English, but dared not, lest like Dogberry I should have been written down for an ass by my merry country folks, who, I remember, could not let the Queen of England herself possess in peace a creature of the same kind, but handsomer still, and from a still hotter climate, called the Zebra.

Apropos to quadrupeds, when Portia, in the Merchant of Venice, enumerates her lovers, she names the Neapolitan prince first; who, she says, does nothing, for his part, but talk of his horse, and makes it his greatest boast that he can shoe him himself. This is almost literally true of a nobleman here; and they really do not throw their pains away; for it is surprising to see what command they have their cattle in, though bits are scarcely used among them.

The coat armour of Naples consists of an unbridled horse; and by what I can make out of their character, they much resemble him;

generous and gay; headstrong and violent in their disposition; easy to turn, but difficult to stop. No authority is respected by them when some strong passion animates them to fury: yet lazily quiet, and unwilling to stir till accident rouses them to terror, or rage urges them forward to incredible exertions of suddenly-bestowed strength. In the eruption of 1779, their fears and superstitions rose to such a height, that they seized the French ambassador upon the bridge, tore him almost out of his carriage as he fled from Portici, and was met by them upon the Ponte della Maddalena, where they threatened him with instant death if he did not get out of his carriage, and prostrating himself before the statue of St. Januarius, which stands there, intreat his protection for the city. All this, however, Mons. le Comte de Clermont D’Amboise did not comprehend a word of; but taking all the money out of his pocket, threw it down, happily for him, at the feet of the figure, and pacified them at once, gaining time by those means to escape their vengeance.

It was, I think, upon some other occasion that Sir William Hamilton’s book relates their unworthy treatment of the venerable Archbishop, who refused them the relicks with which they had no doubt of saving the menaced town; but every time Vesuvius burns with danger to the city, they scruple not to insult their Sovereign as he flies from it; throwing large stones after his chariot, guards, &c.; making the insurrection, it is sure to occasion, more perilous, if possible, than the volcano itself. And last night when La Montagna fu cattiva[3], as their expression was, our Laquais de Place observed that it might possibly be because so many hereticks and unbelievers had been up it the day before. “Oh! let us,” as King David wisely chose, “fall into the hands of God—not into those of man.”

I wished exceedingly to purchase here the genuine account of Massaniello’s far-famed sedition and revolt, more dreadful in a certain way than any of the earthquakes which have at different times shaken this hollow-founded country. But my friends here tell me it was suppressed, and burned by the hands of the common executioner, with many chastisements beside bestowed upon the writer, who tried to escape, but found it more prudent to submit to justice.

Thomas Agnello was the unluckily-adapted name of the mad fisherman who headed the mob on that truly memorable occasion: but it is not an unusual thing here to cut off the first syllable, and by the figure aphÆresis alter the appellation entirely. By that device of dropping the to, he has been called Massaniello; and this is one of their methods to render the patois of Naples as unintelligible to us, as if we had never seen Italy till now; and one is above all things tormented with their way of pronouncing names. Here are Don and Donna again at this town as at Milan however, because the King of Spain, or RÉ Cattolico, as these people always call him, has still much influence; and they seem to think nearly as respectfully of him as of their own immediate sovereign, who is however greatly beloved among them; and so he ought to be, for he is the representative of them all. He rides and rows, and hunts the wild boar, and catches fish in the bay, and sells it in the market, as dear as he can too; but gives away the money they pay him for it, and that directly: so that no suspicion of meanness, or of any thing worse than a little rough merriment can be ever attached to his truly-honest, open, undesigning character.

Stories of monarchs seldom give me pleasure, who seldom am persuaded to give credit to tales told of persons few people have any access to, and whose behaviour towards those few is circumscribed within the laws of insipid and dull routine; but this prince lives among his subjects with the old Roman idea of a window before his bosom I believe. They know the worst of him is that he shoots at the birds, dances with the girls, eats macaroni, and helps himself to it with his fingers, and rows against the watermen in the bay, till one of them burst out o’bleeding at the nose last week, with his uncourtly efforts to outdo the King, who won the trifling wager by this accident: conquered, laughed, and leaped on shore amidst the acclamations of the populace, who huzzaed him home to the palace, from whence he sent double the sum he had won to the waterman’s wife and children, with other tokens of kindness. Mean time, while he resolves to be happy himself, he is equally determined to make no man miserable.

When the Emperor and the Grand Duke talked to him of their new projects for reformation in the church, he told them he saw little advantage they brought into their states by these new-fangled notions; that when he was at Florence and Milan, the deuce a Neapolitan could he find in either, while his capital was crowded with refugees from thence; that in short they might do their way, but he would do his; that he had not now an enemy in the world, public or private; and that he would not make himself any for the sake of propagating doctrines he did not understand, and would not take the trouble to study: that he should say his prayers as he used to do, and had no doubt of their being heard, while he only begged blessings on his beloved people. So if these wise brothers-in-law would learn of him to enjoy life, instead of shortening it by unnecessary cares, he invited them to see him the next morning play a great match at tennis.

The truth is, the jolly Neapolitans lead a coarse life, but it is an unoppressed one. Never sure was there in any town a greater shew of abundance: no settled market in any given place, I think, but every third shop full of what the French call so properly ammunition de Bouche, while whole boars, kids and small calves dangle from a sort of neat scaffolding, all with their skins on, and make a pretty appearance. Poulterers hang up their animals in the feathers too, not lay them on boards plucked, as at London or Venice.

The Strada del Toledo is at least as long as Oxford Road, and straight as Bond-street, very wide too, the houses all of stone, and at least eight stories high. Over the shops live people of fashion I am told, but the persons of particularly high quality have their palaces in other parts of the town; which town at last is not a large one, but full as an egg: and Mr. Clarke, the antiquarian, who resides here always, informed me that the late distresses in Calabria had driven many families to Naples this year, beside single wanderers innumerable; which wonderfully increased the daily throng one sees passing and repassing. To hear the Lazaroni shout and bawl about the streets night and day, one would really fancy one’s self in a semi-barbarous nation; and a Milanese officer, who has lived long among them, protested that the manners of the great corresponded in every respect with the idea given of them by the little. His account of female conduct, and that even in the very high ranks, was such as reminded me of Queen Oberea’s sincerity, when Sir Joseph Banks joked her about Otoroo. It is however observable, and surely very praiseworthy, that if the Italians are not ashamed of their crimes, neither are they ashamed of their contrition. I saw this very morning an odd scene at church, which, though new to me, appeared, perhaps from its frequent repetition, to strike no one but myself.

A lady with a long white dress, and veiled, came in her carriage, which waited for her at the door, with her own arms upon it, and three servants better dressed than is common here, followed and put a lighted taper in her hand. En cet État, as the French say, she moved slowly up the church, looking like Jane Shore in the last act, but not so feeble; and being arrived at the steps of the high altar, threw herself quite upon her face before it, remaining prostrate there at least five minutes, in the face of the whole congregation, who, equally to my amazement, neither stared nor sneered, neither laughed nor lamented, but minded their own private devotions—no mass was saying—till the lady rose, kissed the steps, and bathed them with her tears, mingled with sobs of no affected or hypocritical penitence I am sure. Retiring afterwards to her own seat, where she waited with others the commencement of the sacred office, having extinguished her candle, and apparently lighted her heart; I felt mine quite penetrated by her behaviour, and fancied her like our first parent described by Milton in the same manner:

Let not this story, however, mislead any one to think that more general decorum or true devotion can be found in churches of the Romish persuasion than in ours—quite the reverse. This burst of penitential piety was in itself an indecorous thing; but it is the nature and genius of the people not to mind small matters. Dogs are suffered to run about and dirty the churches all the time divine service is performing; while the crying of babies, and the most indecent methods taken by the women to pacify them, give one still juster offence. There is no treading for spittle and nastiness of one sort or another, in all the churches of Italy, whose inhabitants allow the filthiness of Naples, but endeavour to justify the disorders of other cities; though I do believe nothing ever equalled the Chiesa de Cavalieri at Pisa, in any Christian land. Santa Giustina at Padua, the Redentore at Venice, St. Peter’s at Rome, and some of the least frequented churches at Milan, are exceptions; they are kept very clean, and do not, by the scandalous neglect of those appointed to keep them, disgrace the beauty of their buildings.

Here has, however, been a dreadful accident which puts such slight considerations out of one’s head. A Friar has killed a woman in the church just by the Crocelle inn, for having refused him favours he suspected she had granted to another. No step is taken though towards punishing the murderer, because he is religioso, È di piÙ cavaliere. What a miracle that more such outrages are not daily committed in a country where profession of sanctity, and real high birth, are protections from law and justice! Surely nothing but perfect sobriety and great goodness of disposition can be alleged as a reason why worse is not done every day. I said so to a gentleman just now, who assured me the criminal would not escape very severe castigation; and that perhaps the convent would inflict such severities upon that gentleman as would amply supply the want of activity in the exertion of civil power.

It is a stupid thing not to mention the common dress of the ordinary women here, which ladies likewise adopt, if they venture out on foot, desiring not to be known. Two black silk petticoats then serve entirely to conceal their whole figure; as when both are tied round their waist, one is suddenly turned up, and as they pull it quick over their heads, a loose trimming of narrow black gauze drops over the face, while a hook and eye fastens all close under the chin, and gives them an air not unlike our country wenches, who throw the gown tail over their heads, to protect them from a summer’s shower. The holiday dresses mean time of the peasants round Naples, are very rich and cumbersome. One often sees a great coarse raw-boned fellow on a Sunday, panting for heat under a thick blue velvet coat comically enough; the females in a scarlet cloth petticoat, with a broad gold lace at the bottom, a jacket open before, but charged with heavy ornaments, and the head not unbecomingly dressed with an embroidered handkerchief from Turkey, exactly as one sees them represented here in prints, which they sell dear enough, God knows; and ask, as I am informed by the purchasers, not twice or thrice, but four or five times more than at last they take, as indeed for every thing one buys here: One portrait is better, however, than a thousand words, when single figures are to be delineated; but of the Grotta del Cane, description gives a completer idea than drawing. Both are perhaps nearly unnecessary indeed, when speaking of a place so often and so accurately described. What surprised me most among the ceremonies of this extraordinary place was, that the pent up vapour shut in an excavation of the rock, should, upon opening the door, gradually move forwards a few yards, but not rise up above a foot from the surface, nor, by what I could observe, ever dissipate in air; I think we left it hovering over the favourite spot, when the poor cur’s nose had been forcibly held in it for a minute or two, but he took care after his recovery to keep a very judicious distance. Sporting with animal life is always highly offensive; and the fellow’s account that his dog was used to the operation, and had already gone through it eight times, that it did him no harm, &c. I considered as words used merely to quiet our impatience of the experiment, which is infinitely more amusing when tried upon a lighted flambeau, extinguishing it most completely in a moment. What connection there is between flame and vitality, those who know more of the matter than I do, must expound. Certain it is, that many sorts of vapour are equally fatal to both; and where fermentation is either going forward, or has lately been, people accustomed to such matters always try with a candle whether the cask is approachable by man or not; and I once saw a terrifying accident arise in a great brewhouse, from the headstrong stupidity of a workman who would go down into a vat, the contents of which had lately been drawn off, without sending his proper prÆcursor the candle, to enquire if all was safe. The consequence was half expected by his companions, who hearing him drop off the steps, and fall flat to the bottom, began instantly hooking him up again, but there were no signs of life; some ran for their master, others for a surgeon, but we were nearest at hand, and recollecting what one had read of the recovery of dogs at Naples, by tossing them suddenly into the lake Agnano, we made the men carry their patient to the cooler, and plunging him over head and ears, restored his life, exactly in the manner of the Grotta del Cane experiment, which succeeded so completely in this fellow’s case, I remember, that waking after the temporary suspension, we had much ado to impress so insensible a mortal with a due sense of the danger his rashness had incurred.

But it is time to tell of Herculaneum, Pompeia, and Portici; of a theatre, the scene of gaiety and pleasure, overwhelmed by torrents of liquid fire! the inhabitants of a whole town surprised by immediate and unavoidable destruction! Where that very town indeed was built with the lava produced by former eruptions, one would think it scarce possible that such calamities could be totally unexpected;—but no matter, life must go on, though we all know death is coming;—so the bread was baking in their ovens, the meat was smoking on their dishes, some of their wine already decanted for use, the rest in large jars (amphora), now petrified with their contents inside, and fixed to the walls of the cellars in which they stand.—How dreadful are the thoughts which such a sight suggests! how very horrible the certainty, that such a scene may be all acted over again to-morrow; and that we, who to-day are spectators, may become spectacles to travellers of a succeeding century, who mistaking our bones for those of the Neapolitans, may carry some of them to their native country back again perhaps; as it came into my head that a French gentleman was doing, when I saw him put a human bone into his pocket this morning, and told him I hoped he had got the jaw of a Gaulish officer, instead of a Roman soldier, for future reflections to energize upon. Of all single objects offered here to one’s contemplation, none are more striking than a woman’s foot, the print of her foot I mean, taken apparently in the very act of running from the river of melted minerals that surrounded her, and which now serves as an intaglio to commemorate the misery it caused. Another melancholy proof of what needs no confirmation, is the impression of a sick female, known to be so from the stole she wore, a drapery peculiar to the sex; her bed, converted into a substance like plaster of Paris, still retains the form and covering of her who perished quietly upon it, without ever making even an effort to escape.

That one of these towns is crushed, or rather buried, under loads of heavy lava, and is therefore difficult to disentangle, all have heard; that Pompeia is only lightly covered with pumice-stones and ashes, is new to nobody; it is in the power, as a Venetian gentleman said angrily, of an English hen and chickens to scratch it open in a week, though these lazy Neapolitans will leave it not half dislodged, before a new eruption swallows all again.

Our visit to Portici was more than equally provoking in the same way; to see deposited there all the antiques which are so curious in themselves, so very valuable when considered as specimens of ancient art, and of the mode of living practised in ancient Rome, kept at a place where I do sincerely believe they will be again overwhelmed and confounded among the king of Naples’s furniture, to the great torture of future antiquarians, and to the disgrace of present insensibility.

The triclinia and stibadia used at supper by the old Romans prove the verses which our critics have been working at so long, to have been at least well explained by them, and do infinite honour to those who, without the advantage of seeing how the utensils were constructed, knew perfectly well their way of carrying on life, from their acquaintance with a language long since dead, and I am sure buried under a heap of rubbish heavier and more difficult to remove than all the lava heaped on Herculaneum; but it is a source of perpetual wonder, and let me add perpetual pleasure too, to know that Cicero, and Virgil, and Horace, if alive, would find their writings as well understood, ay and as perfectly tasted, by the scholars of Paris and London, as they had ever been by their own old literary acquaintance.

The sight of the curule chair was charming, and one thought of old Papyrius, his long white beard, and ivory stick with which he reproved the insolence of a Gaulish soldier, who, when Brennus entered the city, seeing all those venerable senators sitting in a row, took them for inanimate figures, and stroked Papyrius’s beard, to feel whether he was alive or no. The curule chair was so called from currus a chariot, and this we examined had holes bored in it, where it had been fixed to the car: I do think there is just such a one in the British MusÆum, but that did not much engage my attention, so great is the influence of locality upon the mind. The way in which they decypher the old MSS. here likewise is pretty and curious, and requires infinite patience, which as far as they have gone has not been well repaid; the operation laboriosius est quam SibyllÆ folia colligere[4], to use the words of Politian, whose right name I learned at Florence to be Messer Angelo di Monte Pulciano.

May not, however, a more important consequence than any yet mentioned be found deducible from what we have seen this day? for if Jesus Christ condescended to use the Roman, or commonly adopted custom of supping on a triclinium (as it is plain he did by the recumbent posture of St. John), when eating the Passover for the last time with his disciples at Jerusalem; that sect of Christians called Romanists ought sure to be the last, not first, to exclude from salvation all such of their brethren as do not receive the Lord’s Supper precisely in their way; when nothing can be clearer, from our blessed Saviour’s example, than that he thought old forms, if laudable, not necessary or essential to the well-performing a devotional rite; seeing that to eat the Passover according to original institution, those who communicated were bound to take it standing, and with a staff in their hands beside as expressive of more haste.

The Christmas season here at Naples is very pleasingly observed; the Italians are peculiarly ingenious in adorning their shops I think, and setting out their wares; every grocer, fruiterer, &c. now mingles orange, and lemon, and myrtle leaves, among the goods exposed at his door, as we do greens in the churches of England, but with infinitely more taste; and this device produces a very fine effect upon the whole, as one drives along la Strada del Toledo, which all morning looks showy from these decorations, and all evening splendid from the profusion of torches, flambeaux, &c. that shine with less regularity indeed, but with more lustre and greater appearance of expensive gaiety, than our neat, clean, steady London lamps. Some odd, pretty, moveable coffee-houses too, or lemonade-shops, set on wheels, and adorned, according to the possessor’s taste, with gilding, painting, &c. and covered with ices, orgeats, and other refreshments, as in emulation each of the other, and in a strange variety of shapes and forms too, exquisitely well imagined for the most part,—help forward the finery of Naples exceedingly: I have counted thirty of these galante shops on each side the street, which, with their necessary illuminations, make a brilliant figure by candle-light, till twelve o’clock, when all the show is over, and every body put out their lights and quietly lie down to rest. Till that hour, however, few things can exceed the tumultuous merriment of Naples, while volantes, or running footmen, dressed like tumblers before a show, precede all carriages of distinction, and endeavour to keep the people from being run over; yet whilst they are listening to Policinello’s jokes, or to some such street orator as Dr. Moore describes with equal truth and humour, they often get crushed and killed; yet, as Pope says,

The Lazaroni who has his child run over by the coach of a man of quality, has a regular claim upon him for no less than twelve carlines (about five shillings English); if it is his wife that meets with the accident, he gets two ducats, live or die; and for the master of the family (house he has none) three is the regular compensation; and no words pass here about trifles. Truth is, human life is lower rated in all parts of Italy than with us; they think nothing of an individual, but see him perish (excepting by the hand of justice) as a cat or dog. A young man fell from our carriage at Milan one evening; he was not a servant of ours, but a friend which, after we were gone home, the coachman had picked up to go with him to the fireworks which were exhibited that night near the Corso: there was a crowd and an embarras, and the fellow tumbled off and died upon the spot, and nobody even spoke, or I believe thought about the matter, except one woman, who supposed that he had neglected to cross himself when he got up behind.

The works of art here at Naples are neither very numerous nor very excellent: I have seen the vaunted present of porcelain intended for the king of England, in return for some cannon presented by him to this court; and think it more entertaining in its design than admirable as a manufacture. Every dish and plate, however, being the portrait as one may say of some famous Etruscan vase, or other antique, dug out of the ruins of these newly-discovered cities, with an account of its supposed story engraved neatly round the figure, makes it interesting and elegant, and worthy enough of one prince to accept, and another to bestow.

There is a work of art, however, peculiar to this city, and attempted in no other; on which surprising sums of money are lavished by many of the inhabitants, who connect or associate to this amusement ideas of piety and devotion: the thing when finished is called a presepio, and is composed in honour of this sacred season, after which all is taken to pieces, and arranged after a different manner next year. In many houses a room, in some a whole suite of apartments, in others the terrace upon the house-top, is dedicated to this very uncommon show; consisting of a miniature representation in sycamore wood, properly coloured, of the house at Bethlehem, with the blessed Virgin, St. Joseph, and our Saviour in the manger, with attendant angels, &c. as in pictures of the nativity; the figures are about six inches high, and dressed with the most exact propriety. This however, though the principal thing intended to attract spectators’ notice, is kept back, so that sometimes I scarcely saw it at all; while a general and excellent landscape, with figures of men at work, women dressing dinner, a long road in real gravel, with rocks, hills, rivers, cattle, camels, every thing that can be imagined, fill the other rooms, so happily disposed too for the most part, the light introduced so artfully, the perspective kept so surprisingly!—one wonders and cries out, it is certainly but a baby-house at best; yet managed by people whose heads naturally turned towards architecture and design, give them power thus to defy a traveller not to feel delighted with the general effect; while if every single figure is not capitally executed, and nicely expressed beside, the proprietor is truly miserable, and will cut a new cow, or vary the horse’s attitude, against next Christmas coÛte qui coÛte: and perhaps I should not have said so much about the matter, if there had not been shewn me within this last week, presepios which have cost their possessors fifteen hundred or two thousand English pounds; and, rather than relinquish or sell them, many families have gone to ruin: I have wrote the sums down in letters, not figures, for fear of the possibility of a mistake. One of these playthings had the journey of the three kings represented in it, and the presents were all of real gold and silver finely worked; nothing could be better or more livelily finished.—“But, Sir,” said I, “why do you dress up one of the Wise Men with a turban and crescent, six hundred years before the birth of Mahomet, who first put that mark in the forehead of his followers? The eastern Magi were not Turks; this is a breach of costume.” My gentleman paused, and thanked me; said he would enquire if there was nothing heretical in the objection; and if all was right, it should be changed next year without fail.

A young lady here of English parents, just ten years old, asked me, very pertinently, “Why this pretty sight was called a Presepio?” but said she suddenly, answering herself, “I suppose it is because it is preceptive:” such a mistake was more valuable than knowledge, and gave me great esteem of her understanding; the little girl’s name was Zaffory.

The King’s menagerie is neither rich in animals, nor particularly well kept: I wonder a man of his character and disposition should not delight in possessing a very fine one. The bears however were as tame as lapdogs; there was a wolf too, larger than ever I saw a wolf, and an elephant that played a hundred tricks at the command of his keeper, little less a beast than he; but as Pope says, after Horace,

Let us then tell about the two assemblies, o sia conversazioni, where one goes in search of amusement as to the rooms of Bath or Tunbridge exactly; only that one of these places is devoted to the nobiltÀ, the other is called de’ buoni amici; and such is the state of subordination in this country, that though the great people may come among the little ones, and be sure of the grossest adulation, a merchant’s wife, shining in diamonds, being obliged to stand up reverentially before the chair of a countess, who does her the honour to speak to her; the poor amici are totally excluded from the subscription of the nobles, nor dare even to return the salutation of a superior, should a good-natured person of that rank be tempted, from frequently seeing them at the rooms, to give them a kind nod in the street or elsewhere. All this seems comical enough to us, and I had much ado to look grave, while a beautiful and well-educated wife of a rich banker here, confessed herself not fit company for an ignorant mean-looking woman of quality. But though such unintelligible doctrines make one for a moment ashamed both of one’s sex and species, that lady’s knowledge of various languages, her numerous accomplishments in a thousand methods of passing time away with innocent elegance, and a sort of studied address never observed in Italy before, gave me infinite delight in her society, and daily increased my suspicion that she was a foreigner, till nearer intimacy discovered her a German Lutheran, with a singular head of thick blonde hair, so unlike those I see around me. We grew daily better acquainted, and she shewed me—but not indignantly at all—some ladies from the higher assembly sitting among these, very low dressed indeed, a knotting-bag and counters in their lap, to shew their contempt of the company; while such as spoke to them stood before their seat, like children before a governess in England, as long as the conversation lasted.

I inquired if the men confined their addresses wholly to their own rank? She said, beauty often broke the barrier, and when a pretty woman of the second rank got a cavalier servente of the first, much happiness and much distinction was the consequence: but alas! he will not even try to push her up among the people of fashion, and when he meets any is sure to look ashamed of his mistress; so that her felicity can consist only in triumphing over equals, for to rival a superior is here an impossibility.

Our Duke and Dutchess of Cumberland have made all Naples adore them though, by going richly dressed, and behaving with infinite courtesy and good-humour, at an assembly or ball given in the lower rooms, as the English comically call them. A young Palermitan prince applauded them for it exceedingly; so I took the liberty to express my wonder. “Oh,” replied he, “we are not ignorant how much English manners differ from our own: I have already, though but just eighteen years old, as sovereign of my own state, under the King of both Sicilies, condemned a man to death because he was a rascal, but the law and the people govern in England I know.” My desire of hearing about Sicily, which we could not contrive to visit, made me happy to cultivate Prince Ventimiglia’s acquaintance; he was very studious, very learned of his age, and uncommonly clever: told me of the antiquities his island had to boast, with great intelligence, and a surprising knowledge of ancient history.

We wished to have made a party to go in the same company to PÆstum, but my cowardice kept me at home, so bad was the account of the roads and accommodation; though Abate Bianconi of Milan, for whom I have so much esteem, bid me remember to look at the buildings there attentively; adding, that they were better worth our observation than all the boasted antiquities at Rome; “as they had seen (said he) the original foundation of her empire, and outlived its decay: that they had seen her second birth too, and power under some of her pontiffs over all Europe about six or seven centuries ago; and that they would now probably remain till all that was likewise abolished, with only slight traces left behind to shew that fuimus, &c.”

How mortifying it is to go home and never see this PÆstum! Prince Ventimiglia went there with Mr. Cox; he professes his intention soon to visit England, concerning the manners and customs of which he is very inquisitive, and not ill-versed in the language; but books drop oddly into people’s hands: This gentleman commended Ambrose Philips’s Pastorals, and I remember the Florentines seemed strangely impressed with the merit of the other Philips as a poet. Bonducci has translated his Cyder, and calls him emulous of Milton, in good time! but it is difficult to distinguish jest from earnest in a foreign language.

I will not, if I can help it, lose sight of our Sicilian however, till I have made him tell me something about Dionysius’s Ear, about the eruptions of Ætna, and the Castagno a cento cavalli, which, he protests, is not magnified by Brydone.

It is wonderfully mortifying to think how little information after all can be obtained of any thing new or any thing strange, though so far from one’s own country. What I picked up most curious and diverting from our conversation, was his expression of surprise, when at our house one day he read a letter from his mother, telling him that such a lady, naming her, remained still unmarried, and even unbetrothed, though now past ten years old. “She will,” said I, “perhaps break through old customs, and chuse for herself, as she is an orphan, and has no one whom she need consult.”—“Impossible, Madam!” was the reply.—“But tell me, Prince, for information’s sake, if such a lady, this girl for example, should venture to assert the rights of humanity, and make a choice somewhat unusual, what would come of it?”—“Why nothing in the world would come of it,” answered he; “the lass would be immediately at liberty again, for no man so circumstanced could be permitted to leave the country alive you know, nor would her folly benefit his family at all, as her estate would be immediately adjudged to the next heir. No person of inferior rank in our country would therefore, unless absolutely mad, set his life to hazard for the sake of a frolic, the event of which is so well known beforehand;—less still, because, if love be in the case, all personal attachment may be fully gratified, only let her but be once legally married to a man every way her equal.” Could one help recollecting Fielding’s song in the Virgin unmasked? who says,

I will mention another talk I had with a Sicilian lady. We met at the house of the Swedish minister, Monsieur AndrÉ, uncle to the lamented officer who perished in our sovereign’s service in America; and while the rest of the company were entertaining themselves with cards and music, I began laughing in myself at hearing the gentleman and lady who sat next me, called by others Don Raphael and Donna Camilla, because those two names bring Gil Blas into one’s head. Their agreeable and interesting conversation however soon gave my mind a more serious turn when discoursing on the liberal premiums now offered by the King of Naples to those who are willing to rebuild and repeople Messina. Donna Camilla politely introduced me to a very sick but pleasing-looking lady, who she said was going to return thither: at which she, starting, cried, “Oh God forbid, my dear friend!” in an accent that made me think she had already suffered something from the concussions that overwhelmed that city in the year 1783. Her inviting manner, her soft and interesting eyes, whose languid glances seemed to shew beauty sunk in sorrow, and spirit oppressed by calamity, engaged my utmost attention, while Don Raphael pressed her to indulge the foreigner’s curiosity with some particulars of the distresses she had shared. Her own feelings were all she could relate she said—and those confusedly. “You see that girl there,” pointing to a child about seven or eight years old, who stood listening to the harpsichord: “she escaped! I cannot, for my soul, guess how, for we were not together at the time.”—“Where were you, madam, at the moment of the fatal accident?”—“Who? me?” and her eyes lighted up with recollected terror: “I was in the nursery with my maid, employed in taking stains out of some Brussels lace upon a brazier; two babies, neither of them four years old, playing in the room. The eldest boy, dear lad! had just left us, and was in his father’s country-house. The day grew so dark all on a sudden, and the brazier—Oh, Lord Jesus! I felt the brazier slide from me, and saw it run down the long room on its three legs. The maid screamed, and I shut my eyes and knelt at a chair. We thought all over; but my husband came, and snatching me up, cried, run, run.—I know not how nor where, but all amongst falling houses it was, and people shrieked so, and there was such a noise! My poor son! he was fifteen years old; he tried to hold me fast in the crowd. I remember kissing him: Dear lad, dear lad! I said. I could speak just then: but the throng at the gate! Oh that gate! Thousands at once! ay, thousands! thousands at once: and my poor old confessor too! I knew him: I threw my arms about his aged neck. Padre mio! said I—Padre mio! Down he dropt, a great stone struck his shoulder; I saw it coming, and my boy pulled me: he saved my life, dear, dear lad! But the crash of the gate, the screams of the people, the heat—Oh such a heat! I felt no more on’t though; I saw no more on’t; I waked in bed, this girl by me, and her father giving me cordials. We were on shipboard, they told me, coming to Naples to my brother’s house here; and do you think I’ll ever go back there again? No, no; that’s a curst place; I lost my son in it. Never, never will I see it more! All my friends try to persuade me, but the sight of it would do my business. If my poor boy were alive indeed! but he! ah, poor dear lad! he loved his mother; he held me fast—No, no, I’ll never see that place again: God has cursed it now; I am sure he has.”

A narrative so melancholy, so tender, and so true, could not fail of its effect. I ran for refuge to the harpsichord, where a lady was singing divinely. I could not listen though: her grateful sweetness who told the dismal story, followed me thither: she had seen my ill-suppressed tears, and followed to embrace me. The tale she had told saddened my heart, and the news we heard returning to the Crocelle did not contribute to lighten its weight, while an amiable young Englishman, who had long lain ill there, was now breathing his last, far from his friends, his country, or their customs; all easily dispensed with, perhaps derided, during the bustle of a journey, and in the madness of superfluous health; but sure to be sighed after, when life’s last twilight shuts in precipitately closer and closer round a man, and leaves him only the nearer objects to repose and dwell on.

Such was Captain ——’s situation! he had none but a foreign servant with him. We thought it might sooth him to hear “Can I do any thing for you, Sir?” in an English voice: so I sent my maid: he had no commands he said; he could not eat the jelly she had made him; he wished some clergyman could be found that he might speak to: such a one was vainly enquired for, till it was discovered that ill-health had driven Mr. Mentze to Naples, who kindly administered the last consolation a Christian can receive; and heard the next day, when confined himself to bed, of his countryman’s being properly thrust by the banker into the Buco Protestante; so they contemptuously call a dirty garden one drives by in this town, where not less than a hundred people, small and great, from our island, annually resort, leaving fifty or sixty thousand pounds behind them at a moderate computation; though if their bodies are obliged to take perpetual apartments here, no better place has been hitherto provided for them than this kitchen ground; on which grow cabbages, cauliflowers, &c. sold to their country folks for double price I trow, the remaining part of the season.

Well! well! if the Neapolitans do bury Christians like dogs, they make some singular compensations we will confess, by nursing dogs like Christians. A very veracious man informed me yester morning, that his poor wife was half broken-hearted at hearing such a Countess’s dog was run over; “for,” said he, “having suckled the pretty creature herself, she loved it like one of her children.” I bid him repeat the circumstance, that no mistake might be made: he did so; but seeing me look shocked, or ashamed, or something he did not like,—“Why, madam,” said the fellow, “it is a common thing enough for ordinary men’s wives to suckle the lapdogs of ladies of quality:” adding, that they were paid for their milk, and he saw no harm in gratifying one’s superiors. As I was disposed to see nothing but harm in disputing with such a competitor, our conference finished soon; but the fact is certain.

Indeed few things can be foolisher than to debate the propriety of customs one is not bound to observe or comply with. If you dislike them, the remedy is easy; turn yours and your horses heads the other way.

20th January 1786.

Here are the most excellent, the most incomparable fish I ever eat; red mullets, large as our maycril, and of singularly high flavour; besides the calamaro, or ink-fish, a dainty worthy of imperial luxury; almond and even apple trees in blossom, to delight those who can be paid for coarse manners and confined notions by the beauties of a brilliant climate. Here are all the hedges in blow as you drive towards Pozzuoli, and a snow of white May-flowers clustering round Virgil’s tomb. So strong was the sun’s heat this morning, even before eleven o’clock, that I carried an umbrella to defend me from his rays, as we sauntered about the walks, which are spacious and elegant, laid out much in the style of St. James’s Park, but with the sea on one side of you, the broad street, called Chiaja, on the other. What trees are planted there however, either do not grow up so as to afford shade, or else they cut them, and trim them about to make them in pretty shapes forsooth, as we did in England half a century ago.

Be this as it will, the vaunted view from the castle of St. Elmo, though much more deeply interesting, is in consequence of this defect less naturally pleasing than the prospect from Lomellino’s villa near Genoa, or Lord Clifford’s park, called King’s Weston, in Somersetshire; those two places being, in point of mere situation, possessed of beauties hitherto unrivalled by any thing I have seen. Nor does the steady regularity of this Mediterranean sea make me inclined to prefer it to our more capricious or rather active channel. Sea views have at best too little variety, and when the flux and reflux of the tide are taken away from one, there remains only rough and smooth: whereas the hope which its ebb and flow keep constantly renovating, serves to animate, and a little change the course of one’s ideas, just as its swelling and sinking is of use, to purify in some degree, and keep the whole from stagnation.

I made inquiry after the old story of Nicola Pesce, told by Kircher, and sweetly brought back to all our memories by Goldsmith, who, as Dr. Johnson said of him, touched nothing that he did not likewise adorn; but I could gain no addition to what we have already heard. That there was such a man is certain, who, though become nearly amphibious by living constantly in the water, only coming sometimes on shore for sleep and refreshment, suffered avarice to be his ruin, leaping voluntarily into the Gulph of Charybdis to fetch out a gold cup thrown in thither to tempt him—what could a gold cup have done one would wonder for Nicola Pesce?—yet knowing the dangers of the place, he braved them all it seems for this bright reward; and was supposed to be devoured by one of the polypus fish, who, sticking close to the rocks, extend their arms for prey. When I expressed my indignation that he should so perish; “He forgot perhaps,” said one present, “to recommend himself to Santo Gennaro.”

The castle on this hill, called the Castel St. Elmo, would be much my comfort did I fix at Naples; for here are eight thousand soldiers constantly kept, to secure the city from sudden insurrection; his majesty most wisely trusting their command only to Spanish or German officers, or some few gentlemen from the northern states of Italy, that no personal tenderness for any in the town below may intervene, if occasion for sudden severity should arise. We went to-day and saw their garrison, comfortably and even elegantly kept; and I was wicked enough to rejoice that the soldiers were never, but with the very utmost difficulty, permitted to go among the towns-men for a moment.

To-morrow we mount the Volcano, whose present peaceful disposition has tempted us to inspect it more nearly. Though it appears little less than presumption thus to profane with eyes of examination the favourite alembic of nature, while the great work of projection is carrying on; guarded as all its secret caverns are too with every contradiction; snow and flame! solid bodies heated into liquefaction, and rolling gently down one of its sides; while fluids congeal and harden into ice on the other; nothing can exceed the curiosity of its appearance, now the lava is less rapid, and stiffens as it flows; stiffens too in ridges very surprisingly, and gains an odd aspect, not unlike the pasteboard waves representing sea at a theatre, but black, because this year’s eruption has been mingled with coal. The connoisseurs here know the different degrees, dates, and shades of lava to a perfection that amazes one; and Sir William Hamilton’s courage, learning, and perfect skill in these matters, is more people’s theme here than the Volcano itself. Bartolomeo, the Cyclop of Vesuvius as he is called, studies its effects and operations too with much attention and philosophical exactness, relating the adventures he has had with our minister on the mountain to every Englishman that goes up, with great success. The way one climbs is by tying a broad sash with long ends round this Bartolomeo, letting him walk before one, and holding it fast. As far as the Hermitage there is no great difficulty, and to that place some chuse to ride an ass, but I thought walking safer; and there you are sure of welcome and refreshment from the poor good old man, who sets up a little cross wherever the fire has stopt near his cell; shews you the place with a sort of polite solemnity that impresses, spreads his scanty provisions before you kindly, and tells the past and present state of the eruption accurately, inviting you to partake of

This Hermit is a Frenchman. J’ai dansÉ dans mon lit tans de fois[5], said he: the expression was not sublime when speaking of an earthquake, to be sure; I looked among his books, however, and found Bruyere. “Would not the Duc de Rochefoucault have done better?” said I. “Did I never see you before, Madam?” said he; “yes, sure I have, and dressed you too, when I was a hair-dresser in London, and lived with Mons. Martinant, and I dressed pretty Miss Wynne too in the same street. Vit’elle encore? Vit’elle encore?[6] Ah I am old now,” continued he; “I remember when black pins first came up.” This was charming, and in such an unexpected way, I could hardly prevail upon myself ever to leave the spot; but Mrs. Greatheed having been quite to the crater’s edge with her only son, a baby of four years old; shame rather than inclination urged me forward; I asked the little boy what he had seen; I saw the chimney, replied he, and it was on fire, but I liked the elephant better.

That the situation of the crater changed in this last eruption is of little consequence; it will change and change again I suppose. The wonder is, that nobody gets killed by venturing so near, while red-hot stones are flying about them so. The Bishop of Derry did very near get his arm broke; and the Italians are always recounting the exploits of these rash Britons who look into the crater, and carry their wives and children up to the top; while we are, with equal justice, amazed at the courageous Neapolitans, who build little snug villages and dwell with as much confidence at the foot of Vesuvius, as our people do in Paddington or Hornsey. When I enquired of an inhabitant of these houses how she managed, and whether she was not frighted when the Volcano raged, lest it should carry away her pretty little habitation: “Let it go,” said she, “we don’t mind now if it goes to-morrow, so as we can make it answer by raising our vines, oranges, &c. against it for three years, our fortune is made before the fourth arrives; and then if the red river comes we can always run away, scappar via, ourselves, and hang the property. We only desire three years use of the mountain as a hot wall or forcing-house, and then we are above the world, thanks be to God and St. Januarius,” who always comes in for a large share of their veneration; and this morning having heard that the Neapolitans still present each other with a cake upon New-year’s day, I began to hug my favourite hypothesis closer, recollecting the old ceremony of the wheaten cake seasoned with salt, and called Janualis in the Heathen days. All this however must still end in mere conjecture; for though the weather here favours one’s idea of Janus, who loosened the furrow and liquefied the frost, to which the melting our martyr’s blood might, without much straining of the matter, be made to allude; yet it must be recollected after all, that the miracle is not performed in this month but that of May, and that St. Januarius did certainly exist and give his life as testimony to the truth of our religion, in the third century. Can one wonder, however, if corruptions and mistakes should have crept in since? And would it not have been equal to a miracle had no tares sprung up in the field of religion, when our Saviour himself informs us that there is an enemy ever watching his opportunity to plant them?

These dear people too at Rome and Naples do live so in the very hulk of ship-wrecked or rather foundered Paganism, have their habitation so at the very bottom of the cask, can it fail to retain the scent when the lees are scarce yet dried up, clean or evaporated? That an odd jumble of past and present days, past and present ideas of dignity, events, and even manner of portioning out their time, still confuse their heads, may be observed in every conversation with them; and when a few weeks ago we revisited, in company of some newly-arrived English friends, the old baths of BaiÆ, Locrine lake, &c. Tobias, who rowed us over, bid us observe the Appian way under the water, where indeed it appears quite clearly, even to the tracks of wheels on its old pavement made of very large stones; and seeing me perhaps particularly attentive, “Yes, Madam,” said he, “I do assure you, that Don Horace and Don Virgil, of whom we hear such a deal, used to come from Rome to their country-seats here in a day, over this very road, which is now overflowed as you see it, by repeated earthquakes, but which was then so good and so unbroken, that if they rose early in the morning they could easily gallop hither against the Ave Maria.”

It was very observable in our second visit paid to the Stuffe San Germano, that they had increased prodigiously in heat since mount Vesuvius had ceased throwing out fire, though at least fourteen miles from it, and a vast portion of the sea between them; it vexed me to have no thermometer again, but by what one’s immediate feelings could inform us, there were many degrees of difference. I could not now bear my hand on any part of them for a moment. The same luckless dog was again produced, and again restored to life, like the lady in Dryden’s Fables, who is condemned to be hunted, killed, recovered, and set on foot again for the amusement of her tormentors; a story borrowed from the Italian.

Solfaterra burned my fingers as I plucked an incrustation off, which allured me by the beauty of its colours, and roared with more violence than when I was there before. This horrible volcano is by no means extinguished yet, but seems pregnant with wonders, principally combustible, and likely to break with one at every step, all the earth round it being hollow as a drum, and I should think of no great thickness neither; so plainly does one hear the sighings underneath, which some of the country people imagine to be tortured spirits howling with agony.

It is supposed that Lake Agnano, where the dog is flung in, if the dewy grass do not suffice to recover him, with its humidity and freshness, as it often does; is but another crater of another volcano, long ago self-destroyed by scorpion-like suicide; and it is like enough it may be so. There are not wanting however those that think, or say at least, how a subterraneous or subaqueous city remains even now under that lake, but lies too deep for inspection.

Sia come sia[7], as the Italians express themselves, these environs are beyond all power of comprehension, much more beyond all effort of words to describe; and as Sannazarius says of Venice, so I am sure it may be said of this place, “That man built Rome, but God created Naples:” for surely, surely he has honoured no other spot with such an accumulation of his wonders: nor can any thing more completely bring the description of the devoted cities mentioned in Genesis before one’s eyes, than these concealed fires, which there I trust burst up unexpectedly, and, attended by such lightning as only hot countries can exhibit, devoured all at once, nor spared the too incredulous inquirer, who turned her head back with contempt of expected judgments, but entangling her feet in the pursuing stream of lava, fixed her fast, a monument of bituminous salt.

Though surrounded by such terrifying objects, the Neapolitans are not, I think, disposed to cowardly, though easily persuaded to devotional superstitions; they are not afraid of spectres or supernatural apparitions, but sleep contentedly and soundly in small rooms, made for the ancient dead, and now actually in the occupation of old Roman bodies, the catacombs belonging to whom are still very impressive to the fancy; and I have known many an English gentleman, who would not endure to have his courage impeached by living wight, whose imagination would notwithstanding have disturbed his slumbers not a little, had he been obliged to pass one night where these poor women sleep securely, wishing only for that money which travellers are not unwilling to bestow; and perhaps a walk among these hollow caves of death, these sad repositories of what was once animated by valour and illuminated by science, strike one much more than all the urns and lachrymatories of Portici.

How judicious is Mr. Addison’s remark, “That Siste Viator! which has a striking effect among the Roman tombs placed by the road side, loses all its power over the mind when placed in the body of a church:” I think he might have said the same, had he lived to see funereal urns used as decorations of hackney-coach pannels, and Caput Bovis over the doors in New Tavistock-street.

It is worth recollecting however, that the Dictator Sylla is supposed to be the first man of consequence who ordered his body to be burned at Rome, as till then, burial was apparently the fashion: his death, occasioned by the morbus pedicularis, made his interment difficult, and what necessity suggested to be done for him, grew up into a custom, and the sycophants of power, ever hasty to follow their superiors, now shewed their zeal even in post obit imitation. But while I am writing, more modern and less tyrannic claimants for respect agreeably disturb one’s meditations on the cruelty and oppression used by these wicked possessors of immortal though ill-gotten fame.

The Queen of Naples is delivered, and we are all to make merry: the Castello d’Uovo, just under our windows, is to be illuminated: and from the Carthusian convent on the hill, to my poor solitary old acquaintance the hermit and hair-dresser, who inhabits a cleft in mount Vesuvius, all resolve to be happy, and to rejoice in the felicity of a prince that loves them.—Shouting, and candles, and torches, and coloured lamps, and Polinchinello above all the rest, did their best to drive forward the general joy, and make known the birth of the royal baby for many miles round the capital; and there was a splendid opera the next night, in this finest of all fine theatres, though that of Milan pleases me better; as I prefer the elegant curtains which festoon it over the boxes there, to our heavy gilt ornaments here at Naples; and their boasted looking-glasses, never cleaned, have no effect as I perceive towards helping forward the enchantment. A festa di ballo, or masquerade, given here however, was exceedingly gay, and the dresses surprisingly rich: our party, a very large one, all Italians, retired at one in the morning to quite the finest supper of its size I ever saw. Fish of various sorts, incomparable in their kinds, composed eight dishes of the first course; we had thirty-eight set on the table in that course, forty-nine in the second, with wines and dessert truly magnificent, for all which Mr. Piozzi protested to me that we paid only three shillings and sixpence a head English money; but for the truth of that he must answer: we sate down twenty-two persons to supper, and I observed there were numbers of these parties made in different taverns, or apartments adjoining to the theatre, whither after refreshment we returned, and danced till day-light.

The theatre is a vast building, even when not inhabited or set off by lights and company: all of stone too, like that of Milan; but particularly defended from fire by St. Anthony, who has an altar and chapel erected to his honour, and showily decorated at the door; and on Sunday night, January the twenty-second, there were fireworks exhibited in honour of himself and his pig, which was placed on the top, and illuminated with no small ingenuity: the fire catching hold of his tail first—con rispetto—as said our Cicerone. But il RÈ Lear È le sue tre Figlie are advertised, and I am sick to-night and cannot go.

My loss however is somewhat compensated; for though I could not see our own Shakespear’s play acted at Naples, I went some days after to one of the charming theatres this town is entertained by every evening, and saw a play which struck me exceedingly: the plot was simply this—An Englishman appears, dressed precisely as a Quaker, his hat on his head, his hands in his pockets, and with a very pensive air says he will take that pistol, producing one, and shoot himself; “for,” says he, “the politics go wrong at home now, and I hate the ministerial party, so England does not please me; I tried France, but the people there laughed so about nothing, and sung so much out of tune, I could not bear France; so I went over to Holland; those Dutch dogs are so covetous and hard-hearted, they think of nothing but their money; I could not endure a place where one heard no sound in the whole country but frogs croaking and ducats chinking. Maladetti! so I went to Spain, where I narrowly escaped a sun-stroke for the sake of seeing those idle beggarly dons, that if they do condescend to cobble a man’s shoe, think they must do it with a sword by their side. I came here to Naples therefore, but ne’er a woman will afford one a chase, all are too easily caught to divert me, who like something in prospect; and though it is so fine a country, one can get no fox-hunting, only running after a wild pig. Yes, yes, I must shoot myself, the world is so very dull I am tired on’t.”—He then coolly prepares matters for the operation, when a young woman bursts into his apartment, bewails her fate a moment, and then faints away. Our countryman lays by his pistol, brings the lady to life, and having heard part of her story, sets her in a place of safety. More confusion follows; a gentleman enters storming with rage at a treacherous friend he hints at, and a false mistress; the Englishman gravely advises him to shoot himself: “No, no,” replies the warm Italian, “I will shoot them though, if I can catch them; but want of money hinders me from prosecuting the search.” That however is now instantly supplied by the generous Briton, who enters into their affairs, detects and punishes the rogue who had betrayed them all, settles the marriage and reconciliation of his new friends, adds himself something to the good girl’s fortune, and concludes the piece with saying that he has altered his intentions, and will think no more of shooting himself, while life may in all countries be rendered pleasant to him who will employ it in the service of his fellow-creatures; and finishes with these words, that such are the sentiments of an Englishman.

Were this pretty story in the hands of one of our elegant dramatic writers, how charming an entertainment would it make us! Mr. Andrews shall have it certainly, for though very flattering in its intentions towards our countrymen, and the ground-plot, as a surveyor would call it, well imagined; the play itself was scarcely written I believe, and very little esteemed by the Italians; who made excuses for its grossness, and said that their theatre was at a very low ebb; and so I believe it is. Yet their genius is restless, and for ever fermenting; and although, like their volcano, of which every individual has a spark, it naturally throws out of its mouth more rubbish than marble; like that too, from some occasional eruptions we may gather gems stuck fast among substances of an inferior nature, which want only disentangling, and a new polish, to make them valued, even beyond those that reward the toil of an expecting miner.

The word gems reminds one of Capo di Monte, where the king’s cameos are taken care of, and where the medallist may find perpetual entertainment; for I do believe nothing can exceed the riches of this collection; though it requires good eyes, great experience, and long study, to examine their merits with accurate skill, and praise them with intelligent rapture: of these three requisites I boast none, so cannot enjoy this regale as much as many others; but I have a mortal aversion to those who encumber the general progress of science by reciprocating contempt upon its various branches: the politician however, who weighs the interests of contending powers, or endeavours at the happiness of regulating some particular state; who studies to prevent the encroachments of prerogative, or impede advances to anarchy; hears with faint approbation, at best, of the discoveries made in the moon by modern astronomers—discoveries of a country where he can obtain no power, and settle no system of government—discoveries too, which can only be procured by peeping through glasses which few can purchase, at a place which no man can desire to approach. While the musical composer equally laments the fate of the fossilist, who literally buries his talent in the ground, and equally dead to all the charms of taste, the transports of true expression, and the delights of harmony, rises with the sun only to shun his beams, and seek in the dripping caverns of the earth the effects of his diminished influence. The medallist has had much of this scorn to contend with; yet he that makes it his study to register great events, is perhaps next to him who has contributed to their birth: and this palace displays a degree of riches en ce genre, difficult to conceive.

I was, however, better entertained by admiring the incomparable Schidonis, which are to be found only here: he was a scholar, or rather an imitator, of Correggio; and what he has done seems more the result of genius animated by observation, than of profound thought or minute nicety; he painted such ragged folks as he found upon the Chiaja; yet his pictures differ no less from the Dutch school, than do those which flow from the majestic pencil of the demi-divine Caracci and their followers, and for the same reason; their minds reflected dignity and grace, his eyes looked upon forms finely proportioned, though covered with tatters, or perhaps scarcely covered at all; no smugness, no plumpness, no vulgar character, ever crossed the fancy of Schidone; for a Lazaroni at Naples, like a sailor at Portsmouth, is no mean character, though he is a coarse one; it is in the low Parisian, and the true-bred London blackguard, we must look for innate baseness, and near approaches to brutality; nor are the Hollanders wanting in originals I trust, when one has seen so many copies of the human form from their hands, divested of soul as I may say, and, like Prior’s Emma when she resolves to ramble with her outlawed lover,

Here is a beautiful performance too of the Venetian school—a resurrection of Lazarus, by Leandro Bassano, esteemed the best performance of that family, and full of merit—the merit of character I mean; while Mary’s eyes are wholly employed, and her mind apparently engrossed by the Saviour’s benignity, and almighty power; Martha thinks merely on the present exertion of them, and only watches the deliverance of her beloved brother from the tomb: the restored Lazarus too—an apparent corpse, re-awakened suddenly to a thousand sensations at once, wonder, gratitude, and affectionate delight!—How can one coldly sit to hear the connoisseurs admire the folds of the drapery? Lanfranc’s St. Michael too is a very noble picture; and though his angel is infinitely less angelic than that of Guido, his devil is a less ordinary and vulgar devil than that of his fellow-student, which somewhat too much resembles the common peeping satyr in a landscape; whereas Lanfranc’s Lucifer seems embued with more intellectual vices—rage, revenge, and ambition.

But I am called from my observations and reflexions, to see what the Neapolitans call il trionfo di Policinello, a person for whom they profess peculiar value. Harlequin and Brighella here scarcely share the fondness of an audience, while at Venice, Milan, &c. much pleasantry is always cast into their characters.

The triumph was a pageant of prodigious size, set on four broad wheels like our waggons, but larger; it consisted of a pyramid of men, twenty-eight in number, placed with wonderful ingenuity all of one size, something like what one has seen exhibited at Sadler’s Wells, the Royal Circus, &c.; dressed in one uniform, viz. the white habit and puce-coloured mask of caro Policinello; disposed too with that skill which tumblers alone can either display or describe; a single figure, still in the same dress, crowning the whole, and forming a point at the top, by standing fixed on the shoulders of his companions, and playing merrily on the fiddle; while twelve oxen of a beautiful white colour, and trapped with many shining ornaments, drew the whole slowly over the city, amidst the acclamations of innumerable spectators, that followed and applauded the performance with shouts.

What I have learned from this show, and many others of the same kind, is of no greater value than the derivation of his name who is so much the favourite of Naples: but from the mask he appears in, cut and coloured so as exactly to resemble a flea, with hook nose and wrinkles, like the body of that animal; his employment too, being ever ready to hop, and skip, and jump about, with affectation of uncommon elasticity, giving his neighbours a sly pinch from time to time: all these circumstances, added to the very intimate acquaintance and connection all the Neapolitans have with this, the least offensive of all the innumerable insects that infest them; and, last of all, his name, which, corrupt it how we please, was originally Pulicinello; leaves me persuaded that the appellation is merely little flea.

A drive to Caserta, the king’s great palace, not yet quite finished, carries me away from this important study, and leaves me little time to enjoy the praises due to a discovery of so much consequence.

The drive perhaps pleased us better than the palace, which is a prodigious mass of building indeed, and to my eye appears to cover more space than proud Versailles itself; court within court, and quadrangle within quadrangle; it is an enormous bulk to be sure—not pile—for it is not high in proportion to the surrounding objects somehow; and being composed all of brick, presents ideas rather of squat solidity, than of princely magnificence. Ostentation is expected always to strike, as elegance is known to charm, the beholder; and space seldom fails in its immediate effect upon the mind; but here the valley (I might say hole) this house is set in, looks too little for it; and offends one in the same manner as the more beautiful buildings do at Buxton, where from every hill one expects to tumble down upon the new Crescent below. The stair-case is such, however, as I am persuaded no other palace can shew; vastly wider than any the French king can boast, and infinitely more precious with regard to the marbles which compose its sides. The immensity of it, however, though it enhances the value, does not do much honour to the taste of him who contrived it. No apartments can answer the expectations raised by such an approach; and in fact the chapel alone is worthy an ascent so fit for a triumphal procession, instead of a pair of stairs. That chapel is I confess of exquisite beauty and elegance; and there is a picture, by Mengs, of the blessed Virgin Mary’s presentation when a girl, that is really paitrie des graces; it scarcely can be admired or commended enough, and one can scarcely prevail on one’s self ever to quit it. Her marriage, a picture on the other side, is not so happily imagined; but it seems as if the painter thought that joke too good to part with, that there never was a particularly excellent picture of a wedding; and that Poussin himself failed, when having represented all the six other sacraments so admirably, that of marriage has been found fault with by the connoisseurs of every succeeding generation.

Well! if the palace at Caserta must be deemed more heavy than handsome, I fear the gardens must likewise be avowed to be laid out in a manner one would rather term savage than natural: all artifice is banished however: the king of Naples scorns petty tricks for the amusement of petty minds;—he turns a whole river down his cascade,—a real one; and if its formation is not of the first rate for assuming an appearance of nature, it has the merit of being sincerely that which others only pretend to be: while I am told that his architects are now employed in connecting the great stones awkwardly disposed in two rows down each side the torrent, with the very rocks and mountains among which the spring rises; if they effect this, their cascade will, so far as ever I have read or heard, be single in its kind.

Van Vittelli’s aqueduct is a prodigiously beautiful, magnificent, and what is more, a useful performance: having the finest models of antiquity, he is said to have surpassed them all. Why such superb and expensive methods should be still used to conduct water up and down Italy, any more than other nations, or why they are not equally necessary in France and England, nobody informs me. Madame de Bocages enquired long ago, when she was taken to see the fountain Trevi at Rome, why they had no water at Paris but the Seine? I think the question so natural, that one wishes to repeat it; and one great reason, little urged by others, incites me to look with envy on the delicious and almost innumerable gushes of water that cool the air of Naples and of Rome, and pour their pellucid tides through almost every street of those luxurious cities: it is this, that I consider them as a preservative against that dreadfullest of all maladies, canine madness; a distemper which, notwithstanding the excessive heat, has here scarcely a name. Sure it is the plenty of drink the dogs meet at every turn, that must be the sole cause of a blessing so desirable.

My stay has been always much shorter than I wished it, in every great town of Italy; but here! where numberless wonders strike the sense without fatiguing it, I do feel double pleasure; and among all the new ideas I have acquired since England lessened to my sight upon the sea, those gained at Naples will be the last to quit me. The works of art may be found great and lovely, but the drunken Faun and the dying Gladiator will fade from one’s remembrance, and leave the glow of Solfaterra and the gloom of Posilippo indelibly impressed. Vesuvius too! that terrified me so when first we drove into this amazing town, what future images can ever obliterate the thrilling sensations it at first occasioned? Surely the sight of old friends after a tedious absence can alone supply the vacancy that a mind must feel which quits such sublime, such animated scenery, and experiences a sudden deprivation of delight, finding the bosom all at once unfurnished of what has yielded it for three swiftly-flown months, perpetual change of undecaying pleasures.

To-morrow I shall take my last look at the Bay, and driving forward, hope at night to lodge at Terracina.