It is not always easy, when one stands upon the highlands which encircle the Piano di Sorrento, in some conditions of the atmosphere, to tell where the sea ends and the sky begins. It seems. practicable, at such times, for one to take ship and sail up into heaven. I have often, indeed, seen white sails climbing up there, and fishing-boats, at secure anchor I suppose, riding apparently like balloons in the hazy air. Sea and air and land here are all kin, I suspect, and have certain immaterial qualities in common. The contours of the shores and the outlines of the hills are as graceful as the mobile waves; and if there is anywhere ruggedness and sharpness, the atmosphere throws a friendly veil over it, and tones all that is inharmonious into the repose of beauty.
The atmosphere is really something more than a medium: it is a drapery, woven, one could affirm, with colors, or dipped in oriental dyes. One might account thus for the prismatic colors I have often seen on the horizon at noon, when the sun was pouring down floods of clear golden light. The simple light here, if one could ever represent it by pen, pencil, or brush, would draw the world hither to bathe in it. It is not thin sunshine, but a royal profusion, a golden substance, a transforming quality, a vesture of splendor for all these Mediterranean shores.
The most comprehensive idea of Sorrento and the great plain on which it stands, imbedded almost out of sight in foliage, we obtained one day from our boat, as we put out round the Capo di Sorrento, and stood away for Capri. There was not wind enough for sails, but there were chopping waves, and swell enough to toss us about, and to produce bright flashes of light far out at sea. The red-shirted rowers silently bent to their long sweeps; and I lay in the tossing bow, and studied the high, receding shore. The picture is simple, a precipice of rock or earth, faced with masonry in spots, almost of uniform height from point to point of the little bay, except where a deep gorge has split the rock, and comes to the sea, forming a cove, where a cluster of rude buildings is likely to gather. Along the precipice, which now juts and now recedes a little, are villas, hotels, old convents, gardens, and groves. I can see steps and galleries cut in the face of the cliff, and caves and caverns, natural and artificial: for one can cut this tufa with a knife; and it would hardly seem preposterous to attempt to dig out a cool, roomy mansion in this rocky front with a spade.
As we pull away, I begin to see the depth of the plain of Sorrento, with its villages, walled roads, its groves of oranges, olives, lemons, its figs, pomegranates, almonds, mulberries, and acacias; and soon the terraces above, where the vineyards are planted, and the olives also. These terraces must be a brave sight in the spring, when the masses of olives are white as snow with blossoms, which fill all the plain with their sweet perfume. Above the terraces, the eye reaches the fine outline of the hill; and, to the east, the bare precipice of rock, softened by the purple light; and turning still to the left, as the boat lazily swings, I have Vesuvius, the graceful dip into the plain, and the rise to the heights of Naples, Nisida, the shining houses of Pozzuoli, Cape Misenum, Procida, and rough Ischia. Rounding the headland, Capri is before us, so sharp and clear that we seem close to it; but it is a weary pull before we get under its rocky side.
Returning from Capri late in the afternoon, we had one of those effects which are the despair of artists. I had been told that twilights are short here, and that, when the sun disappeared, color vanished from the sky. There was a wonderful light on all the inner bay, as we put off from shore. Ischia was one mass of violet color, As we got from under the island, there was the sun, a red ball of fire, just dipping into the sea. At once the whole horizon line of water became a bright crimson, which deepened as evening advanced, glowing with more intense fire, and holding a broad band of what seemed solid color for more than three quarters of an hour. The colors, meantime, on the level water, never were on painter's palette, and never were counterfeited by the changeable silks of eastern looms; and this gorgeous spectacle continued till the stars came out, crowding the sky with silver points.
Our boatmen, who had been reinforced at Capri, and were inspired either by the wine of the island or the beauty of the night, pulled with new vigor, and broke out again and again into the wild songs of this coast. A favorite was the Garibaldi song, which invariably ended in a cheer and a tiger, and threw the singers into such a spurt of excitement that the oars forgot to keep time, and there was more splash than speed. The singers all sang one part in minor: there was no harmony, the voices were not rich, and the melody was not remarkable; but there was, after all, a wild pathos in it. Music is very much here what it is in Naples. I have to keep saying to myself that Italy is a land of song; else I should think that people mistake noise for music.
The boatmen are an honest set of fellows, as Italians go; and, let us hope, not unworthy followers of their patron, St. Antonino, whose chapel is on the edge of the gorge near the Villa Nardi. A silver image of the saint, half life-size, stands upon the rich marble altar. This valuable statue has been, if tradition is correct, five times captured and carried away by marauders, who have at different times sacked Sorrento of its marbles, bronzes, and precious things, and each time, by some mysterious providence, has found its way back again,—an instance of constancy in a solid silver image which is worthy of commendation. The little chapel is hung all about with votive offerings in wax of arms, legs, heads, hands, effigies, and with coarse lithographs, in frames, of storms at sea and perils of ships, hung up by sailors who, having escaped the dangers of the deep, offer these tributes to their dear saint. The skirts of the image are worn quite smooth with kissing. Underneath it, at the back of the altar, an oil light is always burning; and below repose the bones of the holy man.
The whole shore is fascinating to one in an idle mood, and is good mousing-ground for the antiquarian. For myself, I am content with one generalization, which I find saves a world of bother and perplexity: it is quite safe to style every excavation, cavern, circular wall, or arch by the sea, a Roman bath. It is the final resort of the antiquarians. This theory has kept me from entering the discussion, whether the substructions in the cliff under the Poggio Syracuse, a royal villa, are temples of the Sirens, or caves of Ulysses. I only know that I descend to the sea there by broad interior flights of steps, which lead through galleries and corridors, and high, vaulted passages, whence extend apartments and caves far reaching into the solid rock. At intervals are landings, where arched windows are cut out to the sea, with stone seats and protecting walls. At the base of the cliff I find a hewn passage, as if there had once been here a way of embarkation; and enormous fragments of rocks, with steps cut in them, which have fallen from above.
Were these anything more than royal pleasure galleries, where one could sit in coolness in the heat of summer and look on the bay and its shipping, in the days when the great Roman fleet used to lie opposite, above the point of Misenum? How many brave and gay retinues have swept down these broad interior stairways, let us say in the picturesque Middle Ages, to embark on voyages of pleasure or warlike forays! The steps are well worn, and must have been trodden for ages, by nobles and robbers, peasants and sailors, priests of more than one religion, and traders of many seas, who have gone, and left no record. The sun was slanting his last rays into the corridors as I musingly looked down from one of the arched openings, quite spellbound by the strangeness and dead silence of the place, broken only by the plash of waves on the sandy beach below. I had found my way down through a wooden door half ajar; and I thought of the possibility of some one's shutting it for the night, and leaving me a prisoner to await the spectres which I have no doubt throng here when it grows dark. Hastening up out of these chambers of the past, I escaped into the upper air, and walked rapidly home through the narrow orange lanes.
The tiptop of the Villa Nardi is a flat roof, with a wall about it three feet high, and some little turreted affairs, that look very much like chimneys. Joseph, the gray-haired servitor, has brought my chair and table up here to-day, and here I am, established to write.
I am here above most earthly annoyances, and on a level with the heavenly influences. It has always seemed to me that the higher one gets, the easier it must be to write; and that, especially at a great elevation, one could strike into lofty themes, and launch out, without fear of shipwreck on any of the earthly headlands, in his aerial voyages. Yet, after all, he would be likely to arrive nowhere, I suspect; or, to change the figure, to find that, in parting with the taste of the earth, he had produced a flavorless composition. If it were not for the haze in the horizon to-day, I could distinguish the very house in Naples—that of Manso, Marquis of Villa,—where Tasso found a home, and where John Milton was entertained at a later day by that hospitable nobleman. I wonder, if he had come to the Villa Nardi and written on the roof, if the theological features of his epic would have been softened, and if he would not have received new suggestions for the adornment of the garden. Of course, it is well that his immortal production was not composed on this roof, and in sight of these seductive shores, or it would have been more strongly flavored with classic mythology than it is. But, letting Milton go, it may be necessary to say that my writing to-day has nothing to do with my theory of composition in an elevated position; for this is the laziest place that I have yet found.
I am above the highest olive-trees, and, if I turned that way, should look over the tops of what seems a vast grove of them, out of which a white roof, and an old time-eaten tower here and there, appears; and the sun is flooding them with waves of light, which I think a person delicately enough organized could hear beat. Beyond the brown roofs of the town, the terraced hills arise, in semicircular embrace of the plain; and the fine veil over them is partly the natural shimmer of the heat, and partly the silver duskiness of the olive-leaves. I sit with my back to all this, taking the entire force of this winter sun, which is full of life and genial heat, and does not scorch one, as I remember such a full flood of it would at home. It is putting sweetness, too, into the oranges, which, I observe, are getting redder and softer day by day. We have here, by the way, such a habit of taking up an orange, weighing it in the hand, and guessing if it is ripe, that the test is extending to other things. I saw a gentleman this morning, at breakfast, weighing an egg in the same manner; and some one asked him if it was ripe.
It seems to me that the Mediterranean was never bluer than it is to-day. It has a shade or two the advantage of the sky: though I like the sky best, after all; for it is less opaque, and offers an illimitable opportunity of exploration. Perhaps this is because I am nearer to it. There are some little ruffles of air on the sea, which I do not feel here, making broad spots of shadow, and here and there flecks and sparkles. But the schooners sail idly, and the fishing-boats that have put out from the marina float in the most dreamy manner. I fear that the fishermen who have made a show of industry, and got away from their wives, who are busily weaving nets on shore, are yielding to the seductions of the occasion, and making a day of it. And, as I look at them, I find myself debating which I would rather be, a fisherman there in the boat, rocked by the swell, and warmed by the sun, or a friar, on the terrace of the garden on the summit of Deserto, lying perfectly tranquil, and also soaked in the sun. There is one other person, now that I think of it, who may be having a good time to-day, though I do not know that I envy him. His business is a new one to me, and is an occupation that one would not care to recommend to a friend until he had tried it: it is being carried about in a basket. As I went up the new Massa road the other day, I met a ragged, stout, and rather dirty woman, with a large shallow basket on her head. In it lay her husband, a large man, though I think a little abbreviated as to his legs. The woman asked alms. Talk of Diogenes in his tub! How must the world look to a man in a basket, riding about on his wife's head? When I returned, she had put him down beside the road in the sun, and almost in danger of the passing vehicles. I suppose that the affectionate creature thought that, if he got a new injury in this way, his value in the beggar market would be increased. I do not mean to do this exemplary wife any injustice; and I only suggest the idea in this land, where every beggar who is born with a deformity has something to thank the Virgin for. This custom of carrying your husband on your head in a basket has something to recommend it, and is an exhibition of faith on the one hand, and of devotion on the other, that is seldom met with. Its consideration is commended to my countrywomen at home. It is, at least, a new commentary on the apostolic remark, that the man is the head of the woman. It is, in some respects, a happy division of labor in the walk of life: she furnishes the locomotive power, and he the directing brains, as he lies in the sun and looks abroad; which reminds me that the sun is getting hot on my back. The little bunch of bells in the convent tower is jangling out a suggestion of worship, or of the departure of the hours. It is time to eat an orange.
Vesuvius appears to be about on a level with my eyes and I never knew him to do himself more credit than to-day. The whole coast of the bay is in a sort of obscuration, thicker than an Indian summer haze; and the veil extends almost to the top of Vesuvius. But his summit is still distinct, and out of it rises a gigantic billowy column of white smoke, greater in quantity than on any previous day of our sojourn; and the sun turns it to silver. Above a long line of ordinary looking clouds, float great white masses, formed of the sulphurous vapor. This manufacture of clouds in a clear, sunny day has an odd appearance; but it is easy enough, if one has such a laboratory as Vesuvius. How it tumbles up the white smoke! It is piled up now, I should say, a thousand feet above the crater, straight into the blue sky,—a pillar of cloud by day. One might sit here all day watching it, listening the while to the melodious spring singing of the hundreds of birds which have come to take possession of the garden, receiving southern reinforcements from Sicily and Tunis every morning, and think he was happy. But the morning has gone; and I have written nothing.
If ever a northern wanderer could be suddenly transported to look down upon the Piano di Sorrento, he would not doubt that he saw the Garden of the Hesperides. The orange-trees cannot well be fuller: their branches bend with the weight of fruit. With the almond-trees in full flower, and with the silver sheen of the olive leaves, the oranges are apples of gold in pictures of silver. As I walk in these sunken roads, and between these high walls, the orange boughs everywhere hang over; and through the open gates of villas I look down alleys of golden glimmer, roses and geraniums by the walk, and the fruit above,—gardens of enchantment, with never a dragon, that I can see, to guard them.
All the highways and the byways, the streets and lanes, wherever I go, from the sea to the tops of the hills, are strewn with orange-peel; so that one, looking above and below, comes back from a walk with a golden dazzle in his eyes,—a sense that yellow is the prevailing color. Perhaps the kerchiefs of the dark-skinned girls and women, which take that tone, help the impression. The inhabitants are all orange-eaters. The high walls show that the gardens are protected with great care; yet the fruit seems to be as free as apples are in a remote New England town about cider-time.
I have been trying, ever since I have been here, to ascertain the price of oranges; not for purposes of exportation, nor yet for the personal importation that I daily practice, but in order to give an American basis of fact to these idle chapters. In all the paths I meet, daily, girls and boys bearing on their heads large baskets of the fruit, and little children with bags and bundles of the same, as large as they can stagger under; and I understand they are carrying them to the packers, who ship them to New York, or to the depots, where I see them lying in yellow heaps, and where men and women are cutting them up, and removing the peel, which goes to England for preserves. I am told that these oranges are sold for a couple of francs a hundred. That seems to me so dear that I am not tempted into any speculation, but stroll back to the Tramontano, in the gardens of which I find better terms.
The only trouble is to find a sweet tree; for the Sorrento oranges are usually sour in February; and one needs to be a good judge of the fruit, and know the male orange from the female, though which it is that is the sweeter I can never remember (and should not dare to say, if I did, in the present state of feeling on the woman question),—or he might as well eat a lemon. The mercenary aspect of my query does not enter in here. I climb into a tree, and reach out to the end of the branch for an orange that has got reddish in the sun, that comes off easily and is heavy; or I tickle a large one on the top bough with a cane pole; and if it drops readily, and has a fine grain, I call it a cheap one. I can usually tell whether they are good by splitting them open and eating a quarter. The Italians pare their oranges as we do apples; but I like best to open them first, and see the yellow meat in the white casket. After you have eaten a few from one tree, you can usually tell whether it is a good tree; but there is nothing certain about it,—one bough that gets the sun will be better than another that does not, and one half of an orange will fill your mouth with more delicious juices than the other half.
The oranges that you knock off with your stick, as you walk along the lanes, don't cost anything; but they are always sour, as I think the girls know who lean over the wall, and look on with a smile: and, in that, they are more sensible than the lively dogs which bark at you from the top, and wake all the neighborhood with their clamor. I have no doubt the oranges have a market price; but I have been seeking the value the gardeners set on them themselves. As I walked towards the heights, the other morning, and passed an orchard, the gardener, who saw my ineffectual efforts, with a very long cane, to reach the boughs of a tree, came down to me with a basketful he had been picking. As an experiment on the price, I offered him a two-centime piece, which is a sort of satire on the very name of money,—when he desired me to help myself to as many oranges as I liked. He was a fine-looking fellow, with a spick-span new red Phrygian cap; and I had n't the heart to take advantage of his generosity, especially as his oranges were not of the sweetest. One ought never to abuse generosity.
Another experience was of a different sort, and illustrates the Italian love of bargaining, and their notion of a sliding scale of prices. One of our expeditions to the hills was one day making its long, straggling way through the narrow street of a little village of the Piano, when I lingered behind my companions, attracted by a handcart with several large baskets of oranges. The cart stood untended in the street; and selecting a large orange, which would measure twelve inches in circumference, I turned to look for the owner. After some time a fellow got from the open front of the neighboring cobbler's shop, where he sat with his lazy cronies, listening to the honest gossip of the follower of St. Crispin, and sauntered towards me.
"How much for this?" I ask.
"One franc, signor," says the proprietor, with a polite bow, holding up one finger.
I shake my head, and intimate that that is altogether too much, in fact, preposterous.
The proprietor is very indifferent, and shrugs his shoulders in an amiable manner. He picks up a fair, handsome orange, weighs it in his hand, and holds it up temptingly. That also is one, franc.
I suggest one sou as a fair price, a suggestion which he only receives with a smile of slight pity, and, I fancy, a little disdain. A woman joins him, and also holds up this and that gold-skinned one for my admiration.
As I stand, sorting over the fruit, trying to please myself with size, color, and texture, a little crowd has gathered round; and I see, by a glance, that all the occupations in that neighborhood, including loafing, are temporarily suspended to witness the trade. The interest of the circle visibly increases; and others take such a part in the transaction that I begin to doubt if the first man is, after all, the proprietor.
At length I select two oranges, and again demand the price. There is a little consultation and jabber, when I am told that I can have both for a franc. I, in turn, sigh, shrug my shoulders, and put down the oranges, amid a chorus of exclamations over my graspingness. My offer of two sous is met with ridicule, but not with indifference. I can see that it has made a sensation. These simple, idle children of the sun begin to show a little excitement. I at length determine upon a bold stroke, and resolve to show myself the Napoleon of oranges, or to meet my Waterloo. I pick out four of the largest oranges in the basket, while all eyes are fixed on me intently, and, for the first time, pull out a piece of money. It is a two-sous piece. I offer it for the four oranges.
"No, no, no, no, signor! Ah, signor! ah, signor!" in a chorus from the whole crowd.
I have struck bottom at last, and perhaps got somewhere near the value; and all calmness is gone. Such protestations, such indignation, such sorrow, I have never seen before from so small a cause. It cannot be thought of; it is mere ruin! I am, in turn, as firm, and nearly as excited in seeming. I hold up the fruit, and tender the money.
"No, never, never! The signor cannot be in earnest."
Looking round me for a moment, and assuming a theatrical manner, befitting the gestures of those about me, I fling the fruit down, and, with a sublime renunciation, stalk away.
There is instantly a buzz and a hum that rises almost to a clamor. I have not proceeded far, when a skinny old woman runs after me, and begs me to return. I go back, and the crowd parts to receive me.
The proprietor has a new proposition, the effect of which upon me is intently watched. He proposes to give me five big oranges for four sous. I receive it with utter scorn, and a laugh of derision. I will give two sous for the original four, and not a centesimo more. That I solemnly say, and am ready to depart. Hesitation and renewed conference; but at last the proprietor relents; and, with the look of one who is ruined for life, and who yet is willing to sacrifice himself, he hands me the oranges. Instantly the excitement is dead, the crowd disperses, and the street is as quiet as ever; when I walk away, bearing my hard-won treasures.
A little while after, as I sat upon the outer wall of the terrace of the Camaldoli, with my feet hanging over, these same oranges were taken from my pockets by Americans; so that I am prevented from making any moral reflections upon the honesty of the Italians.
There is an immense garden of oranges and lemons at the village of Massa, through which travelers are shown by a surly fellow, who keeps watch of his trees, and has a bulldog lurking about for the unwary. I hate to see a bulldog in a fruit orchard. I have eaten a good many oranges there, and been astonished at the boughs of immense lemons which bend the trees to the ground. I took occasion to measure one of the lemons, called a citron-lemon, and found its circumference to be twenty-one inches one way by fifteen inches the other,—about as big as a railway conductor's lantern. These lemons are not so sour as the fellow who shows them: he is a mercenary dog, and his prices afford me no clew to the just value of oranges.
I like better to go to a little garden in the village of Meta, under a sunny precipice of rocks overhung by the ruined convent of Camaldoli. I turn up a narrow lane, and push open the wooden door in the garden of a little villa. It is a pretty garden; and, besides the orange and lemon-trees on the terrace, it has other fruit-trees, and a scent of many flowers. My friend, the gardener, is sorting oranges from one basket to another, on a green bank, and evidently selling the fruit to some women, who are putting it into bags to carry away.
When he sees me approach, there is always the same pantomime. I propose to take some of the fruit he is sorting. With a knowing air, and an appearance of great mystery, he raises his left hand, the palm toward me, as one says hush. Having dispatched his business, he takes an empty basket, and with another mysterious flourish, desiring me to remain quiet, he goes to a storehouse in one corner of the garden, and returns with a load of immense oranges, all soaked with the sun, ripe and fragrant, and more tempting than lumps of gold. I take one, and ask him if it is sweet. He shrugs his shoulders, raises his hands, and, with a sidewise shake of the head, and a look which says, How can you be so faithless? makes me ashamed of my doubts.
I cut the thick skin, which easily falls apart and discloses the luscious quarters, plump, juicy, and waiting to melt in the mouth. I look for a moment at the rich pulp in its soft incasement, and then try a delicious morsel. I nod. My gardener again shrugs his shoulders, with a slight smile, as much as to say, It could not be otherwise, and is evidently delighted to have me enjoy his fruit. I fill capacious pockets with the choicest; and, if I have friends with me, they do the same. I give our silent but most expressive entertainer half a franc, never more; and he always seems surprised at the size of the largesse. We exhaust his basket, and he proposes to get more.
When I am alone, I stroll about under the heavily-laden trees, and pick up the largest, where they lie thickly on the ground, liking to hold them in my hand and feel the agreeable weight, even when I can carry away no more. The gardener neither follows nor watches me; and I think perhaps knows, and is not stingy about it, that more valuable to me than the oranges I eat or take away are those on the trees among the shining leaves. And perhaps he opines that I am from a country of snow and ice, where the year has six hostile months, and that I have not money enough to pay for the rich possession of the eye, the picture of beauty, which I take with me.
There are three places where I should like to live; naming them in the inverse order of preference,—the Isle of Wight, Sorrento, and Heaven. The first two have something in common, the almost mystic union of sky and sea and shore, a soft atmospheric suffusion that works an enchantment, and puts one into a dreamy mood. And yet there are decided contrasts. The superabundant, soaking sunshine of Sorrento is of very different quality from that of the Isle of Wight. On the island there is a sense of home, which one misses on this promontory, the fascination of which, no less strong, is that of a southern beauty, whose charms conquer rather than win. I remember with what feeling I one day unexpectedly read on a white slab, in the little inclosure of Bonchurch, where the sea whispered as gently as the rustle of the ivy-leaves, the name of John Sterling. Could there be any fitter resting-place for that most, weary, and gentle spirit? There I seemed to know he had the rest that he could not have anywhere on these brilliant historic shores. Yet so impressible was his sensitive nature, that I doubt not, if he had given himself up to the enchantment of these coasts in his lifetime, it would have led him by a spell he could not break.
I am sometimes in doubt what is the spell of Sorrento, and half believe that it is independent of anything visible. There is said to be a fatal enchantment about Capri. The influences of Sorrento are not so dangerous, but are almost as marked. I do not wonder that the Greeks peopled every cove and sea-cave with divinities, and built temples on every headland and rocky islet here; that the Romans built upon the Grecian ruins; that the ecclesiastics in succeeding centuries gained possession of all the heights, and built convents and monasteries, and set out vineyards, and orchards of olives and oranges, and took root as the creeping plants do, spreading themselves abroad in the sunshine and charming air. The Italian of to-day does not willingly emigrate, is tempted by no seduction of better fortune in any foreign clime. And so in all ages the swarming populations have clung to these shores, filling all the coasts and every nook in these almost inaccessible hills with life. Perhaps the delicious climate, which avoids all extremes, sufficiently accounts for this; and yet I have sometimes thought there is a more subtle reason why travelers from far lands are spellbound here, often against will and judgment, week after week, month after month.
However this may be, it is certain that strangers who come here, and remain long enough to get entangled in the meshes which some influence, I know not what, throws around them, are in danger of never departing. I know there are scores of travelers, who whisk down from Naples, guidebook in hand, goaded by the fell purpose of seeing every place in Europe, ascend some height, buy a load of the beautiful inlaid woodwork, perhaps row over to Capri and stay five minutes in the azure grotto, and then whisk away again, untouched by the glamour of the place. Enough that they write "delightful spot" in their diaries, and hurry off to new scenes, and more noisy life. But the visitor who yields himself to the place will soon find his power of will departing. Some satirical people say, that, as one grows strong in body here, he becomes weak in mind. The theory I do not accept: one simply folds his sails, unships his rudder, and waits the will of Providence, or the arrival of some compelling fate. The longer one remains, the more difficult it is to go. We have a fashion—indeed, I may call it a habit—of deciding to go, and of never going. It is a subject of infinite jest among the habitues of the villa, who meet at table, and who are always bidding each other good-by. We often go so far as to write to Naples at night, and bespeak rooms in the hotels; but we always countermand the order before we sit down to breakfast. The good-natured mistress of affairs, the head of the bureau of domestic relations, is at her wits' end, with guests who always promise to go and never depart. There are here a gentleman and his wife, English people of decision enough, I presume, in Cornwall, who packed their luggage before Christmas to depart, but who have not gone towards the end of February,—who daily talk of going, and little by little unpack their wardrobe, as their determination oozes out. It is easy enough to decide at night to go next day; but in the morning, when the soft sunshine comes in at the window, and when we descend and walk in the garden, all our good intentions vanish. It is not simply that we do not go away, but we have lost the motive for those long excursions which we made at first, and which more adventurous travelers indulge in. There are those here who have intended for weeks to spend a day on Capri. Perfect day for the expedition succeeds perfect day, boatload after boatload sails away from the little marina at the base of the cliff, which we follow with eves of desire, but—to-morrow will do as well. We are powerless to break the enchantment.
I confess to the fancy that there is some subtle influence working this sea-change in us, which the guidebooks, in their enumeration of the delights of the region, do not touch, and which maybe reaches back beyond the Christian era. I have always supposed that the story of Ulysses and the Sirens was only a fiction of the poets, intended to illustrate the allurements of a soul given over to pleasure, and deaf to the call of duty and the excitement of a grapple with the world. But a lady here, herself one of the entranced, tells me that whoever climbs the hills behind Sorrento, and looks upon the Isle of the Sirens, is struck with an inability to form a desire to depart from these coasts. I have gazed at those islands more than once, as they lie there in the Bay of Salerno; and it has always happened that they have been in a half-misty and not uncolored sunlight, but not so draped that I could not see they were only three irregular rocks, not far from shore, one of them with some ruins on it. There are neither sirens there now, nor any other creatures; but I should be sorry to think I should never see them again. When I look down on them, I can also turn and behold on the other side, across the Bay of Naples, the Posilipo, where one of the enchanters who threw magic over them is said to lie in his high tomb at the opening of the grotto. Whether he does sleep in his urn in that exact spot is of no moment. Modern life has disillusioned this region to a great extent; but the romance that the old poets have woven about these bays and rocky promontories comes very easily back upon one who submits himself long to the eternal influences of sky and sea which made them sing. It is all one,—to be a Roman poet in his villa, a lazy friar of the Middle Ages toasting in the sun, or a modern idler, who has drifted here out of the active currents of life, and cannot make up his mind to depart.
On heights at either end of the Piano di Sorrento, and commanding it, stood two religious houses: the Convent of the Carnaldoli to the northeast, on the crest of the hill above Meta; the Carthusian Monastery of the Deserto, to the southwest, three miles above Sorrento. The longer I stay here, the more respect I have for the taste of the monks of the Middle Ages. They invariably secured the best places for themselves. They seized all the strategic points; they appropriated all the commanding heights; they knew where the sun would best strike the grapevines; they perched themselves wherever there was a royal view. When I see how unerringly they did select and occupy the eligible places, I think they were moved by a sort of inspiration. In those days, when the Church took the first choice in everything, the temptation to a Christian life must have been strong.
The monastery at the Deserto was suppressed by the French of the first republic, and has long been in a ruinous condition. Its buildings crown the apex of the highest elevation in this part of the promontory: from its roof the fathers paternally looked down upon the churches and chapels and nunneries which thickly studded all this region; so that I fancy the air must have been full of the sound of bells, and of incense perpetually ascending. They looked also upon St. Agata under the hill, with a church bigger than itself; upon more distinct Massa, with its chapels and cathedral and overlooking feudal tower; upon Torca, the Greek Theorica, with its Temple of Apollo, the scene yet of an annual religious festival, to which the peasants of Sorrento go as their ancestors did to the shrine of the heathen god; upon olive and orange orchards, and winding paths and wayside shrines innumerable. A sweet and peaceful scene in the foreground, it must have been, and a whole horizon of enchantment beyond the sunny peninsula over which it lorded: the Mediterranean, with poetic Capri, and Ischia, and all the classic shore from Cape Misenum, Baiae, and Naples, round to Vesuvius; all the sparkling Bay of Naples; and on the other side the Bay of Salerno, covered with the fleets of the commerce of Amalfi, then a republican city of fifty thousand people; and Grecian Paestum on the marshy shore, even then a ruin, its deserted porches and columns monuments of an architecture never equaled elsewhere in Italy. Upon this charming perch, the old Carthusian monks took the summer breezes and the winter sun, pruned their olives, and trimmed their grapevines, and said prayers for the poor sinners toiling in the valleys below.
The monastery is a desolate old shed now. We left our donkeys to eat thistles in front, while we climbed up some dilapidated steps, and entered the crumbling hall. The present occupants are half a dozen monks, and fine fellows too, who have an orphan school of some twenty lads. We were invited to witness their noonday prayers. The flat-roofed rear buildings extend round an oblong, quadrangular space, which is a rich garden, watered from capacious tanks, and coaxed into easy fertility by the impregnating sun. Upon these roofs the brothers were wont to walk, and here they sat at peaceful evening. Here, too, we strolled; and here I could not resist the temptation to lie an unheeded hour or two, soaking in the benignant February sun, above every human concern and care, looking upon a land and sea steeped in romance. The sky was blue above; but in the south horizon, in the direction of Tunis, were the prismatic colors. Why not be a monk, and lie in the sun?
One of the handsome brothers invited us into the refectory, a place as bare and cheerless as the feeding-room of a reform school, and set before us bread and cheese, and red wine, made by the monks. I notice that the monks do not water their wine so much as the osteria keepers do; which speaks equally well for their religion and their taste. The floor of the room was brick, the table plain boards, and the seats were benches; not much luxury. The monk who served us was an accomplished man, traveled, and master of several languages. He spoke English a little. He had been several years in America, and was much interested when we told him our nationality.
"Does the signor live near Mexico?"
"Not in dangerous proximity," we replied; but we did not forfeit his good opinion by saying that we visited it but seldom.
Well, he had seen all quarters of the globe: he had been for years a traveler, but he had come back here with a stronger love for it than ever; it was to him the most delightful spot on earth, he said. And we could not tell him where its equal is. If I had nothing else to do, I think I should cast in my lot with him,—at least for a week.
But the monks never got into a cozier nook than the Convent of the Camaldoli. That also is suppressed: its gardens, avenues, colonnaded walks, terraces, buildings, half in ruins. It is the level surface of a hill, sheltered on the east by higher peaks, and on the north by the more distant range of Great St. Angelo, across the valley, and is one of the most extraordinarily fertile plots of ground I ever saw. The rich ground responds generously to the sun. I should like to have seen the abbot who grew on this fat spot. The workmen were busy in the garden, spading and pruning.
A group of wild, half-naked children came about us begging, as we sat upon the walls of the terrace,—the terrace which overhangs the busy plain below, and which commands the entire, varied, nooky promontory, and the two bays. And these children, insensible to beauty, want centesimi!
In the rear of the church are some splendid specimens of the umbrella-like Italian pine. Here we found, also, a pretty little ruin,—it might be Greek and—it might be Druid for anything that appeared, ivy-clad, and suggesting a religion older than that of the convent. To the east we look into a fertile, terraced ravine; and beyond to a precipitous brown mountain, which shows a sharp outline against the sky; halfway up are nests of towns, white houses, churches, and above, creeping along the slope, the thread of an ancient road, with stone arches at intervals, as old as Caesar.
We descend, skirting for some distance the monastery walls, over which patches of ivy hang like green shawls. There are flowers in profusion, scented violets, daisies, dandelions, and crocuses, large and of the richest variety, with orange pistils, and stamens purple and violet, the back of every alternate leaf exquisitely penciled.
We descend into a continuous settlement, past shrines, past brown, sturdy men and handsome girls working in the vineyards; we descend —but words express nothing—into a wonderful ravine, a sort of refined Swiss scene,—high, bare steps of rock butting over a chasm, ruins, old walls, vines, flowers. The very spirit of peace is here, and it is not disturbed by the sweet sound of bells echoed in the passes. On narrow ledges of precipices, aloft in the air where it would seem that a bird could scarcely light, we distinguish the forms of men and women; and their voices come down to us. They are peasants cutting grass, every spire of which is too precious to waste.
We descend, and pass by a house on a knoll, and a terrace of olives extending along the road in front. Half a dozen children come to the road to look at us as we approach, and then scamper back to the house in fear, tumbling over each other and shouting, the eldest girl making good her escape with the baby. My companion swings his hat, and cries, "Hullo, baby!" And when we have passed the gate, and are under the wall, the whole ragged, brown-skinned troop scurry out upon the terrace, and run along, calling after us, in perfect English, as long as we keep in sight, "Hullo, baby!" "Hullo, baby!" The next traveler who goes that way will no doubt be hailed by the quick-witted natives with this salutation; and, if he is of a philological turn, he will probably benefit his mind by running the phrase back to its ultimate Greek roots.
For three years, once upon a time, it did not rain in Sorrento. Not a drop out of the clouds for three years, an Italian lady here, born in Ireland, assures me. If there was an occasional shower on the Piano during all that drought, I have the confidence in her to think that she would not spoil the story by noticing it.
The conformation of the hills encircling the plain would be likely to lead any shower astray, and discharge it into the sea, with whatever good intentions it may have started down the promontory for Sorrento. I can see how these sharp hills would tear the clouds asunder, and let out all their water, while the people in the plain below watched them with longing eyes. But it can rain in Sorrento. Occasionally the northeast wind comes down with whirling, howling fury, as if it would scoop villages and orchards out of the little nook; and the rain, riding on the whirlwind, pours in drenching floods. At such times I hear the beat of the waves at the foot of the rock, and feel like a prisoner on an island. Eden would not be Eden in a rainstorm.
The drought occurred just after the expulsion of the Bourbons from Naples, and many think on account of it. There is this to be said in favor of the Bourbons: that a dry time never had occurred while they reigned,—a statement in which all good Catholics in Sorrento will concur. As the drought went on, almost all the wells in the place dried up, except that of the Tramontano and the one in the suppressed convent of the Sacred Heart,—I think that is its name.
It is a rambling pile of old buildings, in the center of the town, with a courtyard in the middle, and in it a deep well, boring down I know not how far into the rock, and always full of cold sweet water. The nuns have all gone now; and I look in vain up at the narrow slits in the masonry, which served them for windows, for the glance of a worldly or a pious eye. The poor people of Sorrento, when the public wells and fountains had gone dry, used to come and draw at the Tramontano; but they were not allowed to go to the well of the convent, the gates were closed. Why the government shut them I cannot see: perhaps it knew nothing of it, and some stupid official took the pompous responsibility. The people grumbled, and cursed the government; and, in their simplicity, probably never took any steps to revoke the prohibitory law. No doubt, as the government had caused the drought, it was all of a piece, the good rustics thought.
For the government did indirectly occasion the dry spell. I have the information from the Italian lady of whom I have spoken. Among the first steps of the new government of Italy was the suppression of the useless convents and nunneries. This one at Sorrento early came under the ban. It always seemed to me almost a pity to rout out this asylum of praying and charitable women, whose occupation was the encouragement of beggary and idleness in others, but whose prayers were constant, and whose charities to the sick of the little city were many. If they never were of much good to the community, it was a pleasure to have such a sweet little hive in the center of it; and I doubt not that the simple people felt a genuine satisfaction, as they walked around the high walls, in believing that pure prayers within were put up for them night and day; and especially when they waked at night, and heard the bell of the convent, and knew that at that moment some faithful soul kept her vigils, and chanted prayers for them and all the world besides; and they slept the sounder for it thereafter. I confess that, if one is helped by vicarious prayer, I would rather trust a convent of devoted women (though many of them are ignorant, and some of them are worldly, and none are fair to see) to pray for me, than some of the houses of coarse monks which I have seen.
But the order came down from Naples to pack off all the nuns of the Sacred Heart on a day named, to close up the gates of the nunnery, and hang a flaming sword outside. The nuns were to be pulled up by the roots, so to say, on the day specified, and without postponement, and to be transferred to a house prepared for them at Massa, a few miles down the promontory, and several hundred feet nearer heaven. Sorrento was really in mourning: it went about in grief. It seemed as if something sacrilegious were about to be done. It was the intention of the whole town to show its sense of it in some way.
The day of removal came, and it rained! It poured: the water came down in sheets, in torrents, in deluges; it came down with the wildest tempest of many a year. I think, from accurate reports of those who witnessed it, that the beginning of the great Deluge was only a moisture compared to this. To turn the poor women out of doors such a day as this was unchristian, barbarous, impossible. Everybody who had a shelter was shivering indoors. But the officials were inexorable. In the order for removal, nothing was said about postponement on account of weather; and go the nuns must.
And go they did; the whole town shuddering at the impiety of it, but kept from any demonstration by the tempest. Carriages went round to the convent; and the women were loaded into them, packed into them, carried and put in, if they were too infirm to go themselves. They were driven away, cross and wet and bedraggled. They found their dwelling on the hill not half prepared for them, leaking and cold and cheerless. They experienced very rough treatment, if I can credit my informant, who says she hates the government, and would not even look out of her lattice that day to see the carriages drive past.
And when the Lady Superior was driven away from the gate, she said to the officials, and the few faithful attendants, prophesying in the midst of the rain that poured about her, "The day will come shortly, when you will want rain, and shall not have it; and you will pray for my return."
And it did not rain, from that day for three years.
And the simple people thought of the good Superior, whose departure had been in such a deluge, and who had taken away with her all the moisture of the land; and they did pray for her return, and believed that the gates of heaven would be again opened if only the nunnery were repeopled. But the government could not see the connection between convents and the theory of storms, and the remnant of pious women was permitted to remain in their lodgings at Massa. Perhaps the government thought they could, if they bore no malice, pray as effectually for rain there as anywhere.
I do not know, said my informant, that the curse of the Lady Superior had anything to do with the drought, but many think it had; and those are the facts.
The common people of this region are nothing but children; and ragged, dirty, and poor as they are, apparently as happy, to speak idiomatically, as the day is long. It takes very little to please them; and their easily-excited mirth is contagious. It is very rare that one gets a surly return to a salutation; and, if one shows the least good-nature, his greeting is met with the most jolly return. The boatman hauling in his net sings; the brown girl, whom we meet descending a steep path in the hills, with an enormous bag or basket of oranges on her head, or a building-stone under which she stands as erect as a pillar, sings; and, if she asks for something, there is a merry twinkle in her eye, that says she hardly expects money, but only puts in a "beg" at a venture because it is the fashion; the workmen clipping the olive-trees sing; the urchins, who dance about the foreigner in the street, vocalize their petitions for un po' di moneta in a tuneful manner, and beg more in a spirit of deviltry than with any expectation of gain. When I see how hard the peasants labor, what scraps and vegetable odds and ends they eat, and in what wretched, dark, and smoke-dried apartments they live, I wonder they are happy; but I suppose it is the all-nourishing sun and the equable climate that do the business for them. They have few artificial wants, and no uneasy expectation—bred by the reading of books and newspapers—that anything is going to happen in the world, or that any change is possible. Their fruit-trees yield abundantly year after year; their little patches of rich earth, on the built-up terraces and in the crevices of the rocks, produce fourfold. The sun does it all.
Every walk that we take here with open mind and cheerful heart is sure to be an adventure. Only yesterday, we were coming down a branch of the great gorge which splits the plain in two. On one side the path is a high wall, with garden trees overhanging. On the other, a stone parapet; and below, in the bed of the ravine, an orange orchard. Beyond rises a precipice; and, at its foot, men and boys were quarrying stone, which workmen raised a couple of hundred feet to the platform above with a windlass. As we came along, a handsome girl on the height had just taken on her head a large block of stone, which I should not care to lift, to carry to a pile in the rear; and she stopped to look at us. We stopped, and looked at her. This attracted the attention of the men and boys in the quarry below, who stopped work, and set up a cry for a little money. We laughed, and responded in English. The windlass ceased to turn. The workmen on the height joined in the conversation. A grizzly beggar hobbled up, and held out his greasy cap. We nonplussed him by extending our hats, and beseeching him for just a little something. Some passers on the road paused, and looked on, amused at the transaction. A boy appeared on the high wall, and began to beg. I threatened to shoot him with my walkingstick, whereat he ran nimbly along the wall in terror The workmen shouted; and this started up a couple of yellow dogs, which came to the edge of the wall and barked violently. The girl, alone calm in the confusion, stood stock still under her enormous load looking at us. We swung out hats, and hurrahed. The crowd replied from above, below, and around us, shouting, laughing, singing, until the whole little valley was vocal with a gale of merriment, and all about nothing. The beggar whined; the spectators around us laughed; and the whole population was aroused into a jolly mood. Fancy such a merry hullaballoo in America. For ten minutes, while the funny row was going on, the girl never moved, having forgotten to go a few steps and deposit her load; and when we disappeared round a bend of the path, she was still watching us, smiling and statuesque.
As we descend, we come upon a group of little children seated about a doorstep, black-eyed, chubby little urchins, who are cutting oranges into little bits, and playing "party," as children do on the other side of the Atlantic. The instant we stop to speak to them, the skinny hand of an old woman is stretched out of a window just above our heads, the wrinkled palm itching for money. The mother comes forward out of the house, evidently pleased with our notice of the children, and shows us the baby in her arms. At once we are on good terms with the whole family. The woman sees that there is nothing impertinent in our cursory inquiry into her domestic concerns, but, I fancy, knows that we are genial travelers, with human sympathies. So the people universally are not quick to suspect any imposition, and meet frankness with frankness, and good-nature with good-nature, in a simple-hearted, primeval manner. If they stare at us from doorway and balcony, or come and stand near us when we sit reading or writing by the shore, it is only a childlike curiosity, and they are quite unconscious of any breach of good manners. In fact, I think travelers have not much to say in the matter of staring. I only pray that we Americans abroad may remember that we are in the presence of older races, and conduct ourselves with becoming modesty, remembering always that we were not born in Britain.
Very likely I am in error; but it has seemed to me that even the funerals here are not so gloomy as in other places. I have looked in at the churches when they are in progress, now and then, and been struck with the general good feeling of the occasion. The real mourners I could not always distinguish; but the seats would be filled with a motley gathering of the idle and the ragged, who seemed to enjoy the show and the ceremony. On one occasion, it was the obsequies of an officer in the army. Guarding the gilded casket, which stood upon a raised platform before the altar, were four soldiers in uniform. Mass was being said and sung; and a priest was playing the organ. The church was light and cheerful, and pervaded. by a pleasant bustle. Ragged boys and beggars, and dirty children and dogs, went and came wherever they chose—about the unoccupied spaces of the church. The hired mourners, who are numerous in proportion to the rank of the deceased, were clad in white cotton,—a sort of nightgown put on over the ordinary clothes, with a hood of the same drawn tightly over the face, in which slits were cut for the eyes and mouth. Some of them were seated on benches near the front; others were wandering about among the pillars, disappearing in the sacristy, and reappearing with an aimless aspect, altogether conducting themselves as if it were a holiday, and if there was anything they did enjoy, it was mourning at other people's expense. They laughed and talked with each other in excellent spirits; and one varlet near the coffin, who had slipped off his mask, winked at me repeatedly, as if to inform me that it was not his funeral. A masquerade might have been more gloomy and depressing.
The most serviceable saint whom I know is St. Antonino. He is the patron saint of the good town of Sorrento; he is the good genius of all sailors and fishermen; and he has a humbler office,—that of protector of the pigs. On his day the pigs are brought into the public square to be blessed; and this is one reason why the pork of Sorrento is reputed so sweet and wholesome. The saint is the friend, and, so to say, companion of the common people. They seem to be all fond of him, and there is little of fear in their confiding relation. His humble origin and plebeian appearance have something to do with his popularity, no doubt. There is nothing awe-inspiring in the brown stone figure, battered and cracked, that stands at one corner of the bridge, over the chasm at the entrance of the city. He holds a crosier in one hand, and raises the other, with fingers uplifted, in act of benediction. If his face is an indication of his character, he had in him a mixture of robust good-nature with a touch of vulgarity, and could rough it in a jolly manner with fishermen and peasants. He may have appeared to better advantage when he stood on top of the massive old city gate, which the present government, with the impulse of a vandal, took down a few years ago. The demolition had to be accomplished in the night, under a guard of soldiers, so indignant were the populace. At that time the homely saint was deposed; and he wears now, I think, a snubbed and cast-aside aspect. Perhaps he is dearer to the people than ever; and I confess that I like him much better than many grander saints, in stone, I have seen in more conspicuous places. If ever I am in rough water and foul weather, I hope he will not take amiss anything I have here written about him.
Sunday, and it happened to be St. Valentine's also, was the great fete-day of St. Antonino. Early in the morning there was a great clanging of bells; and the ceremony of the blessing of the pigs took place,—I heard, but I was not abroad early enough to see it,—a laziness for which I fancy I need not apologize, as the Catholic is known to be an earlier religion than the Protestant. When I did go out, the streets were thronged with people, the countryfolk having come in for miles around. The church of the patron saint was the great center of attraction. The blank walls of the little square in front, and of the narrow streets near, were hung with cheap and highly-colored lithographs of sacred subjects, for sale; tables and booths were set up in every available space for the traffic in pre-Raphaelite gingerbread, molasses candy, strings of dried nuts, pinecone and pumpkin seeds, scarfs, boots and shoes, and all sorts of trumpery. One dealer had preempted a large space on the pavement, where he had spread out an assortment of bits of old iron, nails, pieces of steel traps, and various fragments which might be useful to the peasants. The press was so great, that it was difficult to get through it; but the crowd was a picturesque one, and in the highest good humor. The occasion was a sort of Fourth of July, but without its worry and powder and flowing bars.
The spectacle of the day was the procession bearing the silver image of the saint through the streets. I think there could never be anything finer or more impressive; at least, I like these little fussy provincial displays,—these tag-rags and ends of grandeur, in which all the populace devoutly believe, and at which they are lost in wonder,—better than those imposing ceremonies at the capital, in which nobody believes. There was first a band of musicians, walking in more or less disorder, but blowing away with great zeal, so that they could be heard amid the clangor of bells the peals of which reverberate so deafeningly between the high houses of these narrow streets. Then follow boys in white, and citizens in black and white robes, carrying huge silken banners, triangular like sea-pennants, and splendid silver crucifixes which flash in the sun. Then come ecclesiastics, walking with stately step, and chanting in loud and pleasant unison. These are followed by nobles, among whom I recognize, with a certain satisfaction, two descendants of Tasso, whose glowing and bigoted soul may rejoice in the devotion of his posterity, who help to bear today the gilded platform upon which is the solid silver image of the saint. The good old bishop walks humbly in the rear, in full canonical rig, with crosier and miter, his rich robes upborne by priestly attendants, his splendid footman at a respectful distance, and his roomy carriage not far behind.
The procession is well spread out and long; all its members carry lighted tapers, a good many of which are not lighted, having gone out in the wind. As I squeeze into a shallow doorway to let the cortege pass, I am sorry to say that several of the young fellows in white gowns tip me the wink, and even smile in a knowing fashion, as if it were a mere lark, after all, and that the saint must know it. But not so thinks the paternal bishop, who waves a blessing, which I catch in the flash of the enormous emerald on his right hand. The procession ends, where it started, in the patron's church; and there his image is set up under a gorgeous canopy of crimson and gold, to hear high mass, and some of the choicest solos, choruses, and bravuras from the operas.
In the public square I find a gaping and wondering crowd of rustics collected about one of the mountebanks whose trade is not peculiar to any country. This one might be a clock-peddler from Connecticut. He is mounted in a one-seat vettura, and his horse is quietly eating his dinner out of a bag tied to his nose. There is nothing unusual in the fellow's dress; he wears a shiny silk hat, and has one of those grave faces which would be merry if their owner were not conscious of serious business on hand. On the driver's perch before him are arranged his attractions,—a box of notions, a grinning skull, with full teeth and jaws that work on hinges, some vials of red liquid, and a closed jar containing a most disagreeable anatomical preparation. This latter he holds up and displays, turning it about occasionally in an admiring manner. He is discoursing, all the time, in the most voluble Italian. He has an ointment, wonderfully efficacious for rheumatism and every sort of bruise: he pulls up his sleeve, and anoints his arm with it, binding it up with a strip of paper; for the simplest operation must be explained to these grown children. He also pulls teeth, with an ease and expedition hitherto unknown, and is in no want of patients among this open-mouthed crowd. One sufferer after another climbs up into the wagon, and goes through the operation in the public gaze. A stolid, good-natured hind mounts the seat. The dentist examines his mouth, and finds the offending tooth. He then turns to the crowd and explains the case. He takes a little instrument that is neither forceps nor turnkey, stands upon the seat, seizes the man's nose, and jerks his head round between his knees, pulling his mouth open (there is nothing that opens the mouth quicker than a sharp upward jerk of the nose) with a rude jollity that sets the spectators in a roar. Down he goes into the cavern, and digs away for a quarter of a minute, the man the while as immovable as a stone image, when he holds up the bloody tooth. The patient still persists in sitting with his mouth stretched open to its widest limit, waiting for the operation to begin, and will only close the orifice when he is well shaken and shown the tooth. The dentist gives him some yellow liquid to hold in his mouth, which the man insists on swallowing, wets a handkerchief and washes his face, roughly rubbing his nose the wrong way, and lets him go. Every step of the process is eagerly watched by the delighted spectators.
He is succeeded by a woman, who is put through the same heroic treatment, and exhibits like fortitude. And so they come; and the dentist after every operation waves the extracted trophy high in air, and jubilates as if he had won another victory, pointing to the stone statue yonder, and reminding them that this is the glorious day of St. Antonino. But this is not all that this man of science does. He has the genuine elixir d'amour, love-philters and powders which never fail in their effects. I see the bashful girls and the sheepish swains come slyly up to the side of the wagon, and exchange their hard-earned francs for the hopeful preparation. O my brown beauty, with those soft eyes and cheeks of smothered fire, you have no need of that red philter! What a simple, childlike folk! The shrewd fellow in the wagon is one of a race as old as Thebes and as new as Porkopolis; his brazen face is older than the invention of bronze, but I think he never had to do with a more credulous crowd than this. The very cunning in the face of the peasants is that of the fox; it is a sort of instinct, and not an intelligent suspicion.
This is Sunday in Sorrento, under the blue sky. These peasants, who are fooled by the mountebank and attracted by the piles of adamantine gingerbread, do not forget to crowd the church of the saint at vespers, and kneel there in humble faith, while the choir sings the Agnus Dei, and the priests drone the service. Are they so different, then, from other people? They have an idea on Capri that England is such another island, only not so pleasant; that all Englishmen are rich and constantly travel to escape the dreariness at home; and that, if they are not absolutely mad, they are all a little queer. It was a fancy prevalent in Hamlet's day. We had the English service in the Villa Nardi in the evening. There are some Englishmen staying here, of the class one finds in all the sunny spots of Europe, ennuye and growling, in search of some elixir that shall bring back youth and enjoyment. They seem divided in mind between the attractions of the equable climate of this region and the fear of the gout which lurks in the unfermented wine. One cannot be too grateful to the sturdy islanders for carrying their prayers, like their drumbeat, all round the globe; and I was much edified that night, as the reading went on, by a row of rather battered men of the world, who stood in line on one side of the room, and took their prayers with a certain British fortitude, as if they were conscious of performing a constitutional duty, and helping by the act to uphold the majesty of English institutions.