Lilian Whiting

“With dreamful eyes
My spirit lies
Where summer sings but never dies.”

Naples is the paradise of excursions. It is set in the heart of incomparable loveliness. Over its sapphire sea one sails away—to the Fortunate Isles, or some others equally alluring. Its heights and adjacent mountains offer views that one might well cross the ocean to enjoy. Its atmosphere is full of classic interest; of song, and story, and legend, and romance; of history, too, which in its tragic and exciting episodes is not less vivid in color and in strange studies of human life than is any romance. Naples is the city of fascination. Rome is stately and impressive; Florence is all beauty and enchantment; Genoa is picturesque; Venice is a dream city; but Naples is simply—fascinating. There is the common life of the streets and the populace continually en scÈne; the people who are at home on the sunny side in winter, or the shady side in summer; there is the social life of the nobility, which is brilliant and vivacious. The excursions, of which Naples is the centre, are the chief interest to travellers, and these, while possible in winter, are far more enjoyable in the early spring. Still even in midwinter the days are sunny, and while the air is crisp and cool, it is not cold. The grass is as green as in June; but the foliage and flowers are more or less withered. Naples has the high and the lower town, the former the more desirable, and the fine hotels perched on the terraces, with the view all over the Bay of Naples, Capri, Sorrento, and Vesuvius, offer a vista hardly to be duplicated in the entire world. The lower town has its fine hotels on the water’s edge, with a beautiful view over the bay, less enchanting than when seen from above. The Bay of Naples is enclosed in two semicircular arms that extend far out at sea, the southern reaching nearly to Capri, while near the termination of the northern,

“Fair Ischia smiles
O’er liquid miles.”

Far out at sea the sun shines dazzlingly on the blue Mediterranean. The landscape is full of those curious formations that are always inherent in volcanic regions. The region surrounding Naples is abrupt, picturesque, with the same irregular outline of hills that characterizes the elevations in the Tonto basin in Arizona. The vegetation is of the tropical type. The cactus is common, although it grows to no such monstrous heights as in Arizona. Orange and lemon groves prevail as far as the eye can see. On every height towns and villages crown the crests and sweep in winding terraces around the hillsides. Olive orchards abound. Castles and ruins gleam white in the sunshine on the ledge of rocky precipices. The curved shores shine like broken lines of silver, with deep indentations at Naples and at Castellammare. Between these two points rises Vesuvius, the thin blue smoke constantly curling from the summit that, since the eruption of 1906, has lost much of its elevation. In many places there is hardly the width of a roadway between the low mountains and the coast, but the cliffs are tropically luxurious in vegetation. Everywhere the habitations of the people crowd the space. From the monasteries and the castles that crown the heights, both distant and near to the clustered villages of the plain and those clinging to the hillsides, the scene is one unending panorama of human life. For Naples is only the focussing point of these densely populated regions of Southern Italy. The city stretches along the coast on both sides her semicircular bay; but the terraced hills, the stretches of land beyond, and every peak and valley are thickly sown with human habitations. Its commanding heights, two of which rise in the middle of the town, and its beautiful mirrored expanse of water give to it the most unparalleled variety and beauty of landscape loveliness.

“What words can analyze,” says George S. Hillard, “the parts and details of this matchless panorama, or unravel that magic web of beauty into which palaces, villas, forests, gardens, vineyards, the mountains, and the sea are woven? What pen can paint the soft curves, the gentle undulations, the flowing outlines, the craggy steeps, and the far-seen heights, which, in their combination, are so full of grace and, at the same time, expression? Words here are imperfect instruments, and must yield their place to the pencil and the graver. But no canvas can reproduce the light and color which play round this enchanting region. No skill can catch the changing hues of the distant mountains, the star-points of the playing waves, the films of purple and green which spread themselves over the calm waters, the sunsets of gold and orange, and the aerial veils of rose and amethyst which drop upon the hills from the skies of morning and evening. The author of the book of Ecclesiasticus seems to have described Naples, when he speaks of ‘the pride of the height, the clear firmament, the beauty of heaven, with his glorious show.’ ‘See Naples and then die,’ is a well-known Italian saying; but it should read, ‘See Naples and then live.’ One glance at such a scene stamps upon the memory an image which, forever after, gives a new value to life.”

CASTEL SANT’ELMO, NAPLES

CASTEL SANT’ELMO, NAPLES

Naples gives to the visitor the impression of being a city without a past. If she has a history, it is not written in her streets. She is poetic and picturesque, not historic. The heights of Capodimonte and Sant’Elmo divide her into unequal parts, and there is the old Naples which only the antiquarian or the political economist would wish to see, and the new and modern city which is such a miracle of beauty that one longs to stay forever, and fails to wonder that the siren sought these shores. Naples has either been very much misrepresented as to its prevailing manners and customs, or else it has changed within the past decade, for, as a rule, the gentle courtesy and kindness of the people are especially appealing. Augustus often sojourned in Naples, and it was an especially poetic haunt of Virgil, whose tomb is here. Although the poverty and the primitive life of the great masses of the people have been widely discussed, it is yet true that Naples has a very charming social life, and that the University is a centre of learning and culture. One of the oldest universities in Europe, it has a faculty of over one hundred and twenty professors and more than five thousand students. A large and valuable library, and a mineralogical collection which specialists from all over the world come to study, are among the treasures of this University, which was founded in the early part of the thirteenth century by Emperor Frederick William II. There is now in process of erection a new group of buildings which will embody the latest laboratory and library and other privileges. ArchÆology is, naturally, a special feature of the University of Naples, and the proximity to Pompeii, Herculaneum, and to the wonderful Pompeian collection in the Museum of Naples affords peculiar and unrivalled advantages to students. A bust of Thomas Aquinas, during his life a lecturer at this University, is one of the interesting treasures. The Archives of the Kingdom of Naples attract many a scholar and savant to this city. There are in this collection (which is kept in the monastery adjoining the Church of San Severino) over forty thousand Greek manuscripts, some of which date back to the year 700. The Naples Museum is the great repository of all Pompeian art, and it is rich in sculpture; but it is badly arranged and the vast series of galleries and the long flights of stairs make any study of its work so fatiguing that a visit to it might rank as one of the seven labors of Hercules.

In the royal museum of the Palazzo di Capodimonte, which is located on the beautiful height bearing that name, there are some pictures that are well worth visiting, not because they are particularly good art, but because of the interest attaching to the subjects. This gallery is largely the work of modern Neapolitan artists. Here is the celebrated picture of Michael Angelo bending over the dead body of Vittoria Colonna, kissing only her hand, and haunted by the after-regret that he did not kiss her forehead. Virginia Lebrun has here portraits of Maria Theresa and of the Duchess of Parma; there is one canvas (by Celentano) showing Benvenuto Cellini at the Castel Sant’Angelo; a scene depicting the death of CÆsar and a few others of some degree of interest.

Curiously, Naples has never produced great art. Salvator Rosa was, to be sure, a Neapolitan, but his is almost the only name that has made itself immortal in the art of this city. Domenico Morelli, who has recently died, made himself felt as an original painter with certain claims that arrested attention. He is not a draughtsman, but he is a colorist of passionate intensity; he has original power and, more than all, he has a curious endowment of what may be called artistic clairvoyance. Transporting himself by the magic of thought to places on which his eye never rested, he yet sees as in vision their special characteristics. In one of his most important works, the motive of which is the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, he has painted the desert with a startling reality. Here is a great plain, the stony, parched Judean plain, with the very feeling of its desolation pervading the atmosphere. The Royal Chapel in Naples was decorated by Morelli, the ceiling painted with an “Assumption of the Virgin,” which stands alone in all the interpretations of this theme; not by virtue of superior artistic excellence,—on the contrary its art does not make a strong appeal,—but by its originality of treatment. The “Salve Regina” and the “Da Scala d’Oro” are among the more interesting works of this artist, whose recent death has removed a figure of exceptional character in modern art, one who had, pre-eminently, the courage of his convictions. Some few years ago Morelli’s “Temptation of St. Anthony” was exhibited in both Paris and Florence, and was generally condemned, perhaps because not wholly understood. The form of the temptation was supposed to be the shapes taken by a morbid and diseased imagination; but while as a psychological conception it was not without value, it was yet far from attractive as a work of art. The finest conception, perhaps, ever depicted of the temptation of St. Anthony—a subject that has haunted many an artist—is that painted by the late Carl Guthers of Washington, a lofty and gifted spirit whose too brief stay on earth ended in the early months of 1907. In this picture the temptation of the saint appears as a vision of all that is purest and sweetest in life,—wife, children, home; it was from all this peace and loveliness that St. Anthony turned, sacrificing personal happiness to the duty of consecrated service to his Master, in the exquisite conception of Mr. Guthers. Edoardo Dalbano is the typical leader of the Neapolitan school of painting of the present day, and his fascinating picture, called the “Isle of Sirens,” representing the sirens singing in the sunlit Bay of Naples, might well be held as the keynote to all this enchanting region. Surely, if the sirens sing not in those blue waters, it were useless to search elsewhere for them. Buono is an artist of the Neapolitan shores, who paints its fisher-folk; Brancaccio catches the very spirit and animated atmosphere of the street scenes of Naples; Campriani and Pratello are landscapists of note; Esposito, too, despite his Spanish name, is a Neapolitan marine painter whose work is often most arresting in its power to catch the flickering sunshine over blue water that bathes the rocks rising out of the sea,—these isles of the sirens from which float the melodies that enchanted Odysseus.

The traveller may be surprised to find that in size Naples ranks fourth on the European Continent,—Paris, Berlin, and St. Petersburg, only, exceeding it. Naples should be, not only a port, a pleasure haunt, and a paradise for excursions, but one of the great cities of the world in commercial and in social importance. It has one of the finest natural harbors of the world; it has a beautiful and attractive adjoining country in which to extend, indefinitely, its residence and trade districts; it has the most enchanting fairyland of views that ever were seen this side the ethereal world; it has an atmosphere of song and story and a climate that is far from being objectionable. Naples is seldom the possessor of a higher temperature in summer than is New York or Boston; the winters are mild, and they offer weeks of sunny loveliness when Rome is swept by the icy tramontana from the snow-clad Alban hills. Naples offers, too, exceedingly good facilities for living; the groups of excellent hotels, both on the terraces and on the water’s edge in the lower town and along the Villa Nazionale, offer every comfort, and the politeness and courtesy of the Neapolitans, as a rule, are among the alluring features of this enchanting city.

What shall be said of one hotel, especially, perched on the cliffs, to which one ascends by an elevator, finding it the most luxurious fairyland that imagination can conjure? Leaving the street one walks through a marble tunnel lighted with electricity, wondering if he is, indeed, in the grotto of the Muses. Entering a “lift” truly American in its comfort and speed, he is wafted up the heights and steps out in—is it paradise? Here is a large salon entirely of glass with an incomparable view all over the gleaming bay, with Capri and Sorrento shining fair on the opposite sides and Vesuvius, a purple peak, in the near distance. The great city of Naples lies spread out below, with its interior heights of Capodimonte and others. It is a view for which alone one might well sail the four thousand miles of sea from the American shores. Through open French windows one may step out on the terrace. If it is cold he may still enjoy this sublimely wonderful view behind the glass walls that reveal all its beauty and protect him from wind or chill. Elsewhere adjoining salons stretch away, where sunshine, music, reading matter, and dainty writing-desks allure the guest and create for him, indeed, an earthly paradise.

Of the drive on the Strada Nuova di Posilipo, skirting the coast while following the winding rise of the hill, with the sumptuous villas and gardens on one side and the blue sea on the other,—what words can suggest its charm? On a jutting promontory on the ruins of the Palazzo di Donna Ana are seen the palace whose convenient location made it possible for the royal hosts to throw their guests into the sea whenever they became tiresome, an accommodation that the modern hostess might, at times, appreciate. On this road, winding up the Posilipo, is the villa where Garibaldi passed the last winter of his life and which is marked by a tablet. And everywhere and at every turn are the beautiful views, commanding Bagnoli, Camaldoli, Ischia, Baia and Procida, Capri, Nisida and the Neapolitan waters. The hill slopes are overgrown with myrtles and orange trees and roses. Here and there a defile is filled with a vineyard under careful culture.

In the presence of all this marvel of nature’s loveliness the visitor hardly remembers the historic interest; yet it was on the little island of Nisida that Brutus and Cassius concocted the conspiracy against CÆsar. The vast PhlegrÆan Plain before the eye is invested with Hellenic traditions and is the region of many scenes in the poems of Virgil and Homer. In the years of the first and second centuries this plain was dotted with the rich villas of the Roman aristocracy. Here, too, lay the celebrated Lacus Avernus, a volcanic lake which the ancients regarded as the entrance to Avernus itself. Truly it required little imagination to see here the approach to the infernal regions. The air was so poisonous that no bird could fly over the lake and live. Virgil’s scene of the descent of Æneas, guided by the sibyl, into the infernal depths is laid here; and near this lake are resorts of the latter-day tourist, known as the “Sibyl’s Grotto,” the “Grotto della Pace,” the “Bagni di Sibyl,” and the “Inferno.”

ANCIENT TEMPLE, BAIÆ

Baia, on the coast, was the Newport of Rome in the days of Augustus, Hadrian, Cicero, and Nero. It was then the most magnificent summer watering-place known to the world. The glory of the Roman Empire was reflected in the glory of Baia. In one of the Epistles of Horace a Roman noble is made to say: “Nothing in the world can be compared with the lovely bay of Baia.” Some five hundred years ago this region became so malarial that no one could dwell in it. Fragments and ruins still remain of the imposing baths and villas of the Roman occupancy. An old crater called the Capo Miseno is described by Virgil as the burial place of Misenus:—

CumÆ was the most ancient Greek colony of Italy on the coast, and the last survivors of the Tarquinii died here. This is the most classic of all these legendary coast towns near Naples, as it was here that the CumÆan Sibyl dwelt with the mysterious sibylline leaves,—the books that were carried to Rome. A colossal Acropolis was once here, fragments of whose walls are now standing; and the rocky foundation is honeycombed with secret passages and openings. It is here that Virgil’s “Grotto of the Sibyl” is supposed to have stood,—the grotto “whence resound as many voices, the oracles of the prophetess.”

The journey from Naples to Herculaneum is easily made by electric train cars within an hour, and while there is not much to see it is still an excursion well worth making. Dr. de Petra, of the chair of ArchÆology in the University of Naples, and formerly the Director of the National Museum, is warmly in favor of the proposed excavation of this buried city, as is Professor Spinazzola of the San Martino museum, who believes that Italy may well become one vast museum of antiquities. “As the theatre of Herculaneum is actually at present a subterranean excavation,” he observed, “why not excavate in a similar way the entire city underneath modern Resina? In this way a perfectly unique underground museum would be formed, which would have the merit of leaving magnificent Roman art treasures exactly in their proper places in the villas. Such a work ought to be perfectly practicable, with the resources of modern engineering, and would certainly be unique in the world.

“There would be no need to build a special museum for the objects discovered. Not only would this money be saved, but I feel convinced that so many visitors would be attracted as to more than pay for the maintenance. A subterraneous Herculaneum—surely a perfectly unique place of pilgrimage, just as it was nearly two thousand years ago—might be lighted by electric arc lights. I feel certain it would attract sight-seers from the ends of the world. At the same time work might go on in the open parts of the city.

“Pompeii was more of an industrial town, while Herculaneum was a favorite resort of the Roman patricians, who did not bring their treasures with them from their northern homes, but had them executed by Greek artists in the south.”

Under the mighty floods of lava d’acqua that buried Herculaneum doubtless lie temples, a splendid forum, magnificent villas, and most valuable art and literary treasures. In the eighteenth century excavations brought to light rare bronzes, mosaics, and papyri. The famous equestrian statue of Balbo, in the Naples Museum, was excavated from Herculaneum. Professor Lanciani and Commendatore Boni of Rome—the latter the present director of the Forum, succeeding Lanciani—believe that some of the richest art of ancient times may be found in Herculaneum; as does Professor Dall’Osso, inspector of excavations at Pompeii.

Herculaneum is held to have been founded by Hercules when he landed at Campania, returning from Iberia, some three hundred years B.C., and it was in 63 A.D. that it was destroyed. Of this cataclysm Pliny, the Younger, wrote:—

Dr. Charles Waldstein of Cambridge University, the eminent archÆologist, whose efforts toward initiating the excavation of Herculaneum were a notable event of 1906, thus writes of this buried city:—

The present descent into the theatre of Herculaneum is made by a flight of more than a hundred steps, slippery and cold, in total darkness save for the candle that is carried by the guide, and the visitor sees only the stone seats of the amphitheatre and the stage with the two vacant niches, the statues that filled each being now placed in the Museum in Naples.

The journey of thirteen miles from Naples to Pompeii is through a succession of densely populated villages that seem to be an integral part of Naples itself, for there is no line of demarcation. Portici, Torre del Greco, Torre dell’Annunziata, and others all blend with each other and with Naples. However familiar one has become with the literature of Pompeii, with both archÆological descriptions and imaginative interpretations in romance, and however familiar with its aspects he may have become from replicas in art museums, and from pictures, one can yet hardly approach this silent, phantom city without being thrilled by its deep significance. At a distance of a few miles over the gently undulating plain rises Vesuvius; one gazes on the paths where the rivers of molten fire must have rolled down. George S. Hillard, visiting Pompeii in 1853, thus described a house which the visitors of to-day study and admire:—

From Pompeii to Castellammare, the beautiful seaside summer resort of the Neapolitans, “a lover of nature could hardly find a spot of more varied attractions. Before him spreads the unrivalled bay,—dotted with sails and unfolding a broad canvas, on which the most glowing colors and the most vivid lights are dashed,—a mirror in which the crimson and gold of morning, the blue of noon, and the orange and yellow-green of sunset behold a livelier image of themselves,—a gentle and tideless sea, whose waves break upon the shore like caresses, and never like angry blows. Should he ever become weary of waves and languish for woods, he has only to turn his back upon the sea and climb the hills for an hour or two, and he will find himself in the depth of sylvan and mountain solitudes,—in a region of vines, running streams, deep-shadowed valleys, and broad-armed oaks,—where he will hear the ringdove coo, and see the sensitive hare dart across the forest aisles. A great city is within an hour’s reach; and the shadow of Vesuvius hangs over the landscape, keeping the imagination awake by touches of mystery and terror.”

The road to Sorrento, on a cliff a hundred feet or more above the sea, with mountains on the other side, towering up hundreds of feet high; a road cut in many places out of the solid rock, supported by galleries and viaducts from below,—a road that crosses deep gorges and chasms, always with the iridescent colors of the sea below,—and from Sorrento to Amalfi again, only, if possible, even more wonderful,—is there in the world any drive that can rival this picturesque and sublime route? Of it George Eliot wrote:—

Sorrento, with its memories and associations of Tasso, seems a place in which one cares only to sit on the balcony of the hotel overhanging the sea and watch the magic spectacle of a panorama unrivalled in all the beauty of the world. Flowers grow in riotous profusion; the fairy sail of a flitting boat is caught in the deepening dusk; the dark outline of Vesuvius is seen against the horizon; and orange orchards gleam against gray walls. Here Tasso was born, in 1544, fit haunt for a poet, with tangles of gay blossoms and the aerial line of mountain peaks. A low parapet borders the precipice, and over it one leans in the air heavy with perfume of locust blossoms. Has the lovely town anything beside sunsets and stars and poets’ dreams? Who could ask for more?

To La Cava,—to Amalfi,—still all a dream world!

How Amalfi sets itself to song and music! Who can enter it without hearing in the air Longfellow’s beautiful lines?—

If ever a region was dropped out of paradise designed, solely, for a poet’s day-dreams, it is Amalfi, and the even more beautiful Ravello just above. One fancies that it must have been in the mystic loveliness of this eyrie that the poet lost himself in a day-dream while Jupiter was dividing all the goods of the world. When he reproached the god for not saving a portion for him, Jupiter replied that all the goods were gone, it was true, but that his heaven was always open to the poet.

The ancient Amalfi, the city of activities and merchandise, is gone.

It is impossible to realize that Amalfi was once a flourishing city of Oriental trade. One looks in vain for any trace of ruin or shrine that still suggests the ancient splendors of activity. The strata of the past, so visible in other mediÆval cities, are not apparent here. The great cathedral is a most interesting study in the art of architecture,—its exquisite arcades, its delicate, lofty campanile glittering in the sun. The green-roofed cupola is a distinctive feature, and up the many flights of stairs the old Capuccini convent lies,—the unique, romantic hotel where the cells of the monks are now the rooms of the perpetual procession of guests. Does the wraith of Cardinal Capuano, who founded this convent, still wander in midnight hours through the dim cloisters? Does he still keep watch by the body of St. Andrew, the apostle, which he is said to have found and brought to the cathedral where the saint lies, as a saint should lie, gloriously entombed. St. Andrew was the patron saint of Amalfi, but at his death his body was carried from Patras to the Bosphorus, where it was placed in a church in Constantinople. The legend runs that Cardinal Capuano, being in Constantinople, entered the Church of the Holy Apostles to pray, and knowing that the body of the saint was in that city, he besought the heavenly powers to guide him to it. Rising from his devotions he was approached by an aged priest, who announced to the Cardinal that the object of his search was in that very church in which he was praying for guidance; and, aided by unseen powers, he was able to recover it and convey it to Amalfi. All Italian towns that respect themselves offer the allurement of an entombed saint and if, occasionally, the same identical saint does duty for more than one city, who is to decide the local genuineness of the claim? Nothing in all Italy is so curious as is this town of staircases instead of streets; of houses perched on the angles of impossible eyries suggesting that, as the Venetians go about in gondolas, so the Amalfians must have airships, or the wings of Icarus, with which to circle in air from their dwellings to the beach.

The precipitous gorges and dark ravines have on their crests low parapets of stone walls over which the visitor lingers and leans watching the bluest of seas lying fair under the bluest of skies. The main road,—there is only one,—descending from the hill to the water’s edge, makes its progress through a tunnel.

The old Amalfi, with its palaces, its arches and colonnades, lies under the sea. Just as the Pensione Caterina with its rose walks and terraces slipped into the sea in December of 1899, when two guests and several fishermen lost their lives, so the ancient Amalfi fell, its cliffs swallowed up in the waters below.

When, on a May evening, the white moonlight falls in cascades of silver sheen over terraces and sea, with Amalfi all alabaster and pearl like a dream city in the ethereal air; when the stars hang low in the skies and the fairy lights of the fishermen’s boats twinkle far out at sea; when the summer silence is suddenly thrilled by the melody of Neapolitan songs on the air, as if it were a veritable chant d’amour of sirens,—then does one believe in the buried city. These rich baritone voices are surely those of some singers of the buried ages. They are floating across the centuries since Amalfi had its pride and place among the great centres of activity. Atrani, Amalfi’s twin city, lies in the adjoining defile of the mountains which arch above them. The strange old houses are all dazzlingly white, transfigured under the moon to an unearthly loveliness.

The tragedy of the ruin of Amalfi is related by Petrarca, who was then living in Naples. It was in 1343 that a terrible cataclysm—an earthquake accompanied by a tempest—caused the destruction and the submergence of the city in the sea.

The believers in astrology will find their faith re-enforced by the fact that a bishop, who was also an astrologist, had read in the stars that in December of 1343 a terrible disaster would occur on the Naples coast. It arrived on schedule time. Petrarca, writing of it to Giovanni Colonna, states that in consequence of the prediction of the bishop, the people were in a condition of wild terror, endeavoring to repent of their sins and aspiring to a purer moral life. In this tide of religious emotion, ordinary occupations were neglected. On the very day of the calamity people were crowding the churches and kneeling in prayer. At night, after the people were in bed, the shock came. The sunset had been fair, the evening quiet, and the people were reassured. But they were awakened from sleep by the violence of falling walls and the terror of the tempest. Petrarcha was lodging in a convent, and he heard the monks calling to one another as they rushed from cell to cell. They hastily gathered crosses and sacred relics in their hands, and, preceded by the prior, sought the chapel, where they passed the night in prayer while the tempest raged outside. The sea broke against the rocks with a fury that seemed to tear the very foundations of the earth. The thunder pealed, and mingled with it were the shrieks of the frightened populace. The rain fell in torrents, deluging the city as if the sea itself were pouring on it. When the morning came the darkness still continued. In the harbor broken ships crashed helplessly together. The sands were strewn with mutilated dead bodies. Between Capri and the shore the sea ran mountains high. Amalfi was completely destroyed, and has never regained her prestige.

The cathedral at Ravello has traces of the rich art it once enshrined, and the rose gardens of the Palazzo Rufolo might enchant Hafiz himself. The terrace on the very crest of the mountain commands one of the wonderful views of the world. The cloistered colonnades of this old Saracenic palace reveal views even to the plains of PÆstum. There are rare mosaics and fragments of bronzes and marbles yet remaining.

The noble Greek ruins at PÆstum—the three temples—stand in all the majesty of utter desolation. They are overgrown with flowers, however, and they stand “dewy in the light of the rising dawn-star.”

The detour to PÆstum is full of significance. The massive columns of the temples stand like giants of the ages. “It is difficult,” writes John Addington Symonds, “not to return again and again to the beauty of coloring at PÆstum. Lying basking in the sun on a flat slab of stone, and gazing eastward, we overlook a foreground of dappled light and shadow; then come two stationary columns built, it seems, of solid gold, where the sunbeams strike along their russet surface. Between them lies the landscape, a medley first of brakefern and asphodel and feathering acanthus and blue spikes; while beyond and above is a glimpse of mountains, purple almost to indigo with cloud shadows, and flecked with snow.”

The sail from Amalfi to PÆstum is one incomparable in loveliness. The sunshine is all lurid gold. The faint, transparent blue haze fills all the defiles of the mountains; the cliffs disclose yawning caverns where vast clusters of stalactites hang; and as the boat floats toward Capri from the Sorrento promontory its rocky headlands rise and flame into purple and rose against the glowing sky. Across the Bay of Naples rises the great city. It stands in some subtle way reminding one of the scene where one

Capri is the idyllic island of prismatic light and shade, of gay and joyous life. Here Tiberius had his summer palace, and it was from these shores that he sent the historic letter which revolutionized the life of Sejanus. The letter—verbosa et grandis epistola—is still vivid in the historic associations of Rome. Capri is one of the favorite resorts both for winter and summer. Its former modest prices are now greatly increased, like all the latter-day expenses of Italy; but its beauty is perennial, and the artist and poet can still command there a seclusion almost impossible to secure elsewhere in Italy. The distinguished artist, Elihu Vedder of Rome, has a country house on Capri, and another well-known artist, Charles Caryl Coleman, makes this island his home. There are days—sometimes several days in succession—that the sea is high and the boats cannot run between Naples, Sorrento, and Capri; and the enforced seclusion is still the seclusion of the poet’s dream. For he shares it with Mithras, the “unconquered god of the sun,” whose cult influenced all the monarchs of Europe and who holds his court in the Grotto de Matrimonia. Into this grotto one descends by a flight of nearly two hundred feet; he strolls among the ruins of the villa of Tiberius, where the very air is still vital and vocal with those strange and tragic chapters of Roman life. The Emperor Augustus first founded here palaces and aqueducts. Tiberius, who retired to Capri in the year 27 A.D., had his architects build twelve villas, in honor of the gods, the largest of these being for Jupiter and known as the Villa Jovis. In 31 A.D. occurred that dramatic episode in Roman history, the fall of Sejanus, and six years later Tiberius died. The vast white marble baths he had built for him are now submerged on the coast, and boats glide over the spot where they stood. The Villa Jovis stood on a cliff seven hundred feet above the sea, and the traditions of the barbarities and atrocities that took place there still haunt the island. The natives apparently regard them as a certain title to fame, but the wise tourists persistently ignore horrors; life is made for joy, sweetness, and charm; it is far wiser to think on these things.

And there is charm and joy to spare on lovely Capri. “Sea-mists are frequent in the early summer mornings, swathing the cliffs of Capri and brooding on the smooth water till the day wind rises,” says John Addington Symonds. “Then they disappear like magic, rolling in smoke-wreaths from the surface of the sea, condensing into clouds and climbing the hills like Oceanides in quest of Prometheus, or taking their station on the watch towers of the world as in the chorus of the Nephelai. Such a morning may be chosen for the giro of the island. The Blue Grotto loses nothing of its beauty, but rather gains by contrast, when passing from dense fog you find yourself transported to a world of wavering subaqueous sheen. It is only through the very topmost arch that a boat can glide into this cavern; the arch itself spreads downward through the water so that all the light is transmitted from beneath and colored by the sea. Outside the magic world of pantomime there is nothing to equal these effects of blue and silver.... Numberless are the caves at Capri. The so-called Green Grotto has the beauty of moss agate in its liquid floor; the Red Grotto shows a warmer chord of color; and where there is no other charm to notice, endless beauty may be found in the play of sunlight upon roofs of limestone, tinted with yellow, orange, and pale pink, mossed over, hung with fern, and catching tones of blue or green from the still deeps beneath.... After a day upon the water it is pleasant to rest at sunset in the loggia above the sea. The Bay of Naples stretches far and wide in front, beautiful by reason of the long fine line descending from Vesuvius, dipping almost to a level, and then gliding up to join the highlands of the north. Now sun and moon begin to mingle: waning and waxing splendors. The cliffs above our heads are still blushing like the heart of some tea-rose; when lo, the touch of the huntress is laid upon those eastern pinnacles, and the horizon glimmers with her rising. Was it on such a night that Ferdinand of Aragon fled from his capital before the French, with eyes turned ever to the land he loved, chanting, as he leaned from his galley’s stern, that melancholy psalm, ‘Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain,’ and seeing Naples dwindle to a white blot on the purple shore?”

The roses of Capri would form a chapter alone. What walks there are where the air is all fragrance of acacia and rose and orange blossoms! Cascades of roses in riotous luxuriance festoon the old gray stone walls; the pale pink of the early dawn or of a shell by the seashore, the amber of the Banskeia rose, the great golden masses of the MarÉchal Niel, their faint yellow gleaming against the deep green leaves of myrtle and frond. The intense glowing scarlet of the gladiolus flames from rocks and roadside, and rosemary and the purple stars of hyacinths garland the ways, until one feels like journeying only in his singing robes. The deep, solemn green of stone pines forms canopies under the sapphire skies, and through their trunks one gazes on the sapphire sea. Is Capri the isle of Epipsychidion?

One walks among these rose-lined lanes, hearing in the very air that exquisite lyric by Louise Chandler Moulton:—

Monte Cassino is one of the most interesting inland points in Southern Italy,—the monastery lying on the crest of a hill nearly two thousand feet above the sea. Dante alludes to this in his Paradiso (XXII, XXXVII), and in the prose translation made by that eminent Dantean scholar, Professor Charles Eliot Norton, this assurance of Beatrice to Dante is thus rendered:—

Dante adds that the company “like a whirlwind gathered itself upward,” and that “the sweet lady urged me behind them, with only a sign, up over that stairway; so did her virtue overcome my nature. But never here below, where one mounts and descends naturally, was there motion so rapid that it could be compared unto my wing.”

The time was when Dante and Beatrice met, and he “was standing as one who within himself represses the point of his desire, and attempts not to ask, he so fears the too-much.” And then he heard: “If thou couldst see, as I do, the charity which burns among us thy thoughts would be expressed. But that thou through waiting mayst not delay thy high end, I will make answer to thee, even to the thought concerning which thou art so regardful.”

The vast monastery of Monte Cassino, lying on the crest of a hill nearly two thousand feet above the sea, has one of the most magnificent locations in all Italy. This monastery was founded (in 529 A.D.) by St. Benedict, on the site of an ancient temple to Apollo. Dante alludes to this also in the Paradiso (Canto XX, 11). As seen from below this monastery has the appearance of a vast castle, or fortress. Its location is one of the most magnificent in all Italy. The old entrance was a curious passage cut through solid rock and it is still used for princes and cardinals—no lesser dignitaries being allowed to pass through it—and within the past thirty years a new entrance has been constructed. In the passageway of the mediÆval entrance St. Benedict is said to have had his cell, and of recent years the German Benedictines, believing they had located the original cell, had it located, restored, and decorated with Egyptian frescoes. Several of the courts of this convent are connected by beautiful arcades with lofty arches, and adorned with statues, among which are those of St. Benedict and his sister, St. Scholastica. Still farther up the hill, upon the monastery, stands the church which is built on the site of the ancient one that was erected by St. Benedict himself—this present edifice dating back to 1637. Above the portals there is a long inscription in Latin relating the history of the monastery and the church. These portals are solid bronze, beautifully carved, with inlaid tablets of silver on which are inscribed a list of all the treasures of the abbey in the year 1006. The church is very rich in interior decoration of mosaics, rare marbles, and wonderful monumental memorials. Either side of the high altar are monuments to the Prince of Mignano (Guidone Fieramosca) and also to Piero de Medico. Both St. Benedict and his sister, St. Scholastica, are entombed under the high altar, which is one of the most elaborately sculptured in all the churches of Italy.

Among the pictorial decorations of this church are a series of fresco paintings by Luca Giordano, painted in the seventeenth century, representing the miracles wrought by St. Benedict. In the refectory is the “Miracle of the Loaves,” by Bassano; and in the chapel below are paintings by Mazzaroppi and Marco da Siena. Nothing can exceed the richness and beauty of the carvings of the choir stalls. These were executed in the seventeenth century by Coliccio.

The library of this monastery is renowned all over Europe—indeed, it is famous all over the world—for its preservation of ancient manuscripts done by the monks. These are carefully treasured in the archives. Among them is the record of a vision that came to the monk Alferic, in the twelfth century, on which it is believed that Dante founded his immortal “Divina Commedia;” there is also a fourteenth-century edition of Dante with margined notes; and the Commentary of Origen (on the Epistle to the Romans), dating back to the sixteenth century; there is the complete series of Papal bulls that were sent to the monastery of Monte Cassino from the eleventh century to the present time, many of them being richly illuminated and decorated with curiously elaborate seals. There is an autograph letter of the Sultan Mohammed II to Pope Nicholas IV, with the Pope’s reply,—the theme of the correspondence being the Pope’s threat of war. The imperial Mohammed seems to have been in terror of this, and in his epistle he expresses his willingness, and, indeed, his intention, to be converted as soon as he shall visit Rome! Apparently the Holy Father of that day laid little stress on the sincerity of this offer on the part of the Sultan. Here, too, is a wonderful correspondence between Don Erasmo Gattola, the historian of the abbey, and a great number of the celebrated men of his time; and there are hundreds of other letters, manuscripts, and documents relating to kings, nobles, emperors, and many of the nobility of the age.

In this monastery there is a most interesting collection of relics, in bronze, silver, gold, and rosso antico. The library proper contains some eleven thousand volumes, dating back to the very dawn of the discovery of the art of printing.

Mr. Longfellow, whose poet’s pen has pictured so many of the Italian landscapes and ancient monuments, thus set Monte Cassino to music, picturing the entire landscape of the Terra di Lavoro region:—

The monastery of Monte Cassino entertains, as its guests, for dinner or for a night, all gentlemen who visit it; but there is an alms box on the ancient gate into which the guest is supposed to place whatever contribution he pleases for the poor of the place. The Italian government, in 1866, declared this monastery to be a “Monumento Nazionale,” and it is now a famous ecclesiastical school with some two hundred students and a resplendent faculty of fifty learned monks under the direction of the Abbot. Some of the most celebrated prelates in Europe have been educated at Monte Cassino.

Quite near Monte Cassino, as Longfellow depicts in his lines, is Monte Aquino, a picturesque hillside where the “Doctor Angelicus,” Thomas Aquinas, was born (in 1224), the son of Count Landulf, in the Castel Roccasecca. He was educated in the monastery, and one finds himself recalling here these lines of Thomas William Parsons, entitled “Turning from Darwin to Thomas Aquinas:”—

It was at Aquinum, too, at the foot of Monte Aquino, Juvenal was born. Near the peaks of Monte Cassino and Monte Aquino is that of Monte Cairo, five thousand five hundred feet high, from whose summit one of the finest views of all southern Europe is attained. The Gulf of Gaeta, the valley of San Germano, the wild and romantic mountain region of the Abruzzi and a view, too, of the blue sea are in the panorama, bathed in the opalescent, gleaming lights that often invest the Italian landscape with jewelled splendor.

It might have been in this pictured dream-region that Hercules came to rest.

But still in unmeasured space, still beyond and afar and unattained, still lost in the unpenetrated realms of the poet’s fancy,—