the longitude please,—
For, maybe, while wasting my taper,
Your sun's climbing over the trees."
III
CAPTURED BY A CABMAN
If Lady Morgan wrote of her beloved Irish capital "dear, dirty Dublin," we may describe Naples less alliteratively in somewhat the same words, except that to American eyes the Neapolitan city is even dirtier and vastly more beautiful. Indeed, no words written nor pictures painted give any adequate conception of the blueness of the sea, the soft purple shades upon the mountains, and the fine transparency and lightness of this air. One breathes in gayety with every breath, a certain elasticity and joie de vivre which the filth, the noise, the bad odors, and even the hopeless poverty all around us are powerless to dispel.
From the Strada Vittorio Emanuele, where we are stopping, we look down upon a series of terraced gardens, some of them very poor little gardens with a few vegetables, among them the omnipresent and much beloved artichoke, the fennel, like a coarse celery, and lettuce. Roses are climbing all over the walls of these hillside gardens, and in many of them orange-trees are blooming, spreading around them a delicious perfume. Here on the heights we have none of the disadvantages of Naples, the noise, the unsavory odors, or the uncleanliness.
Above this strada, which is the name by which the Neapolitans call their streets, the hills tower for many feet, and way up on their crests are the Castle of St. Elmo and the old Carthusian monastery of San Martino. We visited San Martino the day after our arrival, because Zelphine had an irrepressible desire to get to the tip-top of everything and view both the city and bay from the heights above us. The ascent was made in one of the funicolari, cable trams, which are used so much over here. They are rather terrifying at first, but are said to be quite safe, and are, I believe, less dangerous than many of our elevators.
The old monastery is now a museum, under the management of the Museo Nazionale, and contains many paintings, porcelains, carvings, and other antiques. We neglected the treasures within for the greater pleasure of wandering at will through the charming, picturesque cloisters, which are richly carved and of a stone warm and creamy in tone, so different from the heavy, dark cloisters one sees in England and elsewhere. Most of our morning was spent basking in the sunshine of the court; we could fancy the old monks enjoying, as we did, the genial warmth that in the Southern Italian winter is only to be found out of doors. The museum itself was damp, as are all the galleries at this season.
In this court are a number of handsome sarcophagi, with inscriptions and coats-of-arms carved in the marble; from hence we passed into the Belvedere, whose balconies command an exquisite view of the city and bay. We gazed long at the noble panorama spread before us, from Posilipo to the hill of Capodimonte. Over across the bay were Ischia and Capri, blue as its own grotto, with Sorrento's long point of land reaching out into the sea, and off in the far distance the snow-line of the Apennines. To our left, Vesuvius, with its three peaks, was smoking away as peacefully as a Hollander on his hooge stoep. Seeing them by day it is hard to believe that these fair blue hills could have wrought sudden destruction upon the cities of the plain; but last night, when flames flashed up skyward from the smoking crater, I must confess that we had some misgivings. When we beheld these danger-signals, as they seemed to us, we carried our fears and our queries to the padrone and the concierge, who both assured us, to their own satisfaction if not entirely to ours, that Vesuvius has never erupted in the direction of Naples, evidently feeling that Italian volcanoes, like Italian people, are not in the habit of changing their ways.
Standing upon the Belvedere of San Martino, we were able to form some idea of the great width of the bay, where just now "William's yacht," as one of our English friends always calls it, is riding at anchor. The Kaiser is making one of his rapid, semi-official, quite friendly, and wholly diplomatic visits to Rome, and his yacht awaits him here.
We have spent the morning at the National Museum, where are so many of the world-famous sculptures, the Hercules, a magnificent, strong figure in perfect repose, a giant taking his ease, and the Farnese Bull, both of them from the Baths of Caracalla in Rome, and a huge bronze horse from Herculaneum. Most impressive and interesting to us is the statue of Diana of the Ephesians, against whose worship Paul preached at Ephesus. A curious statue is this, odd enough to have fallen down from Jupiter, according to the tradition, or from any other heathen god! The torso is of fine, variegated marble, and the head, hands, and feet, the latter slender and delicate, are of bronze. This Diana is not a huntress, like the Greek Artemis with the crescent above her brow, but bears about her the symbols of abundance. We lingered long near this statue of the great goddess of the Ephesians, marvelling wherein lay the secret of her power. To Demetrius and the other silversmiths who made her shrines she was valuable, as she brought them great gain; but for beauty or grace there was no reason why this Diana should have been worshipped by "Asia and all the world."
Among the bronzes from Pompeii and Herculaneum we found the originals of many of the exquisitely graceful figures with which we are all familiar. We greeted as old friends the Dancing Faun, the Mercury, the Flying Victory, the Wrestlers, Silenus, the Boy with the Dolphin, and, above all, the lovely Narcissus, which they now call by another name. Zelphine and I have decided that we will never acknowledge this to be a Dionysus or anything less poetic than the Narcissus. This charming, youthful figure with the bent head and listening ear is quite small, not nearly life-size, and for that reason, perhaps, its beauty is more delicate and spiritual. If that little figure could speak, what could it not tell of pomp, luxury, love, and delight, all overtaken and overwhelmed by sudden destruction in the buried city where it was found!
Now, indeed, if it were in my power to rhyme four lines and make sense at the same time, which was my school-girl idea of poetry-making, I should certainly be sending you a poem about the Narcissus; but why cudgel my brains when Keats has, with his own sympathetic charm, told the pathetic story of the beautiful youth?—
"Who gazed into the stream's deep recess
And died of his own dear loveliness."
On our way home from the museum our vetturino beat his horse so unmercifully, although the poor nag was going as fast as a horse could be expected to go up hill, that Zelphine remonstrated with him, very tactfully, as I thought, paying his sorry Rosinante compliments and calling the wretched beast il buono cavallo. The idea of any one feeling compassion for a horse evidently touched the driver's sense of humor, and, regarding it as a huge joke, he laughed and whipped the poor animal still more unmercifully, making us understand, in the gibberish of French and Italian peculiar to the cabmen here, that there was no need to be merciful to a creature without a soul. We longed for greater facility in some language that he could understand, to inquire into his own spiritual condition. As, however, words were wanting, we fell to wondering wherein such a being as this differs from the beasts of the field. The cabmen of Naples would certainly afford our friend Dr. C. an additional argument in favor of his pet doctrine of conditional immortality.
Our driver's attitude toward the animal creation is, we are told, that of most Neapolitans. Even persons of more intelligence question the advisability of caring for the comfort of dumb creatures, yet these apparently cruel people have a most kindly custom. If parents lose a child, and children are generally so numerous that it seems as if one could scarcely be missed, they adopt an orphan, call it God's child, and treat it as their own.
We have been wondering, ever since we came here, where the beauty and fashion of Naples are to be found, having seen on the streets only tradespeople and beggars. We put the question to our friend the concierge at the Hotel B. At five o'clock in the afternoon, he told us, the beau monde could be seen taking an airing on the Chiaia, never earlier. It seems that Neapolitans of quality do not drive while the sun is shining. You remember that old Italian proverb about only dogs and Englishmen liking the sun? To this I would add the wise peasants, with whom its genial warmth takes the place of food, fire, and proper clothing.
Five o'clock on a March afternoon is a rather chilly and uncomfortable hour for a drive; but we should have to go then or give up all idea of