LETTER III.

Account of Vesuvius—The Hermitage—The famous Lagrima Christi—Difficulties of the Path—Curious Appearance of the Old Crater—Odd Assemblage of Travellers—The New Crater—Splendid Prospect—Mr. Mathias, Author of the Pursuits of Literature—The Archbishop of Tarento.

Mounted upon asses much smaller than their riders, and with each a bare-legged driver behind, we commenced the ascent of Vesuvius. It was a troublesome path worn through the rough scoria of old eruptions, and after two hours’ toiling, we were glad to dismount at “the hermitage.” Here lives a capuchin friar on a prominent rib in the side of the volcano, the red-hot lava dividing above his dwelling every year or two, and coursing away to the valley in two rivers of fire on either side of him. He has been there twelve years, and supports himself, and probably half the brotherhood at the monastery, by sellingLagrima Christito strangers. It is a small white building with a little grass and a few trees about it, and looks like an island in the black waste of cinders and lava.

A shout from the guide was answered by the opening of a small window above, and the shaven crown of the old friar was thrust forth with a welcome and a request that we would mount the stairs to the parlour. He received us at the top, and gave us chairs around a plain board table, upon which he set several bottles of the far-famed wine of Vesuvius. One drinks it, and blesses the volcano that warmed the roots of the grape. It is a ripe, rich, full-bodied liquor, which “ascends me into the brain” sooner than any continental wine I have tasted. I never drank anything more delicious.

We remounted our asses and rode on, much more indifferent than before, to the roughness of the path. It strikes one like the road to the infernal regions. No grass, not a shrub, nothing but a wide mountain of cinders, black and rugged, diversified only by the deeper die of the newer streaks of lava. The eye wearied of gazing on it. We mounted thus for an hour or more, arriving at last at the base of a lofty cone whose sides were but slopes of deep ashes. We left our donkeys here in company with those of a large party that had preceded us, and made preparations to ascend on foot. The drivers unlaced their sashes, and passing them round the waists of the ladies, took the ends over their shoulders, and proceeded. Harder work could scarce be conceived. The feet had no hold, sinking knee-deep at every step, and we slipped back so much, that our progress was almost imperceptible. The ladies were soon tired out, although more than half dragged up by the guides. At every few steps there was a general cry for a halt, and we lay down in the warm ashes, quite breathless and discouraged.

In something more than an hour from the hermitage we reached the edge of the old crater. The scene here was very curious. A hollow, perhaps a mile round, composed entirely of scoria (like the cinders under a blacksmith’s window) contained in its centre the sharp new cone of the last eruption. Around in various directions, sat some thirty groups of travellers, with each their six or seven Italian guides, refreshing themselves with a lunch after the fatigue of the ascent. There were English, Germans, French, Russians, and Italians, each speaking their own language, and the largest party, oddly enough, was from the United States. As I was myself travelling with foreigners, and found my countrymen on Vesuvius unexpectedly, the mixture of nations appeared still more extraordinary. The combined heat of the sun and the volcano beneath us, had compelled the Italians to throw off half their dress, and they sat or stood leaning on their long pikes, with their brown faces and dark eyes glowing with heat, as fine models of ruffians as ever startled a traveller in this land of bandits. Eight or ten of them were grouped around a crack in the crater, roasting apples and toasting bread. There were several of these cracks winding about in different directions, of which I could barely endure the heat, holding my hand at the top. A stick thrust in a foot or more, was burnt black in a moment.

With another bottle or two of “lagrima Christi” and a roasted apple, our courage was renewed, and we picked our way across the old crater, sometimes lost in the smoke which steamed up through the cracks, and here and there treading on beautiful beds of crystals of sulphur. The ascent of the new cone was shorter, but very difficult. The ashes were so new and light, that it was like a steep sand-bank, giving discouragingly at the least pressure, and sinking till the next step was taken. The steams of sulphur as we approached the summit, were all but intolerable. The ladies coughed, the guides sneezed and called on the Madonna, and I never was more relieved than in catching the first clear draught of wind on the top of the mountain.

Here we all stood at last—crowded together on the narrow edge of a crater formed within the year, and liable every moment to be overwhelmed with burning lava. There was scarce room to stand, and the hot ashes burnt our feet as they sunk into it. The females of each party sunk to the ground, and the common danger and toil breaking down the usual stiff barrier of silence between strangers, the conversation became general, and the hour on the crater’s edge passed very agreeably.

A strong lad would just about throw a stone from one side to the other of the new crater. It was about forty feet deep, perhaps more, and one crust of sulphur lined the whole. It was half the time obscured in smoke, which poured in volumes from the broad cracks with which it was divided in every direction, and occasionally an eddy of wind was caught in the vast bowl, and for a minute its bright yellow surface was perfectly clear. There had not been an eruption for four or five months, and the abyss, which is, for years together, a pit of fire and boiling lava, has had time to harden over, and were it not for the smoking steams, one would scarce suspect the existence of the tremendous volcano slumbering beneath.

After we had been on the summit a few minutes, an English clergyman of my acquaintance, to our surprise, emerged from the smoke. He had been to the bottom for specimens of sulphur for his cabinet. Contrary to the advice of the guide, I profited by his experience, and disappearing in the flying clouds, reached the lowest depths of the crater with some difficulties of foothold and breath. The cracks, which I crossed twice, were so brittle as to break like the upper ice of a twice frozen pond beneath my feet, and the stench of the exhaling gases was nauseating beyond all the sulphuretted hydrogen I have ever known. The sensation was painfully suffocating from the moment I entered the crater. I broke off as many bits of the bright golden crystals from the crust as my confusion and failing strength would allow, and then remounted, feeling my way up through the smoke to the summit.

I can compare standing on the top of Vesuvius and looking down upon the bay and city of Naples, to nothing but mounting a peak in the infernal regions overlooking paradise. The larger crater encircles you entirely for a mile, cutting off the view of the sides of the mountain, and from the elevation of the new cone, you look over the rising edge of this black field of smoke and cinders, and drop the eye at once upon Naples, lying asleep in the sun, with its lazy sails upon the water, and the green hills enclosing it clad in the indescribable beauty of an Italian atmosphere. Beyond all comparison, by the testimony of every writer and traveller, the most beautiful scene in the world, the loveliest water, and the brightest land, lay spread out before us. With the stench of hot sulphur in our nostrils, ankle deep in black ashes, and a waste of smouldering cinders in every direction around us, the enjoyment of the view certainly did not want for the heightening of contrast.

We made our descent by jumps through the sliding ashes, frequently tumbling over each other, and retracing in five minutes the toil of an hour. Our donkeys stood tethered together on the herbless field of cinders, and we were soon in the clumsy saddles, and with a call at the hermitage, and a parting draught of wine with the friar, we reached our carriages at the little village of Resina in safety. The feet of the whole troop were in a wretched condition. The ladies had worn shoes, or slight boots, which were cut to pieces of course, and one very fine-looking girl, the daughter of an elderly French gentleman, had, with the usual improvidence of her nation, started in satin slippers. She was probably lamed for a month, as she insisted on persevering, and wrapped her feet in handkerchiefs to return.

We rode along the curve of the bay, by one of these matchless sunsets of Italy, and arrived at Naples at dark.

I have had the pleasure lately of making the acquaintance of Mr. Mathias, the distinguished author of the “Pursuits of Literature,” and the translator of Spenser and other English poets into Italian. About twenty years ago, this well-known scholar came to Italy on a desperate experiment of health. Finding himself better almost against hope, he has remained from year to year in Naples, in love with the climate and the language, until, at this day, he belongs less to the English than the Italian literature, having written various original poems in Italian, and translated into Italian verse, to the wonder and admiration of the scholars of the country. I found him this morning at his lodgings, in an old palace on the Pizzofalcone, buried in books as usual, and good-humoured enough to give an hour to a young man who had no claim on him beyond the ordinary interest in a distinguished scholar. He talked a great deal of America naturally, and expressed a very strong friendship for Mr. Everett, whom he had met on his travels, requesting me at the same time to take to him a set of his works as a remembrance. Mr. Mathias is a small man, of perhaps sixty years, perfectly bald, and a little inclined to corpulency. His head is ample, and would make a fine picture of a scholar. His voice is hurried and modest, and from long residence in Italy, his English is full of Italian idioms. He spoke with rapture of Da Ponte, calling me back as I shut the door, to ask for him. It seemed to give him uncommon pleasure that we appreciated and valued him in America.

I have looked over, this evening, a small volume, which he was kind enough to give me. It is entitled “Lyric Poetry, by T. I. Mathias; a new edition, printed privately.” It is dated 1832, and the poems were probably all written within the last two years. The shortest extract I can make is a “Sonnet to the Memory of Gray,” which strikes me as very beautiful.

“Lord of the various lyre! devout we turnOur pilgrim steps to thy supreme abode,And tread with awe the solitary roadTo grace with votive wreaths thy hallowed urn.Yet, as we wander through this dark sojourn,No more the strains we hear, that all abroadThy fancy wafted, as the inspiring GodPrompted ‘the thoughts that breathe, the words that burn.’

“Lord of the various lyre! devout we turn

Our pilgrim steps to thy supreme abode,

And tread with awe the solitary road

To grace with votive wreaths thy hallowed urn.

Yet, as we wander through this dark sojourn,

No more the strains we hear, that all abroad

Thy fancy wafted, as the inspiring God

Prompted ‘the thoughts that breathe, the words that burn.’

“But hark! a voice in solemn accents clearBursts from heaven’s vault that glows with temperate fire;Cease, mortal, cease to drop the fruitless tear;Mute though the raptures of his full-strung lyre,E’en his own warblings, lessened on his ear,Lost in seraphic harmony expire.”

“But hark! a voice in solemn accents clear

Bursts from heaven’s vault that glows with temperate fire;

Cease, mortal, cease to drop the fruitless tear;

Mute though the raptures of his full-strung lyre,

E’en his own warblings, lessened on his ear,

Lost in seraphic harmony expire.”

I have met also, at a dinner party lately, the celebrated antiquary, Sir William Gell. He, too, lives abroad. His work on Pompeii has become authority, and displays very great learning. He is a tall, large-featured man, and very commanding in his appearance, though lamed terribly with the gout.

A friend, whom I met at the same house, took me to see the archbishop of Tarento yesterday. This venerable man, it is well known, lost his gown for his participation in the cause of the Carbonari (the revolutionary conspirators of Italy). He has always played a conspicuous part in the politics of his time, and now, at the age of ninety, unlike the usual fate of meddlers in troubled waters, he is a healthy, happy, venerated old man, surrounded in his palace with all that luxury can give him. The lady who presented me took the privilege of intimate friendship to call at an unusual hour, and we found the old churchman in his slippers, over his breakfast, with two immense tortoise-shell cats, upon stools, watching his hand for bits of bread, and purring most affectionately. He looks like one of Titian’s pictures. His face is a wreck of commanding features, and his eye seems less to have lost its fire, than to slumber in its deep socket. His hair is snowy white—his forehead of prodigious breadth and height—and his skin has that calm, settled, and yet healthy paleness, which carries with it the history of a whole life of temperance and thought.

The old man rose from his chair with a smile, and came forward with a stoop and a feeble step, and took my two hands, as my friend mentioned my name, and looked me in the face very earnestly. “Your country,” said he, in Italian, “has sprung into existence like Minerva, full grown and armed. We look for the result.” He went on with some comments upon the dangers of republics, and then sent me to look at a portrait of Queen Giovanna, of Naples, by Leonardo da Vinci, while he sat down to talk with the lady who brought me. His secretary accompanied me as a cicerone. Five or six rooms, communicating with each other, were filled with choice pictures, every one a gift from some distinguished individual. The present king of France has sent him his portrait! Queen Adelaide has sent a splendid set of Sèvres china, with the portraits of her family; the Queen of Belgium had presented him with her miniature and that of Leopold; the King and Queen of Naples had half-furnished his house; and so the catalogue went on. It seemed as if the whole continent had united to honour the old man. While I was looking at a curious mosaic portrait of a cat, presented to him on the death of the original, by some prince whose name I have forgotten, he came to us, and said he had just learned that my pursuits were literary, and would present me with his own last work. He opened the drawer of a small bureau and produced a manuscript of some ten pages, written in a feeble hand. “This,” said he, “is an enumeration from memory of what I have not seen for many years, the classic spots about our beautiful city of Naples, and their associations. I have written it in the last month to wile away the time, and call up again the pleasure I have received many times in my life in visiting them.” I put the curious document in my bosom with many thanks, and we kissed the hand of the good old priest and left him. We found his carriage, with three or four servants in handsome livery, waiting for him in the court below. We had intruded a little on the hour for his morning ride.

I found his account of the environs merely a simple catalogue, with here and there a classic quotation from a Greek or Latin author, referring to them. I keep the MS. as a curious memento of one of the noblest relics I have seen of an age gone by.

LETTER IV.

The Fashionable World of Naples at the Races—Brilliant Show of Equipages—The King and his Brother—Rank and Character of the Jockeys—Description of the Races—The Public Burial Ground at Naples—Horrid and inhuman Spectacles—The Lazzaroni—The Museum at Naples—Ancient Relics from Pompeii—Forks not used by the Ancients—The Lamp lit at the time of our Saviour—The antique Chair of Sallust—The Villa of Cicero—The Balbi Family—Bacchus on the Shoulders of a Faun—Gallery of Dians, Cupids, Joves, Mercuries, and Apollos, Statue of Aristides, &c.

I have been all day at “the races.” The King of Naples, who has a great admiration for everything English, has abandoned the Italian custom of running horses without riders through the crowded street, and has laid out a magnificent course on the summit of a broad hill overlooking the city on the east. Here he astonishes his subjects withriddenraces, and it was to see one of the best of the season, that the whole fashionable world of Naples poured out to the campo this morning. The show of equipages was very brilliant, the dashing liveries of the various ambassadors, and the court and nobles of the kingdom, showing on the bright greensward to great effect. I never saw a more even piece of turf, and it was fresh in the just-born vegetation of spring. The carriages were drawn up in two lines, nearly half round the course, and for an hour or two before the races, the king and his brother, Prince Carlo, rode up and down between with the royal suite, splendidly mounted, the monarch himself upon a fiery grey blood-horse, of uncommon power and beauty. The director was an Aragonese nobleman, cousin to the king, and as perfect a specimen of the Spanish cavalier as ever figured in the pages of romance. He was mounted on a Turkish horse, snow-white, and the finest animal I ever saw; and he carried all eyes with him, as he dashed up and down, like a meteor. I like to see a fine specimen of a man, as I do a fine picture, or an excellent horse, and I think I never saw a prettier spectacle of its kind, than this wild steed from the Balkan and his handsome rider.

The king is tall, very fat, but very erect, of a light complexion, and a good horseman, riding always in the English style, trotting and rising in his stirrup. (He is about twenty-three, and so surprisingly like a friend of mine in Albany, that the people would raise their hats to them indiscriminately I am sure.) Prince Charles is smaller and less kingly in his appearance, dresses carelessly and ill, and is surrounded always in public with half a dozen young Englishmen. He is said to have been refused lately by the niece of the wealthiest English nobleman in Italy, a very beautiful girl of eighteen, who was on the ground to-day in a chariot and four.

The horses were led up and down—a delicate, fine-limbed sorrel mare, and a dark chestnut horse, compact and wiry—both English. The bets were arranged, the riders weighed, and, at the beat of a bell, off they went like arrows. Oh what a beautiful sight! The course was about a mile round, and marked with red flags at short distances; and as the two flying creatures described the bright green circle, spread out like greyhounds, and running with an ease and grace that seemed entirely without effort, the king dashed across the field followed by the whole court; the Turkish steed of Don Giovanni restrained with difficulty in the rear, and leaping high in the air at every bound, his nostrils expanded, and his head thrown up with the peculiar action of his race, while his snow-white mane and tail flew with every hair free to the wind. I had, myself, a small bet upon the sorrel. It was nothing—a pair of gloves with a lady—but as the horses came round, the sorrel a whip’s length ahead, and both shot by like the wind, scarce touching the earth apparently, and so even in their speed that the rider in blue might have kept his hand on the other’s back, the excitement became breathless. Away they went again, past the starting-post, pattering, pattering on with their slender hoofs, the sorrel still keeping her ground, and a thousand bright lips wishing the graceful creature success. Half way round the blue jacket began to whip. The sorrel still held her way, and I felt my gloves to be beyond peril. The royal cortège within the ring spurred across at the top of their speed to the starting-post. The horses came on—their nostrils open and panting, bounding upon the way with the same measured leaps a little longer and more eager than before; the rider of the sorrel leaning over the neck of his horse with a loose rein, and his whip hanging untouched from his wrist. Twenty leaps more! With every one the rider of the chestnut gave the fine animal a blow. The sorrel sprang desperately on, every nerve strained to the jump, but at the instant that they passed the carriage in which I stood, the chestnut was developing his wiry frame in tremendous leaps, and had already gained on his opponent the length of his head. They were lost in the crowd that broke instantly into the course behind them, and in a moment after a small red flag was waved from the stand. My favourite had lost!

The next race was ridden by a young Scotch nobleman, and the son of the former French ambassador, upon the horses with which they came to the ground. It was a match made up on the spot. The Frenchman was so palpably better mounted, that there was a general laugh when the ground was cleared and the two gentlemen spurred up and down to show themselves as antagonists. The Parisian himself stuffed his white handkerchief in his bosom, and jammed down his hat upon his head with a confident laugh, and among the ladies there was scarce a bet upon the grave Scotchman, who borrowed a stout whip, and rode his bony animal between the lines with a hard rein and his feet set firmly in the stirrups. The Frenchman generously gave him every advantage, beginning with the inside of the ring. The bell struck, and the Scotchman drove his spurs into his horse’s flanks and started away, laying on with his whip most industriously. His opponent followed, riding very gracefully, but apparently quite sure that he could overtake him at any moment, and content for the first round with merely showing himself off to the best advantage. Round came Sawney, twenty leaps ahead, whipping unmercifully still; the blood of his hired hack completely up, and himself as red in the face as an alderman, and with his eye fixed only on the road. The long-tailed bay of the Frenchman came after, in handsome style, his rider sitting complacently upright, and gathering up his reins for the first time to put his horse to his speed. The Scotchman flogged on. The Frenchman had disdained to take a whip, but he drove his heels hard into his horse’s sides soon after leaving the post, and leaned forward quite in earnest. The horses did remarkably well, both showing much more bottom than was expected. On they came, the latter gaining a little and working very hard. Sawney had lost his hat, and his red hair streamed back from his redder face; but flogging and spurring, with his teeth shut and his eyes steadily fixed on the road, he kept the most of his ground and rode away. They passed me a horse’s length apart, and the Scotchman’s whip flying to the last, disappeared beyond me. He won the race by a couple of good leaps at least. The king was very much amused, and rode off laughing heartily, and the discomfited Frenchman came back to his party with a very ill-concealed dissatisfaction.

A very amusing race followed between two midshipmen from an English corvette lying in the bay, and then the long lines of splendid equipages wheeled into train, and dashed off the ground. The road, after leaving the campo, runs along the edge of the range of hills, enclosing the city, and just below, within a high white wall, lies thepublic burial-place of Naples. I had read so many harrowing descriptions of this spot, that my curiosity rose as we drove along in sight of it, and requesting my friends to set me down, I joined an American of my acquaintance, and we started to visit it together.

An old man opened the iron door, and we entered a clean, spacious, and well-paved area, with long rows of iron rings in the heavy slabs of the pavement. Without asking a question, the old man walked across to the farther corner, where stood a moveable lever, and fastening the chain into the fixture, raised the massive stone cover of a pit. He requested us to stand back for a few minutes to give the effluvia time to escape, and then, sheltering our eyes with our hats, we looked in. You have read, of course, that there are three hundred and sixty-five pits in this place, one of which is opened every day for the dead of the city. They are thrown in without shroud or coffin, and the pit is sealed up at night for a year. They are thirty or forty feet deep, and each would contain perhaps two hundred bodies. Lime is thrown upon the daily heap, and it soon melts into a mass of garbage, and by the end of the year the bottom of the pit is covered with dry white bones.

It was some time before we could distinguish anything in the darkness of the abyss. Fixing my eyes on one spot, however, the outlines of a body became defined gradually, and in a few minutes, sheltering my eyes completely from the sun above, I could see all the horrors of the scene but too distinctly. Eight corpses, all of grown persons, lay in a confused heap together, as they had been thrown in one after another in the course of the day. The last was a powerfully made, gray old man, who had fallen flat on his back, with his right hand lying across and half covering the face of a woman. By his full limbs and chest, and the darker colour of his legs below the knee, he was probably one of the lazzaroni, and had met with a sudden death. His right heel lay on the forehead of a young man, emaciated to the last degree, his chest thrown up as he lay, and his ribs showing like a skeleton covered with skin. The close black curls of the latter, as his head rested on another body, were in such strong relief that I could have counted them. Off to the right, quite distinct from the heap, lay, in a beautiful attitude, a girl, as well as I could judge, of not more than nineteen or twenty. She had fallen on the pile and rolled or slid away. Her hair was very long, and covered her left shoulder and bosom; her arm was across her body, and if her mother had laid her down to sleep, she could not have disposed her limbs more decently. The head had fallen a little away to the right, and the feet, which were small, even for a lady, were pressed one against the other, as if she were about turning on her side. The sexton said that a young man had come with the body, and was very ill for some time after it was thrown in. We asked him if respectable people were brought here. “Yes,” he said, “many. None but the rich would go to the expense of a separate grave for their relations. People were often brought in handsome grave-clothes, but they were always stripped before they were left. The shroud, whenever there was one, was the perquisite of the undertakers.” And thus are flung into this noisome pit, like beasts, the greater part of the population of this vast city—the young and the old, the vicious and the virtuous together, without the decency even of a rag to keep up the distinctions of life! Can human beings thus be thrown away?—men like ourselves—women, children, like our sisters and brothers? I never was so humiliated in my life as by this horrid spectacle. I did not think a man—a felon even, or a leper—what you will that is guilty or debased—I did not think anything that had been human could be so recklessly abandoned. Pah! It makes one sick at heart! God grant I may never die at Naples!

While we were recovering from our disgust, the old man lifted the stone from the pit destined to receive the dead on the following day. We looked in. The bottom was strewn with bones, already fleshless and dry. He wished us to see the dead of several previous days, but my stomach was already tried to its utmost. We paid our gratuity, and hurried away. A few steps from the gate, we met a man bearing a coffin on his head. Seeing that we came from the cemetery, he asked us if we wished to look into it. He set it down, and the lid opening with a hinge, we were horror-struck with the sight ofseven dead infants! The youngest was at least three months old, the eldest perhaps a year; and they lay heaped together like so many puppies, one or two of them spotted with disease, and all wasted to baby-skeletons. While we were looking at them, six or seven noisy children ran out from a small house at the road-side and surrounded the coffin. One was a fine girl of twelve years of age, and instead of being at all shocked at the sight, she lifted the whitest of the dead things, and looked at its face very earnestly, loading it with all the tenderest diminutives of the language. The others were busy in pointing to those they thought had been prettiest, and none of them betrayed fear or disgust. In answer to a question of my friend about the marks of disease, the man rudely pulled out one by the foot that lay below the rest, and holding it up to show the marks upon it, tossed it again carelessly into the coffin. He had brought them from the hospital for infants, and they had died that morning. The coffin was worn with use. He shut down the lid, and lifting it again upon his head, went on to the cemetery, to empty it like so much offal upon the heap we had seen!

I have been struck repeatedly with the little value attached to human life in Italy. I have seen several of these houseless lazzaroni literally dying in the streets, and no one curious enough to look at them. The most dreadful sufferings, the most despairing cries, in the open squares, are passed as unnoticed as the howling of a dog. The day before yesterday, a woman fell in the Toledo, in a fit, frothing at the mouth, and livid with pain; and though the street was so crowded that one could make his way with difficulty, three or four ragged children were the only persons even looking at her.

I have devoted a week to the museum at Naples. It is a world! Anything like a full description of it would tire even an antiquary. It is one of those things (and there are many in Europe) that fortunatelycompeltravel. You must come abroad to get an idea of it.

The first day I buried myself among the curiosities found at Pompeii. After walking through the chambers and streets where they were found, I came to them naturally with an intense interest. I had visited a disentombed city, buried for seventeen centuries—had trodden in their wheel-tracks—had wandered through their dining-rooms, their chambers, their baths, their theatres, their market-places. And here were gathered in one place, their pictures, their statues, their cooking utensils, their ornaments, the very food as it was found on their tables! I am puzzled, in looking over my note-book, to know what to mention. The catalogue fills a printed volume.

A curious corner in one of the cases was that containing the articles found on the toilet of the wealthiest Pompeian’s wife. Here were pots of rouge, ivory pins, necklaces, ear-rings, bracelets, small silver mirrors, combs, ear-pickers, &c. &c. In the next case were two loaves of bread, found in a baker’s oven, and stamped with his name. Two large cases of precious gems, cameos and intaglios of all descriptions, stand in the centre of this room (among which, by the way, the most exquisitely done are two which one cannot look at without a blush). Another case is filled with eatables, found upon the tables—eggs, fish-bones, honey-comb, grain, fruits, &c. In the repository for ancient glass are several cinerary urns, in which the ashes of the dead are perfectly preserved; and numerous small glass lachrymatories, in which the tears of the survivors were deposited in the tombs.

The brazen furniture of Pompeii, the lamps particularly, are of the most curious and beautiful models. Trees, to which the lamps were suspended like fruit, vines, statues holding them in their hands, and numerous other contrivances, were among them, exceeding far in beauty any similar furniture of our time. It appears that the ancients did not know the use of the fork, as every other article of table service except this has been found here.

To conceive the interest attached to the thousand things in this museum, one must imagine a modern city, Boston for example, completely buried by an unexpected and terrific convulsion of nature. Its inhabitants mostly escape, but from various causes leave their city entombed, and in a hundred years the grass grows over it, and its very locality is forgotten. Near two thousand years elapse, and then a peasant, digging in the field, strikes upon some of its ruins, and it is unearthed just as it stands at this moment, with all its utensils, books, pictures, houses, and streets, in untouched preservation. What a subject for speculation! What food for curiosity! What a living and breathing chapter of history were this! Far more interesting is Pompeii. For the age in which it flourished and the characters who trod its streets, are among the most remarkable in history. This brazen lamp, shown to me to-day as a curiosity, was lit every evening in the time of Christ. The handsome chambers through which I wandered a day or two ago, and from which were brought this antique chair, were the home of Sallust, and doubtless had been honoured by the visits of Cicero (whose villa, half-excavated, is near by,) and by all the poets and scholars and statesmen of his time. One might speculate endlessly thus! And it is that which makes these lands of forgotten empires so delightful to the traveller. His mind is fed by the very air. He needs no amusements, no company, no books except the history of the place. The spot is peopled wherever he may stray, and the common necessities of life seem to pluck him from a far-reaching dream, in which he had summoned back receding ages, and was communing, face to face, with philosophers and poets and emperors, like a magician before his mirror. Pompeii and Herculaneum seem to me visions. I cannot shake myself and wake to their reality. My mind refuses to go back so far. Seventeen hundred years!

I followed the cicerone on, listening to his astonishing enumeration, and looking at everything as he pointed to it, in a kind of stupor. One has but a certain capacity. We may be over-astonished. Still he went on in the same every-day tone, talking as indifferently of this and that surprising antiquity as a pedlar of his two-penny wares. We went from the bronzes to the hall of the papyri—thence to the hall of the frescoes, and beautiful they were. Their very number makes them indescribable. The next morning we devoted to the statuary—and of this, if I knew where to begin, I should like to say a word or two.

First of all comes theBalbi family—father, mother, sons, and daughters. He was pro-consul of Herculaneum, and by the excellence of the statues, which are life itself for nature, he and his family were worth the artist’s best effort. He is a fine old Roman himself, and his wife is a tall, handsome woman, much better-looking than her daughters. The two Misses Balbi are modest-looking girls, and that is all. They were the high-born damsels of Herculaneum, however; and, if human nature has not changed in seventeen centuries, they did not want admirers who compared them to the Venuses who have descended with them to the “Museo Borbonico.” The eldest son is on horseback in armour. It is one of the finest equestrian statues in the world. He is a noble youth, of grave and handsome features, and sits the superb animal with the freedom of an Arab and the dignity of a Roman. It is a beautiful thing. If one had visited these Balbis, warm and living, in the time of Augustus, he could scarcely feel more acquainted with them than after having seen their statues as they stand before him here.

Come a little farther on! Bacchus on the shoulders of a faun—a child delighted with a grown-up playfellow. I have given the same pleasure to just such another bright “picture in little” of human beauty. It moves one’s heart to see it.

Pass now a whole gallery of Dians, Cupids, Joves, Mercuries, and Apollos, and come to the presence of Aristides—him whom the Athenians exiled because they were tired of hearing him calledThe Just. Canova has marked three spots upon the floor where the spectator should place himself to see to the best advantage this renowned statue. He stands wrapped in his toga, with his head a little inclined, as if in reflection, and in his face there is a mixture of firmness and goodness from which you read his character as clearly as if it were written across his forehead. It was found at Herculaneum, and is, perhaps, the simplest and most expressive statue in the world.

LETTER V.

Pæstum—Temple of Neptune—Departure from Elba—Ischia—Bay of Naples—The Toledo—The Young Queen—Conspiracy against the King—Neapolitans Visiting the Frigates—Leave the Bay—Castellamare.

Salvator Rosa studied the scenery of La Cava—the country between Pompeii and Salerno, on the road to Pæstum. It is a series of natively abrupt glens, but gemmed with cottages and hanging gardens, through which the wildness of every feature is as apparent as those of a savage through his trinkets. I was going to Pæstum with an agreeable party, and we came out upon the bluffs overhanging Salerno and the sea, an hour before sunset.

We darted down upon the little city lying in the bend of the bay, like a bird’s descent upon her nest. The road is cut through the side of the precipice, and runs to the bottom with a single sweep. We were to pass the night here, and go to Pæstum the next morning, see the ruins, and return here to sleep once more before returning to Naples.

We were five or six miles from Salerno before sunrise, and entering upon the dreary wastes of Calabria. The people we passed on the road were dressed in skins with the wool outside, and the country looked abandoned by nature itself, scarce a flourishing tree or a healthy plant within the range of the sight. We turned from the main road after a while, crossed a ruinous bridge, and tracked a broad, waste, gloomy plain, till my eyes ached with its barrenness. In an hour more, three stately temples began to rise in the distance, increasing in grandeur as we approached. A cluster of ruined tombs on the right—a grass-grown and broken city wall, through a rent of which passed the road—and we stood among them, in the desert, amid temples of inimitable beauty!

There seemed to be a general feeling in the party that silence and solitude were the spirits of the place. We separated and rambled about alone. The grand temple of Neptune stands in the centre. A temple in the midst of the sea could scarce seem more strangely placed. I stood on the high base of the altar within and looked out between the columns on every side. The Mediterranean slept in a broad sheet of silver on the west, and on every other side lay the bare, houseless desert, stretching away to the naked mountains on the south and east, with a barrenness that made the heart ache, while it filled the imagination with its singleness and grandeur. I descended to look at the columns. They were eaten through and through with snails and worms, and all of the same rich yellow so admirably represented in the cork models. But their size, and their noble proportion as they stand, cannot be represented. They seem the conception and the work of giant minds and hands. One’s soul rises among them.

We walked round the ruins for hours. A little towards the sea, lie the traces of an amphitheatre, filled with fragments of statuary, and parts of immense friezes and columns. We all assembled at last in the great temple, and sat down on the immense steps towards the east in the shadow of the pediment, speculating on the wonderful fabric above us, till we were summoned to start on our return. To think that these very temples were visited as venerable antiquities in the time of Christ! What events have these worm-eaten columns outlived! What moths of an hour, in comparison, are we?

It is difficult to conceive how three such magnificent structures, so near the sea, the remains of a great city, should have been lost for ages. A landscape-painter, searching for the picturesque, came suddenly upon them fifty years ago, and astonished the world with his discovery! It adds to their interest now.

We turned our horses’ heads towards Naples. What an extraordinary succession of objects were embraced in the fifty miles between—Pæstum, Pompeii, Vesuvius, Herculaneum!—and, added to these, the thousand classic associations of the lovely coast along Sorrento! The value of life deepens incalculably with the privileges of travel.

Written on board the frigate “United States.”—We set sail from Elba on the 3rd of June. The inhabitants, all of whom, I presume, had been on board of the ships, were standing along the walls and looking from the embrasures of the fortress to see us off. It was a clear summer’s morning, without much wind, and we crept slowly off from the point, gazing up at the windows of Napoleon’s house as we passed under, and laying on our course for the shore of Italy. We soon got into the fresher breeze of the open sea, and the low white line of villages on the Tuscan coast appeared more distant, till, with a glass, we could see the people at the windows watching our progress. Fishing-boats were drawn up on shore, and the idle sailors were leaning in the half shadow which they afforded; but with the almost total absence of trees, and the glaring white of the walls, we were content to be out upon the cool sea, passing town after town unvisited. Island after island was approached and left during the day; barren rocks with only a lighthouse to redeem their nakedness: and in the evening at sunset we were in sight at Ischia, the towering isle in the bosom of the bay of Naples. The band had been called as usual at seven, and were playing a delightful waltz upon the quarter-deck; the sea was even, and just crisped by the breeze from the Italian shore; the sailors were leaning on the guns listening; the officers clustered in their various places; and the murmur of the foam before the prow was just audible in the lighter passages of the music. Above and in the west glowed the eternal but untiring teints of the summer sky of the Mediterranean, a gradually fading gold from the edge of the sea to the zenith, and the early star soon twinkled through it, and the air dampened to a reviving freshness. I do not know that a mere scene like this, without incident, will interest a reader, but it was so delightful to myself, that I have described it for the mere pleasure of dwelling on it. The desert stillness and loneliness of the sea, the silent motion of the ship, and the delightful music swelling beyond the bulwarks and dying upon the wind, were such singularly combined circumstances! It was a moving paradise in the waste of the ocean.

Sail was shortened last night, and we lay-to under the shore of Ischia, to enter the bay of Naples by daylight. As the morning mist lifted a little, the peculiar shape of Vesuvius, the boldness of the island of Capri, the sweeping curves of Baiæ and Portici, and the small promontory which lifts Naples toward the sea, rose like the features of a familiar friend to my eye. It would be difficult to have seen Naples without having a memory steeped in its beauty. A fair wind set us straight into the bay, and one by one the towns on its shore, the streaks of lava on the sides of its volcano, and, soon after, the houses of friends on the street of the Chiaga became distinguishable to the eye. There had been a slight eruption since I was here; but now, as before, there was scarce a puff of smoke to be seen rising from Vesuvius. My little specimen of sulphur which I took from the just hardened bosom of the crater now destroyed, lies before me on the table as I write, more valued than ever, since its bed has been melted and blown into the air. The new and lighter-coloured streak on the right of the mountain, would have informed me of itself that the lava had issued since I was here. The sound of bells and the hum of the city reached our ears, and running in between the mole and the castle, the anchor was dropped, and the ship surrounded with boats from the shore.

The heat kept us on board till the evening, and with several of the officers I landed and walked up the Toledo as the lazzaroni were stirring from their sleep under the walls of the houses. With the exception of the absence of the English, who have mostly flitted to the baths, Naples was the same place as ever, busy, dirty, and gay. Her thousand beggars were still “dying of hunger,” and telling it to the passenger in the same exhausted tone; her gay carriages and skeleton hacks were still flying up and down, and dashing at and over you for your custom; the cows and goats were driven about to be milked in the street; the lemonade-sellers stood in their stalls; the money changers at their tables in the open squares; puncinello squeaked and beat his mistress at every corner; the awnings of the cafés covered hundreds of smokers and loungers; and this gay, miserable, homeless, out-of-doors people, seemed as degraded and thoughtless, and, it must be owned, as insensibly happy as before. You would think, to walk through the Toledo of Naples, that two-thirds of its crowd of wretches, and all its horses and dogs, were at their last extremity, and yet they go on, and, I was told by an Englishman resident here, who has been accustomed to meet always the same faces, seem never to change or disappear, suffering, and groaning, and dragging up and down, shocking the eye and sickening the heart of the inexperienced stranger for years and years.

We passed theprima sera, the first part of the evening, as most men in Italy pass it, eating ices at the thronged café, and at nine we went to the splendid theatre of San Carlo to seeLa Sonnambula. The king and queen were present, with the dissolute old queen-mother and her gray-headed lover. I was instantly struck with the alteration in the appearance of the young queen. When I was here three months ago, she was just married, and appeared frequently in the public walks, and a fresher or brighter face I never had seen. She was acknowledged the most beautiful woman in Naples, and had, what is very much valued in this land of pale brunettes, a clear rosy cheek, and lips as bright as a child’s. She is now thin and white, and looks to me like a person fading with a rapid consumption.

Several conspiracies have been detected within a month or two, the last of which was very nearly successful. The day before we arrived, two officers in the royal army, men of high rank, had shot themselves, each putting a pistol to the other’s breast, believing discovery inevitable. One died instantly, and the other lingers to-day without any hope of recovery. The king was fired at on parade the day previous, which was supposed to have been the first step, but the plot had been checked by partial disclosure, hence the tragedy I have just related.

The ships have been thronged with visitors during the two or three days we have lain at Naples, among whom have been the prime minister and his family. Orders are given to admit every one on board that wishes to come, and the decks, morning and evening, present the most motley scene imaginable. Cameo and lava sellers expose their wares on the gun-carriages, surrounded by the midshipmen—Jews and fruit-sellers hail the sailors through the ports—boats full of chickens and pigs, all in loud outcry, are held up to view with a recommendation in broken English—contadini in their best dresses walk up and down, smiling on the officers, and wondering at the cleanliness of the decks, and the elegance of the captain’s cabin—Punch plays his tricks under the gun-deck ports—bands of wandering musicians sing and hold out their hats, as they row around, and all is harmony and amusement. In the evening, it is pleasanter still, for the band is playing, and the better class of people come off from the shore, and boats filled with these pretty, dark-eyed Neapolitans, row round and round the ship, eying the officers as they lean over the bulwarks, and ready with but half a nod to make acquaintance and come up the gangway. I have had a private pride of my own in showing the frigate as American to many of my foreign friends. One’s nationality becomes nervously sensitive abroad, and in the beauty and order of the ships, the manly elegance of the officers, and the general air of superiority and decision throughout, I have found food for some of the highest feelings of gratification of which I am capable.

We weighed anchor yesterday morning (the twentieth of June), and stood across the bay for Castellamare. Running close under Vesuvius, we passed Portici, Torre del Greco, and Pompeii, and rounded-to in the little harbour of this fashionable watering-place soon after noon. Castellamare is about fifteen miles from Naples, and in the summer months it is crowded with those of the fashionables who do not make a northern tour. The shore rises directly from the sea into a high mountain, on the side of which the king has a country-seat, and around it hang, on terraces, the houses of the English. Strong mineral springs abound on the slope.

We landed directly, and mounting the donkeys waiting on the pier, started to make the round of the village walks. English maids with their prettily dressed and rosy children, and English ladies and gentlemen, mounted, like ourselves on donkeys, met us at every turn as we wound up the shady and zigzag roads to the palace. The views became finer as we ascended, till we look down into Pompeii, which was but four miles off, and away toward Naples, following the white road with the eye along the shore of the sea. The paths were in fine order, and as beautiful as green trees, and shade, and living fountains, crossing the road continually, could make them. In the neighbourhood of the royal casino, the ground was planted more like a park, and the walks were terminated with artificial fountains, throwing up their bright waters amid statuary and over grottoes, and here we met the idlers of the place of all nations, enjoying the sunset. I met an acquaintance or two, and felt the yearning unwillingness to go away which I have felt on every spot almost of this “delicious land.”

We set sail again with the night-breeze, and at this moment are passing between Ischia and Capri, running nearly on our course for Sicily. We shall probably be at Palermo to-morrow. The ship’s bell beats ten, and the lights are ordered out, and under this imperative government, I must say, “good night!”

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