To the traveller fresh from Girgenti and its venerable ruins, or from Syracuse with its cla.s.sic charm, the first impressions of Palermo may very likely prove disappointing. Especially will they be so if he has come with a mind full of historic enthusiasm and a memory laden with the records of Greek colonization, Saracen dominion, and Norman conquest, and expecting to find himself face to face with the relics and remainder of at any rate the modern period of the three. For Palermo is emphatically what the guide-books are accustomed to describe as "a handsome modern city"; which means, as most people familiar with the Latin countries are but too well aware, a city as like any number of other Continental cities, built and inhabited by Latin admirers and devotees of Parisian "civilization," as "two peas in a pod." In the Sicilian capital the pa.s.sion for the monotonous magnificence of the boulevard has been carried to an almost amusing pitch. Palermo may be regarded from this point of view as consisting of two most imposing boulevards of approximately equal length, each bisecting the city with scrupulous equality from east to west and from north to south, and intersecting each other in its exact center at the mathematically precise angle of ninety degrees. You stand at the Porta Felice, the water-gate of the city, with your back to the sea, and before you, straight as a die, stretches the handsome Via Vittorio Emanuele for a mile or more ahead. You traverse the handsome Via Vittorio Emanuele for half its length and you come to the Quattro Canti, a small octagonal piazza which boasts itself to be the very head of Palermo, and from this intersection of four cross-roads, you see stretching to right and left of you the equally handsome Via Macqueda. Walk down either of these two great thoroughfares, the Macqueda or the Vittorio Emanuele, and you will be equally satisfied with each; the only thing which may possibly mar your satisfaction will be your consciousness that you would be equally satisfied with the other, and, indeed, that it requires an effort of memory to recollect in which of the two you are. There is nothing to complain of in the architecture or decoration of the houses. All is correct, regular, and symmetrical in line, bright and cheerful in color, and, as a whole, absolutely wanting in individuality and charm.
It is, however, of course impossible to kill an ancient and interesting city altogether with boulevards. Palermo, like every other city, has its "bits," to be found without much difficulty by anyone who will quit the beaten track of the two great thoroughfares and go a-questing for them himself. He may thus find enough here and there to remind him that he is living on the "silt" of three, nay, four civilizations, on a fourfold formation to which Greek and Roman, Saracen and Norman, have each contributed its successive layer. It need hardly be said that the latter has left the deepest traces of any. The Palazzo Reale, the first of the Palermitan sights to which the traveller is likely to bend his way, will afford the best ill.u.s.tration of this. Saracenic in origin, it has received successive additions from half-a-dozen Norman princes, from Robert Guiscard downwards, and its chapel, the Cappella Palatina, built by Roger II. in the early part of the twelfth century, is a gem of decorative art which would alone justify a journey to Sicily to behold. The purely architectural beauties of the interior are impressive enough, but the eye loses all sense of them among the wealth of their decoration. The stately files of Norman arches up the nave would in any other building arrest the gaze of the spectator, but in the Cappella Palatina one can think of nothing but mosaics. Mosaics are everywhere, from western door to eastern window, and from northern to southern transept wall. A full-length, life-sized saint in mosaic grandeur looks down upon you from every interval between the arches of the nave, and medallions of saints in mosaic, encircled with endless tracery and arabesque, form the inner face of every arch. Mosaic angels float with outstretched arms above the apse.
A colossal Madonna and Bambino, overshadowed by a hovering Pere Eternel, peer dimly forth in mosaic across the altar through the darkness of the chancel. The ground is golden throughout, and the somber richness of the effect is indescribable. In Palermo and its environs, in the Church of Martorana, and in the Cathedral of Monreale, no less than here, there is an abundance of that same decoration, and the mosaics of the latter of the two edifices above mentioned are held to be the finest of all; but it is by those of the Cappella Palatina, the first that he is likely to make the acquaintance of, that the visitor, not being an expert or connoisseur in this particular species of art-work, will perhaps be the most deeply impressed.
The Palazzo Reale may doubtless too be remembered by him, as affording him the point of view from which he has obtained his first idea of the unrivaled situation of Palermo. From the flat roof of the Observatory, fitted up in the tower of S. Ninfa, a n.o.ble panorama lies stretched around us. The spectator is standing midway between Amphitrite and the Golden Sh.e.l.l that she once cast in sport upon the sh.o.r.e. Behind him lies the Conca d"Oro, with the range of mountains against which it rests, Grifone and Cuccio, and the Billieni Hills, and the road to Monreale winding up the valley past La Rocca; in front lies the n.o.ble curve of the gulf, from Cape Mongerbino to the port, the bold outlines of Monte Pellegrino, the Bay of Mondello still farther to the left, and Capo di Gallo completing the coast-line with its promontory dimly peering through the haze.
Palermo, however, does not perhaps unveil the full beauty of its situation elsewhere than down at the sea"s edge, with the city nestling in the curve behind one and Pellegrino rising across the waters in front.
But the environs of the city, which are of peculiar interest and attraction, invite us, and first among these is Monreale, at a few miles"
distance, a suburb to which the traveller ascends by a road commanding at every turn some new and striking prospect of the bay. On one hand as he leaves the town, lies the Capuchin Monastery, attractive with its catacombs of mummified ex-citizens of Palermo to the lover of the gruesome rather than of the picturesque. Farther on is the pretty Villa Tasca, then La Rocca, whence by a winding road of very ancient construction we climb the royal mount crowned by the famous Cathedral and Benedictine Abbey of Monreale. Here more mosaics, as has been said, as fine in quality and in even greater abundance than those which decorate the interior of the Cappella Palatina; they cover, it is said, an area of seventy thousand four hundred square feet. From the Cathedral we pa.s.s into the beautiful cloisters, and thence into the fragrant orange-garden, from which another delightful view of the valley towards Palermo is obtained. San Martino, the site of a suppressed Benedictine monastery, is the next spot of interest. A steep path branching off to the right from Monreale leads to a deserted fort, named Il Castellaccio, from which the road descends as far as S. Martino, whence a pleasant journey back to Palermo is made through the picturesque valley of Bocca di Falco.
The desire to climb a beautiful mountain is as strong as if climbing it were not as effectual a way of hiding its beauties as it would be to sit upon its picture; and Monte Pellegrino, sleeping in the sunshine, and displaying the n.o.ble lines of what must surely be one of the most picturesque mountains in the world, is likely enough to lure the traveller to its summit. That ma.s.s of gray limestone, which takes such an exquisite flush under the red rays of the evening, is not difficult to climb. The zigzag path which mounts its sides is plainly visible from the town, and though steep at first, it grows gradually easier of ascent on the upper slopes of the mountain. Pellegrino was originally an island, and is still separated by the plain of the Conca d"Oro from the other mountains near the coast. Down to a few centuries ago it was clothed with underwood, and in much earlier times it grew corn for the soldiers of Hamilcar Barca, who occupied it in the first Punic War. Under an overhanging rock on its summit is the Grotto of Sta. Rosalia, the patron saint of the city, the maiden whom tradition records to have made this her pious retreat several centuries ago, and the discovery of whose remains in 1664 had the effect of instantaneously staying the ravages of the plague by which Palermo was just then being desolated. The grotto has since been converted, as under the circ.u.mstances was only fitting, into a church, to which many pilgrimages are undertaken by the devout. A steep path beyond the chapel leads to the survey station on the mountain top, from which a far-stretching view is commanded. The cone of Etna, over eighty miles off as the crow flies, can be seen from here, and still farther to the north, among the Liparaean group, the everlasting furnaces of Stromboli and Vulcano. There is a steeper descent of the mountain towards the southwest, and either by this or by retracing our original route we regain the road, which skirts the base of the mountain on the west, and, at four miles"
distance from the gate of the town, conducts to one of the most charmingly situated retreats that monarch ever constructed for himself, the royal villa-chateau of La Favorita, erected by Ferdinand IV. (Ferdinand I. of the Two Sicilies), otherwise not the least uncomfortable of the series of uncomfortable princes whom the Bourbons gave to the South Italian peoples.
Great as are the attractions of Palermo, they will hardly avail to detain the visitor during the rest of his stay in Sicily. For him who wishes to see Trinacria thoroughly, and who has already made the acquaintance of Messina and Syracuse, of Catania and Girgenti, the capital forms the most convenient of head-quarters from which to visit whatever places of interest remain to be seen in the western and southwestern corner of the island. For it is hence that, in the natural order of things, he would start for Marsala (famous as the landing-place of "the Thousand," under Garibaldi, in 1860, and the commencement of that memorable march which ended in a few weeks in the overthrow of the Bourbon rule) and Trapani (from _drepanon_), another sickle-shaped town, dear to the Virgilian student as the site of the games inst.i.tuted by aeneas to the memory of the aged Anchises, who died at Eryx, a poetically appropriate spot for a lover of Aphrodite to end his days in. The town of the G.o.ddess on the top of Monte San Giuliano, the ancient Eryx, is fast sinking to decay. Degenerate descendants, or successors would perhaps be more correct, of her ancient worshippers prefer the plain at its foot, and year by year migrations take place thither which threaten to number this immemorial settlement of pagan antiquity among the dead cities of the past, and to leave its gra.s.s-grown streets and moldering cathedral alone with the sea and sky. There are no remains of the world-famed shrine of Venus Erycina now save a few traces of its foundation and an ancient reservoir, once a fountain dedicated to the G.o.ddess. One need not linger on San Giuliano longer than is needful to survey the mighty maritime panorama which surrounds the spectator, and to note Cape Bon in Africa rising faintly out of the southward haze.
For Selinunto has to be seen, and Segesta, famous both for the grandeur and interest of their Greek remains. From Castelvetrano station, on the return route, it is but a short eight miles to the ruins of Selinus, the westernmost of the h.e.l.lenic settlements of Sicily, a city with a history of little more than two centuries of active life, and of upwards of two thousand years of desolation. Pammilus of Megara founded it, so says legend, in the seventh century B. C. In the fifth century of that era the Carthaginians destroyed it. Ever since that day it has remained deserted except as a hiding-place for the early Christians in the days of their persecution, and as a stronghold of the Mohammedans in their resistance to King Roger. Yet in its short life of some two hundred and twenty years it became, for some unknown reason of popular sanct.i.ty, the site of no fewer than seven temples, four of them among the largest ever known to have existed. Most of them survive, it is true, only in the condition of prostrate fragments, for it is supposed that earthquake and not time has been their worst foe, and the largest of them, dedicated to Hercules, or as some hold, to Appollo, was undoubtedly never finished at all. Its length, including steps, reaches the extraordinary figure of three hundred and seventy-one feet; its width, including steps, is a hundred and seventy-seven feet; while its columns would have soared when completed to the stupendous height of fifty-three feet. It dates from the fifth century B. C., and it was probably the appearance of the swarthy Carthaginian invaders which interrupted the masons at their work. It now lies a colossal heap of mighty, prostrate, broken columns, their flutings worn nearly smooth by time and weather, and of plinths shaped and rounded by the same agencies into the similitude of gigantic mountain boulders.
It is, however, the temples of Selinunto rather than their surroundings which command admiration and in this respect they stand in marked contrast to that site of a single unnamed ruin, which is, perhaps, taking site and ruin together, the most "pathetic" piece of the picturesque in all Sicily, the hill and temple of Segesta. From Calatafimi, scene of one of the Garibaldian battles, to Segesta the way lies along the Castellamare road, and through a beautiful and well-watered valley. The site of the town itself is the first to be reached. Monte Barbaro, with the ruins of the theater, lies to the north, to the west the hill whereon stands the famous Temple. No one needs a knowledge of Greek archaeology or Greek history, or even a special love for Greek art, in order to be deeply moved by the spectacle which the spot presents. He needs no more than the capacity of Virgil"s hero to be touched by "the sense of tears in mortal things." The Temple itself is perfect, except that its columns are still unfluted; but it is not the simple and majestic outline of the building, its lines of lessening columns, or its ma.s.sive architraves upborne upon those mighty shafts, which most impress us, but the harmony between this great work of man and its natural surroundings. In this mountain solitude, and before this deserted shrine of an extinct worship we are in presence of the union of two desolations, and one had well-nigh said of two eternities, the everlasting hills and the imperishable yearnings of the human heart. No words can do justice to the lonely grandeur of the Temple of Segesta. It is unlike any other in Sicily in this matter of unique position. It has no rival temple near it, nor are there even the remains of any other building, temple or what not, to challenge comparison, within sight of the spectator. This ruin stands alone in every sense, alone in point of physical isolation, alone in the austere pathos which that position imparts to it.
In the Museum of Palermo, to which city the explorer of these ruined sanctuaries of art and religion may now be supposed to have returned, the interesting metopes of Selinus will recall the recollection of that greater museum of ruins which he just visited at Selinunto; but the suppressed monastery, which has been now turned into a Museo n.a.z.ionale, has not much else besides its h.e.l.lenic architectural fragments to detain him. And it may be presumed, perhaps, that the pursuit of antiquities, which may be hunted with so much greater success in other parts of the islands, is not precisely the object which leads most visitors to Sicily to prolong their stay in this beautifully seated city. Its attraction lies, in effect and almost wholly, in the characteristic noted in the phrase just used. Architecturally speaking, Palermo is naught: it is branded, as has been already said, with the ba.n.a.lity and want of distinction of all modern Italian cities of the second cla.s.s. And, moreover, all that man has ever done for her external adornment she can show you in a few hours; but days and weeks would not more than suffice for the full appreciation of all she owes to nature. Antiquities she has none, or next to none, unless, indeed, we are prepared to include relics of the comparatively modern Norman domination, which of course abound in her beautiful mosaics, in that category. The silt of successive ages, and the detritus of a life which from the earliest times has been a busy one, have irrecoverably buried almost all vestiges of her cla.s.sic past. Her true, her only, but her all-sufficient attraction is conveyed in her ancient name. She is indeed "Panormus"; it is as the "all harbor city"
that she fills the eye and mind and lingers in the memory and lives anew in the imagination. When the city itself and its environs as far as Monreale and San Martino and La Zisa have been thoroughly explored; when the imposing Porta Felice has been duly admired; when the beautiful gardens of La Flora, with its wealth of sub-tropical vegetation, has been sufficiently promenaded on; when La Cala, a quaint little narrow, shallow harbor, and the busy life on its quays have been adequately studied; then he who loves nature better than the works of man, and prefers the true eternal to the merely figurative "immortal," will confess to himself that Palermo has nothing fairer, nothing more captivating, to show than that _chef-d" oeuvre_ which the Supreme Artificer executed in shaping those n.o.ble lines of rock in which Pellegrino descends to the city at its foot, and in tracing that curve of coast-line upon which the city has sprung up under the mountain"s shadow. The view of this guardian and patron height, this tutelary rock, as one might almost fancy it, of the Sicilian capital is from all points and at all hours beautiful. It dominates the city and the sea alike from whatever point one contemplates it, and the bold yet soft beauty of its contours has in every aspect a never-failing charm. The merest lounger, the most frivolous of promenaders in Palermo, should congratulate himself on having always before his eyes a mountain, the mere sight of which may be almost described as a "liberal education" in poetry and art. He should haunt the Piazza Marina, however, not merely at the promenading time of day, but then also, nay, then most of all, when the throng has begun to thin, and, as Homer puts it, "all the ways are shadowed," at the hour of sunset. For then the clear Mediterranean air is at its clearest, the fringing foam at its whitest, the rich, warm background of the Conca d"Oro at its mellowest, while the bare, volcanic-looking sides of Monte Pellegrino seem fusing into ruddy molten metal beneath the slanting rays. Gradually, as you watch the color die out of it, almost as it dies out of a snow-peak at the fading of the _Alpen-gluth_, the shadows begin to creep up the mountain-sides, forerunners of the night which has already fallen upon the streets of the city, and through which its lights are beginning to peer. A little longer, and the body of the mountain will be a dark, vague ma.s.s, with only its cone and graceful upper ridges traced faintly against pale depths of sky.
Thus and at such an hour may one see the city, bay, and mountain at what may be called their aesthetic or artistic best. But they charm, and with a magic of almost equal potency, at all hours. The fascination remains unabated to the end, and never, perhaps, is it more keenly felt by the traveller than when Palermo is smiling her G.o.d-speed upon the parting guest, and from the deck of the steamer which is to bear him away he waves his last farewell to the receding city lying couched, the loveliest of Ocean"s Nereids, in her sh.e.l.l of gold.
If his hour of departure be in the evening, when the rays of the westering sun strike athwart the base of Pellegrino, and tip with fire the summits of the low-lying houses of the seaport, and stream over and past them upon the glowing waters of the harbor the sight is one which will not be soon forgotten. Dimmer and dimmer grows the beautiful city with the increasing distance and the gathering twilight. The warm rose-tints of the n.o.ble mountain cool down into purple, and darken at last into a heavy ma.s.s of somber shadows; the sea changes to that spectral silver which overspreads it in the gloaming. It is a race between the flying steamer and the falling night to hide the swiftly fading coast-line altogether from the view; and so close is the contest that up to the last it leaves us doubtful whether it be darkness or distance that has taken it from us. But in a few more minutes, be it from one cause or from the other, the effacement is complete. Behind us, where Palermo lay a while ago, there looms only a bank of ever-darkening haze, and before the bows of our vessel the gray expanse of Mediterranean waters which lie between us and the Bay of Naples.
XIV
NAPLES
The Bay of Naples--Vesuvius--Characteristic scenes of street life--The _alfresco_ restaurants--Chapel of St. Januarius--Virgil"s Tomb--Capri, the Mecca of artists and lovers of the picturesque--The Emperor Tiberius--Description of the Blue Grotto--The coast-road from Castellamare to Sorrento--Amalfi--Sorrento, "the village of flowers and the flower of villages"--The Temples of Paestum.
Naples in itself, apart from its surroundings, is not of surpa.s.sing beauty. Its claim to be "the most beautiful city in Europe" rests solely on the advent.i.tious aid of situation. When the fict.i.tious charm which distance gives is lost by a near approach, it will be seen that the city which has inspired the poets of all ages is little more than a huge, bustling, commonplace commercial port, not to be compared for a moment, aesthetically speaking, with Genoa, Florence, Venice, or many other Italian towns equally well known to the traveller. This inherent lack is, however, more than compensated for by the unrivaled natural beauties of its position, and of its charming environs. No town in Europe, not Palermo with its "Golden Sh.e.l.l," Constantinople with its "Golden Horn," nor Genoa, the "Gem of the Riviera," can boast of so magnificent a situation. The traveller who approaches Naples by sea may well be excused for any exuberance of language. As the ship enters the Gulf, pa.s.sing between the beautiful isles of Ischia and Capri, which seem placed like twin outposts to guard the entrance of this watery paradise, the scene is one which will not soon fade from the memory. All around stretches the bay in its azure immensity, its sweeping curves bounded on the right by the rocky Sorrentine promontory, with Sorrento, Meta, and a cl.u.s.ter of little fishing villages nestling in the olive-clad precipices, half hidden by orange groves and vineyards, and the majestic form of Monte Angelo towering above. Farther along the coast, Vesuvius, the tutelary genius of the scene, arrests the eye, its vine-clad lower slopes presenting a startling contrast to the dark cone of the volcano belching out fire and smoke, a terrible earnest of the hidden powers within. On the left the graceful undulations of the Camaldoli hills descend to the beautifully indented bay of Pozzuoli, which looks like a miniature replica of the parent gulf with the volcano of Monte Nuovo for its Vesuvius. Then straight before the spectator lies a white ma.s.s like a marble quarry; this, with a white projecting line losing itself in the graceful curve of Vesuvius, resolves itself, as the steamer draws nearer, into Naples and its suburbs of Portici and Torre del Greco. Beyond, in the far background, the view is shut in by a phantom range of snowy peaks, an offshoot of the Abruzzi Mountains, faintly discerned in the purple haze of the horizon.
All these varied prospects unite to form a panorama which, for beauty and extent, is hardly to be matched in Europe.
This bald and inadequate description may perhaps serve to explain one reason for the pre-eminence among the many beautiful views in the South of Europe popularly allowed to the Bay of Naples. One must attribute the aesthetic attraction of the Bay a good deal to the variety of beautiful and striking objects comprised in the view. Here we have not merely a magnificent bay with n.o.ble, sweeping curves (the deeply indented coasts of the Mediterranean boast many more extensive), but in addition we have in this comparatively circ.u.mscribed area an unequaled combination of sea, mountain, and island scenery. In short, the Gulf of Naples, with its islands, capes, bays, straits, and peninsulas, is an epitome of the princ.i.p.al physical features of the globe, and might well serve as an object lesson for a child making its first essay at geography. Then, too, human interest is not lacking. The mighty city of Naples, like a huge octopus, stretches out its feelers right and left, forming the straggling towns and villages which lie along the eastern and western sh.o.r.es of the bay. A more plausible, if prosaic, reason for the popularity of the Bay of Naples may, however, be found in its familiarity. Naples and Vesuvius are as well known to us in prints, photographs, or engravings as St. Paul"s Cathedral or the Houses of Parliament. If other famous bays, Palermo or Corinth, for instance, were equally well known, that of Naples would have many rivals in popular estimation.
The traveller feels landing a terrible anticlimax. The n.o.ble prospect of the city and the bay has raised his expectations to the highest pitch, and the disenchantment is all the greater. The sordid surroundings of the port, the worst quarter of the city, the squalor and filth of the streets, preceded by the inevitable warfare with the rapacious rabble of yelling boatmen, porters, and cab-drivers, make the disillusionized visitor inclined to place a sinister interpretation on the equivocal maxim, _Vedi Napoli e poi mori_; and Goethe"s aphorism, that a man can never be utterly miserable who retains the recollection of Naples, seems to him the hollowest mockery and the cruellest irony.
The streets of Naples are singularly lacking in architectural interest.
Not only are there few historic buildings or monuments, which is curious when we consider the important part Naples played in the mediaeval history of the South of Europe, but there are not many handsome modern houses or palaces of any pretensions. Not that Naples is wanting in interest. The conventional sight-seer, who calls a place interesting in proportion to the number of pages devoted to its princ.i.p.al attractions in the guide-books, may, perhaps, contemptuously dismiss this great city as a place which can be sufficiently well "done" in a couple of days; but to the student of human nature Naples offers a splendid field in its varied and characteristic scenes of street life. To those who look below the surface, this vast hive of humanity, in which Italian life can be studied in all its varied phases and aspects, cannot be wholly commonplace.
It is a truism that the life of Naples must be seen in the streets. The street is the Neapolitan"s bedroom, dining-room, dressing-room, club, and recreation ground. The custom of making the streets the home is not confined to the men. The fair s.e.x are fond of performing _al fresco_ toilettes, and may frequently be seen mutually a.s.sisting each other in the dressing of their magnificent hair in full view of the pa.s.sers-by.
As in Oriental cities, certain trades are usually confined to certain streets or alleys in the poorer quarters of the town. The names at street corners show that this custom is a long-established one. There are streets solely for cutlers, working jewelers, second-hand bookstalls, and old clothes shops, to name a few of the staple trades. The most curious of these trading-streets is one not far from the Cathedral, confined to the sale of religious wares; shrines, tawdry images, cheap crucifixes, crosses, and rosaries make up the contents of these ecclesiastical marine stores. This distinctive local character of the various arts and crafts is now best exemplified in the Piazza degli Orefici. This square and the adjoining streets are confined to silversmiths and jewelers, and here the characteristic ornaments of the South Italian peasant women can still be bought, though they are beginning to be replaced by the cheap, machine-made abominations of Birmingham. Apart from the thronging crowds surging up and down, these narrow streets and alleys are full of dramatic interest. The curious characteristic habits and customs of the people may best be studied in the poor quarters round the Cathedral. He who would watch this shifting and ever-changing human kaleidoscope must not, however, expect to do it while strolling leisurely along. This would be as futile as attempting to stem the ebb and flow of the street currents, for the streets are narrow and the traffic abundant. A doorway will be found a convenient harbor of refuge from the long strings of heavily laden mules and donkeys which largely replace vehicular traffic. A common and highly picturesque object is the huge charcoal-burner"s wagon, drawn usually by three horses abreast. The richly decorated pad of the harness is very noticeable, with its brilliant array of gaudy bra.s.s flags and the shining _repousse_ plates, with figures of the Madonna and the saints, which, together with the Pagan symbols of horns and crescents, are supposed to protect the horses from harm. Unfortunately these talismans do not seem able to protect them from the brutality of their masters. The Neapolitan"s cruelty to animals is proverbial. This characteristic is especially noticeable on Festas and Sundays. A Neapolitan driver apparently considers the seating capacity of a vehicle and the carrying power of a horse to be limited only by the number of pa.s.sengers who can contrive to hang on, and with anything less than a dozen perched on the body of the cart, two or three in the net, and a couple on the shafts, he will think himself weakly indulgent to his steed. It is on the Castellamare Road on a Festa that the visitor will best realize the astonishing elasticity of a Neapolitan"s notions as to the powers of a beast of burden. A small pony will often be seen doing its best to drag uphill a load of twelve or fifteen hulking adults, incited to its utmost efforts by physical suasion in the form of sticks and whips, and moral suasion in the shape of shrill yells and oaths. Their diabolical din seems to give some color to the saying that "Naples is a paradise inhabited by devils."
The _al fresco_ restaurants of the streets are curious and instructive.
That huge jar of oil simmering on a charcoal fire denotes a fried-fish stall, where fish and "oil-cakes" are retailed at one sou a portion. These stalls are much patronized by the very poor, with whom macaroni is an almost unattainable luxury. At street corners a snail-soup stall may often be seen, conspicuous by its polished copper pot. The poor consider snails a great delicacy; and in this they are only following ancient customs, for even in Roman times snails were in demand, if we may judge from the number of snail-sh.e.l.ls found among the Pompeii excavations. A picturesque feature are the herds of goats. These ambulating dairies stream through the town in the early morning. The intelligent beasts know their customers, and each flock has its regular beat, which it takes of its own accord.
Sometimes the goats are milked in the streets, the pail being let down from the upper floors of the houses by a string, a pristine type of _ascenseur_. Generally, though, the animal mounts the stairs to be milked, and descends again in the most matter-of-fact manner.
The gaudily painted stalls of the iced-water and lemonade dealers give warmth of color to the streets. There are several grades in the calling of _acquaiolo_ (water-seller). The lowest member of the craft is the peripatetic _acquaiolo_, who goes about furnished simply with a barrel of iced water strapped on his back, and a basket of lemons slung to his waist, and dispenses drinks at two centesimi a tumbler. It was thought that the completion of the Serino aqueduct, which provides the whole of Naples with excellent water at the numerous public fountains, would do away with the time-honored water-seller; but it seems that the poorer cla.s.ses cannot do without a flavoring of some sort, and so this humble fraternity continue as a picturesque adjunct of the streets. These are only a few of the more striking objects of interest which the observer will not fail to notice in his walks through the city. But we must leave this fascinating occupation and turn to some of the regulation sights of Naples.
Though, in proportion to its size, Naples contains fewer sights and specific objects of interest than any other city in Italy, there are still a few public buildings and churches which the tourist should not neglect.
There are quite half-a-dozen churches out of the twenty-five or thirty noticed by the guide-books which fully repay the trouble of visiting them.
The Cathedral is in the old part of the town. Its chief interest lies in the gorgeous Chapel of St. Januarius, the patron saint of Naples. In a silver shrine under the richly decorated altar is the famous phial containing the coagulated blood of the saint. This chapel was built at the beginning of the seventeenth century, in fulfilment of a vow by the grateful populace in honor of the saint who had saved their city "from the fire of Vesuvius by the intercession of his precious blood." St. Januarius is held in the highest veneration by the lower cla.s.ses of Naples, with whom the liquefaction ceremony, which takes place twice a year, is an article of faith in which they place the most implicit reliance. The history of the holy man is too well known to need repet.i.tion here. The numerous miracles attributed to him, and the legends which have grown round his name, would make no inconsiderable addition to the hagiological literature of Italy.
Of the other churches, Sta. Chiara, S. Domenico Maggiore, and S. Lorenzo are best worth visiting. In building Sta. Chiara the architect would seem to have aimed at embodying, as far as possible, the idea of the church militant, the exterior resembling a fortress rather than a place of worship. In accordance with the notions of church restoration which prevailed in the last century, Giotto"s famous frescoes have been covered with a thick coating of whitewash, the sapient official who was responsible for the restoration considering these paintings too dark and gloomy for mural decoration. Now the most noteworthy objects in the church are the Gothic tombs of the Angevin kings.
The two churches of S. Domenico and S. Lorenzo are not far off, and the sightseer in this city of "magnificent distances" is grateful to the providence which has placed the three most interesting churches in Naples within a comparatively circ.u.mscribed area. S. Domenico should be visited next, as it contains some of the best examples of Renaissance sculpture in Naples as Sta. Chiara does of Gothic art. It was much altered and repaired in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but still remains one of the handsomest of the Neapolitan churches. Its most important monument is the marble group in relief of the Virgin, with SS.
Matthew and John, by Giovanni da Nola, which is considered to be the sculptor"s best work. The Gothic church of S. Lorenzo has fortunately escaped in part the disfiguring hands of the seventeenth century restorer.
This church is of some literary and historical interest, Petrarch having spent several months in the adjoining monastery; and it was here that Boccaccio saw the beautiful princess immortalized in his tales by the name of Fiammetta.
In order to appreciate the true historical and geographical significance of Naples, we must remember that the whole of this volcanic district is one great palimpsest, and that it is only with the uppermost and least important inscription that we have hitherto concerned ourselves. To form an adequate idea of this unique country we must set ourselves to decipher the earlier-written inscriptions. For this purpose we must visit the National Museum, which contains rich and unique collections of antiquities elsewhere absolutely unrepresented. Here will be found the best treasures from the buried towns of c.u.mae, Herculaneum, and Pompeii. The history of nearly a thousand years may be read in this vast necropolis of ancient art.
To many, however, the living present has a deeper interest than the buried past, and to these the innumerable beautiful excursions round Naples will prove more attractive than all the wealth of antiquities in the Museum.
Certainly, from a purely aesthetic standpoint, all the best things in Naples are out of it if the bull may be allowed. To reach Pozzuoli and the cla.s.sic district of Baiae and c.u.mae, we pa.s.s along the fine promenade of the Villa n.a.z.ionale, which stretches from the Castello dell" Ovo (the Bastille of Naples) to the Posilipo promontory, commanding, from end to end, superb un.o.bstructed views of the Bay. Capri, the central point of the prospect, appears to change its form from day to day, like a fairy island.
Sometimes, on a cloudless day, the fantastic outlines of the cliffs stand out clearly defined against the blue sea and the still bluer background of the sky; the houses are plainly distinguished, and you can almost fancy that you can descry the groups of idlers leaning over the parapet of the little piazza, so clear is the atmosphere. Sometimes the island is bathed in a bluish haze, and by a curious atmospheric effect a novel form of _Fata Morgana_ is seen, the island, appearing to be lifted out of the water and suspended between sea and sky.
The grounds of the Villa n.a.z.ionale are extensive, and laid out with taste, but are disfigured by inferior plaster copies, colossal in size, of famous antique statues. It is strange that Naples, while possessing some of the greatest masterpieces of ancient sculptors, should be satisfied with these plastic monstrosities for the adornment of its most fashionable promenade.
The most interesting feature of the Villa n.a.z.ionale is the Aquarium. It is not merely a show place, but an international biological station, and, in fact, the portion open to the public consists only of the spare tanks of the laboratory. This inst.i.tution is the most important of its kind in Europe, and is supported by the princ.i.p.al European Universities, who each pay for so many "tables."
[Ill.u.s.tration]
At the entrance to the tunneled highway known as the Grotto di Posilipo, which burrows through the promontory that forms the western bulwark of Naples, and serves as a barrier to shut out the noise of that overgrown city, is a columbarium known as Virgil"s Tomb. The guide-books, with their superior erudition, speak rather contemptuously of this historic spot as the "so-called tomb of Virgil." Yet historical evidence seems to point to the truth of the tradition which has a.s.signed this spot as the place where Virgil"s ashes were once placed. A visit to this tomb is a suitable introduction to the neighborhood of which Virgil seems to be the tutelary genius. Along the sunny slopes of Posilipo the poet doubtless occasionally wended his way to the villa of Lucullus, at the extreme end of the peninsula. Leaving the gloomy grotto, the short cut to Pozzuoli, on our right, we begin to mount the far-famed "Corniche" of Posilipo, which skirts the cliffs of the promontory. The road at first pa.s.ses the fashionable Mergellina suburb, fringed by an almost uninterrupted series of villa gardens. This is, perhaps, one of the most beautiful drives in the South of Europe. Every winding discloses views which are at once the despair and the delight of the painter. At every turn we are tempted to stop and feast the eyes on the glorious prospect. Perhaps of all the fine views in and around Naples, that from the Capo di Posilipo is the most striking, and dwells longest in the memory. At one"s feet lies Naples, its whitewashed houses glittering bright in the flood of sunshine. Beyond, across the deep blue waters of the gulf, Vesuvius, the evil genius of this smiling country, arrests the eye, from whose summit, like a halo,
"A wreath of light blue vapor, pure and rare, Mounts, scarcely seen against the deep blue sky;
... It forms, dissolving there, The dome, as of a palace, hung on high Over the mountains."
Portici, Torre del Greco, and Torre del" Annunziata can hardly be distinguished in this densely populated fringe of coast-line, which extends from Naples to Castellamare. Sometimes at sunset we have a magnificent effect. This sea-wall of continuous towns and villages lights up under the dying rays of the sun like glowing charcoal. The conflagration appears to spread to Naples, and the huge city is "lit up like Sodom, as if fired by some superhuman agency." This atmospheric phenomenon may remind the imaginative spectator of the dread possibilities afforded by the proximity of the ever-threatening volcano towering _in terrorem_ over the thickly populated plain. There is a certain weird charm born of impending danger, which gives the whole district a pre-eminence in the world of imagination. It has pa.s.sed through its baptism of fire; and who knows how soon "the dim things below" may be preparing a similar fate for a city so rashly situated? These dismal reflections are, however, out of place on the peaceful slopes of Posilipo, whose very name denotes freedom from care.
The sh.o.r.es of this promontory are thickly strewed with Roman ruins, which are seldom explored owing to their comparative inaccessibility. Most of the remains, theaters, temples, baths, porticoes, and other buildings, whose use or nature defies the learning of the antiquary, are thought to be connected with the extensive villa of the notorious epicure Vedius Polio. Traces of the fish-tanks for the eels, which Seneca tells us were fed with the flesh of disobedient slaves, are still visible. Descending the winding gradients of Posilipo, we get the first glimpse of the lovely little Bay of Pozzuoli. The view is curious and striking. So deeply and sharply indented is the coast, and so narrow and tortuous are the channels that separate the islands Ischia, Procida, and Nisida, that it is difficult to distinguish the mainland. We enjoy a unique panorama of land and sea, islands, bays, straits, capes, and peninsulas all inextricably intermingled.
Continuing our journey past the picturesque town of Pozzuoli, its semi-oriental looking houses cl.u.s.tered together on a rocky headland, like Monaco, we reach the hallowed ground of the cla.s.sical student. No one who has read his Virgil or his Horace at school can help being struck by the constant succession of once familiar names scattered so thickly among the dry bones of the guide-books. The district between c.u.mae and Pozzuoli is the _sanctum sanctorum_ of cla.s.sical Italy, and "there is scarcely a spot which is not identified with the poetical mythology of Greece, or a.s.sociated with some name familiar in the history of Rome." Leaving Pozzuoli, we skirt the Phlegraean Fields, which, owing to their malaria-haunted situation, still retain something of their ancient sinister character. This tract is, however, now being drained and cultivated a good deal. That huge mound on our right, looking like a Celtic sepulchral barrow, is Monte Nuovo, a volcano, as its name denotes, of recent origin. Geologically speaking, it is a thing of yesterday, being thrown up in the great earthquake of September 30th, 1538, when, as Alexandre Dumas graphically puts it, "One morning Pozzuoli woke up, looked around, and could not recognize its position; where had been the night before a lake was now a mountain." The lake referred to is Avernus, a name familiar to all through the venerable and invariably misquoted cla.s.sical tag, _facilis descensus Averni_, etc. This insignificant-looking volcanic molehill is the key to the physical geography of the whole district.
Though the upheaval of Monte Nuovo has altered the configuration of the country round, the depopulation of this deserted but fertile country is due, not to the crater, but to the malaria, the scourge of the coast. The scarcity of houses on the western horn of the Bay of Naples is very marked, especially when contrasted with the densely populated sea-board on the Castellamare side. Leaving Monte Nuovo we come to a still more fertile tract of country, and the luxuriant vegetation of these Avernine hills "radiant with vines" contrasts pleasingly with the gloomy land "where the dusky nation of Cimmeria dwells" of the poet. The mythological traditions of the beautiful plain a few miles farther on, covered with vineyards and olive-groves and bright with waving corn-fields, where Virgil has placed the Elysian Fields, seem far more appropriate to the landscape as we see it. Perhaps a sense of the dramatic contrast was present in the poet"s mind when he placed the Paradiso and the Inferno of the ancients so near together.
Quite apart from the charm with which ancient fable and poetry have invested this district, the astonishing profusion of ruins makes it especially interesting to the antiquary. A single morning"s walk in the environs of Baiae or c.u.mae will reveal countless fragmentary monuments of antiquities quite outside of the stock ruins of the guide-books, which the utilitarian instincts of the country people only partially conceal, Roman tombs serving as granaries or receptacles for garden produce, temples affording stable-room for goats and donkeys, amphitheaters half-concealed by olive-orchards or orange-groves, walls of ancient villas utilized in building up the terraced vineyards; and, in short, the trained eye of an antiquary would, in a day"s walk, detect a sufficient quant.i.ty of antique material almost to reconstruct another Pompeii. But though every acre of this antiquary"s paradise teems with relics of the past, and though every bay and headland is crowded with memories of the greatest names in Roman history, we must not linger in this supremely interesting district, but must get on to the other beautiful features of the Gulf of Naples.
Capri, as viewed from Naples, is the most attractive and striking feature in the Bay. There is a kind of fascination about this rocky island-garden which is felt equally by the callow tourist making his first visit to Italy, and by the seasoned traveller who knew Capri when it was the center of an art colony as well known as is that of Newlyn at the present day. No doubt Capri is now considered by super-sensitive people to be as hopelessly vulgarized and hackneyed as the Isle of Man or the Channel Isles, now that it has become the favorite picknicking ground of shoals of Neapolitan excursionists; but that is the fate of most of the beautiful scenery in the South of Europe, if at all easy of access. These fastidious minds may, however, find consolation in the thought that to the noisy excursionists, daily carried to and from Naples by puffing little c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.l steamers, the greater part of the island will always remain an undiscovered country. They may swarm up the famous steps of Anacapri, and even penetrate into the Blue Grotto, but they do not, as a rule, carry the spirit of geographical research farther.
The slight annoyance caused by the great crowds is amply compensated for by the beauties of the extraordinarily grand scenery which is to be found within the island desecrated by memories of that "deified beast Tiberius,"
as d.i.c.kens calls him. What const.i.tutes the chief charm of the natural features of Capri are the sharp contrasts and the astonishing variety in the scenery. Rugged precipices, in height exceeding the cliffs of Tintagel, and in beauty and boldness of outline surpa.s.sing the crags of the grandest Norwegian fiords, wall in a green and fertile garden-land covered with orange-orchards, olive-groves, and corn-fields. Cruising round this rock-bound and apparently inaccessible island, it seems a natural impregnable fortress, a sea-girt Gibraltar guarding the entrance of the gulf, girdled round with precipitous crags rising a thousand feet sheer out of the sea, the cliff outline broken by steep ravines and rocky headlands, with outworks of crags, reefs, and t.i.tanic ma.s.ses of tumbled rocks.