THE GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE LIBRARY
Halsted VanderPoel Campanian Collection
NAPLES
1'OKTA CAl'UANA. NAPLES
NAPLES
PAST AND PRESENT
BY
ARTHUR H. NORWAY
AUTHOR OF " HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS IN DEVON AND CORNWALL '
" PARSON PETER," ETC.
WITH FORTY ILLUSTRATIONS FROM WATER-COLOUR DRAWINGS
BY ARTHUR G. FERARD
METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
1901
GETTY CENTER
LIBRARY
TO MY FRIENDS
BARON AND BARONESS MARIO NOLLI
OF NAPLES, AND OF ARI, IN THE ABRUZZI
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
IN TOKEN THAT THOSE WHO ARE DIVIDED
BY BOTH SEA AND LAND
MAY YET BE UNITED IN THEIR LOVE
FOR ITALY
PREFATORY NOTE
I HAVE designed this book not as a guide, but
as supplementary to a guide. The best of
guide-books even that of Murray or of Gsell-Fels
leaves a whole world of thought and knowledge
untouched, being indeed of necessity so full of detail
that broad, general views can scarcely be obtained
from it.
In this work detail has been sacrificed without
hesitation. I have omitted reference to a few well-
known places, usually because I could add nothing
to the information given in the handbooks, but in
one or two cases because the considerations which
they raised lay too far from the thread of my
discourse.
I have thrown together in the form of an appendix
such hints and suggestions as seemed likely to assist
anyone who desires wider information than I have
given.
A. H. N.
EALING, 1901
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
THE APPROACH TO NAPLES BY THE SEA . i
CHAPTER II
THE ANCIENT MARVELS OF THE PHLEGR/EAN FIELDS. . 21
CHAPTER III
THE BEAUTIES AND TRADITIONS OF THE POSILIPO, WITH
SOME OBSERVATIONS UPON VIRGIL, THE ENCHANTER . 49
CHAPTER IV
THE RIVIERA DI CHIAIA, AND SOME STRANGE THINGS WHICH
OCCURRED THERE . . ... 68
& -
CHAPTER V
THE ENCHANTED CASTLE OF THE EGG, AND THE SUCCESSION
OF THE KINGS WHO HELD IT . 85
CHAPTER VI
THE BARBARITIES OF FERDINAND OF ARAGON, WITH CERTAIN
OTHER SUBJECTS WHICH PRESENT THEMSELVES IN STROLL-
ING ROUND THE ClTY IOI
CONTENTS
CHAPTER VII
PAGE
CHIEFLY ABOUT CHURCHES WITH SOME SAINTS, BUT MORE
SINNERS . . ... 121
CHAPTER VIII
A GREAT CHURCH AND TWO VERY NOBLE TRAGEDIES . 143
CHAPTER IX
VESUVIUS AND THE ClTIES WHICH HE HAS DESTROYED
HERCULANEUM, POMPEII, AND STABILE . . .178
CHAPTER X
CASTELLAMMARE: ITS WOODS, ITS FOLKLORE, AND THE TALE
OF THE MADONNA OF POZZANO . ... 226
CHAPTER XI
SURRIENTO GENTILE: ITS BEAUTIES AND BELIEFS . .251
CHAPTER XII
CAPRI . . i . ' . . . 273
CHAPTER XIII
LA RIVIERA D' AMALFI AND ITS LONG-DEAD GREATNESS . 299
CHAPTER XIV
THE ABBEY OF TRINITA DELLA CAVA, SALERNO, AND THE
RUINED MAJESTY OF P^STUM . . . 327
APPENDIX . . . . . 345
INDEX . . . ; . . 357
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
%.
The Porta Capuana . . . Frontispiece
TO FACE PAGE
The Castle, Ischia . . . ... 6
The Solfatara . . . ... 29
Traces of Earthquake at Casamicciola . . 38
Lake Avernus . . . ... 42
Pozzuoli and Island of Nisida . . ... 50
Scoglio di Virgilio . . . ... 58
Palazzo di Donna Anna . . ... 65
Capri from the Castiglione . . ... 74
Castel dell' Uovo . . . ... 96
Vault in Castel Nuovo . . ... 106
Porch of Santa Barbara, Naples . . . 1 1 1
San Liberatore and Mountains towards Salerno . . .125
Naples from the Harbour . . . 139
Porto Tragara, Capri . . . 1 50
I Faraglioni, Capri . . . . . . 164
Naples from Corso Vittorio Emanuele . . . 178
Ruins of Cathedral at Casamicciola . . 190
Herculaneum . . . ... 200
Temple of Apollo, Pompeii . . . . 210
Tombs of Pompeii . . . ... 220
Castellammare from Quisisana . . . 232
Castellammare from Monte Coppola . ... 243
xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
TO FACE PAGE
Vico Equense . . . ... 253
Plain of Sorrento . . . ...
Valley of Mills, Sorrento . . . . .
Gateway of Capri . . . ...
Capri and Punta di Campanella . ...
Arco Naturale, Capri . . "/''
Ravine of Furore . . . ...
Atrani .... .,-, '; ..-.,;
Amalfi from Cappuccini Convent . . ,< ,- .'- .',
Lion Fountain, Ravello . . . :;<;, \-, ,
Ravello . . . . . n ^ '... ,
Courtyard of Palazzo Rufolo, Ravello . ...
Tower of Scarpariello, Minori . ...
Tower of Majori . . " . . . .
Convent of La Trinita at Corpodi Cava . ...
Temple of Neptune, Psestum . . ...
Basilica of Psestum .
NAPLES
PAST AND PRESENT
CHAPTER I
THE APPROACH TO NAPLES BY THE SEA
ON a fine spring morning when the sun, which
set last night in gold and purple behind the
jagged mountain chain of Corsica, had but just
climbed high enough to send out shafts and flashes
of soft light across the opalescent sea, I came up on
the deck of the great steamer which carried me from
Genoa to watch for the first opening of the Bay of
Naples. It was so early that the decks were very
quiet. There was no sound but the perpetual soft
rustle of the wave shed off from the bow of the
steamer, which slipped on silently without sense of
motion. The Ponza Islands were in sight, desolate
and precipitous, showing on their dark cliffs no house
nor any sign of life, save here and there a seabird
winging its solitary way round the crags and caverns
of the coast. Far ahead, in the direction of our
course, lay one or two dim, cloudy masses, too faint
and shadowy to be detached as yet from the grey
skyline which bounded the crystalline sparkles of the
sea. And so, having strained my eyes in vain effort
to discover the high peak of Ischia, I fell to wondering
2 THE APPROACH TO NAPLES
why any man who is at liberty to choose his route
should dream of approaching this Campanian coast
otherwise than by the sea.
For Naples is the city of the siren " Parthenope,"
sacred to one of those sea nymphs whose marvellous
sweet singing floated out across the waves and lured
the ancient seamen rowing by in their strange old
galleys, shaped after a fashion now long since for-
gotten, and carrying merchandise from cities which
thirty centuries ago and more were "broken by
the sea in the depths of the waters " so that " all
the company in the midst of them did fail." How
many generations had the line of sailors stretched
among whom Parthenope wrought havoc before
Ulysses sailed by her rock, and saw the heaps of
whitening bones, and last of all men heard the
wondrous melodies which must have lured him too,
but for the tight thongs which bound him to the
mast ! So Parthenope and her two sisters cast them-
selves into the sea and perished, as the old prediction
said they must when first a mariner went by their
rock unscathed. But her drowned body floated over
the blue sea till it reached the shore at Naples, and
somewhere near the harbour the wondering people
built her a shrine which was doubtless rarely lovely,
and is mentioned by Strabo, the old Greek geogra-
pher, as being shown still in his day, not long after
the birth of Christ
There is now but little navigation on these seas
compared with the relative importance of the ship-
ping that came hither in old days. Naples is in our
day outstripped by Genoa, and hard run, even for
the goods of southern Italy, by Brindisi and Taranto.
The trade of Rome goes largely to Leghorn. If
Ostia were ever purged of fever and rebuilt, or if
the schemes for deepening the Tiber so as to allow
THE ANTIQUITY OF SHIPS 3
large vessels to discharge at Rome were carried out,
we might see the port of Naples decline as that of
Pozzuoli did for the selfsame reason, the broad facts
which govern the course of trade being the same
to-day as they were three thousand years ago. Even
now it is rather the convenience of passengers and
mails than the necessities of merchants which take
the great ocean steamers into Naples. It is not easy
for men who realise these facts to remember that the
waters of the Campanian coast have more than once
been ploughed by the chief shipping of the world.
Far back in the dawn of history, where nothing
certain can be distinguished of the deeds of men or
nations, the presence of traders, Phoenician and
Greek, can be inferred upon these shores. The
antiquity of shipping is immense and measureless.
Year by year the spade, trenching on the sites of
ancient civilisation, drives back by centuries the date
at which man's intellect began to gather science ;
and no one yet can put his finger on any point of
time and say, " within this space man did not under-
stand the use of sail or oar." The earliest seamen
of whom we know anything at all were doubtless
the successors of many a generation like themselves.
It cannot be much less than a thousand years before
Christ was born when Greek ships were crossing the
sea which washed their western coasts bound for
Sicily and the Campanian shores. Yet how many
ages must have passed between the days when the
Greeks first went afloat and those in which they dared
push off toward the night side of the world, where
the mariners of the dead went to and fro upon the
sea, where the expanse of ocean lay unbroken by
the shelter of any friendly island, and both winds
and currents beat against them in their course, or
even by coasting up and down the Adriatic set that
4 THE APPROACH TO NAPLES
dreaded sea between them and their homes ! Super-
stition, hand in hand with peril, barred their way,
yet they broke through ! But after what centuries of
fearful longing, curiosity, and love of salt adventure
struggling in their hearts with fear of the unknown,
till courage gained the mastery and the galleys
braved the surf and smoke of the planctcz, the
rocks that struck together, "where not even do
birds pass by, no, not the timorous doves which carry
ambrosia for Zeus, but even of them the sheer rock
ever steals one away, and the father sends in another
to make up the number."
Then the rowers saw the rock of Scylla and her
ravening heads thrust forth to prey on them, while
beneath the fig tree on the opposite crag Charybdis
sucked down the black seawater awfully, and cast it
forth again in showers of foam and spray. These fabled
dangers passed, there remained the Island of the Sirens,
which legend placed near Capri, where Ulysses passed
it when he sailed south again ; and so the wonderful
tradition of the Sirens dominates the ancient traffic
of mankind upon these waters, and the harbour where
the shrine of Parthenope was reflected in the blue sea
claims a lofty place in the realms whether of imagina-
tion or of that scholarship which cares rather for the
deeds of men than for the verbal emendations of
a text.
The shrine has gone. The memory remains only
as a fable, whose dim meaning rests on the vast
duration of the ages through which men have
gone to and fro upon these waters. But here, still
unchanged, is the pathway to the shrine the
Tyrrhene Sea, bearing still the selfsame aspect as in
the days when the galleys of ^Eneas beat up the
coast from Troy, and Palinurus watched the wind
rise out of the blackening west. Since those old
CHANGE AND RUIN 5
times the surface of the land has changed as often
almost as the summer clouds have swept across it.
Volcanic outbursts and the caprice of many masters
have wrought together in destruction ; so that he
who now desires to see what Virgil saw must cheat
his eyes at every moment and keep his imagination
ever on the stretch. Even the city of mediaeval days,
the capital of Anjou and Aragon, is so far lost and
hidden that a man must seek diligently before he
cuts the network of old streets, unsavoury and
crowded, in which he can discover the lanes and
courtyards where Boccaccio sought Fiammetta, or
the walls on which Giotto painted.
But here, upon the silent sea, at every moment
fresh objects are coming into sight which have lain
unchanged under dawn and dusk in every generation.
Already the volcanic cone of Monte Epomeo towers
out of Ischia, a menace of destruction which not
twenty years ago fulfilled itself and shook the town
of Casamicciola in a few seconds into a mere rubble
heap. It is a sad thing still to stroll round that once
smiling town. Ruins project on every side. The
cathedral lies shattered and untouched ; there is not
enough money in the island to rebuild it. The
visitors, to whom most of the old prosperity was due,
have not yet recovered from the attack of nerves
brought on by the earthquake. But there remains
wonderful beauty at Casamicciola and elsewhere on
Ischia ; the " Piccola Sentinella " is an excellent hotel ;
some day, surely, the lost ground will be recovered,
and prosperity return.
The new town lies gleaming on the flat at the foot
of the great mountain. Far away towards my right
Capri, loveliest of islands, floats upon the sea touched
with blue haze; and there, stretching landwards, is
the mountain promontory of Sorrento, Monte St.
6 THE APPROACH TO NAPLES
Angelo towering over Monte Faito, and the whole
mass dropping by swift, steep slopes to the Punta di
Campanella, the headland of the bell, whence in the
old days of corsairs the warning toll swung out
across the sea as often as the galleys of Dragut or of
Barbarossa hove in sight, echoing from Torre del
Greco, Torre Annunziata, and many another watch-
tower of that fair and wealthy coast, while the artillery
of the old castle of Ischia, answering with three shots,
gave warning of the coming peril. Even now I can
see that ancient castle, standing nobly on a rock that
seems an island, though, in fact, it is united with the
land by a low causeway ; and it comes into my mind
how Vittoria Colonna took refuge from her sorrows
there, spending her widowhood behind the battlements
on which she had played with her husband as a child.
Doubtless the two children listened awestruck on
many a day to the cannon-shots which warned the
fishers. Perhaps Vittoria may even have been pacing
there when, as Brantome writes, a party of French
knights of Malta came sailing by with much treasure
on their ship, and hearing the three shots took them
arrogantly for a salute in honour of their flag, and so,
thinking of nothing but their dignity, made a courte-
ous salute in answer, and kept on their way. Where-
upon, the spider Dragut, who at that moment was
sacking Castellammare, just where the peninsula joins
the mainland, driving off as captive all those men or
women who had not fled up into the wooded hills in
time, swooped out with half a dozen galleys, and
added the poor knights and their treasure to his piles
of plunder.
Many tales are told about that castle, so near and
safe a refuge from the turbulence of Naples. But
already it is dropping astern, and the lower land
of Procida usurps its place, an island which in the
A PASSIONATE LOVER 7
days of Juvenal was a byword of desolation, though
populous and fertile in our own. The widening
strait of water between the low shore and the craggy
one played its part in a tale as passionate, though
not so famous, as that of Hero and Leander. For
Boccaccio tells us that Gianni di Procida, nephew
and namesake of a man whose loyalty popular
tradition will extol until the end of time, loved one
Restituta Bolgaro, daughter of a gentleman of Ischia ;
and often when his love for her burnt so hotly that
he could not sleep, used to rise and go down to the
water, and if he found no boat would plunge into
the black sea, swim the channel, and lie beneath the
walls of Restituta's house all night, swimming back
happy in the morning if he had but seen the roof
which sheltered her. But one day when Restituta
was alone upon the shore she was carried off by
pirates out of Sicily, who, wondering at her beauty,
took her to Palermo and showed her to King
Federigo, who straightway loved her, and gave her
rooms in his palace, and waited till a day might
come when she would love him. But Gianni armed
a ship and followed swiftly on the traces of the
captors, and found at last that Restituta was in
Palermo. Then, led by love, he scaled the palace
wall by night and crossed the garden in the dark
and gained the poor girl's chamber, and might have
borne her off in safety had not the King, suspecting
that all was not well, come with torches in the
darkness and discovered Gianni and cast him into
prison, where he lay till he was sentenced to be
taken out and burned at the stake in the Piazza
of Palermo together with the girl who had dared
to flout the affection of a king. And burned they
would have been had not the great Admiral
Ruggiero di Loria chanced to pass that way as
8 THE APPROACH TO NAPLES
they stood together at the stake and known Gianni
as the nephew of that great plotter who conceived
the massacre of the Sicilian Vespers, whereby the
crown of Sicily was set upon the head of Aragon.
Straightway he hastened to the King, who forthwith
released Gianni and gave him Restituta, and sent
both home laden with rich gifts to Ischia, where they
lived happy for many a year, till they were overcome
at last by no worse fate than that which is reserved
for all humanity whether glad or sorry.
No man can prove this story true ; but it is at
least so happily conceived as to be worth credence,
like others told us by the same immortal writer,
who, though a Florentine, knew Naples well, and
doubtless wove into the Decameron many an
anecdote picked up in the taverns which survives
now in no other form. For there was no Brantome
to collect for us the gossip of the days when Anjou
drove out Hohenstaufen from this kingdom ; and
if we would know what happened on the coast in
those tragic and far-distant times we must take the
tales set down by Boccaccio for what they may be
worth.
I am not sure that Gianni, the hot-passioned lad
who used to swim this strait by night, does not
emerge out of the darkness of the centuries more
clearly than his greater uncle that mighty plotter
who, using craft and guile where he had no strength,
is fabled to have built up a conspiracy and
engineered a massacre which has no parallel save
in the St. Bartholomew. Yet it is not to be judged
without excuse like that foul act of cold-blooded
treachery, but was in some measure an expiation of
intolerable wrongs, as may be discovered even now
by anyone who will study the plentiful traditions
of that March night when eight thousand French
THE SICILIAN VESPERS 9
of every age and either sex perished in two hours,
slain at the signal of the vesper bell ringing in
Palermo. That bloodshed split the kingdom of the
two Sicilies in twain. It did more : it scored men's
minds with a memory so deep that even now there
is no child in Sicily who could not tell how the
massacre began. To men then living it appeared
a cataclysm so tremendous that they must needs
date time from it, as from the birth of Christ or
the foundation of the world. In documents written
full four centuries later the passage of the years is
reckoned thus ; and in Palermo to this day the
nuns of the Pieta sing a litany on the Monday after
Easter in memory of the souls of the French who
perished on that night of woe. So memorable was
the deed ascribed by tradition to the plotter, Giovanni
di Procida, lord of that little island which is already
slipping past me out of sight.
The steamer slips on noiselessly as ever. Procida
falls away into the background, with its old brown
town clinging to the seaward face of a precipitous
cliff; and I can look down the Bay of Baiae, where
in old Roman days every woman who went in a Pene-
lope came out a Helen, and almost catch a glance at
Cumae, where Daedalus put off his weary wings after
that great flight from Crete which no man since has
contrived to imitate. There lies the Gate of Hell
down which ^Eneas plunged in company with the
Sibyl ; and round it all the land of the Phlegrean
fields, heaving and steaming with volcanic fires. There
too is the headland of Posilipo, where Virgil dwelt
and where he wrought those enchantments concerning
which I shall have much to say hereafter ; for though
Virgil is a poet to the world at large, he is a magician
in the memory of the Neapolitans. And who shall
say their tradition is not true ?
io THE APPROACH TO NAPLES
Next, sweeping round towards my right hand in a
perfect curve, comes the shore of the Riviera di Chiaia,
once a pleasant sandy beach, broken midway by the
jutting rock and island on which stood the church and
monastery of San Lionardo. It is long since church
and island disappeared, and few of those gay Neapoli-
tans who throng the Via Caracciolo, that fine parade
which now usurps the whole seafront from horn to
horn of the bay, could even point out where it stood.
In these days the whole shore is embowered in trees
and gardens skirting the fine roadway ; and there
stands the wonderful aquarium, which has no equal
in the world, and where the wise will spend many
afternoons and yet leave its marvels unexhausted.
My eyes have travelled on to the other horn of this
fine bay, and are arrested by what is surely the most
picturesque object in all Naples. For at this point
the spine or backbone of land which breaks the pre-
sent city into two, leaving on the right the ancient
town and on the left the modern, built along the
pretty shore of which I have just spoken, at this
point the ridge sweeps down precipitously from the
Castle of St. Elmo on the height, breaks off abruptly
in the sheer cliff of the Pizzo-Falcone, " The Falcon's
Beak," and then sends jutting out into the sea a small
craggy island which bears an old hoary castle low
down by the water's edge. On this grey morning the
sea breaks heavily about the black reef on which
the castle stands, and the walls, darkened almost to
the colour of the rock itself, assume a curious aspect
of vast age, such as disposes one to seek within their
girth for some at least among the secrets of old
Naples. Nor will the search be vain ; for this hoary
fortress is Castel dell' Uovo, " The Castle of the Egg,"
so called, if we may lend an ear to Neapolitan tradi-
tion, because Virgil the Enchanter built it on an egg,
CASTEL DELI: uovo n
on which it stands unto this hour, and shall stand
until the egg is broken. Others again say that the
islet is egg-shaped, which it is not, unless my eyes
deceive me ; and of other explanations I know none
at all, so that any man who can content himself with
neither of these may resign himself to contemplate
an unsolved puzzle for as long as he may stay in
Naples.
Apart, however, from the wizard Virgil and the
idle tale of the enchanted egg, there is something so
arresting in the sight of this ancient castle thrust out
into the sea that I cannot choose but see in it the
heart of the interest of Naples. It is by far the
oldest castle which Naples owns, and as its day came
earliest so it passed the first. Castel Nuovo robbed
it of its consequence, both as a royal dwelling and
a place of arms ; and now the noisy, feverish tide
of life that beats so restlessly from east to west
through the great city finds scarce an echo on the
silent battlements of the Egg Castle, where Norman
monarchs met their barons and royal prisoners
languished in the dungeons. Inside the walls there
is nothing to attract a visitor but memories. Yet
those gather thick and fast as soon as one has
crossed the drawbridge, and there is scarce one other
spot in Naples where a man who cares for the past
of the old tragic city can lose himself more easily in
dreams.
But again the steamer turns her course a little, and
suddenly the Castel dell' Uovo slips out of sight, the
old brown city passes across my line of vision like
a picture 'on the screen of a camera oscura when the
lens is moved, and I am gazing out beyond the houses
across the wide rich plain out of which the vast bulk
of Vesuvius rears itself dark and tremendous, tower-
ing near the sea. There are other mountains far
12 THE APPROACH TO NAPLES
away, encircling the plain like the walls of some
great amphitheatre, but they are beyond the range
of volcanic catastrophe, and stood unmoved while the
peaks of Vesuvius were piled up and blown away
into a thousand shapes, sometimes green and fertile,
the haunt of wild boars and grazing cattle, at others
rent by fire and subterranean convulsion so as to
give reality to the most awful visions which the im-
agination of mankind has conceived concerning the
destruction which befell the sinful cities of the plain.
The plain is the Campagna Felice, a happy country,
notwithstanding the perpetual menace of the smoking
mountain, which time after time has convulsed the
fields, altered the outline of the coast, and over-
whelmed cities, villages, and churches. Throughout
the last eighteen hundred years a destruction like
to that which befell the cities of Herculaneum and
Pompeii has been overtaking hamlets and buildings
of less note. The country is a palimpsest. What is
now written on its surface is not a tithe of what was
once inscribed there. In 1861 an earthquake at Torre
del Greco made a fissure in the main street. Those
who dared descend it found themselves in a church,
long since buried and forgotten. So it is in every
direction throughout the Campagna Felice. The
works of man are overwhelmed in countless numbers
by the ejections from Vesuvius, and the green fields
of beans and lupins which stretch so pleasantly across
the wide spaces between the Sarno and the Sebeto
cover the ruins of innumerable homes.
It seems strange that a land exposed to such great
and constant perils should be densely populated.
The coast is lined with towns, all shining in the
sun, and the first graceful slopes of Vesuvius itself
are studded with white buildings, planted here and
there in apparent oblivion of the floods of red-hot
VESUVIUS 13
lava which have so often forced their way down the
inclines towards the sea. There must be many
dwellers in those towns who saw the lava break out
from new vents in 1861 among the cultivated fields.
Yet the fields are cultivated still, and in time of
eruption the peasants will continue working in the
vineyards within a few hundred yards of the crawl-
ing stream, knowing well how often its progress is
arrested by the cooling of the fiery mass. There
is, moreover, the power of the saints to be considered.
How often has not San Gennaro arrested the out-
breaks, and brought peace to the frightened city !
On the Ponte della Maddalena he stands unto this
day, his outstretched arm, pointing to the mountain
with a gesture drawn from the mimic language of
the people, bids it " Halt ! " And then the fertility
of the volcanic soil ! Vesuvius, if a rough friend, is
a kindly one. He may drive the people to their
prayers from time to time, which is no great harm !
but, if a balance be struck, his benefits are as many as
his injuries, and the peasants, looking up, as they hoe
their fields, at the coiling wreaths of copper-coloured
smoke which issue from the cone, are content to take
their chance that death may some day meet them too
in a cloud of scorching ashes as it did those who
dwelt in Pompeii so very long ago.
The great steamer is already near her moorings.
The western or newer half of Naples is hidden by
the hill, and I have before my eyes only the densely
peopled ancient city, a rabbit warren of tortuous
and narrow streets, unsavoury and not too safe, yet
full of interest if not of beauty, and possessing a
picturesqueness which is all their own. One salient
feature only arrests the eye wandering over this
intricate mass of balconies and house-fronts the
handsome steeple of the Carmine, a church sorely
14 THE APPROACH TO NAPLES
injured and defaced, but still abounding in romance.
For there lies the boy-king Conradin, slaughtered by
Charles of Anjou in the market-place just outside ;
and there, too, the fisherman Masaniello met his
end, after a trick of fortune had made him ruler
of Naples for eight days. There is no church in all
the city so full of tragedies as this, which was founded
by hermits fleeing from Mount Carmel twelve hundred
years ago, and which ever since has been close to the
heart of the passionate and fierce-tempered people
dwelling round its walls.
I do not doubt there was a time when travellers,
arriving at Naples by sea, found themselves greeted
by persons of aspect more pleasing than those who
accost the astonished pilgrim of to-day. There was
surely an age when the lazzaroni were really pictur-
esque, when they lay on the warm sand in the sun-
shine, while the bay resounded with the chant of
fishermen, the light-hearted people beguiling their un-
bounded leisure with the tuneful strains of " Drunghe,
drunghete," of " Tiritomba," or even the too familiar
" Santa Lucia." It cannot be that travellers lied when
they wrote of the amazing picturesqueness of the
Neapolitans, that they painted brown purple, and
put on their spectacles of rose as they approached
the land ! I wish I had those spectacles ; for indeed
the aspect of the quays and wharves of Naples is
not attractive, while the people who throng the boats
now pushing off towards the steamer are just such
a crowd of expectant barterers as one may see
wherever a great steamer touches. In the stern of
the first stands a naked boy, brown and lithe. His
accomplishment is to dive for pence, which he does
with singular dexterity, cramming all the coins as he
catches them into his mouth, which yet is not so full
as to impede his bellowing like a bull in the effort to
LANDING AT NAPLES 15
attract more custom. Did I complain of the lack of
music ? I was hasty ; for there comes a second boat,
carrying two nymphs whose devotion to the art has
caused them to forget the use of water, unless it be
internally. One has a hoarse voice, the other a shrill
one ; and with smiles and antics they pipe out the
cheapest of modern melodies, chanting the eternal
"Funicoli, Funicola," till one wishes the writer of
that most paltry song could be keelhauled, or taught
by some other process of similar asperity how grave
is the offence of him who casts one more jingle into
the hoarse throats of the street musicians of to-day.
If I flee to the further side of the steamer and stop
my ears from the cacophony, my face is tickled by
the foliage of huge nosegays thrust up on the ends
of poles from a boat so low in the water that I
cannot see it. The salt air grows heavy with the
scent of violets and roses. None of my senses is
at peace.
But in another hour the landing was happily
accomplished. The recollection of the mob through
which one struggled to the quay, the noise, the
extortion, and the smells had faded away into the
limbo of bad dreams, and I was free to go whither
I would in the small portion of the day remaining
and taste whichever sight of Naples pleased me first.
There is nothing more bewildering to a stranger than
to be turned loose in a great city with which he is
imperfectly acquainted. I looked east towards the
Carmine ; but the handsome campanile lay far from
the centre of the city. I gazed before me, up a long
straight street which cleft the older city with a course
as straight as any bow shot, the house fronts intricate
with countless balconies and climbing plants. It is
the Strada del Duomo ; but I knew it to be new
through all its lower length, and it leads into the
1 6 THE APPROACH TO NAPLES
very heart of the dense old town, where, lost in
a maze of vicoli, I could never grasp the broad and
general aspect of this metropolis of many kings.
At that moment I remembered the hill on which
the Castle of St. Elmo stood ; and turning west-
wards along the street which borders the quays,
I came out in no great distance on the Piazza del
Municipio, bordered on the further side by the walls
and towers of Castel Nuovo, that old royal castle
of Anjou and Aragon, which saw so many tragedies
wrought within its walls, and holds some still, as I
shall tell in time, for the better persuasion of any
who may be disposed to set down the accusations
of history as distant and vague charges, which cannot
nowadays be brought to the test of sight. Before my
eyes rises the white priory of San Martino topping
the hillside high above the town, and it is to that
point that I am hastening ere the gold light of the
afternoon fades off the bay, and the grey shades of
the early dusk rob the islands of their sunset colours.
It is a long climb up to the belvedere of the low
white building. The Neapolitans believed in days
not long distant that vast caverns of almost im-
measurable extent branched out laterally from the
dungeons of St. Elmo and ran down beneath the
city even to Castel Nuovo, making a secret com-
munication between the garrisons of the two for-
tresses on which the security of Naples most
depended. The story is not true. The vaults of
St. Elmo do not reach so far, and are not more
extensive than the circuit of the castle. But indeed
these hillsides on which Naples lies are pierced so
frequently by caverns, so many tales are told of
grottoes known and unknown in every spine of rock,
that the wildest stories of mysterious passages have
found ready credence ; and there are doubtless many
ITALIAN GOVERNMENT 17
children, old and young, in Naples who believe that
one may walk beneath the earth from St. Elmo to
Castel Nuovo no less firmly than they credit the
existence of vast caverns filled with gold and jewels
lying underneath Castel dell' Uovo, guarded for ever
from the sight of man by the chafing of the
waves.
Naples presents us with a strange blend of romance
and common sense the modern spirit, practical and
useful, setting itself with something like the energy
of the old Italian genius towards the gigantic task
of acquiring the arts of government, and turning a
people enslaved for centuries into one which can wield
the hammer of its own great destinies. " L' Italia
e fatta," said Massimo d'Azeglio, "ma chi fara ora
gli Italiani?" It was the question of a patriot,
and it may be that it is not wholly answered yet.
The most careless of observers can see that some
things still go wrong in Italy, that the Italians are
not yet wholly made, and it is the easiest as it is
the stupidest of tasks to demonstrate that thirty
years of freedom have not taught the youngest nation
what the oldest took eight centuries to learn. It
galls me to hear the supercilious remarks dropped
by strangers coming from a country where serious
difficulties of government have not existed in the
memory of man, the casual wisdom of critics who
look around too carelessly to note the energy with
which one by one the roots of evil are plucked up,
and the refuse of the long tyranny cleared away.
I am not writing a political tract ; but I say once
for all that the recent history of Italy can show more
triumphs than its failures ; and the day will surely
come when the indomitable courage of her rulers
shall purge the country of those cankers which for
centuries ate out her manhood.
1 8 THE APPROACH TO NAPLES
"We do not serve the dead the past is past.
God lives, and lifts his glorious mornings up
Before the eyes of men awake at last,
Who put away the meats they used to sup,
And down upon the .dust of earth outcast
The dregs remaining of the ancient cup,
Then turn to wakeful prayer and worthy act."
Dear prophetess and poet, who once from Casa
Guidi sang so bravely of the future, kindling the love
of Italy in many a heart where it has since grown
into a passion, it is coming true ! It may be that
fulfilment loiters, but Heaven does not disappoint
mankind of hopes so great as these. They are of
the sort with which God keeps troth. The child
who went by singing " O bella liberta, o bella ! " does
not flute so sweetly now he is a man, but his hands
have taken hold, and his heart is set on the greatness
of his motherland.
The sun lies thick and hot in the Toledo, that long
and crowded street which is the chief thoroughfare of
Naples. It is hotter still when, having toiled as far
as the museum, I turn off along the Corso Vittorio
Emmanuele, which winds along the hillside, giving at
each turn grand views across the town and harbour
towards Capri shining in the west. A little way
down the Corso is a flight of steps, long, tortuous and
steep, yet forming much the pleasantest approach to
the white priory whither every visitor to Naples goes
once at least towards the hour of sunset. As one
mounts, the city drops away, and the long semicircle
of hills behind it rises into sight, green rounded hills,
bearing on their summits palms which stand out sharp
and dark against the sky. With every convolution
of the stairs one sees more and more of the great
plain out of which Vesuvius rises, the Campagna
Felice, a purple flat, stretching from the base of the
SAN MARTINO 19
volcano as far as that mountain chain which marks
the limit of its power. Out of the mountains comes
a fresh cool wind, and all the city sparkles in the
sun.
So I went up among the housetops till at length
I reached an open space bounded by a rampart
whence one looked down upon the town. On the
further side a gateway gave admission to a court-
yard, and that again to a corridor of the old priory,
through which a guide led me with vain pointings
toward the chamber containing the "Presepe," a vast
model of the scene of the Nativity. Mary sits upon
a height under a fragment of an old Greek building ;
while all the valleys are filled with the procession
of the kings. Their goods are being unloaded from
the troops of asses which bore them. In the meadows
sheep are grazing, cows are being milked ; and the
sky is filled with choirs of angels. It is an ingenious,
theatrical toy, but not half so pretty as the sunset,
which I came to see. So, with some indignation of
my guide, I pressed on through an exquisitely cool
arcaded courtyard of white marble, its centre occupied
by a garden wherein palms and roses grew almost
profuse enough to hide the ancient draw well, with
its chain and bucket lying as if they waited for some
brother told off by the Prior to draw water for the
rest. In one corner of this courtyard a doorway
gives admission to the belvedere, a little chamber
with two windows, whereof one looks towards the
plain behind Vesuvius, and the other gives upon
Posilipo.
As I stepped out on the belvedere the sun was
dropping fast towards Posilipo, and wide flashes of
gold were spreading over all the cup-shaped bay.
Far out at sea, between the two horns of the gulf, the
dark peaks of Capri caught the light, and presently
20 THE APPROACH TO NAPLES
the glow blazed more brightly in the west, and all the
shores where Sorrento lies began to quiver softly in
the sunset. Vesuvius was grim and black ; a pillar of
dark smoke mounted slowly from its summit, and
stretched across the paling sky like a banner floating
defiantly from some tall citadel. Deep down beneath
me lay the white city, a forest of domes and house-
fronts which seemed at first impenetrable. But ere
long the royal palace detached itself from the other
buildings, and I could distinguish Castel Nuovo, with
its old round towers, looking very dark and grim,
while on the left a forest of domes and spires rose out
of the densely crowded streets which have known so
many masters and have allured conquerors from lands
so very far away. A faint brown haze crept down
from the hilltops, the first touch of evening chilled the
air, but the seaward sky was marvellously clear, and
the wide bay gleamed with gold and purple lights.
CHAPTER II
THE ANCIENT MARVELS OF THE
PHLEGR^AN FIELDS
IT is a morning of alternate sun and shadow. The
clouds are flying low across the city, so that now
one dome and now another flashes into light and the
orange groves shine green and gold among the square
white houses. All the high range of the Sorrento
mountains lies in shadow, but on the sea the colours
are glowing warm and bright, here a tender blue, there
deepening into grey, and again, nearer into shore, a
marvellous rich tint which has no name, but is azure
and emerald in a single moment. Away across the
crescent of the gulf a crowd of fishing boats are
putting forth from Torre del Greco or Torre dell'
Annunziata. Even at this distance one can see how
they set their huge triangular sails and scatter, some
one way, some another, searching each perhaps for
his favourite volcanic shoal ; for the largest fish lurk
always in the hollows of those lava reefs which have
from time to time burst out of the bottom of the bay.
Some, perhaps, are sailing for the coral fishery upon
the coast of Africa, to which great numbers go still
in this month of April out of all the harbours beneath
Vesuvius, though the profits are not what they were,
and the trade is falling upon evil days. As for the
mountain, he has cleared himself of clouds, and from
his summit a heavy coil of smoke uncurls itself lazily
22 THE PHLEGR^EAN FIELDS
and spreads like a pennant stretching far across the
sky.
All these things and more I have time to notice
while I trudge along above the housetops of the city,
those flat roofs named astrici which are such plea-
sant lounges on the summer evenings when the blue
bay is dotted over with white sails and the shadows
deepen on the flanks of Vesuvius or the distant line
of the Sorrento coast At length the road approach-
ing the ridge of hill whose point forms the headland
of Posilipo drops swiftly, and I find myself in face
of a short ascent leading to the mouth of the very
ancient grotto by which, these two thousand years
and more, those who fared from Naples unto Pozzuoli
have saved themselves the trouble of the hill.
It is absolutely necessary to pause and consider
this hill, to which so much of the rare beauty of
Naples is to be attributed. For the moment I set
aside its legends and traditions, and turn my atten-
tion to the eminence itself. It is a cliff of yellow
rock, whose consistency somewhat resembles sand-
stone, evidently worked without much difficulty, since
% it has been quarried out into vast cavities. The rock
is tufa. It is a volcanic product, and forms the staple
not only of the headland, but also of all the site of
Naples and the rising ground behind it up to the
base of the blue Apennines, which are seen con-
tinually towering in the distance beyond Vesuvius.
Thus at Naples one may distinguish between the
eternal hills and those which have no title to the
name. Of the latter is Posilipo, formed as I said
out of volcanic ash. That ash was ejected underneath
the sea, and having been compacted into rock by the
action of the water was upreared by some convulsion
long since forgotten. It is an intrusion on the land-
scape a very ancient one, certainly but it has
POSILIPO 23
nothing to do with the great mountain-chain which
hems in the Neapolitan Campagna and ends at last in
the Sorrento peninsula and Capri. All the most fertile
plain which lies within that barrier was once beneath
the sea, which flowed up to the bases of the moun-
tains. There is no doubt about it. The rock of
Posilipo contains shells of fish now living in the
bay. From Gaeta to Castellammare stretched one
wide inlet of the sea. But underneath the water
volcanic ash was being cast out, as it is still at certain
spots within the bay ; the heaps of ash and pumice
stone grew into shoals and reefs, were uplifted into
hills, the sea flowed back from its uptilted bed, and
the coasts of Naples and of Baiae assumed some
outline roughly similar to that which they possess at
present.
Of course all this is very ancient history, far be-
yond the ken of written records, or even the faintest
whisper of tradition, unless, indeed, in the awe with
which ancient writers alluded to the Phlegraean fields,
fabled in old time to be the gate of hell, we may
detect some lingering memory of the horrible con-
vulsion which drove back the sea, and out of its
deserted bed reared up this wilderness of ash and
craters. But speculations of this kind are rather idle.
We had better turn towards the grottoes, which are,
at least in part, the work of men whose doings on
this earth are known to history. The one, of course,
is wholly modern, a construction of our own age for
the accommodation of the steam tramway; but the
other, through which one walks or drives, is certainly
as old as the Emperor Augustus, and has sometimes
been supposed to possess an antiquity far greater
than that.
It seems remarkable that the Romans should have
esteemed it easier to bore through the cliff than to
2 4
make a road across the headland. Indeed, there were
villas on Posilipo, and there must surely have been
a road of some sort from very early times, though it
must be admitted that the founders of Naples did
not go to Pozzuoli by the coast as we do. The old
road climbed up directly from the city to Antignano,
in the direction of Camaldoli, and kept along the
ridge as far as possible. The coast road began to be
used when the tunnel had been made. Still there
must have been at least a track across the headland,
and one wonders why the Romans did not improve
it, in preference to boring underground. The ease
with which the soft stone can be worked may account
partially for their choice ; but it is not to be forgotten
that numberless caves, whether natural or artificial,
exist in the cliffs at Posilipo and Pizzofalcone, giving
occasion to the quick fancy of the Neapolitans to
devise wild tales of buried treasure and of strange
fierce beasts which guard it from the greed of men.
The old legends of the Cimmerians who dwelt in
dark caverns of the Phlegraean fields present them-
selves to mind in this connection, and without follow-
ing out this mysterious subject further into the mists
which envelope it, we may recognise the possibility
that some among these caverns are far older than is
commonly believed. Of course the preference of the
Romans for tunnelling is explained at once, if we
may suppose that by enlarging existing caverns they
found their tunnel already partly made.
" I do not know," cries Capaccio, an ancient topo-
grapher who may yet be read with pleasure, though
the grapes have ripened three hundred times above
his tomb, " I do not know whether the Posilipo is
more adorned by the grotto or the grotto by
Posilipo." I really cannot guess what he meant
It sounds like the despairing observation of a writer
PIEDIGROTTA 25
at a loss for matter. We will leave him to resolve
his own puzzle and go on through the darkness of
the ill-lighted grotto no pleasanter now than when
Seneca grumbled at its dust and darkness sparing
some thought for that great festival which on the
7th of September every year turns this dark highway
into a pandemonium of noise and riot. The festival
of Piedigrotta is held as much within the tunnel
as on the open space outside, where stands the
church whose Madonna furnishes a devotional pre-
text for all the racket. Indeed it is almost more
wild and whirling within than without ; for one need
not become a boy again to understand that the joys
of rushing up and down, wearing a fantastic paper
cap, blowing shrieks upon a catcall, and brandishing
a Chinese lantern, must be infinitely greater in the
bowels of the hill than in the open air. Of course
it is not only, nor even chiefly, a feast for children.
All the lower classes rejoice at Piedigrotta, and often
with the best of cause ; for it happens not infrequently
that the sky, which for many weeks has been pitiless
and brazen, clouds and breaks about that time, the
welcome rain falls, the streets grow cool again, and
laughter rises from end to end of the reviving city.
Of Fuorigrotta, the unpleasing village at the
further end of the grotto, I have nothing to say,
unless it be to express the wish that Giacomo
Leopardi, who lies in the church of San Vitale,
lay elsewhere. That superb poet and fine scholar
whose verses upon Italy not yet reborn rank by
their majesty and fire next after those of Dante,
and who yet could produce a poem rendering so
nobly the solitude of contemplation as that which
commences
" Che fai tu luna in del, dimmi, che fai,
Silenziosa luna ! "
26 THE PHLEGR^AN FIELDS
this man should have lain upon some mountain-top,
among the scent of rosemary and of fragrant myrtle,
rather than in such a reeking dirty village as
Fuorigrotta.
But I forget! the compelling interest of this
day's journey is not literary. A short walk from
Fuorigrotta brings me to a point where the road
turns slightly upward to the right, leading me to the
brow of a hill, over which I look into a wooded
hollow none other than the Lago d'Agnano, once
a crater, then a volcanic lake. Oddly enough, it
is not mentioned as a lake by any ancient writer.
Pliny describes the Grotta del Cane, which we are
about to visit, but says not a word of any lake.
This fact, with some others, suggests that the water
appeared in this old crater only in the Middle Ages ;
though it really does not matter much, for it is gone
now. The bottom has been reft from the fishes and
converted into fertile soil. The sloping heights which
wall the basin have a waste and somewhat blasted
aspect ; but I was not granted time to muse on these
appearances before a smiling but determined brigand,
belonging to the class of guides, sauntered up with
a small cur running at his heels and made me aware
that I had reached the entrance of the Dog Grotto.
I might have known it ; for, in fact, through many
centuries up to that recent year when it pleased the
Italians to drain the lake, the life of the small dogs
dwelling in this neighbourhood has been composed
of progresses from grotto to lake and back again,
first held up by the heels to be stifled by the poisonous
gas, then soused head over ears in the lake with
instructions to recover quickly because another car-
riage was coming down the hill. Thus lake and
grotto were twin branches of one establishment, now
dissolved. Perhaps the lake was the more important
GROTTA DEL CANE 27
of the two, since it is easier to stifle a dog or man
than to revive him ; and on many occasions there
would have been melancholy accidents had not the
cooling waters been at hand. For instance it is
related by M. de Villamont, who came this way when
the seventeenth century was very young indeed,
that M. de Tournon, a few years before, desiring to
carry off a bit of the roof of the grotto, was un-
happily overcome by the fumes as he stood chipping
off the piece he fancied, and tumbled on the floor,
as likely to perish as could be wished by the bitterest
foe of those who spoil ancient monuments. His
friends promptly dragged him out and tossed him
into the lake. It is true the cure found so successful
with dogs proved somewhat less so with M. de
Tournon, for he died a few days later. Yet had the
lake been dry, as it is to-day, he would have died in
the cave, which would surely have been worse.
The little dog he was hardly better than a puppy
looked at me and wagged his tail hopefully. I
understood him perfectly. He had detected my
nationality ; and I resolved to be no less humane
than a countrywoman of my own who visited this
grotto no great while ago, and who, when asked by
the brigand whether he should put the dog in,
answered hastily, " Certainly not." " Ah ! " said the
guide, "you are Englees ! If you had been American
you would have said, ' Why, certainly.' " I made the
same condition. The fellow shrugged his shoulders.
He did not care, he knew another way of extorting
as many francs from me; and accordingly we all
went gaily down the hill, preceded by the happy
cur, running on with tail erect, till we reached a
gate in the wall through which we passed to the
Grotta del Cane.
A low entrance, hardly more than a man's height,
28 THE PHLEGR^EAN FIELDS
a long tubular passage of uniform dimensions sloping
backwards into the bowels of the hill such is all
one sees on approaching the Dog Grotto. A misty
exhalation rises from the floor and maintains its
level while the ground slopes downwards. Thus,
if a man entered, the whitish vapour would cling
at first about his feet. A few steps further would
bring it to his knees, then waist high, and in a little
more it would rise about his mouth and nostrils and
become a shroud indeed ; for the gas is carbonic
acid, and destroys all human life. King Charles the
Eighth of France, who flashed across the sky of
Naples as a conqueror, came here in the short space
of time before he left it as a fugitive, bringing with
him a donkey, on which he tried the effects of the
gas. I do not know why he selected that animal ;
but the poor brute died. So did two slaves, whom
Don Pietro di Toledo, one of the early Spanish
viceroys, used to decide the question whether any
of the virtue had gone out of the gas. That question
is settled more humanely now. The guide takes
a torch, kindles it to a bright flame, and plunges
it into the vapour. It goes out instantly ; and when
the act has been repeated some half-dozen times the
gas, impregnated with smoke, assumes the appear-
ance of a silver sea, flowing in rippling waves against
the black walls of the cavern.
With all its curiosity the Dog Grotto is a deadly
little hole, in which the world takes much less interest
nowadays than it does in many other objects in the
neighbourhood of the Siren city, going indeed by
preference to see those which are beautiful, whereas
not many generations ago it rushed off hastily to see
first those which are odd. For that reason many
visitors to Naples neglect this region of the Phlegraean
fields and are content to wait the natural occasion
29
for visiting the mouth of Styx, over which all created
beings must be ferried before they reach the nether
world. It is a pity; for, judged from the point of
beauty solely, there is enough in the shore of the Bay
of Baiae to content most men. The road mounts
upon the ridge which parts the slope of Lago d'
Agnano from the sea. One looks down from the
spine over a broken land of vineyards to a curved
bay, an almost perfect semicircle, bounded on the
left by the height of Posilipo, with the high crag
of the Island of Nisida, and on the right by Capo
Miseno, the point which took its name from the old
Trojan trumpeter who made the long perilous voyage
with yneas, but perished as he reached the promised
land where at last the wanderers were to find rest.
The headland, which, like every other eminence in
sight, is purely volcanic, is a lofty mass of tufa,
united with the land by a lower tongue, like a mere
causeway ; and on the nearer side stands the Castle
of Baiae, with the insignificant townlet which bears
on its small shoulders the burden of so great a name.
Midway in the bay the ancient town of Pozzuoli
nestles by the water's edge, deserted this long while
by all the trade which brought it into touch with
Alexandria and many another city further east, filling
its harbour with strange ships, crowding its quays
with swarthy sailors, and with silks and spices of the
Orient. All that old consequence has gone now like
a dream, and no one visits the cluster of old brown
houses for any other reason than to see that which is
still left of its ancient greatness. But before going
down the hill, I turn aside towards a gateway on my
right, which admits me to a place of strange and
curious interest. It is the Solfatara, and is nothing
more or less than the crater of a half-extinct volcano,
which, having lain torpid for full seven centuries, is
30 THE PHLEGR^AN FIELDS
now a striking proof of the fertility of volcanic soil,
and the speed with which Nature will haste to spread
her lushest vegetation even over a thin crust which
covers seething fires. It was so once with the crater
of Vesuvius, which, after five centuries of rest, filled
itself with oaks and beeches, and covered its slopes
with fresh grass up to the very summit.
Indeed, on entering the inclosure of the Solfatara,
one receives the impression of treading the winding
alleys of a well-kept and lovely park. The path runs
through a pretty wood. The trees are scarcely more
important than a coppice ; but under their green
shade there grows a wealth of flowers of every colour,
glowing in the soft sunshine which filters through the
boughs. There is the white gum cistus, which is so
strangely like the white wild rose of English hedges,
and the branching asphodel, with myriads of those
exquisite anemones, lilac and purple, which make the
woods of Italy in springtime a perpetual joy to us
who come from colder climates ; and among these, a
profusion of smaller blossoms trailing on the ground,
crimson, white and orange, making such a mass of
colour as the most cunning gardener would seek
vainly to produce. One lingers and delays among
these woods, doubting whether any sight which may
be shown one further on can compensate for the loss
of the cool glades.
But already over the green coppice bare grey hill-
sides have come in sight. They are the walls of the
old crater, and here and there a puff of white smoke
curling out of a cleft reminds me that the flowers are
only here on sufferance, and that the whole hollow is
in fact but waiting the moment when its hidden fires
will break forth again, and vomit destruction over all
the country. A few yards further on the coppice
falls away. The flowers persist in carpeting the
THE SOLFATARA 31
ground ; but in a little way they too cease, the soil
grows grey and blasted. Full in front there rises a
strange scene of desolation. The wall of the crater
is precipitous and black. At its base there are open-
ings and piles of discoloured earth which suggest the
debris of some factory of chemicals, an impression
which is driven home by the yellow stains of sulphur
which lie in every direction on the grey bottom of
the crater. From one vast rent in the soil a towering
pillar of white smoke pours out with a loud hissing
noise, and blows away in wreaths and coils over the
dark surface of the cliff.
There is something curiously arresting in this quick
passage from a green glade carpeted with flowers
to the calcined ash and the grey desolation of this
broken hillside. Of vegetation there is almost none,
except a stunted heather which creeps hardily to-
wards the blast hole. A little way off, towards the
right, lies a level space sunk beneath the surrounding
land, not unlike the fashion of an asphalt skating
rink, so even in its surface that it resembles the
work of man, and one strolls towards it to discover
with what purpose anyone had dared to tamper with
the soil in a spot where so thin a crust lies over
bottomless pits of fire. But when one steps out
upon the level flat, it reveals itself at once to be
no human work. The guide stamps with his foot,
and remarks that the sound is hollow. It is indeed,
most unpleasantly so. He jumps upon it, and the
surface quivers. You beg him to spare you further
demonstrations, and walking gingerly on tiptoe, wish-
ing at each step that you were safe in Regent Street
once more, you follow him out towards the middle of
this devilish crust, which rocks so easily and covers
something which you hope devoutly you may never
see. Midway in the expanse the fellow pauses in
32 THE PHLEGR.EAN FIELDS
triumph he has reached what he is confident will
please you. He is standing by a hole, just such an
opening as is made in a frozen lake in winter for the
watering of animals. From it there emerges a little
vapour and a curious low sound, like that which a
child will make with pouting lips. The guide grins,
crouching by the opening; you, on the other hand,
hang back, in doubt whether the crust may not break
off and suddenly enlarge the hole. You are en-
couraged forwards, and at last, peering nervously
down the hole, you see with keen and lively interest
that the crust appeared to have about the thickness
of your walking-stick, at which depth there is a lake
of boiling mud. The grey mud stirs and seethes in
the round vent-hole, rising and falling, while on its
surface the gas collects slowly into a huge bubble,
which forms and bursts and then collects again.
For my part I do not deny that the sight fascinated
me, but it deprived me of all wish to tread further on
that shaking crust, and I sped back as lightly as I
might, wishing all the way for wings, to where there
was at least sound, green earth for a footing, in place
of pumice stone and hardened mud, which some day,
surely, will fly into splinters, and leave the seething,
steaming lake once more open to the heavens.
From the hillside just beyond the gate of the Sol-
fatara one gazes down on the town of Pozzuoli, brown
and ancient, looking, I do not doubt, much the same
unto this hour as when the Apostle Paul landed there
from the Castor and Pollux, a ship of Alexandria
which had wintered in the Island of Melita. But if
the town itself, the very houses clustered on the hill,
preserve the aspect which they bore twenty centuries
ago, so much cannot be said for the sea-front, which
is vastly changed. Pozzuoli in those days must have
rung with the noise of ships entering or departing.
POZZUOLI 33
Its quays were clamorous with all the speeches of the
East ; its great trade in corn needed long warehouses
near the water's edge ; its amphitheatre was built for
the games of a people numbering many thousands.
But now the little boats which come and go are too
few to break the long silence of the city, and there
are scarce any other noises in the place than the
shout of children at their games, or the loud crack of
the vetturino's whip as the strangers rattle through the
streets on their way to Baiae.
It was the fall of Capua which made the trade of
Pozzuoli, and it was the rise of Ostia that destroyed
it. Capua, long the first town of Italy by reason of
its commerce and its luxury, lost that pre-eminence
in the year 211 B.C., when the Romans avenged the
adhesion of the city to the cause of Hannibal. That
act of punishment made Rome the chief mart of
merchants from the East, and the nearest port to the
Eternal City being Pozzuoli, the trade flowed thither
naturally. Naples no doubt had a finer harbour ; but
Naples was not in Roman hands, while Pozzuoli
was. Ostia, before the days of the Emperor Claudius,
who carried out great works there, was a port of
smallest consequence. Thus the harbour of Pozzuoli
was continually full of ships. They came from Spain,
from Sardinia, from Elba, bringing iron, which was
wrought into fine tools by cunning workmen of the
town ; from Africa, from Cyprus, and all the trading
ports of Asia Minor and the isles of the vEgean.
Thither came also the merchants of Phoenicia, bring-
ing with them all those gorgeous wares which moved
the prophet Ezekiel to utter so great a chant of
glory and its doom. " Tarshish was thy merchant by
reason of the multitude of all kinds of riches ; with
silver, iron, tin, and lead they traded in thy fairs. . . .
These were thy merchants in all sorts of things, in
34 THE PHLEGR^EAN FIELDS
blue clothes and broidered work and in chests of rich
apparel, bound with cords and made of cedar among
thy merchandise. The ships of Tarshish did sing of
thee in thy market. Thou wast replenished and made
very glorious in the midst of the seas." All that most
noble description of the commerce of Tyre returns
irresistibly upon the mind when one looks back on
the greatness of Pozzuoli, where the Tyrians them-
selves had a mighty factory and all the nations of the
East brought their wares for sale. Most of all the
town rejoiced when the great fleet hove in sight which
came each year from Egypt in the spring. Seneca
has left us a description of the stir. The fleet of
traders was preceded some way in advance by light,
swift sailing ships which heralded its coming. They
could be known a long way off, for they sailed through
the narrow strait between Capri and the mainland
with topsails flying, a privilege allowed to none but
ships of Alexandria. Then all the town made ready
to hasten to the water's edge, to watch the sailors
dancing on the quays, or to gloat over the wonders
which had travelled thither from Arabia, India, and
perhaps even far Cathay.
Well, all this is an old story now too old, perhaps,
to be of any striking interest yet here upon the
shore is still the vast old Temple of Serapis, the
Egyptian goddess whom the strangers worshipped.
One knows not by what slow stages the Egyptians
departed and the ancient temple was deserted. The
only certain fact is that at some period the whole
inclosure was buried deep beneath the sea, and after
long centuries raised up again by some fresh move-
ment of the swaying shore.
Strange as this seems to those who have not
watched the perpetual heavings and subsidences
of a volcanic land, the testimony of the fact is
THE TEMPLE OF SERAPIS 35
unmistakably in sight of all. For the sacred in-
closure once hallowed to the rite of Serapis is still
not allotted to any other purpose ; and the visitor
who enters it finds many of the ancient columns
still erect. It is a vast quadrangle, once paved with
squares of marble. There was a covered peristyle,
and in the centre another smaller temple. Many of
the columns of fine marble which once adorned the
abode of the goddess were reft from her in the last
century, when the spot was cleared of all the soil and
brushwood which had grown up about it ; but three
huge pillars of cipollino, once forming part of the
pronaos, are still erect ; and what is singular about
them is that, beginning at a height of some twelve
feet from the ground and extending some nine feet
further up, the marble is honeycombed with holes,
drilled in countless numbers deep into the round
surface of the columns.
There is no animal in earth or air which will
attack stone in this destructive manner ; but in the
sea there is a little bivalve, called by naturalists
" lithodomus," whose only happiness lies in boring.
This animal is still found plentifully in the Bay
of Baiae. His shells still lie in the perforations of
the columns; and it is thus demonstrated that the
ancient temple must have been plunged beneath
the sea, that it lay there long ages, till at length
some fresh convulsion reared it up once more out
of the reach of fish. Surely few buildings have
sustained so strange a fate !
The holes drilled by the patient lithodomus, as I
have said, do not extend through the whole height
of the column, but have a range of about nine feet
only, which is thus the measure of the space left
for the operations of the busy spoiler. Above the
ring of perforations one sees the indications of
36 THE PHLEGR^EAN FIELDS
ordinary weathering, so that the upper edge of the
holes doubtless marks the level of high water, and
the summit of the columns stood up above the
waves. But one does not see readily what protected
the lower portion of the marble. Possibly, before
the land swayed downwards something fell which
covered them.
In the twelfth century the Solfatara broke forth
into eruption for the last time. The scoriae and
stones fell thick in Pozzuoli, and they filled the court
of the Serapeon to the height of some twelve feet.
Probably the sea had then already stolen into the
courtyard ; and it may be that the earthquakes
attending the eruption caused the subsidence which
left the lithodomus free to crawl and bore upon the
stones which saw the ancient mysteries of Serapis.
At any rate it was another volcanic outburst which
raised the dripping columns from the sea in 1538,
since which time the land has been swaying slowly
down once more, so that now if anyone cares to
scratch the gravel in the courtyard he will find he
has constructed a pool of clear sea water.
It is a strange and terrible thing to realise the
existence of hidden forces which can sway the solid
earth as lightly as a puff of wind disturbs an
awning ; none the less terrible because the ground
has risen and fallen so very gently that the pillars
stand erect upon their bases. Once more, as at
the Solfatara, one has the sense of treading over
some vast chasm filled with a sleeping power which
may awake at any moment. Let us go on beyond
the city and see what has happened elsewhere upon
this bay, so beautiful and yet so deadly, a strange
dwelling-place for men who have but one life to pass
on the surface of this earth.
In passing out of Pozzuoli one sees upon the right
HIDDEN TREASURE 37
the vine-clad slopes of Monte Barbaro. That also is
a crater, the loftiest in the Phlegraean fields, but long
at rest. The peasants believe the mountain to con-
tain vast treasures statues of kings and queens,
all cast of solid gold, with heaps of coin and jewels
so immense that great ships would be needed to
carry them away. These tales are very old. I some-
times wonder whether they may not have had their
source in dim memory of the great hoard of
treasure which the Goths stored in the citadel of
Cumae, and which, when their power was utterly
broken, they were supposed to have surrendered to
the imperial general Narses. Perhaps they did not ;
perhaps but what is the use of suppositions?
Petrarch heard the stories when he climbed Monte
Barbaro in 1343. Many men, his guides told him,
had set out to seek the treasure, but had not
returned, lost in some horrible abyss in the heart
of the mountain. They must have neglected the
conditions of success. They should have watched
the moon, and learnt how to catch and prison down
the ghosts which guard the precious heaps, otherwise
the whole mass, even if found, will turn to lumps
of coal !
What a wilderness of craters ! Small wonder if
wild tales exist yet in a district which in old days,
and even modern ones, has been encompassed with
fear. One volcano is enough to fill the country east
of Naples with terror. But here are many active,
doubtless, in very different ages Monte Barbaro,
Monte Cigliano, Monte Campana, Monte Grille,
which hems in the more recent crater of Avernus
much as Somma encircles the eruptive crater of
Vesuvius. What terrible sights must have been
witnessed here in those far-distant days when these
and other craters were in action ! " affliction such as
38 THE PHLEGILEAN FIELDS
was not from the beginning of the creation which
God created " until then ! But a few miles away
across the sea is Monte Epomeo, towering out of
Ischia. That was the chief vent of the volcanic
forces in Roman times ; and then the Phlegraean
fields were still. Epomeo has been silent for five
centuries ; but that proves nothing, and there are
people who suggest that the awful earthquake which
destroyed Casamicciola may be just such a prelude
to the awakening of Epomeo as was the convulsion
which shook Pompeii to its foundations sixteen
years before its final destruction. Di avertite
omen !
We need not, however, go back five centuries for
facts that bid men heed what may be passing under-
ground about the shores of this blue bay. Here is
one too large to be overlooked, immediately in
front of us no other than the green slope of Monte
Nuovo, a hill of aspect both innocent and ancient,
ridged with a few pine trees by whose aid the
mountain contrives to look as if it had stood there
beside the Lucrine Lake as long as any eminence
in sight. This is a false pretension. There was no
such mountain when Petrarch climbed the neigh-
bouring height, nor for full two centuries afterwards.
What Petrarch saw exists no longer. He looked
down upon the Lucrine Lake connected with the
sea by a deep channel, and formed with Lake
Avernus into one wide inlet fit for shipping. This
was the Portus Julius, a harbour so large that the
whole Roman fleet could manoeuvre in it. The
canals and piers were in existence less than four
centuries ago ; and this great work, so remarkable
a witness to the sea power of the Romans, would
doubtless have lasted unto our day had it not been
for the intrusion of Monte Nuovo, which destroyed
MONTE NUOVO 39
the channels and reduced the Lucrine Lake to the
dimensions of a sedgy duck pond.
The catastrophe is worth describing, for no other
in historic times has so greatly changed the aspect
of this coast or robbed it of so large a portion of
its beauty. For full two years there had been con-
stant earthquakes throughout Campania. Some
imprisoned force was heaving and struggling to
release itself, and all men began to fear a great
convulsion. On the 27th of September, 1538, the
earth tremors seemed to concentrate themselves
around the town of Pozzuoli. More than twenty
shocks struck the town in rapid succession. By
noon upon the 28th the sea was retreating visibly
from the pleasant shore beside the Lucrine Lake,
where stood the ruined villa of the Empress Agrip-
pina, and a more modern villa of the Anjou kings,
who were used, like all their predecessors in Cam-
pania, to take their ease in summer among the luxu-
riant vegetation of the hills whose volcanic forces
were believed to be lulled in a perpetual sleep.
For three hundred yards the sea fell back, its
bottom was exposed, and the peasants came with
carts and carried off the fish left dry upon the
strand. The whole of the flat ground between Lake
Avernus and the sea had been heaved upwards ;
but at eight o'clock on the following morning it began
to sink again, though not as yet with any violence.
It fell apparently at one spot only, and to a depth of
about thirteen feet, while from the hollow thus formed
there burst out a stream of very cold water, which
was investigated cautiously by several persons, some
of whom found it by no means cold, but tepid and
sulphurous. Ere long those who were examining the
new spring perceived that the sunken ground was
rising awfully. It was upreared so rapidly that by
40 THE PHLEGILEAN FIELDS
noon the hollow had become a hill, and as the new
slopes swelled and rose where never yet had there
been a rising ground, the crest burst and fire broke
out from the summit.
"About this time," says one Francesco del Nero,
who dwelt at Pozzuoli, "about this time fire issued
forth and formed the great gulf with such a force,
noise, and shining light that I, who was standing
in my garden, was seized with great terror. Forty
minutes afterwards, though unwell, I got upon a
neighbouring height, and by my troth it was a splen-
did fire, that threw up for a long time much earth
and many stones. They fell back again all round the
gulf, so that towards the sea they formed a heap in
the shape of a crossbow, the bow being a mile and a
half and the arrow two-thirds of a mile in dimensions.
Towards Pozzuoli it has formed a hill nearly of the
height of Monte Morello, and for a distance of seventy
miles the earth and trees are covered with ashes. On
my own estate I have neither a leaf on the trees nor
a blade of grass. . . . The ashes that fell were soft,
sulphurous, and heavy. They not only threw down
the trees, but an immense number of birds, hares,
and other animals were killed."
Amid such throes and pangs Monte Nuovo was
born, and the events of that natal day suggest hesita-
tion before we label any crater of the Phlegrsean fields
with the word "extinct." It is granted that in the
course of geologic ages volcanic forces do expend
themselves. The British Isles, for instance, contain
many dead volcanoes, once at least as formidable as
any in the world. But the exhaustion has been the
work of countless ages, and many generations of
mankind will come and go upon this planet before
the coasts of Baiae and Misenum are as safe as those
of Cumberland.
THE GREEK SETTLERS 41
While speaking of these terrors, I have been halt-
ing by the wayside at a point, not far beyond the
outskirts of Pozzuoli, where two roads unite, the one
going inland beneath the slope of Monte Barbaro,
the other following the outline of the curved shore
on which Baiae stands. The inland road is the one
which goes to Cumae, and is entitled to respect, if not
to veneration, as being among the oldest of Italian
highways, the approach to the most ancient Greek
settlement in Italy, mother city of Pozzuoli and of
Naples, not to mention the mysterious Palaeopolis,
whose very existence has been disputed by some
scholars. Some say it was more than ten centuries
before Christ's birth that the bold Greeks of Eubcea
came up this coast, where already their kinsmen were
known as traders, and having settled first on Ischia
moved to the opposite mainland, and built their
acropolis upon a crag of trachyte which overhung
the sea. Their life was a long warfare. More than
once they owed salvation to the aid of their kinsmen
from Sicilian cities, yet they made their foundation a
mighty power in Italy. With one hand they held
back the fierce Samnite mountaineers who coveted
their wealth, and gave out with the other more and
more freely that noble culture which has had no rival
yet.
One must wonder why these strangers coming from
the south passed by so many gulfs and harbours
shaped out of the enduring rock only to choose a
site for their new city at the foot of all these craters.
It may be that chance had its part in the matter ; in
some slight indication of wind or wave they may have
seen the guidance of a deity. Indeed, an ancient
legend says their ships were guided by Apollo, who
sent a dove flying over sea to lead them. But again,
the fires of the district were sacred in their eyes. The
42 THE PHLEGR^AN FIELDS
subterranean gods were near at hand, and on the
dark shore of Lake Avernus they recognised the path
by which Ulysses sought the shades. The mysteries
of religion drew them there, and the cave of the
Cumaean sibyl became the most venerated shrine in
Italy. Lastly, one may perceive that the volcanic
tract, full of terrors for the Etruscan or Samnite
mountaineer who looked down upon its fires from
afar, must have made attack difficult from the land.
Greek cities, such as Cumae, studded the coast of
southern Italy. " Magna Graecia " they called the
country ; and Greek it was, in blood, in art, and
language. How powerful and how rich is better
understood at Paestum than it can be now at Cumae,
where, with the single exception of the Arco Felice,
there remains no dignity of ruin, nothing but waste,
crumbling fragments, half buried in the turf of vine-
yards. Such shattered scraps of masonry may aid a
skilful archaeologist to imagine what the city was ;
but in the path of untrained men they are nothing
but a hindrance, and anyone who has already in his
mind a picture of the greatness of Eubcean Cumae
had better leave it there without attempt to verify its
accuracy on the spot.
Observations similar to these apply justly to most
of the remaining sights in this much-vaunted district.
The guides are perfectly untrustworthy. They give
high-sounding names to every broken wall, and there
is not a burrow in the ground which they cannot
connect with some name that has rung round the
world. It is absolutely futile to hope to recapture
the magic with which Virgil clothed this country.
The cave of the Sibyl under the Acropolis of Cumae
was destroyed by the imperial general Narses when
he besieged the Goths. The dark, wet passage on
the shore of Lake Avernus, to which the name of
a
r.
w
RUINED BAI^E 43
the Sibyl is given by the guides, is probably part
of an old subterranean road, not devoid of interest,
but is certainly not worth the discomfort of a visit.
The Lake of Avernus has lost its terrors. It is no
longer dark and menacing, and anyone may satisfy
himself by a cursory inspection that birds by no
means shun it now.
The truth is that this region compares ill in attrac-
tions with that upon the other side of Naples. In
days not far distant, when brigands still invested all
the roads and byways of the Sorrento peninsula,
strangers found upon the Bay of Baiae almost the
only excursion which they could make in safety ; and
imbued as every traveller was with classical tradi-
tion, they still discovered on this shore that fabled
beauty which it may once have possessed. There
is now little to suggest the aspect of the coast when
Roman fashion turned it into the most voluptuous
abode of pleasure known in any age, and when the
shore was fringed with marble palaces whose immense
beauty is certainly not to be imagined by contem-
plating any one of the fragments that stud the hill-
side, though it may perhaps be realised in some dim
way by anyone who will stand within the atrium of
some great house at Pompeii, say the house of Pansa,
who will note the splendour of the vista through the
colonnaded peristyle, and will then remember that
the Pompeiian houses were not famed for beauty,
while the palaces of Baiae were.
Baiae, like Cumae, is lost beyond recall. Fairyland
is shattered into fragments ; and the guides who
baptise them with ridiculous names know no more
than any one of us what it is they say. Really, since
the tragedy of that first great outbreak of Vesuvius
did, as Goethe said, create more pleasure for posterity
than any other which has struck mankind, one is
44 THE PHLEG1LEAN FIELDS
disposed to wish that it had been more widespread.
If only the ashes had rained down a trifle harder at
Misenum and at Baiae, what noble Roman buildings
might have survived unto this day, conserved by the
kind wisdom of the mountain ! What matter if more
of that generation had been left houseless ? It nearly
happened, if Pliny's letter is not exaggerated. " The
ashes now began to fall on us," he says, of his escape
with his mother from the palace at Misenum, "though
in no great quantity. I turned my head, and observed
behind us a thick smoke which came rolling after us
like a torrent. We had scarce stepped out of the
path when darkness overspread us, not like the dark-
ness of a cloudy night, nor that when there is no
moon, but that of a closed room when all the lights
are out. Nothing was to be heard but the shrieks of
women, the screams of children, and the cries of men,
some calling for their children, others for their parents,
others for their husbands, and only distinguishing
each other by their voices. ... At length a glimmer-
ing light appeared, which we imagined to be rather
the forerunner of an approaching burst of flames, as
in truth it was, than the return of day. However,
the fire fell at some distance from us. Then again
we were immersed in thick darkness, and a heavy
shower of ashes rained upon us, which we were obliged
every now and then to shake off, otherwise we should
have been crushed and buried in the heap. ..." It
is an awful tale. Anyone can see how nearly all this
region escaped the fate of Pompeii, and how narrowly
the modern world lost a greater joy than that of con-
templating the city by the Sarno.
However, it did not happen so, and there is
comparatively little satisfaction in describing all
the melancholy scraps of what was marvellously
beautiful. I have nothing to say about them which
THE DYKE OF HERCULES 45
is not said as fully in the guide-books. There is,
however, something which more piques my interest
in the narrow tongue of land parting the Lucrine
Lake from the sea. There is, or was, a causeway here
so ancient that even the Greeks, who settled at Cumae
so many centuries before our era, did not know who
built it ; and being in the dark about the matter, put
down the construction to no less a person than the
god Hercules, who made it, they declared, for the
passage of the oxen which he had taken from Geryon,
the monster whom he slew in Gades. It was no small
work, even for Hercules. The dam was eight stadia
long, nearly a mile, made of large stone slabs laid
with such skill that they withstood the sea for many
centuries. Who could have been the builders of this
dam in days so ancient that even the Greek settlers
did not know its origin? Rome was not in those
days. There were factories and traders on the coast,
Phoenicians perhaps. But why guess about a
question so impossible to solve ? The curiosity of the
thing is worth noting ; for the age of civilisation on
these coasts is very great.
At this spot beside the Lucrine Lake, where the
sea is lapping slowly, almost stealthily, on the one
hand, and the diminished waters of the lake lie still
and reedy on the other, one memory, more than any
other, haunts my mind. It cannot have been far
from this very spot, certainly in sight of it, that there
stood in old Roman days the villa of the Empress
Agrippina, mother of the Emperor Nero, and it was
at Baise, lying just across the blue curved bay, that
he planned her murder, as soon as he discovered that
she loved power, like himself, and stood in the way
of certain schemes on which he set great store.
The fleet which lay at Capo Miseno, the great
naval station of those days, was commanded by one
46 THE PHLEGR^AN FIELDS
Anicetus, a freedman, who, being of an ingenious
mechanical turn of mind, devised a ship of a sort
likely to prove useful to any tyrant anxious to speed
his friends into the nether world without suspicion.
It had much the same aspect as other ships when
viewed from without ; but a careful observer of its
inward parts might notice that the usual tight bolt-
ings were replaced by movable ones, which could be
shot back at will, so that on a given signal the whole
ship would fall to pieces. This pretty toy was of
course not designed to make long voyages it was
enough if it would reach deep water.
Nero was delighted. He saw now how to avoid
all scandal. The Empress was at that moment on
the sea, homeward bound from Antium, and designed
to land at Bauli, which lay near Baiae on the bay.
The ship was prepared, the bolts were shot, and the
pretty pinnace lay waiting on the beach at Bauli when
the Empress disembarked. And there too was Nero,
come from Baiae on purpose to pay duty to his
mother and invite her to spend the Feast of Minerva
with him at Baiae, whither he hoped she would cross
over in the boat which he had had the pleasure of
fitting up with the splendour which was proper to
her rank.
Agrippina knew her son, and was suspicious. She
would go to Baiae, but preferred to follow the road in
a litter. That night, however, when the festivities at
Baiae were over, her fears vanished. Nero had been
affectionate and dutiful. He had assured her of his
love. It would be churlish to refuse to enter the
boat which he had fitted out for her, and which
having been brought over from Bauli now lay waiting
for her on the sands. It was a bright night, brilliant
with stars. The bay must have looked incomparably
peaceful and lovely. On the shore there were crowds
THE MURDER OF AGRIPPINA 47
of bathers, all the fashionable world of Rome, drawn
thither by the presence of the Emperor, and attracted
out by the beauty of the night. At such a time and
place nothing surely could be planned against her.
She went on board with her attendants. The rowers
put off from land. They had gone but a little way
when the canopy under which Agrippina lay crashed
down on her and killed one of her waiting women.
A moment's examination showed that it had been
weighted with pigs of lead. Almost at the same
moment the murderers on board withdrew the bolts.
The machinery, however, refused to act. The planks
still held together ; and the sailors despairing of their
bloodmoney, rushed to the side of the ship and tried
to capsize it. They succeeded so far as to throw
the Empress and her attendants into the sea. Agrip-
pina retained sufficient presence of mind to lie silent
on the water, supporting herself as best she could,
while the sailors thrashed the sea with oars, hoping
thus to make an end of their victim, and one poor
girl who thought to save herself by crying out that
she was the Empress had her brains beaten out for
her pains. At last the shore boats, whose owners
could not know that they were interrupting the
Emperor's dearest wish, arrived upon the scene,
picked up the Empress, and carried her to her villa
on this Lucrine lake.
It would have been wiser to flee to a greater dis-
tance, if indeed there was safety in any Roman
territory for the mother of the Emperor when he
desired to slay her. That night, as she lay bruised
and weak, deserted by her attendants, a band of
murderers rushed in, headed by Anicetus, who thus
redeemed his credit with his master when his more
ingenious scheme had failed. " Strike the womb that
bore this monster ! " cried the Empress, and so died.
48 THE PHLEGK^AN FIELDS
" Then," says Merivale, from whose most vivid story
this is but an outline, "began the torments which
never ceased to gnaw the heart strings of the matri-
cide. Agrippina's spectre flitted before him. . . . The
trumpet heard at her midnight obsequies still blared
with ghostly music from the hill of Misenum."
CHAPTER III
THE BEAUTIES AND TRADITIONS OF
THE POSILIPO
WITH SOME OBSERVATIONS UPON VIRGIL
THE ENCHANTER
IT was setting towards evening when I turned my
back on Baiae and drove through Pozzuoli along
the dusty road which runs beside the sea in the direc-
tion of Posilipo. All day I had seen the blunt
headland of tufa lying like a cloud on the further
side of the blue bay; and from hour to hour as I
plodded through the blasted country, my thoughts
turned pleasantly to the great rampart which stood
solid when all the region further west was shaken like
a cornfield by the wind, and beyond which lies the
city, with its endless human tragedies and its fatal
beauty unimpaired by the possession of many masters.
" Bocca baciata non perde ventura . . . ," the scandal-
ous old proverb has a sweet application to the city,
and the mouth which has been kissed by conquerors
and tyrants is still as fresh and rosy as when first up-
lifted for the delight of man.
I think this angle of the bay more beautiful than
Baiae or Misenum. In Roman times the opposite
shore may have excelled it ; but one does not know
the precise form of the ancient coastline. As I
advanced towards the headland, leaving behind the
bathing-place of Bagnoli, and passing out on the wide
E 49
50 BEAUTIES OF THE POSILIPO
green flats which at that point occupy the valley
mouth, the lofty crag of Nisida began to detach itself
from the mainland, and a channel of blue sea shining
between the two glowed sweetly in the increasing
warmth of evening light. The island is a crater, a
finely broken mass of volcanic rock and verdure,
flecked here with light and there with shadow. One
side of the crater lacks half of its rim, so that there
is a little port. Down by the edge of the many-
coloured water is a pier, where half a dozen boats
lie rocking; and from a similar landing-place upon
the shingly beach of the mainland a fisherman is
hailing some comrade on the island. The answering
shout floats back faint and distant through the clear
air, and a boat pushes off, sculled slowly by a man
standing erect and facing towards the bow, in the
ancient fashion of the Mediterranean. At this point
I dismiss my carriage, for I have many things to
think about, and do not want the company of the
chattering, extortionate vetturino. Having seen him
go off up the hill, cracking his whip like pistol shots,
and urging on his eager pony in the full hope of
a fare at the Punta di Posilipo, I stroll on up the
long ascent towards the shoulder of the hill, stopping
often to watch the gold light grow warmer on the
sea, tinging the volcanic crags of Ischia, until my
enjoyment of the view is broken by an uninvited
companion, who thrusts himself upon me with a re-
minder that I have reached the opening of the Grotto
of Sejanus.
I had'forgotten all about the grotto, though indeed
it was the point for which I should have made, and
but for the interruption of the lively little Tuscan
who acts as custodian, I might have walked by with-
out going in. I accepted gratefully the voluble
assurances that this is indeed the most wonderful
THE GROTTO OF SE JANUS 51
and authentic grotto on the Posilipo, far surpass-
ing those twin tunnels through which one goes from
Naples to Pozzuoli ; and the guide, having caught
up a torch of smouldering tow, and vented a few
hearty curses on the Neapolitans, who lie, he says,
without recollection of eternity, conducted me into
a long passage of utter and palpable darkness.
" Ne femmena ne tela a lume di cannela," say the
Neapolitans You must not judge either a woman or
a weft by candlelight. This is very true, and many
a man has suffered from forgetting it. But when it
is a case of grottoes, there is no choice ; and accord-
ingly I delivered myself over to the chatter of the
Tuscan.
The lively little man was extolling the superior
character of his own countrymen of Tuscany ; and
when his torch flickered out with no warning, leaving
us in sudden blackness in the bowels of the earth,
his indignation blazed out fiercely against the worth-
less knaves who sold such tow in Naples. I paid
little heed to him, for the grandeur and the silence of
the place appeal to the imagination. I was treading
on a smooth and even floor, between walls of tufa
which had been chiselled out so straight that when-
ever I looked back the entrance shone behind me
like a star across a vast dark sky. The air was sweet
and fresh, filtering through some hidden openings of
the rock. The relighted torch flashed now on Roman
brickwork, now on arches of massive stone built to
increase the strength of the vault, and fit it the better
for those great processions of chariots and horsemen
which came and went to the villa at the further end,
returning from a hunting party with dogs which had
wearied out the game on the hills of Astroni, or
escorting the gladiators landed at Pozzuoli for some
combat in the theatre which now lies so waste and
52 BEAUTIES OF THE POSILIPO
desolate amid the vineyards. How this passage
must have rung with shouts and laughter in old
Roman days ! But now it is as silent as the tomb ;
and one passes on a full half-mile in darkness,
to emerge at length with heated fancy and high
memories of Roman splendour, on nothing but a
ruinous cottage, a starved vineyard, and a paltry
garden-ground of common vegetables !
It is not possible, one thinks impatiently, that this
trumpery of vines and cabbages can be all there
is to see at the further end of a passage so ancient
and hewn with such vast labour through the solid
rock ; and indeed, when one's eyes are used to the
sunshine, one perceives that the garden plot lies like
a dust heap on the ruins of a splendid palace.
Treading across a patch of vegetables, covering
I know not what remains of marble portico or
colonnade, I peered down through the trails of
budding vines into a hollow where some fragments
of old masonry project still from the earth, and
after much gazing perceived that the sides of the
hollow rise in tiers, one bank above another, to the
height of seventeen rows. So that here, on this now
lonely creek of the Posilipo, in face of Nisida and
all the blue reach of the Bay of Baiae, there was
once a theatre, ringing with shouts and applause, and
by it all the other buildings of a noble mansion. It
is a poor ruin now, stripped of the marbles which
once made it splendid. There are vast structures on
the slopes and in -the sea itself: an Odeon, another
building seated like a theatre, and relics innumerable
of one of the greatest of all Roman villas, which
must have been incomparably lovely. If only one
such might have lasted to our day !
The long darkness of the grotto, the exit on the
hillside, where the ancient splendour is so shattered,
53
combine to create a sense of mystery which one
never loses on the Posilipo. The sea frets and
chafes about the jagged reefs at the base of the
headland, echoing and resounding in caves of vast
antiquity, where broken marbles and defaced in-
scriptions give substance to the tales of treasure
which the fishers say lies hidden in them to this hour.
The dullest of mankind would be smitten with some
touch of fancy on this spot, much more the quick-
witted Neapolitans, whose rich imagination has run
riot among the relics of a splendid past.
The impression of this lonely cliff is characteristic
of all the headland. I send away my guide, who
can do nothing more for me, and perch myself upon
a scrap of ancient wall, whence I can look past the
green island of Nisida, full in the warm light of
the westering sun, over the wide bay to where the
black peak of Ischia, towering into the clear sky,
begins to shine as if some goddess had brushed it
with liquid gold.
There is a cavern in the cliff at no great distance
which the fishermen call " La Grotta dei Tuoni " (The
Cave of Thunders) ; I scarcely know why, unless it be
because the sea bellows so loudly when it is driven
by the storm wind round the vaults and hollows
of the rock. The cave is accessible only by boat ;
and, like many another cleft in the soft tufa of this
headland, it is believed to hide immeasurable riches,
left there since the days when every cliff bore its
white Roman villa, and all the shady caverns were
the cool arbours of their pleasure grounds. From
the creek of Marechiano, which cleaves the Posilipo
in half, up to the very spot on which I sit, there
is no break in the succession of the ruins. Ancient
cisterns lie upon the beaches, the green tide washes
over shattered colonnades, the boatmen peering down
54 BEAUTIES OF THE POSILIPO
through the translucent water as they sink their nets
see the light waver round the foundations of old
palaces, and the seaweeds stir fantastically on the
walls. It is little wonder if no one of them can
rid himself of the belief in spirits wandering yet
about the wreck of so much splendour, or shake
off the fear
" Lest the dead should, from their sleep
Bursting o'er the starlit deep,
Lead a rapid masque of death
O'er the waters of his path."
As for this cave of the thunders, the story goes that
one day certain Englishmen presented themselves
before a boatman who was lounging on the quay of
Santa Lucia at Naples and demanded whether he
would take them on his skiff into the grotto.
Pepino had seen the cavern many times, and did
not fear it. " Why not ? " he said, and the bargain
was struck. As they rowed across the crescent bay
of the Chiaia, past the Palazzo di Donna Anna, and
under the hillside where the whispering pines grow
down the high cliff faces, and golden lemons glow in
the shade of marble terraces, the Englishmen were
very silent ; and Pepino, who loved chatter, began to
feel oppressed. He did not quite like the zeal with
which they sat studying a huge volume ; for he knew
that great books were of more use to magicians than
to honest people, who were quite content with little
ones, or better still with none at all. So he looked
askance at the English students as he guided his boat
to the mouth of the grotto of the thunders, and ran
in out of the sunshine to the cool green shades and
wavering lights among which the old treasure of the
Romans lies concealed.
The Englishmen rose up, and one of them, taking
the book in both hands, began to read aloud. Who
THE CAVE OF THUNDERS 55
can tell what were the words ? They were strange
and very potent ; for as they rolled and echoed round
the sea-cave it seemed as if the vaulted roof rose
higher, and Pepino, glancing this way and that in
terror, saw that the level of the water was sinking.
Shelf by shelf the sea sank down the rock, leaving
dripping walls of which no living man had ever seen
the shape before ; and Pepino, keeping the boat steady
with his oars, shook with fear as he saw the top of a
marble staircase rear itself erect and shiny out of the
depths of the ocean. Still the English student rolled
out the sonorous words, which rang triumphantly
through the cave, and still the water sank stair by
stair, till suddenly it paused the reader's voice had
stopped, and slowly, steadily the sea began to rise
again.
The spell was broken. A page was missing from
the book ! The Englishman in despair clutched at
the pages as if he would tear them piecemeal. In-
stantly the crash of thunder rang through the cave,
the sea surged back to its old level, the marble stair-
case leading to the treasure was engulfed, and the
boatman, screaming on the name of the Madonna,
was whirled out of the cavern into the light of day
again.
Close below me is a little reef or island of yellow
pozzolano stone, jutting out from the Punta di
Coroglio, which is the name of the most westerly
cliff of the Posilipo, that through which the tunnel
runs. Under the island there is a tiny creek with a
beach of yellow sand ; the spot is so silent that I can
hear the ripple plashing on the beach. That rock is
a famous one. It is the "Scoglio di Virgilio," the
Rock of Virgil, by all tradition a favourite haunt of
the great poet, and the spot in which he practised his
enchantments.
56 BEAUTIES OF THE POSILIPO
Petrarch said he did not believe in those enchant-
ments. But then King Robert questioned him about
them at a moment when both were riding with a
gallant party, and the joy of life was surging high
enough to make men doubt all achievements but
those of battle or of love. Had Petrarch sat alone
watching the sunset bathe the Scoglio di Virgilio
with gold, he might have judged the matter differently.
At any rate twenty generations of Neapolitans since
his day have accepted the beliefs of thirty more who
went before them, and set down Virgil as a magician.
Why must we be wiser than fifty generations of
mankind ?
To be a wizard is not to be wicked ! Virgil's fair
fame is in no danger. There was no malignity in
any of the spells wrought out on that little headland.
Each of them conferred a benefit on the city which
the poet loved. One by one the woes of Naples were
assuaged by the beneficent enchanter ; its flies, its
serpents, the fatal tendency of butcher's meat to go
bad, exposure to volcanic fires, all were held in check
by the power of the enchanter.
A stranger visiting Naples ten centuries ago would
have found it studded with the ingenious inventions
of the wizard. Perhaps the device for bridling the
audacity of Vesuvius might be the first to strike him.
It was nothing less than a horse of bronze bestridden
by an archer, whose notched arrow was ever on the
string, its point directed at the summit of the moun-
tain. This menace sufficed to hold the unruly demons
of the fire in check, and might do so to this hour
were it not that one day a countryman coming into
Naples from the Campagna, and looking at the statue
for the hundredth time felt bored by seeing the archer
had not fired off his arrow yet, and so did it for him.
The shaft sped through the air, striking the rim of
THE ENCHANTER VIRGIL 57
the crater, which straightway boiled over and spouted
fire, and from that day to this no man has found the
means of placing another arrow on the string. It
is a thousand pities. San Gennaro has taken up the
duty now, and stands pointing imperiously with out-
stretched hand bidding the volcano halt. He had
some success too. In 1707, when the fires of the
volcano turned night into day, and its smoke con-
verted day into night, San Gennaro was carried in
procession as far as the Porta Capuana, and had no
sooner come in sight of the mountain than the
thunders ceased, the smoke was scattered, the stars
appeared, and Naples was at peace. But as a rule
the holiness of the saint impresses the demons less
than the menace of the arrow, and the mountain goes
on burning.
As for the bronze fly which the good poet made
and set high on one of the city gates, where it
banished every other insect from the town, it cer-
tainly is not in Naples now. Many people must
have wished it were. The story runs that the young
Marcellus was intercepted by Virgil one day as he
was going fowling, and desired to decide whether
he would rather have a bird which would catch all
other birds, or a fly which would drive away all
flies. Nobody who knows Naples can doubt the
answer. Marcellus, it is true, thought fit to consult
the Emperor Augustus before replying ; but that
fact only adds to the weight of his decision. He
decided on the fly, and many a man listening in the
midnight to the deadly humming outside his mosquito
curtains will lament the loss of Virgil's fly.
It is an Englishman, one John of Salisbury, who
collects these pretty tales for us ; and he has another
which, as it supplies a reason for an historical fact
which must have puzzled many people in the history
58 BEAUTIES OF THE POSILIPO
of Naples, is the better worth recording, and may
indeed have the luck to please both clever and
stupid people in one moment.
The puzzling fact is to discover how on earth it
happened that the city which in Middle Ages bore a
somewhat evil reputation for surrendering itself light-
heartedly at the first summons of any conqueror, yet
held such a different repute in earlier days, having
remained faithful to the Greek Empire in Constanti-
nople when Amalfi had fallen and Salerno received
a stranger garrison, which resisted heroically every
attack of Lombard or of Norman, and saw army
after army retire baffled from before its walls.
Whither had all that stout-heartedness fled in the
days when French, Spanish, and German conquerors
found no more resistance in the Siren city than in
a beautiful woman to whom one man's love is as
much as any other's? How came that old glory
to sink into shame, to accept slavery and to forget
faith? The answer is that in the old days the city
was kept by a spell of the enchanter Virgil.
Virgil, it seems, musing on this point of rock
throughout long moonlight nights, had constructed
a palladium. It consisted of a model of the city,
inclosed in a glass bottle, and as long as this fragile
article remained intact the hosts of besiegers en-
camped in vain beneath the walls. The Emperor
Henry the Sixth was the first who managed to break
in. The city fathers rushed to their palladium to
discover why for the first time it had failed to protect
them. The reason was but too plain. There was
a small crack in the glass!
Through that crack all the virtue went out of the
palladium, and until the great upstirring of heroic
hearts which the world owes to France at the close
of the eighteenth century, Naples was never credited
PUNTA DI POSILIPO 59
again with any marked disposition to resist attack
or to strike courageously for freedom. I am not
sure whether those who know best the inner heart
of Naples would claim that the great deeds wrought
since then are to be attributed to any new palladium ;
but, for my part, if spells are to be spoken of, I
prefer to hold that the long age of sloth and slavery
is that which needs the explanation of black magic,
and that neither the loyal Naples of old days nor
the free Naples of the present time owes any debt
to other sources than its own high spirit and its
natural stout heart, which slept for centuries, but
are now awake again.
The setting sun has dropped so far towards the
sea that the tide begins to wash in grey and gold
around the yellow cliffs. The bay is covered with
dark shades falling from the sky in masses, and
a little wind rising from the west ruffles the water
constantly. Only the ridge of Ischia yet holds the
light, and there it seems as if a river of soft gold
flowed along the mountain -top, vivid and pure,
turning all the peak of Epomeo to a liquid reflection,
impalpable as the sky itself. But the glow fades
even as I watch it ; and the approach of chilly
evening warns me not to loiter on the lonely hill-
side. I wander down across the hollow, passing near
the broken theatre, and so strike a path which climbs
up the further hill between high walls and hedges,
where it is already almost dark, bringing me out at
length on the main road which crosses the headland,
just where a row of booths is set to catch the soldi
of those Neapolitans who have strayed out here in
search of evening freshness. There is a clear, sharp
air upon this high ground ; and the young moon
climbing up the sky sends a faint, silvery light upon
the sea. The road winds on as beautifully as a man
60 BEAUTIES OF THE POSILIPO
need wish. On the left hand rises the hill, on the
right the ground drops in sharp, swift slopes, cleft
with deep ravines where the cliff is sometimes sheer
and sometimes passable for men. All these hollows
are filled with vegetation of surpassing beauty here
a belt of dark green pines, there a grove of oranges
thatched over to protect them from the sun. Golden
lemons gleam out of the rich foliage, hanging thick
and numberless upon the trees. The bare stems of
fig trees are bursting out into their first yellow leaf;
and the hedges of red roses and abutilon fill every
nook with masses of bright colour unknown except
in lands where spring comes with gentle touch and
warm, sweet days of sunny weather. Far down
amid the depths of this luxuriance of fruit and
flowers the sea washes round some creek or curved
white beach, and there built out with terraces and
balconies of pure white stone are villas which repeat
the splendour of those Roman homes over whose
ruins they are built and whose altars lie still in the
innumerable caverns which pierce the base of the
old legendary headland.
In the silvery dusk of this spring evening the
beauty of these ravines brimming over with fruits
and flowers is quite magical. I pause beside a low
wall, over which a man may lean breast high, and
gaze down through the shadows spreading fast among
the trellised paths below. The fading light has
robbed the lemons of their colour ; but the crimson
roses are flaming still against a heavy background
of dark firs, and beyond them the path winds out
upon a little beach, where the tide breaks at the
foot of yellow cliffs, and a boat is rocking at her
moorings. Beyond the outline of the wooded cliff
the grey sea lies darkening like a steely mirror ; and
lifting my eyes I can see the spit of rock on which
WINE OF POSILIPO 61
stands the enchanted Castle of the Egg, black and
grim as ever, and higher still Vesuvius towering amid
the pale sky and the stars, its slowly coiling pillar of
dark smoke suffused with a rosy glow, the reflection
of the raging furnace hidden in its cone. Already
one or two lamps are flashing on the shore. The
day is nearly gone, and the beautiful Southern night
is come.
Many people had wandered up from Naples to
enjoy the taste of approaching summer on this height,
where surely the scent of roses is more poignant than
elsewhere and the outlook over land and sea is of
incomparable beauty. As I walked on slowly down
the road my ears caught the tremulous shrill melody
of a mandolin, and a man's voice near at hand
trolled forth the pretty air of " La vera sorrentina."
I stopped to listen. The voice was sweet enough,
and some passion was in the singer.
" Ma la sgrata sorrentina
Non ha maje di me pieta ! "
The music came from a little roadside restaurant,
half open to the sky, where a few people sat at tables
overlooking the sea. I strolled in, and sat sipping
my vino di Posilipo while the mandolin thrummed
till the singer grew tired, took his fees, and went off
to some other cafe". The wine is not what it was in
Capaccio's days. "Semper Pausilypi vigeat poculum! "
cries the jolly topographer, " and may Jupiter himself
lead the toasts ! " By all means, if he will ; but I fear
the son of Saturn will not be tempted from Olympus
by the contents of the purple beaker set before me at
the price of three soldi. " It is pure, it is fragrant,
it is delicious," Capaccio goes on, waxing more
eloquent with every glass. " In the fiercest heat it
is grateful to the stomach, it goeth down easily, it
62 BEAUTIES OF THE POSILIPO
promoteth moisture, it molesteth neither the liver
nor the reins, nor doth it even obfuscate the head !
Its virtue is not of those that pass away ; for whether
of this year, last year, or of God knows when, it hath
still the scent of flowers, and lyeth sweetly on the
tongue." I think Capaccio must have had a vineyard
here, and sold his wines by auction. Far beneath me
I could hear the washing of the sea, and the moon
climbing up the sky scattered a gleam of silver here
and there upon the water. Naples stretched darkly
round the curving shore, while high upon the ridge
the Castle of St. Elmo stood out black and solid
against the night sky, with the low priory in front,
sword and cowl dominating the city, as ever through
her history, whether for good or ill.
In dusk or sunshine no man who looks upon this
view will need to ask why Virgil loved it, and desired
to be buried near the spot whence he had been used
to watch it. Not far away upon my left, above the
grotto which leads to Pozzuoli, is the tomb tradition-
ally known as his. There are many who believe and
some who doubt ; but there is a mediaeval tale about
the matter which is well worth telling. It was
commonly reported in the days of Hohenstaufen and
Anjou that the bones of Virgil were buried in a
castle surrounded by the sea. There is no other
fortress to which this could apply than the Castle
of the Egg.
In the reign of Roger, King of Sicily, a certain
scholar they are always English, in these legends !
who had wandered far in quest of learning, came into
the royal presence with a petition. The King, who
found him wise and grave, and took pleasure in his
conversation, was willing to grant his wish, whatever
it might be ; whereon the Englishman replied that he
would not abuse the royal favour, nor beg for any
THE TOMB OF VIRGIL 63
mere ephemeral pleasure, but would ask a thing
which in the eyes of men must seem but small,
namely, that he might have the bones of Virgil,
wheresoever he might find them in the realm of
Sicily. It was even then long since forgotten in
what spot precisely the body of the great poet had
been laid ; and it seemed to the King little likely
that a stranger from the north should be able to
discover what had remained hidden from the Nea-
politans. So he gave consent, and the Englishman
set forth for Naples, armed with letters to the Duke,
giving him full power to search wherever he would.
The citizens themselves had no fear of his success
in a quest where they had often failed, and so made
no effort to restrain him. The scholar searched and
dug, guiding his operations by the power of magic.
At last he broke into the centre of a mountain, where
not one cleft betrayed the existence of any cavity
or tomb. There lay the body of the mighty poet,
unchanged and calm as if he slept. Full eleven
centuries he had lain silently in a rest unbroken by
the long-resounding tread of barbarous armies from
the north, flooding and desolating the fair empire
which must have seemed to him likely to outlast
the world. I wish that some one of those who broke
into the sepulchre, and shed the light of day once
more upon those features which had slept so long
in darkness, had told us with what feelings he looked
upon them and saw the very lips that had spoken to
Augustus, and the cheek which Horace kissed. I
think the men who found themselves in the sudden
presence of so much greatness must have stood there
with a certain tremor, as those others did who not
long afterwards disturbed the bones of Arthur and of
Guenevere at Glastonbury, daring to lift and touch
the long fair tresses which brought Lancelot to shame.
64 BEAUTIES OF THE POSILIPO
These men who found the tomb of Virgil would
have done well if they had sealed it up again and
lost the secret, so that the bones might lie unto this
hour on the spot where the spirit is so well remem-
bered. But the English scholar had the King's
warrant, and claimed at least the books on which
the wizard's head was propped. Those the Duke of
Naples gave him, but the bones he refused, and had
them taken for greater safety to Castel dell' Uovo,
where they lay behind an iron grating and were shown
to anyone who desired to see them. But if they were
at any time disturbed, the air would darken suddenly,
high gusts of storm would roar around the battle-
ments of the castle, and the sea beating heavily about
the rocks would rage as if demanding vengeance for
the insult.
Such is the tale told by Gervasius of Tilbury, who
has been dead almost half as long as Virgil. It may
be true or untrue. I am not fond of climbing up into
the judgment seat, or attempting to recognise white-
robed truth in the midst of the throng of less worthy,
though more amusing, characters which throng Italian
legend. Least of all on such a night as this, when
the soft wind blowing over the sea from the enchanted
Castle of the Egg fills the air with whispering sug-
gestions of old dead things and calls back many a
tale of inimitable tragedy wrought out upon the shore
of the gulf which lies before me a furnace in all ages
of hot passions and sensuous delights such as leave
deep marks upon the memory of man. That most
wilful quality is not unlike the echo in the hollow of
some overhanging rock. It will repeat the sounds
that please it, but no others, while even those it will
distort, adding something wild or unearthly to every
one, however ordinary. So the memory of the people
selects capriciously those circumstances which it
QUEEN GIOVANNA 65
cherishes ; and even while it hands them on from
generation to generation it is ever adding fact to fact
with the cunning of him who writes a fairy tale,
casting glamour round the sordid details, struggling
towards the beautiful or terrible even not seldom
towards the scandalous.
A little lower on the slope of the hill, well in sight
from the point at which I sit, there is a vast and
ruined building on the very margin of the sea. In
the dusk light I can clearly see its two huge wings
thrust out into the water, and the broken outline of
its roof breaking the pale sky. The tide washes
round its foundations. The whole mass lies black
and silent, except at one point where a restaurant has
intruded itself into the shell of a once splendid hall,
and lights flicker round the empty windows which
were built for the pleasure of a court. Three hundred
years ago this palace was begun for the wife of a
Spanish viceroy, Donna Anna Carafa. It was never
finished, and has been put to a number of degrading
uses, being at one time a quarantine station, at another
a stable for the horses of the tramway, while a few
fishermen have always housed their wives and children
in its old ruined chambers, undeterred by the tales
which associate the ruin with the spirit of the Queen
Giovanna.
Queen Giovanna is so great a personage in Naples
that it is worth while to consider her particularly.
There are few spots within thirty miles of Naples
where one does not hear of her too amorous life and
her tragic death. I doubt if there are half a dozen
guides or vetturini in all the city who, if asked the
name of this great building, will not answer that it is
" II Palazzo della Regina Giovanna," and on being
further questioned will not tell a doleful story of how
she was strangled in one of the deserted chambers.
F
66 BEAUTIES OF THE POSILIPO
The stranger, ignorant of Naples, will perhaps set
down this fact, pleased to discover a trace of history
yet lingering in the recollection of the people, and
will cherish it carefully until he is told the same
tale at Castel Capuano, on the other side of the city,
with the addition of certain particulars which, by our
narrow northern way of thinking, are damaging to
Queen Giovanna's character. For instance, it is said
of her that she was in those early days so convinced
a democrat as to choose her lovers freely from among
the sovereign people. They were doubtless gratified
by her choice ; but the pleasure faded when they dis-
covered in due course of time that each favourite in
turn, after the fickle Queen grew tired of him, was
expected or compelled to leap from the top of a high
tower, thus carrying all his knowledge of the secret
scandals of a court by a short cut into the next world.
A cruel Queen, it is true ; but how prudent ! Any
one of us might leave a marvellous sweet memory of
himself in the world, if only he could stop the mouths
of But that has nothing to do with Queen
Giovanna.
This sweet memory, however, this fruit of pru-
dence, is precisely what the Queen has attained in
Naples and in all the surrounding country. I have
questioned many peasants who spoke to me about
her, and received the invariable answer that she was
a good Queen, a very good Queen in fact, of the
best. Now history, listening to this declaration,
sighs and shakes her head despairingly. There were
two queens named Giovanna leaving out several
others who, for various reasons, do not come into
the reckoning. The first was certainly a better
woman than the second, but she is credibly believed
to have begun her reign when quite a girl by murder-
ing her first husband, after which she departed in
MORALITY AND QUEENS 67
various ways from the ideal of Sunday-schools. The
second was an atrocious woman, concerning whose
ways of life it is better to say as little as possible.
The first was strangled, though not in Naples, or
its neighbourhood, but at the Castle of Muro, far
down in Apulia. The second had innumerable
lovers, and was, perhaps, one of the worst women
ever born.
The Queen Giovanna of tradition seems to be a
blend of these two sovereigns, laden with the in-
firmities of both, and loved the more for the burden
of the scandals which she bears. It is a charming
trait, this disposition of poor humanity to glorify
dead sinners ! Conscious of their own imperfec-
tions, mindful of the condescension of a queen who
steps down to the moral level of her people, the
Neapolitans welcome her with outstretched hands,
and love her for her peccadilloes. Legend confers
a pleasanter immortality than history, earned less
painfully, bestowed more charitably, and quite as
durable.
CHAPTER IV
THE RIVIERA DI CHIAIA
AND SOME STRANGE THINGS WHICH OCCURRED THERE
IN bright sunshine I came down the last slopes
of the Posilipo, wending towards the Riviera
di Chiaia. The bay sparkled with innumerable
colours ; the hills lay in morning shadow ; Vesuvius
was dark and sullen, and the twin peaks of Capri
rested on the horizon like the softest cloud. The
sun fell very sweetly among the oranges in the villa
gardens, lighting up their dark and glossy leaves
with quick-changing gleams which moved and went
as lightly as if reflected from the restless waters of
the bay. Out on the sea there was a swarm of fish-
ing boats, each provided with a rod of monstrous
length ; while as I reached the level of the sea, and
entered on the winding road that goes to Naples,
I found myself skirting a long, narrow beach, of
which the reeking odours proclaimed it to be a
landing-place of fishers. There, under the shadow
of the towering cliff, boats were hauled up, nets
were drying, fish frails were piled in heaps, and
close to a small stone pier which jutted out into
the water a couple of fishing-wives were scolding
each other much in the same way as two dames of
Brixham or of Newlyn, while a small urchin prone
upon the sand, watched the encounter of wits with
68
MARINA DI CHIAIA 69
eager curiosity to know whether more was to come
of it or not.
More did not come of it. The strife sank into
silence, and as I paced along the margin of the little
beach, glancing now at the wide curve of the bay,
now at the dark fortress of the enchanted Castle of
the Egg upon its further horn, I found myself in
a strange medley of ancient thoughts and modern
ones, the old world wrestling with the new, tales
of the kings of Aragon mingling with the cries of
cabmen and the whirring noises of the tramways.
This little beach by which I stand is all that is now
left of the Marina di Chiaia, which once ran round
the bay up to the rocks and caverns of the Chiata-
mone, where the Egg Castle juts out into the sea.
It was all a sandy foreshore, with boats hauled up
and nets set out to dry, just as one may see them on
this scrap which still remains. It was renowned
as a place of ineffable odours. Indeed, an ancient
writer, seeking a simile for a certain very evil smell,
could think of none more striking than " that which
one smells on the Marina di Chiaia in the evening."
It is to be gathered that the women were in large
measure responsible for this as for most other things
that go wrong in Naples. " Tutt' e' peccate murtali
so' femmene," says the proverb All the mortal sins
are feminine ; and if those, why not the smells also ?
But it is not to be supposed that the women of the
Chiaia were the less attractive. Far from that. We
have the word of the poet del Tufo that they were
so gracious and charming that even a dead man
would not remain insensible to the desire of loving
them. What can have become of these houris ? I
did much desire to see them, but I searched in vain.
I found none but heavy, wide-mouthed women,
owning no charm but dirt, and no attractions save
70 THE RIVIERA DI CHIAIA
a raucous tongue. Perhaps the disappearance of the
smells involved the loss of the beauty also. If so,
another grudge is to be cherished against the sanitary
reformers, who so often in the history of mankind
have proved that they know not what they do.
But I was about to speak of King Alfonso of
Aragon, a monarch whose story can be forgotten
by no one who has given himself the pleasure of
reading the superb work in which Guicciardini has
told the story of his times, a tale of greatness and
of woe immeasurable, having in itself every element
of tragedy, with a human interest which throbs
even painfully from page to page. Macaulay, by
giving currency to a stupid tale about a galley slave
who chose the hulks rather than the history, has
contrived to rob many of us of a pleasure far greater
than can be derived from the antitheses in which
he himself delights ; and has spread abroad the
impression that this prince among historians, this
dignified and simple writer, this unsurpassed judge
of men whom he himself in a wiser moment com-
pared to Tacitus, was dull ! It is but one more
injustice done by Macaulay's hasty fancy, serving
well to prove what mischief may be wrought by
a man who cannot deny himself the pleasure of a
quirk until he has reflected what injury it may do
to another's reputation.
Alfonso of Aragon was King of Naples when the
French, led by their King Charles the Eighth, were
advancing through Italy to the attack of Naples.
The old title of the House of Anjou which reigned
in Naples for near two centuries, was in the French
judgment not extinct ; and Charles, called into Italy
by Ludovic the Moor, Duke of Milan, and one of
the greatest scoundrels of all ages, was pressing on
through the peninsula faster and with more success
THE SPECTRE OF A KING 71
than either his friends wished or his enemies had
feared. One by one the obstacles which were to
have detained him in northern Italy crumbled at
his approach. Florence was betrayed by Piero
di Medici ; the Neapolitan armies in the Romagna
were driven back ; the winter was mild, offering
no obstacle to campaigning ; the Pope was over-
awed ; and at length Alfonso, seeing the enemy
victorious everywhere, and now almost at his gates,
fell into a strange state of nerves. The first warrior
of his age broke down like a panic-stricken girl.
The strong, proud King fell a prey to fear. He
could not sleep, for the night was full of haunting
terrors, and out of the dark there came to visit him
the spectres of men whom he had slain by treachery,
each one seeming to rejoice at the vengeance of
which Heaven had made the French King the in-
strument.
Yet Alfonso had large and well-trained armies at
his command, and the passes of the kingdom were
easily defended. The French were no nearer than
at Rome ; and anyone who has travelled between
the Eternal City and Naples must see how easily
even in our own days a hostile army could be held
among the mountains. Had there been a resolute
defence, many a month might yet have passed before
a single Frenchman reached the Siren city. But
Alfonso could give no orders ; and his terrors were
completed by a vision which appeared to one of his
courtiers in a dream repeated on three successive
nights. It was the spirit of the old King Ferdinand
which appeared to the affrighted Jacopo, grave and
dignified as when all trembled before him in his life,
and commanded, first in gentle words and afterwards
with terrifying threats, that he should go forthwith
to King Alfonso, telling him that it was vain to hope
72 THE RIVIERA DI CHIAIA
to stem the French invasion ; that fate had declared
their house was to be troubled with infinite calamities,
and at length to be stamped out in punishment for
the many deeds of enormous cruelty which the
two had committed, but above all for that one
wrought, at the persuasion of Alfonso, in the Church
of San Lionardo in the Chiaia when he was returning
home from Pozzuoli.
The spirit gave no details of this crime. There
was no need. The mere reference to it completed
Alfonso's overthrow. Whatever the secret may have
been, it scored the King's heart with recollections
which he could not face when conjured up in this
strange and awful manner. There was no longer
any resource for him. His life was broken once
for all, and hastily abdicating his kingdom in favour
of his son Ferdinand, whose clean youth was un-
stained by any crimes, he carried his remorse and
all his sinful memories to a monastery in Sicily,
where he died, perhaps in peace.
No man who reads this tale can refrain from
wondering where was this Church of San Lionardo
on the Chiaia, and what it was that King Alfonso did
there. The first question is easier than the last to
answer, yet there are some materials for satisfying
curiosity in regard to both.
It is useless to seek for the Church of San
Lionardo now. It was swept away when the fine
roadway was made which skirts the whole sea-front
from the Piazza, di Vittoria to the Torretta. But
in old days it must have been a rarely picturesque
addition to the beauty of the bay. It stood upon
a little island rock, jutting out into the sea about
the middle of the curve, near the spot where the
aquarium now stands. It was connected with the
land by a low causeway, not unlike that by which the
SAN LIONARDO 73
Castle of the Egg is now approached ; and it was
a place of peculiar interest and sanctity, apart from
its conspicuous and beautiful position, because from
the days of its first foundation it had claimed a
special power of protection over those who were
tormented by the fear of shipwreck or captivity,
both common cases in the lives of the dwellers on
a shore haunted by pirates and often vexed by
storms. The foundation was due to the piety of
a Castilian gentleman, Lionardo d'Oria, who, being
in peril of wreck so long ago as the year 1028, vowed
a church in honour of his patron saint upon the spot,
wherever it might be, at which he came safely to
land. The waves drove him ashore upon this beach,
midway between Virgil's Tomb and the enchanted
Castle of the Egg ; and here his church stood for
seven hundred years and more upon its rocky islet
a refuge and a shrine for all such as went in peril
by land or sea.
Naturally enough, the thoughts of Neapolitans
turned easily in days of trouble to the saint whose
special care it was to extricate them. Many a
fugitive slipped out of Naples in the dark and
sped furtively along the sandy beach to the island
church, whence, as he knew perfectly, he could
embark on board a fishing-boat with far better hope
of getting clear away than if he attempted to escape
from Naples. Thus at all moments of disturbance in
the city the chance was good that important persons
were in hiding in the Church of San Lionardo
waiting the favourable moment of escape. King
Alfonso must have known this perfectly. One may
even surmise that his journey to Pozzuoli was under-
taken with the object of tempting out rebellious
barons and their followers from the city, where they
might be difficult to find, into this solitary spot,
74 THE RIVIERA DI CHIAIA
where he could scarcely miss them. If so, he
doubtless gloated over the first sight of the island
church as he came riding down from the Posilipo
and out upon the beach towards it, knowing that
the trap was closed and the game his own.
Alfonso was a man who never knew mercy. Who
the fugitives were whom he found hidden in the
church, or in what manner they met their death,
is, so far as I know, recorded nowhere. But this
we know, that it was no ordinary death, no mere
strangling or beheading of rebellious subjects that
the King sanctioned and perhaps watched in this
lonely church which was built as a refuge for troubled
men. Of such deeds there were so many scored up
to the account of both kings that the spirit of the
elder could hardly have reproached his son with any
one of them. What was done in the Church of
San Lionardo was something passing the common
cruelty of even Spaniards in those ages, and it is
perhaps a merciful thing that oblivion has descended
on the details.
I shall return again to King Alfonso and his
family, for the city is full of memories of them, and
in the vaults of the Castel Nuovo there are things
once animate which throw a terrible light upon the
practices of the House of Aragon. But for the time
this may be enough of horrors; and I turn with
pleasure to the long sea-front against which the tide
is breaking fresh and pleasantly, surging white and
foaming over the black rocks which skirt the foot of
the sea-wall. The wind comes freshly out of the east.
Capri is growing into a wonderful clearness. Even
the little town upon the saddle of the island begins
to glow white and sparkling, and the limestone pre-
cipices show their clefts and shadows in the increasing
light. The soft wind blows in little sunny gusts,
THE SEA-FRONT 75
which shake the blossoms of wistaria on the house-
fronts, mingling the salt and fishy odours of the beach
with the scent of flowers in the villa gardens. There
is scarce a sign of cloud in the warm sky, and all
the crescent bay between me and the city takes
colours which are perpetually changing into deeper
tints of liquid blue and rare soft green, with flashes
here and there of brown, and exquisite reflections
which are but half seen before they yield to others
no less beautiful. The long white sea-wall gleams
like the setting of a gem, and the warm air trembles
slightly in the distance, so that the Castle of the Egg
looks as if it were indeed enchanted, and might be
near the doom predicted for it when its frail founda-
tions shall be broken.
I had meant to spend an hour this morning in the
Church of Sannazzaro, on the slope of the hill, at no
great distance from this spot. He who does not see
churches betimes in Naples may chance to miss them
altogether, and will waste much temper during the
hot afternoon in hammering on barred doors with
vain effort to rouse sleepy sacristans. Heaven knows
I am not indifferent to church architecture, and had
the morning been less beautiful I should certainly
have described learnedly enough, the building pre-
serving the memory of the quaint and artificial poet
whom Bembo, as frigid and unnatural as himself,
declared to be next to Virgil in fame, as he was also
next in sepulture. I often wonder whether Bembo
really meant anything at all by this judgment, except
an elegant turn of verse. If he did But I am
straying away from the lights and shadows of this
magic morning, which are far more delightful than
the arcadian rhapsodies of Sannazzaro and of Bembo.
Let me put them both aside. Or stay, one observa-
tion of the former comes into mind. He said the
76 THE RIVIERA DI CHIAIA
Mergellina was "Un pezzo di cielo caduto in terra"
a scrap of heaven fallen down on earth. He had
blood in him, then, this worshipper of nymphs and
classicism ; let us go and see his Mergellina. It will
not take us far from the sea-front, to which it once
lay open, in the days when there were no grand
hotels nor ugly boarding-houses blocking out the
sweet colours and the clean air of the sea.
As I turn inland, my eye is caught by a tablet on
a house-front to the left, which has a melancholy
interest for all Englishmen :
"IN QUESTA CASA NACQUE FRANCESCO CARACCIOLI
AMMIRAGLIO
IL 18 GUIGNO I7S2
STRANGOLATO AL 29 GUIGNO 1799"
" Strangolato " ay, hung at Nelson's yardarm,
while his flagship lay off Naples, and sunk after-
wards in the sea, whence his naked body was washed
up on shore. It is a foul story ; a black stain on the
memory of a hero whose achievements were too
great for any man to attempt a judgment, or to strike
a balance between his virtues and his sins. I turn my
back upon the tablet, and wish that I could forget it.
In a few yards further the whole charming length
of Sannazzaro's bit of heaven lies spread out before
me. A wide, straight street, a paradise of yellow
stucco, stained and peeling off, a wilderness of sordid
shops and dirty children running wild, a solitary
tramcar spinning on its way to Naples, a creaking
cart with vegetables, a huckster bawling fish I have
not patience to catalogue the delights of the Mer-
gellina of to-day, but turn my back on them and
flee to the sea-front again, where I can look out
on what is still unspoiled, because man has no
dominion over it.
THE TORRETTA 77
A short stroll towards the city within reach of
the lapping waves restored my temper, and I re-
membered that as I fled from the Mergellina I saw
over my shoulder a halting-place for tramcars, well
known to all who visit Naples by the name of the
" Torretta."
I hardly know how many of those visitors have
asked themselves what this Torretta was, to which
they have so often paid their fares of twenty-five
centimes, or have connected it in memory with the
other towers of which they hear upon the further side
of Naples. But since Naples is a seaborn city, and a
wealthy city by the shore of ocean attracts pirates as
naturally as flies flock to honey, it may be as well to
explain why the Torretta was built
The tale goes back as far as the days of Don
Fernando Afan de Rivera, Duca d'Alcala, who did
Naples the honour of condescending to govern it as
Viceroy to His Most Catholic Majesty of Spain
from the year 1629 to 1631. He was an old and
gouty viceroy, but not lacking in energy or courage.
Those were times in which infinite numbers of
Turkish pirates hovered round the coasts of Italy ;
and week by week the warning cannon roared out
from Ischia, and the heavy toll of the alarm bells
rolled along the shore from Campanella and Castellam-
mare to the harbours beneath Vesuvius, waking all
the fishermen to watchfulness and rousing the guards
within the city walls.
" All' arme ! all* arme ! la Campana sona,
Li Turche so' arrivati a la marina ! "
The terror-stricken refrain is still on the lips of the
peasants in the coasts which were harried by Dragut
and Ucchiali.
One night a band of these bold corsairs struck
78 THE RIVIERA DI CHIAIA
suddenly in the darkness, and landed on the western
end of the Chiaia, well outside the limits of the city.
There were among their numbers certain renegades
of Naples, and using the local knowledge of these
scoundrels, they had conceived the design of captur-
ing the Marchesa del Vasto, whose palace stood in
this somewhat unprotected region, and whom they
intended to surprise in her sleep. So rich a prisoner
would have brought them a vast ransom ; but the
scheme turned out disappointing. The Marchesa
had gone to take the waters, over the hills at Agnano,
whither greedy Turks could not pursue her. Nothing
remained but to bag as many people of inferior con-
sequence as time permitted ; and the renegades,
turning to their advantage the alarm which was
already spreading among the inhabitants, rushed
about knocking at every door and imploring the
people in anguished tones to come out at once and
save themselves from the Turks, who were landing
at that moment. Some poor frightened souls were
simple enough to accept this invitation, and were
made prisoners for their pains the moment they
crossed the threshold. Others, more wisely, sus-
pecting the trick, made rude replies, and barred
their doors and shutters, knowing that at dawn, if
not before, help must surely come from the neigh-
bouring city.
They were not mistaken in their faith. Naples
was astir, and the guards were mustering by torch-
light in the streets. The Duca d' Alcala was at the
Palazzo Stigliano, near the Porta di Chiaia. Old
and gouty as he was, he had set himself at the head
of his men, the city gate was flung open, and in the
grey light of morning the Turks saw a considerable
force advancing on them. They did not stay to
fight, but pushed off their ships, carrying with them
TURKISH CORSAIRS 79
twenty-four prisoners, whom next day they signified
that they were willing to ransom. Accordingly
parleys were held upon the Island of Nisida; the
Viceroy himself paid part of the sum demanded,
while the rest was contributed by the Society for the
Redemption of Captives, a useful public institution
whose income was heavily drawn upon in those days.
Probably neither one nor the other was entirely
pleased at having to pay out a large sum for the
redemption of people living almost under the walls
of the city. It was to guard against such mishaps
in future that the Torretta was built, and garrisoned
as strongly as its size permitted.
What old tales these seem, and how changed is all
the aspect of this bay ! San Lionardo gone as com-
pletely as the shadow of a drifting cloud ! The
Torretta degraded to a halting -place of tramcars!
The Mergellina stripped of all that made the poet
Sannazzaro love it ! Only on the sea-front the same
beauty of heavenly blue still shimmers on the waters,
breaking into bubbles of pure gold where the soft
tide washes up amid the rocks. The fishing boats
slip to and fro under their large three-cornered sails.
There is more wind out there upon the bay ; it
strikes in sharp puffs on the bellying canvas, and
the light craft heel towards the land. One of them
has put in beside the stairs not far from where I am
loitering. The bottom of his boat is alive with
silvery fish ; and on the cool stones of the landing-
place, just awash with clear green water, stand the
barelegged fishermen, stooping over the still living
fish, cleansing their burnished scales from the soil of
the dirty skiff, laughing and chattering like children,
as they are. Suddenly one of them snatches at a
little object which the others had not noticed, and
holds it up to me in gleeful expectation of a few
8o THE RIVIERA DI CHIAIA
soldi. "Cavallo di mare!" A tiny sea-horse, already
stiff and rigid, a clammy and uncomfortable curiosity.
My good man, if I desire to look at sea-horses I
have but to cross the road to the aquarium, where
I can watch them in the grace and wonder of their
life and shall not be asked to cumber myself with
their dead bodies. Salvatore shrugs his shoulders.
If I am mad enough to miss this chance, it is
my own affair ; the Madonna will scarce send me
another. In the midst of the diatribe I stroll across
to the aquarium.
Rarely, if ever, have I passed by this storehouse
of great marvels without regretting it, for indeed
it has no equal in the world. Tanks of fish are
kept in many cities ; the only aquarium is at Naples.
There alone can one stand and watch the actual
stress and movement of the life which passes in the
sea, that animal life of myriad shapes and colours
which is so like the plants and which while rooted
to a rock, and spreading long translucent tendrils
like a frond of seaweed, will yet curl and uncurl,
swaying this way and that in search of food, or in
the effort to escape some enemy it fears. For the
depths of the sea are full of enemies, and every
sense of those which dwell beneath it is alert. There
one may see the tube- dwelling worms, thrust out
from the mouth of their tall cylinders like a feathery
tuft of tendrils, a revolving fan, which spins and
spins until some sea-horse floating up erect and
graceful comes too close, and instantly the fan closes,
the tendrils disappear and lie hidden till the danger
has gone by. Far along the rock clefts, high and
low throughout the pools, there is a perpetual watch-
fulness and motion, a constant stir and trembling ;
and the provision which the lowest animal possesses
for the protection of its life is in quick and momentary
TREASURES OF THE SEA 81
use, laying open such a revelation of the infinite
resources of nature as itself makes this cool chamber
one of the most interesting places in the world.
But if a man go there for beauty only, in what
profusion he will find it ! The green depths of the
tanks are all aglow with soft rich colour. The sea
beneath the cliffs at Vico is not more blue on the
softest day in spring than the fish which glide by
among these shadows ; nor are the lights seen from
Castellammare when the sun drops down behind
Ischia and the rosy flushes spread along the coast,
more exquisite than the soft pink scales which glance
through the arches of the rocks. Turquoise and
pearl, emerald and jacinth, the gleams caught from
the hidden sun above reflect the hues of every gem.
The strange, dense vegetation, the quick flash of
moving gold and purple, reveal a world of marvellous
rich beauty ; and if it be indeed the case that those
bold divers of past days who dared to plunge out of
the bright sun into the dusk and dimness of the
ocean depths saw there the orange sponges, the
waving forests of crimson weed, and all the myriad
colours of the moving fishes glinting through them, it
is no wonder that they came back into the world of
men spreading tales of countless jewels, and un-
numbered treasures, which lie buried in the caves
and grottoes of the sea.
Naples is alive with stories of this sort ; and not
Naples only, but all Sicily and southern Italy share
the tales of the great diver, Nicol6 Pesce, who is
sometimes a Sicilian and sometimes a dweller on the
mainland, but is claimed by Naples with good reason,
as I shall show presently. The mere sight of things
so like those which Nicol6 must have seen calls up
all the rare stories told of him ; and I go up into the
Villa Garden, which skirts the long sea -front, and
G
82 THE RIVIERA DI CHIA1A
having found a seat beneath a shady palm tree,
whence I can watch the blue sea lying motionless
around the dark battlements of Castel dell' Uovo,
while the wind makes light noises in the feathery
boughs above me, I fall to thinking of the diver who,
at the bidding of the king, searched the caverns under-
neath the castle, which no man has ever found but he,
and came back with his arms full of jewels. Any
child in Naples knows that heaps of gems are lying
in those caverns still.
Who was Nicolo Pesce ? Ah ! what is the use of
asking such questions about a myth ? He was once,
like all of us, a thing which crept about the earth it
matters little when, nei tempi antic 'hi ! But now he
is a butterfly fluttering in the world of romance, a
theme for poets, and cherished in the heart of children.
If you must know more about his actual existence,
catch a child and give him a few soldi to escort you
to the foot of the Vico Mezzocannone, away on the
further side of the city, where the lanes drop steeply
to the harbour. There, built into the front of a house,
you will see an ancient stone, on which is carved the
figure of a shaggy man grasping a knife in his right
hand, while his left is clenched in the air. That is
Nicolo Pesce, so called because he was at home in
the water as a fish is ; and the knife is that which he
used to cut himself out from the bellies of the fish
when he had done the long swift journeys which he
was wont to make in the manner of which no other
man had experience but Jonah.
You may get much more than this from the child,
though confidence is hard to gain, and soldi will not
always buy it. One day the King bade Nicolo find
out what the bottom of the sea is like. The diver
plunged, and when he came up gasping he said he
had seen gardens of coral and large spaces of ribbed
NICOLO PESCE 83
sand strewn with precious stones, and piled here and
there with heaps of treasure, mouldering weapons,
the ribs of sunken ships and the whitening skeletons
of drowned mariners. I well believe it ! Ave Maria,
Stella Maris, Star of the Sea, be gracious to poor
sailors in their peril !
But another time the King bade Nicol6 dive down
and find out how Sicily floated on the sea, and the
man brought up a fearful tale. For he said that
groping to and fro in the dim abysses he saw that
Sicily had rested on three pillars, whereof one had
fallen, one was split and like to fall, and one only
stood erect and sound ! The years have gone by
in many hundreds since that plunge ; but no man
knows whether the shattered pillar is erect.
Now the King desired to be sure that Nicolo did
actually reach the bottom of the sea, and accordingly
took him to the summit of a rock where the water
was deepest, and there, surrounded by his courtiers,
hurled a gold cup far out from the shore. The
goblet flashed and sank, and the King bade Nicol6
dive and bring it back.
The diver plunged, and the King waited, watching
long before the surface of the sea was broken. At
last Nicolo rose, brandishing the cup as he swam,
and when he had reached shore and won his breath
again he cried, " Oh, King, if I had known what
I should see, neither this cup nor half your kingdom
would have tempted me to dive." "What did you
see?" the King demanded, and the diver answered
that he found on the floor of the ocean four im-
penetrable things. First the great rush of a river
which streams out of the bowels of the earth, sweep-
ing all things away before the might of its resistless
current ; and next a labyrinth of rocks, whose crags
overhung the winding ways between them. Then
84 THE RIVIERA DI CHIAIA
he was beaten hither and thither by the flux and
reflux of the waters out of the lowest parts of
ocean ; and lastly, he dared not pass the monsters
which stretched out long tentacles as if to clutch
him and draw him into the caverns of the rocks.
So he groped and wandered in mortal fear, till at
last he saw the gleam of gold upon a shelf of rock
and grasped the cup and came up into the world
again.
Now the King pondered long upon this story, and
then taking the cup flung it into the sea once more,
and bade Nicolo dive again. The fellow begged
hard that he might not go, but the King was ruth-
less, and the waters closed over the diver. The day
waned, the night came on, and still the King waited
on the crag beside the sea. But Nicolo Pesce the
diver was never seen again.
Many a child has thrilled over this story as told
in Schiller's verse, " Wer wagt es, Rittersman oder
Knapp . . ." You ask What is the truth of these old
stories ? I answer that they have neither truth nor
falsity, and that is enough for most of us in this dull
world, of which so much has to be purged away
before the beauty can appear. The flower-laden
boughs in this Villa garden go on rustling in the
sunny wind ; the Judas trees are gay with purple
blossoms, and from the long, straight avenue, where
white marble statues gleam in the cool shades, the
cries and laughter of the children ring out merrily.
Tell a child these tales and he will doubt nothing,
reason over nothing, but accept the beauty and talk
of it with quickened breath and glowing cheeks.
That is the wisdom of the babes. Let us be content
to copy it.
CHAPTER V
THE ENCHANTED CASTLE OF THE EGG
AND THE SUCCESSION OF THE KINGS
WHO HELD IT
IN Naples one is never very far from history, and
when I arose from my pleasant seat beneath the
palm tree, plodding on down the long and beautiful
avenue of the Villa garden I came out at no great
distance on the sunny Piazza, della Vittoria a
name which, I suspect, connects itself in the fancy
of many visitors with some of the wild triumphs of
Garibaldi. But the piazza has an older history than
that. It commemorates the sea battle of Lepanto,
in which Don John of Austria, the youthful son of
the great Emperor Charles the Fifth and of Barbara
Blomberg, washerwoman of Ratisbon, led the united
fleets of Venice, Spain, and Rome into the Gulf of
Lepanto as the Turks were coming out and adminis-
tered a drubbing under which the throne of the
Caliph rocked and tottered, all so long ago as the
year 1576. Naples had the best of reasons, as I
have said already, for rejoicing over any event which
reduced the sea power of the Turks, and I do not
doubt that the child of Kaiser and of washerwoman
had an intoxicating triumph on this spot which has
so long forgotten him.
At this point I hesitate, as the ass did between
8s
86 THE ENCHANTED CASTLE
two bundles, a dilemma often thrust on one in
Naples. For if I turn towards my left and mount
the hill, I reach the Piazza, dei Martiri and the
pleasant strangers' quarter. But since my aim is
not to describe things known easily to all who visit
Naples, but rather to talk at large of what the guide-
books do not mention, I take the other way and
move out on the sea-front again, just where the
Via Partenope, a new road, runs towards the ancient
castle at the point.
As I approach the centre of this ancient city,
scene of so many bitter conflicts, it becomes the
more needful to select those epochs which are most
worthy to be remembered, to let all the ghosts of
great names flutter by except a few, and those the
few whose memories rise oftenest. The choice is
easy. All the deepest tragedy of Naples closes
round the fall of the House of Hohenstaufen and
the fall of that of Aragon. I must explain briefly
how these houses held the throne of Naples and of
Sicily.
The Normans founded that kingdom in the year
1 1 30. They won it by conquest from Lombards
and from Saracens ; and they placed their capital
at Palermo, where their rule on the whole was just
and splendid, and their throne gained lustre from
Arab art and Arab learning, so that those were
happy days for Italy and Sicily, held by strong
sovereigns who kept in check all dangers from
without. But even in the good times the seed of
trouble was sprouting fast ; for the first Normans,
superstitious in their piety, and anxious to obtain
a legal title to the lands their swords had won,
accepted the feudal lordship of the Pope ; and thus
originated the papal claim to alter the succession
of the realm at will.
GUELF AND GHIBELLINE 87
The male line of the Normans failed. Constance,
the heiress of the house, carried the throne to the
Emperor Henry VI., son of the great Barbarossa,
and as resolved as he to turn into realities the
shadowy claims of the Emperors to the overlordship
of all Italy. But the Popes already claimed the
universal spiritual dominion, as the Emperors claimed
the temporal ; and since in the rough-thinking
minds of men there was but little comprehension
of the theoretical distinction between the dominions
of spirit and of matter, it happened often that even
in the understanding of Pope and Kaiser themselves
the difference was lost, and the two claims worked
out to rivalry and the clash of interests which
wrought much bloodshed.
There was not room in Italy for two universal
rulers, both holding of God, even though one ruled
spiritual things and the other temporal. The theory
was clear, but who could interpret the practice on
all occasions? Every Pope was greedy for tem-
poralities ; and no Kaiser, unless wholly occupied
in taming rebellious barons beyond the Alps, could
refrain from meddling with spiritual affairs. Thus
arose two parties throughout Italy, and all the land
was cleft with the feuds of Guelf and Ghibelline, the
former holding to the Pope, the latter dreaming, as
Dante did, of the days when the Emperor should
descend from the Alps again brandishing the sword
of judgment, and purge away the foulness from the
lovely cities which stood oppressed and mourning.
Day and night, in the fancy of the great Florentine,
Rome lay weeping, widowed and alone, calling con-
stantly, " Cesare mio, why hast thou deserted me ? "
More often than not the Emperors did not come,
and the Pope grew ever stronger. But when the
successor of St. Peter saw his great rival established
88 THE ENCHANTED CASTLE
by natural inheritance in the territory which was not
only the fairest of all Italy, but also the one over
which he claimed feudal rights, it was certain that
there could be no peace ; and the conflict might have
broken out at once had not the Emperor died and
his widow granted the Church great power over her
young son, whom the Pope might naturally hope
to mould into what he would.
But the lad grew up strong and self-reliant, a
noble and a splendid monarch, worthy of the
fame which clings to this day about the name of
the Emperor Frederick the Second. Alone of all
the line of Western Emperors this one lived by
choice in Italy. He loved the blue sea and the
purple mountains which guard the land of Sicily.
His heart was in the white coast towns of Apulia
and the ranges of long low hills which look towards
the Adriatic over the flat plains of Foggia, where
the hawks wheel screaming in the clear air and the
great mountain shrine of Monte Gargano towers
blue and dim above the heel of Italy. He loved
the Arab art and learning. He was no mean poet
a troubadour, moreover; and withal a just and upright
ruler, with aims far greater than those of the age
in which he lived, a monarch born for the happiness
of nations, had only the Pope been able to bate
a little of his pride and tolerate the rival at his
gates.
But those were days in which the Popes would
endure no compromise ; and from the hour in which
he entered man's estate to that in which he laid down
his weary life in an Apulian castle, Frederick was in
continual warfare with the Church. Had he lived,
who knows how that struggle might have ended, or
by what devices the prince who was Emperor as well
as King, and had the prestige of the Holy Roman
A RUTHLESS TYRANT 89
Empire at his back, might have met the dangers
gathering round his kingdom ? For the Pope was
negotiating with other princes, offering them the
inheritance of Naples if they would but turn the
Hohenstaufen out; and at length, after an English
prince had refused the enterprise, Charles of Anjou
took it up, brother of St. Louis, and a man accounted
the first warrior of his age. By this time the king-
dom of the Two Sicilies had passed to Manfred, the
favourite child of Frederick the Second, though born
of an unlawful union. There was a child in Germany
of lawful blood, one Conradin ; but he was still playing
with his mother, and of no age to stem the troubles
of the kingdom. Moreover, he was reported dead,
and Manfred seized the throne with the goodwill of
the people, who loved him well, and keep his memory
unto this day ; for he was handsome and gallant,
" Bello e biondo " the Apulians call him still, a king
whom a man might follow and a woman love, and,
but for the Pope and his restless enmity, Manfred
also, like his father, might have made the happiness
of a whole people.
But Charles of Anjou descended suddenly and
met Manfred in battle outside Benevento. It was
the 26th of February, in the year 1266. Manfred,
watching the battle from a hillock, saw his troops
waver ; and suspecting treachery, which was indeed
abroad that day, he rushed into the thickest of the
fight, and was slain by an unknown hand as he strove
to rally his Apulians.
That day there fell before the French spears not
only a noble king, but the peace and happiness of
southern Italy. Charles of Anjou was a grim and
ruthless tyrant, whose conceptions of mercy and
justice were those of a hawk hovering above a hen-
coop. He denied burial to the body of his enemy,
90 THE ENCHANTED CASTLE
and caused it to be flung naked on the banks of the
river, where every soldier as he passed cast a stone
at it. He seized Manfred's luckless queen, Helena,
and kept her prisoner with her children until death
released them. He overthrew good laws and set up
bad ones. He sought to stamp out loyalty to the
old kings by exile and the sword. In Sicily he
wrought unutterable woe, such as in the end turned
the blood of every islander to fire and his heart to
stone, and produced a massacre from which no
Frenchman escaped. All the world knows that
great act of retribution by the name of the Sicilian
Vespers.
But in the meantime Conradin had grown up to
tall boyhood, and his heart was already brave enough
to rage when he saw his kingdom in the hands of
a cruel conqueror, and his own subjects slain and
banished because they loved his house. His mother
wept, but the boy did what any brave boy of kingly
blood would do. I will tell the tale of that great
tragedy later, when I reach the square outside the
Carmine where the last scene was played out, and
the boy-king lost the game, but carried all the
honours with him from the world, leaving eternal
infamy for a heritage to the foe who slew him.
So Charles of Anjou possessed the kingdom. But
it brought no happiness to him or to his race. His
own days were tortured by the loss of Sicily, and
every one of those who followed him reigned un-
easily. Even his grandson Robert, called " The
Wise," is suspected of having won the throne by
murder. Robert's granddaughter, Queen Giovanna,
whose sweet memory we found on the slopes of the
Posilipo, was privy to the murder of her husband,
and was herself smothered with a pillow. The other
Joanna, who followed her, was the most profligate
SUCCESSIVE TYRANTS 91
woman of her age, and in her ended, meanly and
sordidly, the line of Anjou sovereigns.
Then came the House of Aragon, which had
reigned in Sicily ever since the Vespers, and now
expelled the last scion of Anjou and established a
kingdom which seemed likely to be stable. But the
claims of the royal house of France were only dor-
mant ; and before the end of the century they started
up again, eager and adventurous, in the heart of the
young King, Charles the Eighth. It was the wily
Duke of Milan, Ludovic Sforza, named the Moor,
who incited this young man to lead the French
chivalry through the passes of the Alps. He was
the warder of Italy, and he betrayed her. It would
be hard to name any one act of man since God
divided light from darkness which has let loose upon
the world such tremendous consequences of woe.
It is not my duty here to describe those conse-
quences, nor to tell how the French invasion resulted
very shortly in riveting on Naples the long Spanish
slavery, which in the middle of the last century
became a monarchy again, and in 1 860 was torn from
the hold of the Bourbons, and made free at last, by
the grace of God and the valour of true heroes, each
one of whom dared all for Italy.
" Blessed is he of all men, being in one
As father to her and son,
Blessed of all men living, that he found
Her weak limbs bared and bound,
And in his arms and in his bosom bore,
And as a garment wore
Her weight of want, and as a royal dress
Put on her weariness.
" Praise him, O storm and summer, shore and wave,
O skies, and every grave ;
O weeping hopes, O memories beyond tears,
O many and murmuring years."
92 THE ENCHANTED CASTLE
I will quote no more, even of these immortal verses.
Since it was given to an English singer to voice the
rapture with which all good men hailed the salvation
of Italy, it is but just that every visitor should read
the " Song of Italy" himself. I would that everyone
among them had it by heart and could catch some
thrill from the noble passion of the verses.
This has been a long discourse. But if certain
things happened a great while ago, is it my fault ?
Or again, am I to blame for the strange neglect of
Italian history in schools ? The lesson is done now,
and the sun is still bright and hot on the Via Par-
tenope. Even the enchanted Castle of the Egg,
black and grim as it usually looks, has caught the
glow, and is steeped and drowned in warm light. A
quiver of haze hangs over the sea, tremulous and
burning. The wind has dropped, and a midday
silence has descended upon Naples. It is the hour
when sacristans bar the church doors and seek the
solace of slumber, when the vetturini congregate on
the shady side of the piazza, and cease to crack their
whips at the sight of strangers. On the castle bridge
a sentry paces to and fro. There are one or two
restaurants below him in the shadow, neither good
nor bad, but good enough ; and I order my colazione
in one which looks towards the sheer cliff of the
Pizzofalcone, and from which towards my right I
can look out upon the harbour, can catch a glimpse
of the Castel Nuovo, the old royal dwelling of the
Houses of Anjou and Aragon, and see beyond it the
old city bathed in sunshine sloping to the curving
sea.
The Pizzofalcone is the Falcon's Beak. If it were
not too hot to think much about anything, I might
perhaps detect the resemblance. But at this hour, in
this city, and in face of this sun, one does not think ;
DOLCE NAPOLI 93
one sits and lets half realised ideas drift past as they
will. The Pizzofalcone looks to me much like any
other cliff, rather dangerously near the castle, which
could easily be dominated from the height by even
the smallest modern guns. There was once a villa
of the Roman Lucullus on that height. Statesman
and epicure, he had another on this island ; or
perhaps the two formed part of a single domain,
which must have been rarely lovely in those days
when waving pine trees filled the hollows of the cliff
and the sea broke white and creamy on the strand
of Santa Lucia. It was not this handsome quay
stretching on beyond the castle which set the Nea-
politans singing
" Oh, dolce Napoli,
Oh, suol beato."
For the truth is that modern works of engineering
have not yet proved as prolific in poetry as the
abuses they replace, and the Neapolitans have not
written about their sea-wall any song one half so
sweet as that which was inspired by the pretty,
solitary creek outside the city bounds, bad as it is
understood to have been in morals. There were, and
are still, caverns all along the cliffs of Santa Lucia
which were sad places in the old day, full of riotous
and evil people who resorted thither for the worst of
ends. For this reason Don Pietro di Toledo, when
he was Viceroy, ruined some and closed others, by
which act he at once improved the morals of Naples
and enriched its folklore, for nothing stimulated the
imagination of the people so much as the idea that
their caverns were lying empty and silent. They
believe now that some are the haunt of witches, while
others are filled with treasure. One or two are worth
seeing still if a guide can be found to show them.
94 THE ENCHANTED CASTLE
But I sat down here to talk of tragedies connected
with this castle. Some people may think it would
be better to do so within and not without the walls,
and they are welcome to their opinion ; but I have
tried both courses and think not. The interior of
the castle is badly modernised. The custodian is
stupid and knows nothing. The old chapel is a
kitchen, and when I went to see the spot where the
spirit of Queen Helena wrote the word " revenge "
upon the altar I found it full of soldier cooks wash-
ing potatoes for the garrison. The prisons are either
forgotten or not shown. Inside the walls there is
nothing but disillusion and regret.
Queen Helena was the young wife of Manfred,
who, as I said above, was slain at Benevento, defend-
ing his kingdom against the butcher, Charles of
Anjou. The poor girl was at Lucera with her chil-
dren, when they brought her news that her husband,
kingdom, and home were all lost; and her first natural
impulse was to flee to the protection of her father,
the Greek Emperor in Constantinople. So she took
to horse, and rode down out of the hill country
through the coast plains of Apulia, where but a few
weeks earlier she had hunted and feasted with her
lord, and so came to the port of Trani, where she
had touched land and met the King in all the splen-
dour of his retinue when she came from the east a
happy bride. One can fancy with what fearfulness
this little band of fugitives rode towards the sea,
carrying with them the children of the slain King,
and how often they must have turned their heads to
watch lest they might see the spearpoints of Anjou
flashing among the defiles of the mountains. At
Trani surely they would find servants loyal enough
to speed them on board ship before they cast them-
selves at the feet of the conqueror ; and as she rode
QUEEN HELENA 95
beneath the gateway of the white-walled town and
saw the green Adriatic stretching far towards the
shores of Greece, the Queen's heart must have leapt
amidst its sorrow at the thought that she had
brought her dead lord's boys in sight of safety and
of freedom.
Alas, poor Queen ! The whole land was turning
like a flower to the sun ! The Castellan of Trani
spoke her fair. A month before he would have given
all he had to gain her favour, and now he did but
beg her rest until a ship could be got ready, and
instantly sent off tidings to the French. Ere morning
mother and children were riding once more across
the plain, their horses' heads turned from the sea, and
their bridles guided by French hands. Neither the
sorrow of the Queen nor the youth of the children
touched the heart of Charles. He would have
none of the blood of Manfred left in freedom,
and Queen and children died after many years in
prison.
Queen Helena was shut up in this castle for some
years. Men say it was at Nocera that she died, but
it must have been here that her noble spirit fretted
most sorely against fate, bruising itself like a poor
lark flapping against its prison bars. For in the
corridors of this old castle her spirit used to walk on
the eve of Ascension every year, pacing slowly from
her cell to the chapel of the castle, where she wrote
upon the altar the word "revenge" with finger dipped
in blood. Nothing could erase those letters till the
night of the Sicilian Vespers, when the French were
hunted and slain in every street and alley of Palermo.
After that dread act of vengeance wrought in her own
capital city, the spirit of Queen Helena was never
seen again.
It is in sight of these grey walls, which stood here
96 THE ENCHANTED CASTLE
before Naples was a kingdom, certainly in the year
1 140, that every pageant and almost every tragedy
in the long story of the city has passed by. In those
days when dukes ruled Naples, and the age of
Greek dominion was but just over, the castle was
called "Castello del Salvatore," the Castle of the
Saviour, with the addition of the words "near Naples,"
for the old walled city which made such valorous
defences lay beyond the ridge. Sometimes, again, it
is spoken of as " Castello Marino," a name which
sufficiently explains itself; but nowhere is its present
designation used in ancient documents until the year
1352, when it appears in the rules of the Order of
the Holy Spirit, founded by Louis of Anjou, and
appears, moreover, not only as "the Castle of the
Egg," but as "the Castle of the Enchanted Egg,"
thus showing that the legend concerning the magical
foundation of the fortress had gained strength enough
to displace one, if not two, ancient titles, and attach
itself inseparably to the spot.
There is in this fact something very singular ; and
one would willingly ask the dead centuries why they
left us the heritage of this mysterious name. Of
itself, the ancient castle must remain in all men's
minds as the chief interest in Naples, the most
marked object on its beautiful shore, and the central
point of its romantic story. But beyond the beauty
and the interest, one is piqued with curiosity ; and
the sense of mystery clinging to the castle lends it
a charm to which no one can remain insensible.
There are few points near Naples, whether on hillside
or in valley, from which one does not see the en-
chanted castle low down by the water's edge, swept
by cloud and sunshine, or wet with spray, when the
storm wind drives along the shore, a witness of past
ages, the one thing in Naples which has not changed,
THE PIZZOFALCONE 97
except only the blue sea and the contours of the
everlasting hills.
No castle builder of the days when artillery had
come into use would have set this fortress on the
shore beneath the Pizzofalcone, whence it could be
so easily bombarded. It is rather curious to sit under
these old walls, and turn one's eyes in succession to
the three castles of the city. This is much the oldest,
and the least defensible. Then came Castel Nuovo,
a little higher in the town ; Charles of Anjou founded
it ; and lastly St. Elmo, high upon the hillside, in a
perfect situation, of all others best suited to be the
arx t or citadel. Why, one wonders, did not the first
builders use it, and let the city grow around it ? or at
least, why did they not place their keep and fortress
on the Pizzofalcone? an eminence well suited for
defence. Surely those first Greek settlers who came
across the hills from Cumae could not have overlooked
the merits of this site! Perhaps, as some scholars
hold, Neapolis, "the new city," could not be built
upon the Pizzofalcone because Palaeopolis, "the old
city," was already there. I cannot tell. There are no
answers to these questions, which recur again and
again as one wanders round these coasts, none the
less absorbing because one must speculate on them
in vain.
But in Naples one must not spend time in chasing
shadows. I have still to speak about the French
bombardment of the enchanted castle; but first I
will take up the tale of the fall of the House of
Aragon where I left it in my last chapter, when
King Alfonso, terrified and broken by nameless fear,
leapt down shuddering from his throne, and fled from
royalty and kingdom, to die a penitent monk in a
monastery in Sicily.
It was a well-nigh hopeless task for his son
98 THE ENCHANTED CASTLE
Ferdinand to maintain the sceptre thus hastily thrust
into his hands. The French were already over the
borders of his kingdom. They had stormed and
sacked the Castle of Monte di San Giovanni, putting
the garrison to the sword. " This," says Guicciardini
with scornful bitterness, " was the sum of the opposi-
tion and trouble which the King of France met with
in the conquest of a realm so noble and so splendid ;
in the defence of which there was shown neither skill,
nor courage, nor good counsel, no desire for honour,
no strength, no loyalty." The Neapolitans were
strongly posted at San Germano, the River Garigliano
flowing like a moat in front, and their flanks guarded
by lofty mountains ; but they fled without a blow,
before they even saw the French, leaving their guns
behind, and falling back on Capua.
At Capua, that ancient city of delights, which
turned the strong Carthaginian invaders into feeble
voluptuaries, cowardice was fitly followed up by
treachery. The troops were under command of
Gianjacopo Triulzi, a captain of repute, " accustomed
to make profession of honour," observes Guicciardini,
in his dry, contemptuous way. This honourable cap-
tain seized the moment when his young master had
been called back to Naples by disorders in the city,
to deliver over his whole command to the French.
Ferdinand hurried back ; but arrived too late. He
returned with a few followers to Naples. The
whole city was in an uproar, the mob was already
sacking the stables of the Castel Nuovo. There was
no more hope of stemming the tide. The young
king, brave, just, and personally popular, was over-
whelmed by the misdeeds of his house. The very
guards of his palace were inclined to seize his person ;
but he distracted their attention by admitting them
to sack the castle, and while they were quarrelling
A FRUITLESS INTERVIEW 99
over their booty, he left the castle by the secret
postern towards the sea, and embarked on a light
galley bound for Ischia. There as he stood in the
stern, and through the black smoke of the burning
ships, destroyed by his orders, saw home and king-
dom lost by the sins and dishonour of other men, he
repeated over and over, as long as he could still see
Naples, those words in which the psalmist tells us
that except the Lord keep the city, the watchman
waketh but in vain.
But the Castle of the Egg still held out for him,
and the French, having seized a little tower on the
height of Pizzofalcone, bombarded the fortress from
that eminence. King Charles the Eighth himself
was there watching the practice of his gunners, when
two light galleys ran across from Ischia, touching
shore at the old mole, and from one of them landed
Don Federigo of Aragon, uncle of the King, who
had dwelt at the French Court, and knew both
Charles and his barons. They took him up to the
height, and when the French King saw him coming,
says Passaro, that most gossipy of chroniclers, "he
leapt down from his horse and bowed down to the
ground, and embraced Don Federigo with the
greatest pleasure, and took him by the hand and
led him apart to a spot beneath an olive tree, where
they began to talk together, but of what they said
I know nothing, though many supposed that King
Charles was trying to treat with King Ferdinand,
offering him great lordships in France, but he would
not, and Don Federigo left him and went back to
his ships."
A strange interview, surely, between King and
Prince, while the French gunners stood waiting with
their matches burning, and the standard of Aragon
still flew over the enchanted castle. It fell ere long,
TOO THE ENCHANTED CASTLE
and the whole kingdom was in the hands of Charles.
It is true he had not the wit to keep it. But any-
one who wants to know that story must seek it in
Guicciardini, and may live to thank me for referring
him to one of the greatest and most interesting
writers whom the world can show.
CHAPTER VI
THE BARBARITIES OF FERDINAND
OF ARAGON
WITH CERTAIN OTHER SUBJECTS WHICH PRESENT
THEMSELVES IN STROLLING ROUND THE CITY
IT is not possible to stroll along the sea-front
much further than the Castle of the Enchanted
Egg, because the inclosures of the arsenal occupy
the foreshore. Thus the only course open is to turn
inland, and, retracing one's steps a little, to pass up
beneath the shadow of the great cliff of the Pizzo-
falcone into the Strada Santa Lucia, which has
always borne the fame of exhibiting at a glance
more of the highly coloured, if uncleanly, life of
the poorer Neapolitans than any other district of
the city. I suspect its proximity to the hotels had
something to do with this high reputation, for
crowded as the winding roadway is at times with
fishermen and peasant women, there is, I maintain,
incomparably more of uncivilised and ancient Naples
to be seen in the Strada de' Tribunali, or around
Castel Capuano, than is now presented to the eyes
of the astonished visitor in Santa Lucia. However,
the wide pavement on the side of that highway
which opens towards the sea for the famous creek
is filled up now is at all times a standing-place for
booths, chiefly for the sale of the " frutti del mare,"
edible or not ; and there one may see both young
101
102 FERDINAND OF ARAGON
girls and ancient hags proffering their wares with
clamorous pertinacity, making use of a vocabulary
which is piquant, if not sweet, and soaring up
into howls such as only a Neapolitan throat can
execute.
The charm of Santa Lucia is largely of the past.
Naples is suffering a change ; and at this point one
realises for the first time that the old city of dirt
and laughter is being swept and garnished. The
"piano di risanamento," that much-needed scheme
of resanitation which was conceived in Naples after
the dread outbreak of cholera had scourged the
narrow alleys in a way to make the most careless
people think that great conception of broad streets
to be driven through the crowded quarters, letting
the sweet and healing sea air course to and fro
between the houses, has brought health and may
bring cleanliness, but it seems to be expelling
gaiety and picturesqueness with the mephitic
vapours which have wrought such woe. Naples
may be an idle city still, but it is not so idle.
It is disorderly and not too safe, yet is more re-
putable than it was. The rake is contemplating
better things, and by-and-by may actually achieve
them an anticipation over which good men must
rejoice. But visitors who come to play may lament
the increase of seriousness and the vanishing faith
that life begins and ends with laughter.
A traveller approaching Naples from this side must
needs be struck by the narrowness of the close alleys
which pierce the houses of Santa Lucia. Standing
in the middle of any one of these vicoli, a man might
almost touch both house-fronts, while the walls tower
up so high on either hand that only a mere strip of
sky is visible, and that with effort. No breeze but
one which blew directly on the mouth of these
SHADE AND SUN 103
alleys could reach the windows of the dense
population which inhabits them. Disease stalks
unimpeded, beyond the power of science to re-
strain. The reason for building these lines of houses
so close together was, of course, to secure shade,
that priceless blessing throughout the burning dog
days in southern Italy. No man can have strolled
about Italian towns even in fine spring weather
without feeling grateful for the shadows which fall
on him from some overhanging house-front. Under
shelter from the sun the very smells seem less ; and
in August scarce any price in health may appear
too high to pay for a patch of shade which lasts
throughout the day.
The curved roadway of Santa Lucia mounts the
hill on which the kings of Anjou, having resolved
to take up their residence in Naples rather than in
Palermo, which was the former capital of the Two
Sicilies, built their new castle Castel Nuovo still
a fortress, though untenable in modern war. This
eminence lay outside the city then. Centuries
later the town had not absorbed it, and the castle
on the knoll remained surrounded by vineyards and
the palaces of those princes of the blood who were
entitled to dwell in the immediate neighbourhood
of the King. Eastwards lay the city, much as one
may see it now, filling the hollow of the coast and
stretching some way up a hill.
The royal palace, which stands now upon the
right, hiding the front of the Castel Nuovo, is of
course a modern building. It has no beauty, and
I have naught to say concerning it. The handsome
piazza laid out before the palace is a pleasant place
to stroll in, especially on warm evenings when the
lights are glittering and there is music at Gambrinus'
Cafe at the corner. But it has no special interest,
104 FERDINAND OF ARAGON
and I go on therefore round the corner of the piazza,
past the halting-place of tramcars, past the little
garden of the palace and the colonnade of the
San Carlo Theatre, till I reach the Piazza del
Municipio, where a gateway in the long wall admits
to the castle precinct. Admission is free. The sentry
at the gate merely nods when I declare my business
to be curiosity and nothing more, and leaves me
to stroll unchecked up the ascending causeway till
I enter the quadrangle of the castle, where a squad
of soldiers are drilling awkwardly.
It is strange that many visitors to Naples omit
this castle from the sights they see. It is well to
spend hours and days in the museum and aquarium,
or in wandering from church to church, spoilt as is
almost every one among those sacred buildings by
the corrupt taste of the eighteenth century, which
daubed over noble gothic arches with unmeaning
Barocco ornament, and left Naples degraded among
Italian cities by the loss of almost all that was once
done nobly within her walls in stone or marble. But
here is the very fount and centre of the sovereignty
of Naples, the home of all its kings since Manfred,
the Palace of Anjou and Aragon. In these walls
their secrets were deposited, and some to this day
remain open to the curious. Here was the chief
theatre of their pomp, and here, on the knoll above
the shore among the olive groves and orchards
that fringed the city walls, unnumbered tragedies
occurred.
The castle has two courtyards. The portal leading
from the outer to the inner is dignified by what is
probably the finest piece of building now left in
Naples, the triumphal arch erected by Alfonso of
Aragon first of the two kings who bore that name
to celebrate his conquest of the city and the downfall
A NOBLE ARCH 105
of the last adherents of the old House of Anjou.
" Pious, merciful, unconquered " : such were the
terms in which his character was described upon
the arch beneath which he rode in and out in triumph.
Mercy was an attribute uncommon in his family;
of that all men can judge unto this day. Piety is
estimated differently from age to age. In monarchs,
at least of mediaeval times, it was a virtue of out-
ward observance, and in this Alfonso did perhaps
excel. As for the third merit which he claimed,
it is not on record that anyone tried to conquer
him, except the barons of the kingdom, who were
suppressed with a ruthless cruelty which forecast
the tyranny of his son and grandson, who wrought
the deed of terror in the Church of San Lionardo
on the Chiaia.
The archway is chiefly the work of Pietro di Mar-
tino of Milan, though it is said that Giuliano da
Majano also laboured on it, if not others also. It
possesses a noble pair of bronze doors of even greater
interest than the archway ; for not only is their work-
manship extremely fine, but also the figures possess
the interest of portraiture. The scenes depicted are
the triumphs of King Ferdinand, second of the five
monarchs of Aragon, over his revolting barons. There
is Ferdinand upon his war-horse talking to the Duke
of Taranto, his thin, cruel face recognisable at a
glance by the high nose which he derived from his
father, King Alfonso, builder of the arch. In the
medallions of the door the same sharp face appears ;
while his son, afterwards Alfonso the Second, bears
a shorter, thicker face, which is suggestive, though
very falsely, of more kindness.
Let us go into the castle and see what remains
there to explain the reputation of inhuman cruelty
which history has conferred on these kings. A small
io6 FERDINAND OF ARAGON
boy armed with keys is already hovering about
expectant ; and though it is his purpose to show only
the Chapel of Santa Barbara, the slightest hint of a
desire to see the subterranean chamber will cause him
to lead you through the sacristy, where he will pro-
duce a couple of candle ends, and throw open a small
doorway hidden in the wall. A winding stair of
perhaps twenty steps conducts to a little chamber,
faintly lighted by a deep-set window. At first the
room seems empty, but as one's eyes adjust them-
selves to the dim light four coffins become visible,
each lying on a shelf, two open and two closed.
Surely, one thinks, this must be a place of private
sepulture for the Royal Family or for their servants,
and the stair giving access from the chapel was built
for the convenience of mourners who wished to stand
beside their dead. But the boy, with a chuckle of
amusement, lifts the lid of one of the closed coffins.
Within lies the mummy of a man, fearfully distorted
by his agony, his cramped hands clutched desper-
ately, as if fighting with all his strength against those
who held him down. His mouth is contorted, his
whole body heaving with a last struggle for life and
breath. The man was strangled, there can be no
doubt of it ; and there he lies to this hour, fully
clothed in the garments which he wore when he came
down that little winding stair, hose, buttons, and
doublet still intact.
Each of the other coffins contains the body of a
man slain in his clothes, the head separated, and
lying by the shoulders.
Who were these men, and how has it happened
that they lie here all together ? What made mummies
of them, and with what object were their bodies
preserved ? The answer must be sought in history.
The Diario Fermrese, printed by Muratori, tells us
VAULT IN THE CASTEL NUOVO, NAPLES
KINGLY JOYS 107
that " it was the constant habit of King Ferdinand
and King Alfonso, when their enemies, whether
barons or people, had fallen into their hands, to cut
off their heads and keep them salted in chambers
underneath their palace." Not content with having
dismissed the spirits of their foes to another world,
these kingly Aragons must needs have, close by the
scene of their continual sports and labours, so many
secret pleasure chambers into which they could with-
draw at leisure moments and gaze in rapture on the
very features of the enemy whose turbulence was
stilled and whose wits would never be turned against
his king again. Doubtless these visits renewed the
joy of killing !
So in this chamber where King Alfonso or his
father stood and gloated, one may stand to-day and
look down on the same bodies still unmoved a
strange step back into the Middle Ages, and a more
revealing glimpse than any other known to me of
what Naples was in old days, when its kings yes,
even the best of them ! were tigers, and the seeds
were sown of that contempt for life which is to this
hour a chief difficulty of those who govern Naples.
Who were these men ? Surely, one thinks, their rank
and importance must be measured by the care with
which the King bestowed their bodies in such close
neighbourhood to the royal chapel and to his own
apartments !
Probably we shall not miss the truth by very
much if we conclude them to be some among those
barons of the kingdom who, incensed by the harsh
government of Ferdinand, and furious beyond all
measure with his more hateful son, gave rein to their
old affection for the House of Anjou, and conspired
with the Pope to confer the realm on a prince of
that royal house. It seems strange that even under
io8 FERDINAND OF ARAGON
the afflictions of the Aragon sovereignty men should
have looked back on the days of Anjou with affec-
tion. But the fact is that Alfonso, Duke of Calabria,
whose power as the eldest son of the aged King
grew stronger daily, was such a ruler as must needs
rouse regrets for other days even in a patient genera-
tion, much more in one so proud and turbulent
as the Neapolitans. Harshness and cruelty they
understood ; but Alfonso did what no nation will
endure. He took the women, even of the noblest
houses, at his will. Of this came unquenchable
hatred, and in the end the ruin of his house.
The conspiracy was a terrible one. Half the great
officers of the kingdom were involved in it, and
King Ferdinand knew not where to look for loyalty.
The Prince of Salerno, Lord High Admiral of the
realm, and the Prince of Bisignano were among the
leaders members both of that great family of San
Severino, whose palace is known to every visitor as
the Church of the Gesu Nuovo. The Grand Con-
stable, the Grand Seneschal, the King's Secretary
there was no end to the men of note and conse-
quence who joined in the appeal to the Pope to
dethrone the tyrants of the House of Aragon, and
give the kingdom to Rene of Lorraine, last de-
scendant of the ancient kings.
Ferdinand was a prince whose sagacity is extolled
by all men. He was wise as is the serpent. His
statesmanship was of the type made widely known
twenty years later by Caesar Borgia, and in this
emergency he practised the same arts as enabled
that accomplished dissimulator to strangle his four
chief enemies at once. The two occasions deserve
close study from those who would understand the
statecraft of the fifteenth century. Each was indeed
a masterpiece of that art which Machiavelli calls
ABOUT "VIRTU" 109
" virtu," and it is difficult to decide where to award
the palm.
Ferdinand negotiated. It was indeed his only
course, for time must be gained at any cost. This
was in the regular routine of kings in difficulty.
De Comines, in a memorable passage, explains how
useful it is to send ambassadors to meet one's
enemies ; they see so much even while they are
treating. Ferdinand negotiated with such skill,
such open frankness and goodwill, showed such a
broad and merciful spirit, and was so ready to
forgive, that the conspirators, who had waited in
vain for their new king, accepted the accord and
returned sullenly to their castles, doubting and
fearing sorely.
" Let no man think that present kindnesses lead
to the forgetting of past injuries," says Machiavelli,
laying bare the roots of human nature in his incisive
way. To do them justice, the barons supposed no
such thing. The Prince of Salerno was missing one
fine morning. On the gateway of his palace was
a card, on which were inscribed the mystic words
" Passero vecchio non entra in caggiola " (An old
sparrow does not go into the cage). He is said to
have got out of the city disguised as a muleteer.
Other sparrows were less prudent or more unfortu-
nate. The cage doors were wide open, and the
King and Duke sat piping so prettily that any bird
might have thought it safe to flutter in. Towards the
Count of Sarno Ferdinand showed particular affec-
tion. His son Marco Coppola was betrothed to the
daughter of the Duke of Amalfi, the King's nephew.
The wedding was at hand. It must be held in the
Royal Palace, in Castel Nuovo, if only to mark the
royal favour. There were great festivities. The
pomp of the Court was boundless. But the wedding
I io FERDINAND OF ARAGON
garments which the King was preparing were not
of this world. Midway in the feastings and the
music, when all men were confident and careless,
the stroke fell. How, one wonders, did Ferdinand
and Alfonso look at that moment when, sitting at
the head of the tables, gazing down upon their
guests, bridegroom and bride and relatives trusting
in the royal honour, they gave the signal and called
in the soldiers who turned that feast to terror?
How did the guests look when the guard went
round arresting every man of mark or consequence
within the hall ? Surely since Belshazzar was King
in Babylon no feast has been broken up more
awfully !
The craft and treachery of this great stroke fixed
once for all the reputation of Ferdinand and Alfonso.
The nice taste of Renaissance Italy revolted, giving
voice to loud condemnation. King and Prince,
surprised at the outcry, paused, and held back the
secret executioner. It would be safer to have a show
of justice ; so a court was nominated, the prisoners
were tried, and when they had been despatched
from the world in this unexceptionable manner, one
by one the other dukes and barons were caught and led
into the secret pleasure chambers, whence they never
more emerged. The Prince of Bisignano, the Duke
of Melfi, the Duke of Nardo, counts and knights in-
numerable disappeared. Their children and their
wives were treated in like manner. Few escaped ; but
for many a day Neapolitans told the tale how Ban-
della Gaetano, Princess of Bisignano, a woman of high
courage and resource, fled with her young children
to the Church of San Lionardo in the Chiaia; and
there, profiting by the old fame of the saint as the
guardian of fugitives, bribed a boatman to take her
on to Terracina, and so sought refuge with the
PORCH OF SANTA HARBARA, NAl'I.KS
A NAMELESS DEED in
Colonnas. Ferdinand would have given much to
stamp out the brood ; and had he been able to turn
the pages of the book of fate he would have given
even more.
What happened to the prisoners was never known.
For some time the fiction was kept up that they
were alive, and food was even sent daily to their
cells, set down perhaps beside the salted bodies in
mockery. But the executioner was seen wearing a
gold chain which had belonged to the Prince of
Bisignano; and ere long it was known that every
one was dead.
There is no doubt that in these awful days the
Church of San Lionardo was filled with fugitives. It
was there that Alfonso wrought that nameless deed
of terror which dwelt so heavily upon his conscience
as to destroy his nerves and send him fleeing from
the kingdom. We have seen what things his con-
science would endure; perhaps it is as well we
remain in ignorance of what it would not. But if
we argue from the known to the unknown we may
form a surmise of the nature of that act which is
enough to banish sleep, and may well make us
grateful that the walls of that old sanctuary which
concealed so terrible a secret stand no longer on
the smiling shore which is the chosen parade of
Neapolitan society of our own day.
There are two chapels in the castle, one opening
from the other ; but both lost whatever beauty they
once had by the deplorable passion for Barocco,
which wrought such evil in Naples. Two great
beauties still remain, though not inside the chapels.
One is the doorway, a lovely work of Giuliano da
Majano, mercifully left untouched, I know not by what
happy chance; the other is a winding staircase behind
the choir, consisting of a hundred and fifty-eight
112 FERDINAND OF ARAGON
steps, each formed of a single block of travertine,
and so arranged that their inward edges form a
perfect cylinder. There is no end to the scenes
of history and tragedy which are recalled by these
old walls and chambers, in which the hottest
passions of life in Naples have spent themselves so
often, even from the first coming of Charles of
Anjou down to the creation of the Parthenopean
Republic, when Nelson received the surrender of
the Revolutionists, driven to despair by the arrival
of his fleet. But these are tales which visitors must
find out for themselves. If they will not go to
Castel Nuovo on the inducement which I have
given them, neither will they if I should write a
volume.
When I emerge from the old palace fortress
I hesitate, being, in truth, half inclined to turn
directly to the Carmine, the strongest point of
interest in Naples. But a man will fail to com-
prehend the relation of the Carmine to ancient Naples
if he goes to it by the broad street along the quays
which lay outside the mediaeval city. It is better
to plunge into the maze of narrow ways which still,
unto this hour, retain the general aspect of the city
wherein Boccaccio rambled, picking up in I know
not what haunt of roysterers those sad tales which
beguile one yet in the pages of the Decameron.
Who has not read of the nocturnal adventures of
Andreuccio, who came from Pisa to Naples to buy
horses with twenty gold florins in his pocket ? Who
would not wish to see the very lanes through which
he wandered naked in the night ? Who has not felt
the charm of that naive irresponsibility which per-
vades the tales of Naples in old days ? Does it still
exist ? Are the narrow lanes athrob even now on
summer nights with the thrumming of the lute, with
VIA ROMA 113
the patter of girls' feet, made musical by wafts of
song blown down from lofty windows ?
" Flower of the rose,
If I've been merry, what matter who knows ? "
Well, let us go and see ; and first we will turn
up the Toledo, now rechristened " Via Roma," that
long straight street which the Viceroy Don Pietro
di Toledo made without the city wall, and which
is still the chief artery of life and fashion.
The narrow vista, made picturesque by hanging
balconies and green shutters, is bathed in sunshine
not the fierce glare which even in early summer brings
out the awnings used to convert the footways into
shaded corridors, but the pleasant golden glow of an
April Eastertide, carrying with it the reek of violets
and early roses. It is no wonder that the street is
odorous of flowers ; for at any corner a few soldi will
buy them by the handful, fresh and dewy, redolent of
summer, though indeed summer never flees far from
this sunny coast, and even in midwinter she will slip
back for a while, bringing golden days. It is on the
stroke of noon, noon of Holy Thursday, and in another
hour the roadway will be closed to vehicles. For on
this day, by custom old enough to be respectable,
the Neapolitans go on foot to visit the sepulchres of
Christ in the churches, combining this exercise of
devotion with the more worldly solaces of friendship
and social intercourse. There was a time when
princesses came down and mingled with the throng,
the royal ladies of the House of Bourbon going to
and fro on foot ; while the rustling of their long
dresses of black silk gave the ceremony its picturesque
title of " Lu Struscio." There being no princesses in
Naples now, the old ceremony has lost some of its
attractions for the nobly born ; but it is still honoured,
H4 FERDINAND OF ARAGON
and already the carriages are growing thin, while
in every part of the long street men armed with long
brooms are reducing the whole width to the same
state of cleanliness as the footpaths. With the dis-
appearance of the vetturino a blessed peace steals
down upon the air. This is, I should suppose, the
one day in the year on which a man can hear himself
speak in the Via Roma. But Naples, passionate for
noise, is never long without it. Fast as the vetturini
go the hawkers come, hoarse and raucous ; men with
strings of chestnuts, boys holding tiny Java sparrows
on their finger-tips, women thrusting at you trays of
" pastiere," without which no good citizen of Naples
would dream of passing Easter, any more than he
would go through Christmas without " capitoni." It
is rarely wise to apply to local delicacies any other
test than that of sight. The women push past me
with their trays, knowing well that their market does
not lie among the strangers. Meantime the Via
Santa Brigida, which crosses the Via Roma, has
broken out into a jungle of standing booths, on
which are displayed proudly cheap playthings for
the children, sweetmeats and other paschal joys,
mingled with combs, shirtings, and suchlike useful
articles, to which attention is drawn by huge placards.
OCCASIONE !
FERMATEVI ! TASTATE ! GIUDICATE !
while the seething crowd which hustles round the
stalls is animated by any but a feeling of devotion.
So the throng gathers, till by-and-by the Via Roma
is a sea of moving heads. The church doors stand
wide open, of itself an unusual sight in Naples, where
the churches are closed at noon, and reopen only
for an hour in the evening. Their doorways are
LU STRUSCIO 115
curtained heavily in black, and beneath the hanging
folds a ceaseless stream of people are passing in and
out, pressing forward to where the recumbent figure
of our Lord lies at the foot of a blazing trophy of
flowers and wax lights, kissing the contorted limbs
fervently, then hurrying away. A large proportion
of these devotees are dressed in black, especially the
older women, but among them are many who seem
more anxious to display their bright spring toilettes,
and the crowded street assumes the aspect of a
drawing-room, in which greetings and laughing salu-
tations fly freely on all hands. It is all picturesque
enough, and a relic of old life in Naples which is
worth seeing.
In the absence of the usual street noises, in the
solemn trappings of the churches, and yet more in
the tramp of crowds so largely clad in mourning,
there is not wanting a suggestion of funeral pomp ;
and as I stand apart and watch the throng go by,
there comes into my mind the memory of a solemn
procession which once came down this famous high-
way, bearing to the grave the body of a lad whom
the city, by the strangest freak, had raised in one
day from the lowest to the highest station, and cast
down as suddenly into a bloody grave, one who
had enough heroism in his ignorant mind to resent
oppression, and might who knows? have proved
an earlier Garibaldi, had he been supported by the
nobles. It was Mas'aniello who was thus borne dead
down the slope of the Toledo, honoured by the
weeping people who were little likely to find another
leader bold enough to head them, honoured even
by the Church, which rarely refuses outward show
of honour to the men she has destroyed. First came
a hundred boys of the conservatorio of Loreto, then
all the brothers of the monasteries, to the number of
ii6 FERDINAND OF ARAGON
four hundred, and then the body of the fisherman
dictator, wrapped in a white shroud folded so that all
might see the head I hope it had not that hideous
look of death and anguish from which one shrinks
on seeing the wooden model in the museum of San
Martino ! After the bier walked great crowds of
Mas'aniello's followers, those ragamuffin soldiers who
but a few days earlier had stormed down this street in
triumph, sacking and destroying where they pleased.
Now they walked mournfully and slow, as well they
might, for liberty lay upon the bier they followed,
and the Spanish tyranny was about to close over
them again. Behind them trailed their flags, and
they marched to the soft beat of muted drums all
hung with crape. But last of all came those who
made this great procession memorable beyond all
others. The soldiers were followed by a countless
throng of women of the people. Out of every lane
and alley of the swarming city they had come to
bid farewell to their defender, to the one man who
in many generations had dared to show them that
they were not worms. Many of them carried lighted
candles, weeping bitterly as they went slowly by;
while others sang in tearful voices the "Santissimo
Rosario," in trust that the brave soul of the departed
might find peace.
So through this outskirt of the city the funeral
train of Mas'aniello came from the Carmine and went
back to that centre of the life and tragedy of Naples.
We too will go there presently, and then will talk
the more about Mas'aniello. But first we must walk
through the ancient city, and that is now quite close
at hand. I have traversed almost half the length of
the Toledo the ancient name comes more readily
than the modern passing by the little Largo della
Carita, where in the shadow of the tramcars green
THE OLD CITY 117
bays hang around the tablet that protests against
forgetfulness of Felice Cavallotti. I am in sight of
the Piazza. Dante, and a little more would show
me the red walls of the museum, when I halt beneath
the vast and heavy front of the Palazzo Maddaloni,
and turning round into the shadow of the Strada
Quercia, I see the fine courtyard and loggia of the
palace, eloquent of pomps and ceremonies which
find no match in the Naples of to-day. Some
hundred and fifty yards beyond the palace the old
line of the city walls crossed the street at right
angles. There is not a sign of walls or towers now.
The ancient quadrangle of streets and alleys, the old
Greek city which held out so stoutly generation after
generation when besieged by Lombard or Imperialist,
lies open now to strangers of every nation. On
entering its precinct one appears to have found a
new world, albeit an unsavoury one. For here, in
place of the irregular and curved vistas in which the
builders of modern Naples have delighted, is a long
narrow street of exceeding straightness, cleaving like
an arrow -flight through the close -packed houses.
Irresistibly it brings to mind the long straight streets
of Pompeii, so far as a thoroughfare seething with
crowded life can recall one which lies silent and open
under the winds of heaven. It is a just comparison ;
for indeed Pompeii still retains the very aspect which
Naples must have borne. In size, in manner of con-
struction, in defences, the two towns were closely
similar, and this long street which under several
names pierces the ancient city from side to side, was
one of the three Decuman ways which every visitor
to the buried city traces out and follows. A little
higher up the hill is the Decumanus Major, now
called the Strada de" Tribunali, and still by far the
most interesting street in Naples, while higher yet
n8 FERDINAND OF ARAGON
upon the slope the third of the Decuman streets runs
parallel to the other two under the name of Strada
Anticaglia, and in it stood the ancient theatre, some
remnants of which still exist between the Vico di
S. Paolo and the Vico de' Giganti. These three
Decuman streets are the arteries of ancient Naples.
In them, and in the countless alleys which unite
them, are to be found almost all the relics of the
mediaeval city ; and indeed a man wandering about
beneath those unmodernised house-fronts, elbowing
his way through crowds of ragged peasants and of
burly priests, might well doubt in what century he
found himself, so unlike the scene is to the trim
world which he has known elsewhere.
But these are quarters in which it is not prudent
to wander when the night is falling. Naples is not
a safe city, and travellers would do wisely to realise
the fact. Even in broad daylight caution and good
sense are needed more than in most other cities.
Ladies will show it by removing from their dress
all ornaments of the slightest value, and men by
refusing absolutely all inducements to enter houses,
whether offered by small boys professing to find
sacristans a not uncommon trick or by any other
person not known and vouched for. After dark, if
a man must walk alone, he should walk carefully
on the light side of the street and restrain any
curiosity he may feel to see the effect of moonlight
on the houses until he can watch it safely from his
own window. These are not unnecessary cautions.
Neapolitans themselves do not neglect them, though
strangers do ; and many have found cause to regret
it. I myself, while walking with a lady in the im-
mediate neighbourhood of the cathedral, have seen
her caught by the waist by a burly brute and shaken
as a terrier shakes a rat in the effort to unclasp
THE CAMORRA 119
a handsome silver buckle which she wore. The
rascal failed, and was gone again before he could
be seized. But the experience is one which few
men would desire their wives or sisters to undergo.
Complaint is useless. It is even doubtful whether,
in a city where almost every robber has a knife,
worse things may not happen to those who meet
such attacks in the customary English manner.
But the remedy is simple. Carry nothing which
is of any obvious value. Avoid unnecessary con-
versation with poor boys, who are not safe guides.
Go home while it is still light. With these plain
rules men and women equally may explore the
recesses of old Naples with pleasure and with almost
perfect safety.
It is out of these teeming quarters, packed with
a population as dense and fetid as that of Seven
Dials, that the Camorra, the great secret society of
Naples, drew the strength and vigour which enables
it still to defy the law. There would be no exag-
geration in saying that hardly a full generation has
passed by since in all the lower quarters of the city
the Camorra ruled with an audacity so high that
there was neither man nor woman, boy nor girl, who
did not know he must obey it rather than the law.
The law was blind and deaf. The Camorra had
eyes and ears in every vicolo and every cellar. It
discovered all things ; it struck heavily and secretly
at those who tried to thwart it. A fruitseller who
resisted payment of dues to the Camorrist would
find his custom disappear. Accident upon accident
would happen to his goods. Ere long he would be
a ruined man. The Camorra might accept his sub-
mission, if proffered humbly and accompanied by
a fine ; but any active resistance, any communication
with the police, would be repaid by a knife-thrust
120 FERDINAND OF ARAGON
in the stomach some dark night. Fishermen, street
hawkers, vetturini, guides all were under the thrall
of the ruthless organisation, all paid tribute in return
for its protection, and executed its orders without
remorse.
So far as is known to outsiders, the aims of the
Camorra which still exists, and wields consider-
able power yet were not mainly political, though
it was certainly at one time a powerful engine in
the hands of those who desired the return of the
Bourbons. That desire, once passionate in Naples,
has almost died away. Francis the Second is dead,
and there is none who can breathe life into the dry
bones of his party. If the devotion to the old
Royal House exists, it is kept alive by the exertions
of the priests, who would make a hero of Apollyon
if he came down on earth and showed a disposition
to unseat the present king. The lower orders are
still as clerical as in the days of Mas'aniello. Tur-
bulent and fierce as are their passions, they are
capable of high devotion ; and a spiritual ruler who
exerted the whole influence of the Church might
turn them into a great people. But here too, as at
every turn in Italy, the task of government is
checked and hampered by the hostility of Church
and Crown. No foreigner can appreciate the chances
of this struggle, or even apportion fairly blame
between the combatants. It is enough for those of
us who love Italy to sit and watch the unrolling
of the future, lamenting that from the outset of her
career as a united nation she has been wrestling with
a Church whose traditions lie in the humbling of
emperors and kings.
CHAPTER VII
CHIEFLY ABOUT CHURCHES
WITH SOME SAINTS, BUT MORE SINNERS
HE who will see the churches of Naples must
rise betimes, since ancient custom closes them,
for unknown reasons, from eleven o'clock till four.
Some say the poor man will get nothing for his
pains. But this is not so. It is indeed impossible
that sacred buildings in a city so old and famous
as Naples should be devoid of interest. Here, as
elsewhere, they reflect the strong emotions of the
citizens, their sorrows and their aspirations ; and
though it is true that many a once noble building
has been daubed over with unmeaning ornament so
freely that one has trouble in discovering the pure
taste with which the builders wrought it, yet there is
not a church in Naples which does not set vibrating
some chord either of beauty or poignant association.
No man can know the city or its people if he neglect
the churches. Past and present jostle each other
perpetually there, and the effigies of kings look down
with fine grave eyes on the filthy peasant women
lifting up their children to kiss the feet of the dead
Christ.
I have paused in the Strada Quercia opposite the
Gesu Nuovo, once, as I have said before, the palace
of the San Severini, Princes of Salerno. It was on
122 CHIEFLY ABOUT CHURCHES
that fine doorway that the Prince affixed the in-
scription "An old sparrow does not enter into the
cage," as he stood beneath his ancestral gateway
listening for the mule team with its jingling bells
which gave him his chance of life and safety. Per-
haps he waited under this old archway till he saw
the beasts with high-piled burdens coming up this
way from the Mercato, and slipped in silently among
the swarthy knaves who led them, and so forth from
the city and away to France, where he hatched a
scheme of vengeance which destroyed the King, his
enemy. The tinkling of those mule-bells as they
went up this narrow street in the night fell on no
ears that heeded them, yet in truth and earnest they
were ringing the dirge of the House of Aragon.
The interior of the Gesu is among those which
arouse the citizens of Naples to enthusiasm. It is
not without grandeur, but over-decorated, and on my
mind it leaves but little sense of pleasure.
But from this archway where I stand I can see a
church far older and more interesting, one indeed
which yields in fame to none in Naples. It is Santa
Chiara, whose dignified facade rears itself with twin
towers in the cool shadow of the courtyard, a name
famous not only in the ecclesiastical history of Naples,
but in the legal also, having given its title to a great
body of state councillors which once met here. It
was the royal chapel of King Robert the Wise, third
among the monarchs of his house, and the only
prosperous one out of the whole number, though
even he was pursued by sorrows, and by remorse
too, unless the constant suspicions of the centuries
have erred.
For the tale goes that Robert knew better than
any other the cause of that sudden illness which
carried off his elder brother, Charles Martel, King of
ROBERT THE WISE 123
Hungary, when, towards the close of their father's
life, he came to Naples to arrange for the succession.
Stories of mediaeval poisonings are to be received
with caution. No man who glances round Naples
to-day, swept and garnished as it has been by ad-
vancing science, will find it hard to understand how
swiftly disease may nay, must have struck in those
crowded dirty streets six centuries ago. Yet Robert
was believed to have seized the throne by fratricide.
This Church of Santa Chiara was his atonement for
the crime, and by its high altar he sleeps for ever,
robed as a monk and throned as a king, beneath a
monument of rare beauty, on which Petrarch wrote
the jingling epitaph, "Cernite Robertum, regem vir-
tute refertum."
" Chock full of virtue." Such was Petrarch's judg-
ment on King Robert dead, and doubtless he
believed it, for the King's Court was splendid, poets
and scholars were held in honour, and Florentines
especially. Innocent or guilty, Robert ruled with
a magnificence which makes his reign the one bright
spot in the troubled history of the Anjou sovereigns ;
and posterity, which has little good to say of any
of them, remembers gratefully that he procured the
laurel crown for Petrarch, and gave his protection to
that rake Boccaccio.
Let us go in and see his church. It is rectan-
gular, and has no aisles, while a long range of chapels
upon either hand recall irresistibly the quirk re-
corded of King Robert's son, when his father, proud
of the progress which the church was making,
brought him in to admire its fair proportions. The
graceless lad gazed round, and it struck him that
the chapels were not unlike so many mangers. So
when the King pressed him for his opinion he
remarked airily that the church reminded him of
124 CHIEFLY ABOUT CHURCHES
a stable, whereupon the King said angrily, " God
grant, my son, that you be not the first to eat in
those stalls!"
It was a prophetic speech, and one which must
have returned many times on the King's memory,
for the historian Giannone assures us that the first
train of royal mourners who entered the new church
were following the coffin of this very lad, King
Robert's firstborn, and the hope of the realm.
The chief artist selected to adorn Santa Chiara
with frescoes was no other than the great Florentine,
Giotto. Petrarch, Boccaccio, Giotto ! How the best
brains of Tuscany flocked to Naples in those days !
The explanation of it was, apart from the natural
attractions of a splendid Court, that when Charles
of Anjou defeated and slew Manfred, he cast down
by that act, and ruined throughout Italy, the party
of Ghibellines, the Emperor's men, of whom Manfred,
son of a great emperor, was naturally head. The
Guelfs, the Pope's men, returned to Florence, whence
they had been banished, and straightway the closest
ties sprang up between the city on the Arno and
the city of the Siren, so close that the money-bags
of Florence saved Charles from ruin at least once.
So Tuscan poets and artists making the weary
ten days' journey were assured that on the shores
of the blue gulf they would find compatriots.
Giotto came most gladly, and in the chapels of
Santa Chiara he painted many scenes of Bible
story, all of which were daubed over with whitewash
by order of a Spanish officer a century and a half
ago. He complained that they made the church
dark. There is indeed one fresco left in the old
refectory, now a shop. But Crowe and Cavalcaselle
do not accept it as the work of the same hand.
So here, in the large, cool church, Giotto painted
SANTA CHIARA 125
for many a day, alternating his labours perhaps with
visits to Castel dell' Uovo, where he painted the
chapel, now a smoky, useful kitchen ! King Robert
loved the man, so shrewd and cogent was his talk,
and often came to chat with him in one place or the
other. " If I were you, Giotto, I should stop paint-
ing now it is so hot," observed the King. " So
should I, if I were you," returned the artist dryly.
And one day, wishing perhaps to warn Robert by
how frail a tenure he held his throne, he painted
an ass stooping under one pack saddle and looking
greedily towards another lying at his feet. Both
saddles were adorned with crowns, and the explana-
tion was that the ass typified the Neapolitans, who
thought any other saddle better than the one they
bore.
The most beautiful works of art in Santa Chiara,
if not indeed in the whole city, are the eleven small
reliefs which run as a frieze along the organ gallery.
The scenes are from the life of St. Katherine, martyr
as well as saint. Dignified and tender, wrought with
the rarest delicacy, yet inspired with astonishing
vigour, the graceful figures are in white relief upon
a ground of black. Very memorable and lovely
they appear, rebuking the corrupt taste which has
begotten so much base ornament in Naples.
Next to this frieze the interest of Santa Chiara
lies in its monuments, for in this Royal Chapel of
Anjou many children of that house were buried.
The King himself assumed the frock of a Franciscan
monk before his death, craving for a peace which
he did not find upon his throne, and lies recumbent
therefore, attired humbly in his habit, while on a
higher story of the monument he sits enthroned in
all his earthly splendour, gazing down upon his
church with those keen features which were charac-
126 CHIEFLY ABOUT CHURCHES
teristic of his house, the thin hooked nose, not
unlike a vulture's beak, so strangely like that which
one sees on the coins of his grandfather, murderer
of Conradin. Uneasy were the lives of all the
monarchs of that house ; their throne was set in
blood, and in blood it was perpetually slipping.
I left Santa Chiara by the northern door, which
opens on a handsome double staircase descending
to the courtyard. In this wide space there is fine
shadow, and, by contrast with the noisy street out-
side, the square is almost silent a wondrous thing
in Naples ! Across the court, beside the archway
by which I entered, rises the noble campanile, once
planned on Gothic lines, but interrupted by the
death of King Robert, and finished two centuries
and a half later by an architect who transformed
it into the classic style. There are mean houses
all around, occupied by people who care not one jot
for King Robert or his lost design.
Down the incline of the courtyard, where Boc-
caccio may well have whispered guilty secrets to
his Anjou princess, there loafs a hawker with his
donkey, his head thrown back, his brown hat tilted
picturesquely, bawling with iron throat the praises of
his leeks and cabbages, while the donkey creeps on
cautiously over the broken stones. In the Neapoli-
tan speech he is the " padulano " the man who
comes from the swamp, by which is meant the low
plain of the Sebeto, that muddy river which the
railway to Castellammare crosses on the outskirts
of the city. On this marshy ground grow quantities
of early vegetables, and these it is which the padu-
lano goes vaunting in his brazen voice. He needs
his strength of lung, for see ! on the highest story
a woman has heard his bawling and comes out upon
her balcony. At that height they do not bargain in
MIXTURE OF RACES 127
words, but in signs, the universal language of the
people. A few rapid passes of the hands and the
business is done. The woman lets down a basket
by a rope ; a few soldi are jingling in the bottom ;
the basket goes up packed with green stuff, and the
padulano loafs on beside his patient donkey.
It is in these crowded quarters of the ancient city,
these streets through which the noisy, swarthy, dirty
people were seething just as they are now when
Pompeii was a peopled town and the hawkers went
up and down the streets of Herculaneum, it is here
that one can grasp most easily those peculiarities
which fence off life in southern Italy from that of
other regions in the peninsula. Here is neither the
dignity of Rome nor the gracious charm of Tuscany,
but another world, a life more hot and passionate,
more noisy and more sensuous, a character strangely
blended out of the blood of many nations Greek,
Saracen, Norman, Spaniard each of which con-
tributed some burning drop to the quick glow of
the Campanian nature, making it both fierce and
languid, keen and subtle beyond measure when its
interests are engaged, capable of labour, but not
loving it, easily depressed, and when thwarted
turning swiftly to the thought of blood. Here is
difficult material for the statesman. Never yet, in
all its vicissitudes of government, have these vol-
canic, elemental passions been concentrated on any
one great object. In the War of Independence
Milan had its " Cinque Giorni " ; Venice, led by
Manin, struck a glorious blow at the oppressor ;
but Naples effected nothing till Garibaldi came with
armies from without.
How the street swarms with curious figures !
I stand aside in the opening of a side lane, and
there goes past me a man carrying in one hand a
128 CHIEFLY ABOUT CHURCHES
pail of steaming water, while on his other arm he
has a flat basket, containing the sliced feelers of an
octopus, and a tray of rusks. At the low price
of a soldo you may choose your own portion of
the hideous dainty, warm it in the water and devour
it on the spot. Close upon his heels, bawling out
his contribution to the deafening noises of the
streets, comes the " pizzajuolo," purveyor of a dainty
which for centuries has been unknown elsewhere.
" Pizza " may be seen in every street in Naples.
It is a kind of biscuit, crisp and flavoured with
cheese, recognisable at a glance by the little fish,
like whitebait, which are embedded in its brown
surface, dusted over with green chopped herbs.
I cannot recommend the dainty from personal
knowledge, but Neapolitan tradition is strongly in
its favour.
The pizzajuolo goes off chanting down a sideway,
and I, moving on a little, still away from the Toledo
and towards the older quarter of the town, find that
the street has widened out into a small square, the
Largo San Domenico, on the left of which stands
the famous Church of San Domenico Maggiore,
second in beauty to none in Naples, and perhaps
less spoilt than many others by the hand of the
restorer. The bronze statue of the saint stands on
a pillar in the square, looking down on the palaces
which were once the homes of Neapolitan nobles,
dwelling gladly in this centre point of the great city.
Neither cavaliers nor ladies live here now. The
world of trade and civic institutions has slipped into
their abandoned palaces, and enjoys the spacious
rooms and frescoed ceilings which were designed for
the splendour of great entertainments.
On the southern side of the Largo, sloping towards
the sea, runs the Via Mezzocannone, which, if anti-
SAN DOMENICO MAGGIORE 129
quaries are to be believed, was the ditch skirting the
city wall upon the western side in Greco-Roman days.
It is a lane worth following, though narrow and
somewhat fetid, for by it one may reach not only
a certain very ancient fountain, the Fontana Mezzo-
cannone, which is of itself worth seeing, but also the
Church of San Giovanni Pappacoda, and by careful
search may even find the bas-relief of Niccolo Pesce,
of whom I spoke at length in a former chapter. But
my course is eastwards. I turn up the steps, and
enter the Church of San Domenico Maggiore by a
door admitting to its southern transept.
The cool and silent chapel into which one steps is
the most ancient part of the church, massive and
severe. The first glance reveals that the building
must have been in a high degree esteemed a place
of sepulture. The tombs are very numerous, and
names of mark in the history of Naples appear on
every side. Through the vaulted doorway leading to
the main body of the church there stream long
rolling melodies, the crash of a fine organ played
triumphantly, and the grand music of a pure tenor
voice, ringing high among the arches. The church
is full of kneeling figures, among which others stroll
about with little care for their devotions ; while chil-
dren, infinitely dirty, waddle up and down untended,
as if the show were for their amusement only.
The chanting ceases, and the priests in their gor-
geous vestments stream down the altar steps towards
the sacristy. I have come at an unlucky moment !
The sacristy at least will be closed till the priests
have done unrobing! But no! The hawk-eyed sacris-
tan has marked down the stranger, and hurries up
obsequious and eager to detain me. I cannot think
of leaving without seeing the most interesting sight
in Naples the coffins ? " Si, sicuro ! The very sar-
130 CHIEFLY ABOUT CHURCHES
cophagi of all the princes of the House of Aragon."
" But they are in the sacristy," I object, " and that is
full of priests unrobing!" "Oh, you English, you odd
people," hints the sacristan, with a shrug. "What
does that matter?" If he does not care, why should
I ? And in another moment we are in the sacristy.
Clearly the sacristan knew his ground, and has
committed no breach of manners ; for among the
crowd of ecclesiastics, young and old, which fills the
long panelled chamber, some jovial, some ascetic,
many chatting pleasantly, others resting on long
seats, not one betrays the least surprise at the
intrusion of a tourist bent on sightseeing. High
dignitaries, arrayed like Solomon in his glory, make
way courteously as the sacristan draws me forward,
and standing in the centre of the vast apartment
points out that the panelling ceases at half the height
of the walls, leaving a kind of shelf, on which lie,
shrouded in red velvet, to the number of five-and-
forty, the coffins of the family of Aragon, and the
chief adherents of their house.
Here, taking what rest remorse allows him, is that
Ferdinand who trapped the barons in Castel Nuovo.
His son Alfonzo, who shared in that and other in-
famies, is not here. He lies in Sicily, whither he
fled at the bidding of the furies who pursued him.
But close by is his son, the young King Ferdinand,
whose chance of redeeming the fame of his house
was lost by death. And here is that luckless
Isabella, Duchess of Milan and of Bari, whose hus-
band, Duke Giovanni Galeazzo Sforza, was robbed
of throne and life by his uncle Ludovic the Moor,
the man who, more than any other, was accountable
for all the woes and slavery of Italy. What bitter
tragedies were closed when the scarlet palls were
flung over those old coffins ! Here, too, is the dust
HOMES OF FEVER 131
of the base scoundrel Pescara, archetype of treachery
for all ages, at least of public treachery. In private
life his heart may have been true enough, else how
could his wife Vittoria Colonna have loved and
mourned him as she did ? It is no new sight to see
a woman lay great love at the feet of a man who,
on one view, is quite unworthy of it. Her knowledge
is the wider, and the account as she cast it may be
the truer. Why need we be puzzled that we cannot
make our balance agree with hers ? How is it
possible that we should?
On leaving San Domenico Maggiore, my desire is
to pass into the Strada Tribunali, the largest and
most important of the three streets which still cleave
the city as they did in ancient days. The cross
ways turning up by San Domenico are devious and
narrow, evil alleys darkened sometimes by the high
dead wall of a church or convent, at others bristling
with life, from the foul " bassi," the cellars which are
the despair of Neapolitan reformers, where ragged
women crouch over a chafing-dish of bronze, their
only fire, and all the refuse is flung out in the gutter,
up to the high garrets where the week's wash is
hung out on a pole to dry. Not the freshest wind
which blows across the sea from Ischia can bring
sweetness to these alleys, or expel the wandering
fever which on small inducement blazes to an
epidemic and slays ruthlessly. There were high
hopes of Naples when the "risanamento" was begun,
that great scheme of clearance which was to let in
fresh air and sunshine among the rookeries. But
already the new tenements begin to be as crowded
and as filthy as the old ones, and the better era is
soiled at its very outset. One cannot make a people
clean against its will. And then the sunshine! Week
after week it is a curse in Naples. The old narrow
132 CHIEFLY ABOUT CHURCHES
streets made shadow, the new wide ones do not.
Who knows whether the city will escape more lightly
when the next epidemic comes ? God grant it may !
For the days of cholera in 1884 were more awful
than one cares to think about.
Among these devious lanes lies the Chapel of San
Severo, a shrine which everyone should visit, but
one concerning which I have nothing to say that is
not set forth in the guide-books. Had it been the
Church of San Severo and San Sosio indeed, I could
have told a grisly tale of poisonings ; but that lies
far down towards the harbour and we shall not pass
it. At length I emerge in the narrow Street of
Tribunals, and turning eastwards behold it running
straight and crowded further than the eye will reach,
a wilderness of bustling figures, a maze of balconies
and garrets, bright shops high piled with fruit and
vegetables, and butchers' stalls dressed with green
boughs to keep off the flies. At a corner stands the
booth of a lemonade seller, one of the most pictur-
esque of all street merchants in this busy city. His
golden fruit is heaped up underneath a canopy which
shades it from the sun. Brown water-jars are reared
among the fruit and a jet of water sparkling up sheds
a cool dewy spray over oranges and lemons, dripping
off their dark green leaves like dew. Many a passer-
by stops to look at the pretty sight, and the vendor's
tongue is never still, " A quatto, a cinque, a sei a
sordo, 'e purtualle 'e Palermo." In another month
or two his stall will be far gayer, for the figs and
melons will come in, and the " mellonaro " will pass
the day in shouting "Castiellamare! che maraviglia!
so' di Castiellamare ! mellune verace ! cu' 'no sordo
vevo e me lavo 'a faccia ! " With a water-melon one
may drink and wash one's face at once ! Who has
not seen the street urchins gnawing at a slice of
THE CITY STREETS 133
crimson melon, while the water streams out from
among the black seeds, and does in truth make
streaks of cleanliness at least upon their faces ; for
not the widest mouth can catch all the dripping
juice.
In this ancient street one is at the heart of Naples.
This strong pulse of life, this eager, abounding vitality
has throbbed along this thoroughfare for more ages
than one can count ; and the sight on which we look
to-day, the seething crowd, the straight house-fronts,
the long street dropping to the east, is different in no
essential from that which has been seen by every
ruler of the city Spaniard, Angevin, or Norman, yes,
even by Greek and Roman governors from days
when the fires of Vesuvius were a forgotten terror,
and the streets of Pompeii surged with just such
another crowd as this. It is here, in this most
ancient Strada Tribunal!, that the traveller should
pause before he visits the old buried cities. Here
and here only will he learn to comprehend how they
were peopled ; and only when he carries with him in
the eyes of memory the aspect of the cellars and the
shops, the crowded side streets and the pandemonium
of noise, will he succeed in discovering at Pompeii
more than a heap of ruins, out of which the interest
dies quickly because his imagination has not gained
materials out of which to reconstruct the living city.
Neapolis, the old Greek city, was similar to Pompeii
both in size and construction. Its situation, too, was
not dissimilar. It stood near the sea, yet did not
touch it, having a clear space of open ground between
its strand and walls, perhaps because the sea was an
open gateway into every town which stood upon
it, though the nature of the ground partly dictated
the arrangement. There is no building, even in the
Strada Tribunali, which was standing when Pompeii
134 CHIEFLY ABOUT CHURCHES
was a city. The oldest left is near the point at which
we entered the street to be exact, it is at the angle
of the Strada Tribunali and the Vico di Francesco
del Giudice a tall brick campanile of graceful out-
line which, in the confusion of the narrow street, one
might most easily pass unobserved. That is the only
portion still remaining of the church built by Bishop
Pomponio, between the years 514 and 532; and not
only is it almost, if not quite the most ancient build-
ing now extant in Naples, but it was the first of
Neapolitan churches known to have been dedicated
to the Virgin, and it is thus especially sacred in the
eyes of the citizens.
Going eastwards still along this most interesting
street I come ere long to a great church upon my
right where I must pause, for there are associated
with it closely the memories both of Petrarch and
Boccaccio. Now of these two men I confess to a
strong preference for the rake. He was a sinner,
and a great one. But for that matter he was a
penitent in the end, and had he not found grace, it
is for no man to scorn him. Iniquitous though they
be, I prefer the record of his warm human passions
to the dry spirituality of Petrarch ; and to me one
tale out of the Decameron, with its high beat of
joyous and exultant life, is worth all the sonnets
in which the poet of Avignon bewailed the fact that
the moon would not come down out of heaven.
No one who has turned over the works of Boccaccio
is unacquainted with the name of Fiammetta. She
was of course not least among the seven ladies of
noble birth who met in the Church of Santa Maria
Novella in Florence on that Tuesday morning when
the tales of the Decameron begin. She, too, it was
whose amorous musings Boccaccio published in a
book which bore her name. In fact her warm-blooded
FIAMMETTA 135
personality pervades the writings of her lover ; and it
was in this Church of San Lorenzo that he saw her
first, as he tells us himself in the Filocopo. The
passage is well known to be autobiographical, though
occurring in a tale of pure, or rather impure imagina-
tion.
" I found myself," he says, " in a fine church of
Naples, named after him who endured to be offered
as a sacrifice upon the gridiron. And in it there
was a singing compact of sweetest melody. I was
listening to the Holy Mass celebrated by a priest,
successor to him who first girt himself humbly with
the cord, exalting poverty and adopting it. Now
while I stood there, the fourth hour of the day,
according to my reckoning, having already passed
down the Eastern sky, there appeared to my eyes the
wondrous beauty of a young woman, come hither to
hear what I too heard attentively. I had no sooner
seen her than my heart began to throb so strongly
that I felt it in my slightest pulses ; and not knowing
why, nor yet perceiving what had happened, I began
to say, ' Oime, what is this ? ' . . . But at length, being
unable to sate myself with gazing, I said, ' Oh, Love,
most noble lord, whose strength not even the gods
were able to resist, I thank thee for setting happiness
before my eyes ! ' . . . I had no sooner said these words
than the flashing eyes of the lovely lady fixed them-
selves on mine with a piercing light."
There was sin in that look, though not perhaps
by the standard of those days, It was an Anjou
princess who won immortality in the Church of San
Lorenzo on that Holy Thursday when she was
dreaming of nothing but a lover perhaps not even
of so much as that. She was the Princess Maria,
natural daughter of King Robert the Wise, he whose
tomb we saw in the Church of Santa Chiara. She
136 CHIEFLY ABOUT CHURCHES
had a husband ; but no one asks or remembers his
name. It is with Boccaccio that her memory is
linked for evermore. She was certainly of rare
beauty. Her lover, than whom no man ever wrote
more delicately, tries to fix it for all time. " Hair so
blonde that the world holds nothing like it shadows
a white forehead of noble width, beneath which are
the curves of two black and most slender eyebrows
. . . and under these two wandering and roguish
eyes . . . cheeks of no other colour than milk." Item
two lips, indifferent red ! Why, what a shiver it gives
one to realise that not Boccaccio himself can convey
to us any real picture of his love ! Even the magic
of his style, informed by all the passion of his burning
heart, can give us nothing better than a catalogue of
charms such as any village lover of to-day might
write ! The dead are dead ; and no wizard can set
them before us as they lived.
Yet granting that, it is still the spirits of these
lovers which haunt the Church of San Lorenzo, filling
the large old temple with a throb of human passion
to this hour. I saunter round endeavouring to fix
my mind on the details of the architecture, which are
worth more notice than they commonly receive from
all save students. But it is useless. Every time
I raise my eyes I seem to see the subtle radiance
of sympathy flash across the church from the eyes
of the princess, stirring strange, uneasy feelings, born
of young hot blood, and the sensuous essence of the
chanting heard in the restless days of spring.
The architecture may wait the coming of some
cooler head. I stroll out into the courtyard, full of
memories of kings and poets and of Anjou Courts,
when the world was splendid, and life was full of
colour, and the city not more unhappy than it is
to-day.
A MEMORABLE STORM 137
Among the letters of Petrarch is one written from
the monastery attached to this church. The poet
lodged there during a visit to Naples in 1342, after
the death of King Robert, and gives a vivid descrip-
tion of a great hurricane which struck the city on
the 25th of November in that year.
The storm had been predicted by a preacher, whose
denunciation struck such terror into the Neapolitans,
easily stirred to religious apprehensions, that ere dark
a troop of women stripped half naked and clasping
their children to their breasts were rushing through
the streets from church to church, flinging them-
selves prostrate before the altars, bathing the sacred
images with tears, and crying aloud to the Saviour
to have mercy on mankind.
The panic spread from house to house. The city
was alive with fear. Petrarch, not untroubled by the
general consternation, went early to his chamber, and
remained at his window till near midnight watching
the moon sail down a ragged angry sky until her
light was blotted out by the hills, and all the dome
of heaven lay black.
" I was just falling asleep," he says, " when I was
rudely awakened by the horrible noise made by the
windows of my room. The very wall rocked to its
foundation under the buffet of the gust. My lamp,
which burns all night, went out ; in place of sleep
the fear of death came into the chamber. Every
soul in the monastery rose, and those who found
each other in the turmoil of the night, exhorted one
another to meet death bravely.
" The monks who had been astir thus early for
chanting Matins, terrified by the trembling of the
earth, came to my room brandishing crosses and
relics of the saints. At their head strode a prior
named David, a saint indeed, and the sight of them
138 CHIEFLY ABOUT CHURCHES
gave us a little courage. We all descended to the
church, which we found full of people, and there
passed the rest of the night, expecting every moment
that the city would be swallowed up, as foretold by
the preacher.
" It would be impossible to depict the horror of
that night in which all the elements seemed to be
unchained. Nothing can describe the appalling
crash of the storm wind, rain and thunder in one
moment, the roar of the furious sea, the swaying of
the ground, the shrieks of the people, who thought
death here at every instant. Never was night so
long. As soon as day came near the altars were
made ready, and the priests attired themselves for
Mass. At last the morning came. The upper part
of the town had grown more calm, but from the sea-
front came frightful shrieks. Our fear turned into
boldness, and we mounted on horseback, curious to
see what was going on.
" Gods ! What a scene ! Ships had been wrecked
in the harbour, and the shore was strewn with still
breathing bodies, horribly mangled by being dashed
against the rocks the sea had burst the bounds
which God set for it all the lower town was under
water. It was impossible to enter the streets without
risk of drowning. Around us we found more than
a thousand Neapolitan gentlemen who had come to
assist, as it were at the obsequies of their country.
'If I die,' I said to myself, ' I shall die in good
company.' "
If we may trust the story told by Wading, a great
historical authority upon the deeds of the Franciscan
Order, to which the monks of San Lorenzo belonged,
this same prior David, whose aspect Petrarch found
so comforting, was the instrument of a notable
miracle on this occasion, having kept the impious
A PRUDENT POET 139
sea out of at least some part of the city by boldly
thrusting the relics of the saints in its track. Petrarch
does not mention this, and indeed if Prior David
could do so much he is to blame for not having
done more, since he might as easily have prevented
all the damage done while he was chanting in his
church.
As for Petrarch, the storm impressed him so deeply
that he told Cardinal Colonna he had resolved never
to go afloat again, even at the Pope's bidding. " I
will leave the air to birds, and the sea to fishes," he
observed very sagely ; " I know that learned men say
there is no more danger on sea than on land, but I
prefer to render up my life where I received it. That
is a good saying of the ancient writer, ' He who
suffers shipwreck a second time has no right to
blame Neptune.'"
Are we not growing a little tired of churches?
There are so many in this city, and in the next
chapter I shall have to dwell long upon the Carmine,
or rather on its manifold associations. Well, no great
harm will be done if we pass by a good many of
these temples ; but one must not be left unmen-
tioned, namely the cathedral, which we have almost
reached. A few yards from San Lorenzo, the Strada
del Duomo cuts across the old Decumanus Major at
right angles, and if we descend it a little way to-
wards the sea we have before us the fine front of the
cathedral.
It will be expected of me here that in lieu of
copying from Gsell-fels all the interesting facts about
the date of the building, describing the ancient fane
of Santa Restituta which has already witnessed four-
teen centuries, or detailing the arrangement of the
chapels where so much of the noblest ever born in
Naples lies mouldering into dust, it is expected of
140 CHIEFLY ABOUT CHURCHES
me, I suppose, that I shall repeat once more the oft-
told tale of the liquefaction of the blood of San
Gennaro, that miracle and portent which brings luck
to the city if it happens speedily, and is a presage of
woe when it is delayed. We have heard the story
all our lives. But no book on Naples is complete
without it, and I will therefore take the description
by Fucini, which has at any rate the advantage of
being little known in England, to which I may
add that it is the work of one who might very truly
say what he did not know of Naples, at least in his
own day, was not knowledge.
" In the church," says Fucini, " the crowd was
dense. Around the altar crowded pilgrims, male
and female, shouting, laughing, weeping, chewing
prayers and oranges. ... In the midst of deep
silence begins the moving function. The officiating
priest holding up to the people the vase, not unlike
a carriage lamp, inspects it carefully, and beginning
to twirl it in his hands, cries out with a stentorian
voice, ' It is hard, the blood is hard ! ' At that fatal
announcement the people break out into cries most
pitiful. The pilgrims weep, some even are like to
faint. The saint is slow. The miracle delays, the
cries and tears redouble. A group of peasant women
who stand near me pour out these prayers, ' Faccela,
faccela, la grazia, San Gennarino mio bello ! ' And
if the priest still shook his head they broke out
again, ' It is hard ! O, quanto ci mette stamattina,
San Gennarino mio benedetto. Ah faccela, faccela,
questa divina grazia, faccela, faccela, San Gennarino
bello, bello, bello!'
"The pilgrims went on chanting, the people crowded
round the chapel. In the nave a powerful preacher
was relating the life and glories of the saint. The
noise of voices rose or fell as the priest signified that
THE BLOOD OF SAN GENNARO 141
the commencement of the miracle was still far off, or
gave hopes of its speedy consummation.
" At last, when the suspense had lasted nine-and-
twenty minutes, we saw the priests and those spec-
tators who were nearest to them fix their eyes more
intently on the vase, with beckonings and signs, as
if to say, ' Perhaps a minute more 1 almost
think who knows?' Then followed a moment
of great anxiety, a short interval of silence, broken
only by sobs and stifled sighs. The emotion spread,
tearful faces and trembling hands undulated in a
kneeling crowd. Then suddenly all arms were flung
in air, all hands were clapped, the priest waved a
white veil joyfully, and like the outbursts of a hurri-
cane the organs pealed out in crashing harmonies,
the bells clanged and clamoured through the air, and
the high roof of the cathedral rang with the triumph
of the voices of the vast crowd chanting the Ambro-
sian hymn."
If the Duomo had no other interest, the emotion
of this oft-repeated scene would create a fascination
to which everyone must yield. But it teems with
interest. It abounds in relics out of every age of
Naples. I cannot convey its charm to any other
man. For me the church is full of presences and
shadows of the past, kings and cardinals, noble
gentlemen and lovely ladies, hopes and aspirations,
and feverish ambitions mouldering together beneath
marble cenotaphs and stately wealth of gilding and
of fresco. I stand before the monument of Innocent
the Fourth, he who had no other word than " adder "
to bestow on the great emperor whom he opposed
and crushed ; and straightway all the tragedy of that
terrific strife absorbs my memory, and I am de-
voured by pity for the fair land of Italy which
became the battlefield of two such powers, and which
142 CHIEFLY ABOUT CHURCHES
by the victory of the Church and the ruin of the
Empire lost a family of rulers more apt for the
creation of her happiness than any which has
governed the Peninsula from the destruction of the
Goths until our own day. To one who looks back
across the years, desiring more the welfare of this
queen among the lands than the triumph of any prin-
ciple, it seems a base deed that was wrought by this
fine-featured old man, lying here so peacefully in
the contemplation of the centuries, his judges. One
wonders if he ever saw as we do the rare and pre-
cious value of the thing he was destroying, whether
the true nobility of Frederick, his culture, his wide
humanity, his strong firm government were really
worse than nothing in the judgment of the active
brain which throbbed beneath that placid brow. The
ruin of the Empire, the concentration of all power in
the papacy, the expulsion of the Emperor and all his
brood from Italy, it was nothing less than this that
Innocent contrived. Not the great Hildebrand him-
self, whose tomb we shall visit at Salerno, did more
service to the Church. The pity is that one should
find it so hard to see how that service helped man-
kind, to whom no consequences seem to have come
that were not dire and woeful. But whether good
or evil, it was great. There was nothing paltry about
Innocent. He was not of double heart. He found
a great thing to do, and did it with all his might.
In this world of futilities that is much, and very
much, perhaps all that can be asked of man with his
dim vision. The consequences must be left unto the
care of those who see them.
CHAPTER VIII
A GREAT CHURCH AND TWO VERY
NOBLE TRAGEDIES
THERE can be no question that the interest of
Naples deepens as one goes through the ancient
quarter in the direction of the east. In modern
times the centre of the city is on the western side,
but of old it was not so. Castel Nuovo stood outside
the city among groves and gardens. The further one
goes back in history, the more frequently the court is
found at Castel Capuano, which fronts the bottom of
this most picturesque of streets by which we have
come almost the whole distance from the Via Roma.
In an irregular space, shapeless and crowded with
stalls and booths, stands the ancient fortress, long since
rebuilt and handed over to the law. The very name
of the street in whose narrow entrance we still stand
recalls the tribunals. They were all brought together
in this castle by Don Pietro di Toledo, that active
viceroy who stamped his memory on so many parts
of Naples. But there was a place of judgment on
this ground long before his day; and the thing is
worth mention.
Opposite the gate of the castle, and within a stone's-
throw of the spot on which we have halted, stood in
former days a pillar of white marble on a squared
base of stone. It marked the ground on which
143
144 A GREAT CHURCH
debtors were compelled to declare their absolute in-
solvency. The wretched men were stripped stark
naked in proof of their inability to pay, and stood
there exposed to the insults of their creditors. This
custom, which existed in many Italian towns, was
doubtless of great antiquity. The pillar was taken
down in 1856, and is now in the museum of San
Martino. The people called it "La Colonna della
Vicaria." Similarly the Castel Capuano is spoken of
as " La Vicaria," a name which gained a frightful
notoriety in the days of the last Bourbon kings, by
reason of the barbarity of the treatment shown to
political prisoners confined there, and the infamous
condition of the dens in which innocent and cultured
gentlemen were shut up.
So many streets radiate from the Largo della
Vicaria that numberless streams of passengers unite
and separate there, while all day long a market goes
on beneath the walls of the Place of Lamentations
whose secrets Mr. Gladstone laid bare before the
eyes of Europe. Nothing rich or rare or curious
is sold. Old keys, rusty padlocks, shapeless lumps
of battered iron, cheap hats and tawdry bedsteads,
with the inevitable apparatus of the lemonade seller,
brown jars, golden fruit, and dark green leaves, all
dripping in the shade such are the wares set out to
attract the seething crowd which saunters to and fro.
If the truth must be confessed the crowd looks vil-
lainous. The Neapolitans of the lower classes have
not as a rule engaging faces. They are keen and
often humorous, intensely eager and alive, eyes and
lips responsive to the quickest flashes of emotion.
But candid or inviting trust they are not; and as
many scowls as smiles are to be seen on the faces
of old or young alike. They have their virtues, it is
true. They have boundless family affection. When
PORTA CAPUANA 145
misfortune strikes their friends, they are helpful even
to self-sacrifice. They respect the old profoundly, and
serve or tend them willingly. They are industrious
and very patient in their poverty, devout towards the.
Church, especially to the Madonna, who from time to
time writes them a letter, which sells in the streets
faster even than the "pizza." There is perhaps in
these and other qualities the foundation of a character
which may some day place Naples high among the
cities of the world ; but before that day dawns, many
things will have to be both learnt and unlearnt. In
this region of the Porta Capuana one sees the people
in what Charles Lamb would have called its quiddity.
There are low taverns in the house-fronts, haunts of
the Camorra and the vilest of the poor. Each has its
few chairs set out upon the pavement, and its large
shady room inside, with great casks standing in the
background. Here and there a barber hovers in his
doorway, chatting with a neighbour. At morn and
even the tinkling bell announces the coming of the
goats, and children hurry out with tumblers to the
wayside where the bleating herd is stopped and
milked as custom goes, while all day long the steps
of Santa Catarina a Formello are crowded with dirty
women sitting in the shade. High against the church
towers the great archway of the Porta Capuana, a fit
gateway for the approach of kings. What pageants
it has seen ! The great Emperor Charles the Fifth
rode in beneath it on his return from the Tunis
expedition, by which he drove out the corsair Bar-
barossa from the kingdom he had seized, freed no
less than twenty thousand slaves, and dealt the pirates
one of the few heavy blows ever levelled at their
force by Europe until Lord Exmouth three hundred
years later smoked out the hornets' nest at Algiers.
The Castel Capuano did not stand directly on the
146 A GREAT CHURCH
street in those days when it was the home of kings.
It had its gardens, which must almost have touched
those of another royal palace, the Duchescha, of
which all traces have been swallowed up by the
growth of squalor which has claimed this region for
its own. The gardens of the Duchescha were large
and beautiful. It was the pleasure-house of Alfonso
of Aragon, while yet he was Duke of Calabria, heir
to the throne from which he fled in terror so short a
time after he ascended it.
It was no mere archaeological musing which brought
this blood-stained tyrant back to my memory, but
rather the trivial inconvenience of being trundled
roughly towards the gutter by a half-grown lad who
was hurrying along the causeway with a bundle of
pamphlets, one of which, thrust into a cleft stick, he
was brandishing high in the air with an alluring
placard announcing that it was to be had by any-
body for the price of one soldo. 1 pursued the boy,
caught him under the Porta Capuana, and bought his
pamphlet The miscellaneous literature of the Nea-
politan streets is not as a rule of a kind that makes
for righteousness, but my ear had caught the sound
of the word " martin," and I had been half expecting
some sign of public interest in martyrs on this spot.
The pamphlet gave a fairly accurate account of the
massacre of Christians by the Turks who landed at
Otranto in the heel of Italy in the year 1480. So
old a tale has of course much interest for educated
people still ; but what, one asks in wonder, makes
it worth while to hawk the story round the squalid
streets surrounding the Vicaria, where it evidently
commands a sale as brisk as if it were "Vendetta
di Tigre" or any other highly peppered work about
the social vices of the rich.
The matter will become a little clearer if we push
THE MARTYRS OF OTRANTO 147
past the half-clad women who sit suckling babes on
the steps of Santa Caterina a Formello, and go into
that uninteresting church. At the altar rails a priest
is preaching vehemently to a languid congregation,
while in the empty nave four fat laughing children
are toddling round the benches, playing games and
calling to each other merrily. There are gaudy paint-
ings and high silk curtains ; but the only object that
excites my interest is a printed card hung on the
closed railings of the second chapel on the left of the
nave, which appeals for " Elemosina pel culto dei bb,
martiri di Otranto, dei quali 240 corpi si venerano
sotto questo altare."
Alms for the worship of the blessed martyrs of
Otranto ! So some of those twelve thousand who
were put to the sword by the Turks in cold blood on
a hillside near the city have been brought to this
small church in Naples. But why? The answer
doubtless is that the Duke of Calabria, who led the
mingled hosts of Naples and of Europe against the
Turks, brought back these bones as a religious
trophy, and placed them in Santa Caterina because
it lay near to his own palace. He may have been
the more eager about the pious trophy since he
brought no military ones. It was the death of the
Turkish Sultan, not the sword of Alfonso, which
drove the warriors of the Crescent out of Italy.
It is thus clear why the boy was hawking his
pamphlets outside Santa Caterina. But what gains a
ready sale for them ? Well, partly the strong clerical
feeling among the lower orders of the Neapolitans,
and partly the skill with which the priests play upon
this feeling for political ends.
I open the pamphlet, and in its second paragraph
I find these words :
"By this story we shall show that the Catholics
148 A GREAT CHURCH
are the real friends of the country, that the true
martyrs are not found outside the Church, that
Catholicism is the true glory of Italy, and that the
great days worthy to be commemorated are not those
of Milan, nor those of Brescia in 1848, nor those of
Turin in 1864, but the days of Otranto in August,
1480. May the tribute which we pay to-day to our
true martyrs atone for the frequent sacrilege of giving
that name to felons "
No words could prove more clearly by what un-
traversable distance the Church of Rome is parted
from all sympathy with the unity of Italy. That is
why I have told this incident at length. I venture
to say that in the length and breadth of Britain,
where, if bravery is loved, right and justice are loved
too, and felons are not exalted, there is scarce one
man who can read the tale of the five days of Milan
without feeling that there is one of the bright spots
in the history of all mankind, one of those rare occa-
sions when what is noblest leapt to the front, and a
ray of true hope and sunshine fell on Italy. But in
the eyes of the priests this light and glory were
mere crime and darkness. Those who fought the
Austrians were criminals. It is a hopeless difference
of view, hopeless equally if sincere, and if not. I
went on a little sick at heart, as any lover of Italy
may well be when he contemplates the enmity of
State and Church, and that Church the Papacy.
If I were not so eager to reach the Carmine, I
should certainly retrace my steps a little and go up
the Strada Carbonara to the Church of San Giovanni
Carbonara, which contains much that is interesting,
and leads one straight to the tragic days of Queen
Giovanna. But that age of lust and murder, that
perplexed period of woe and strife, does not allure
me when I have the Carmine almost in sight ; and
THE MERCATO 149
I turn away past the railway station, and down the
Corso Garibaldi till I come to the round towers of
the Porta Nolana, the only one of the old city gates
which still serves its ancient purpose and recalls
the days of fortification. Its twin towers are named
" Faith " and " Hope," " Cara Fe " and " Speranza,"
and when one passes in betwixt those virtues one
plunges into a throng which is as animated as the
Strada Tribunali, and considerably dirtier. The life
of the people in this Vico Sopramuro is elemental.
It has but few conventions and disdains restraints.
A tattered shirt, gaping to the waist, admits the free
play of air round the bodies of boys and girls alike ;
the breeches or the gown which complete the costume
recall the aspect of a stormy night sky when the
rent clouds are scattered by the wind and the stars
peep through. It is as well not to loiter among
this engaging people. " The Neapolitans," said Von
Raumer airily, "were invented before the fuss about
the seven deadly sins." I have no wish to make a
fuss about those or any other sins so long as they
are practised upon other people, and I feel completely
charitable to the human anthill when I emerge safe
and sound in the wide square of the Mercato.
In this wide market-place, this bare spot of open
ground which to-day lies cumbered with iron bed-
steads, and piled with empty cases, the debris of last
market day, the bitterest tragedy of Naples was
played out, and a scene enacted of which the infamy
rang through all the world. There is no spot in the
whole city less beautiful or more interesting than
the Mercato ; and in the hot afternoon, while the
churches are closed, and half the city sits drowsy in
the shady spots, I know no better way of passing
time than in recalling some of the poignant memories
which haunt this place of blood and tears.
ISO TWO VERY NOBLE TRAGEDIES
In an earlier chapter of this book, when I gave
a rapid sketch of the succession of Hohenstaufen,
Anjou, and Aragon to the throne of the Two Sicilies,
I passed on without pausing on the story of the
boy-king Corradino, little Conrad, as the Italians
have always called him. It is time now to tell the
tale, for it was on this spot that the lad was mur-
dered.
I need not go back on what I have already said
so far as to repeat how Charles of Anjou defeated
Manfred and slew him outside the walls of Benevento,
nor how utterly the party of the Ghibellines, the
Emperor's men, were cast down throughout Italy
by that great triumph of the Guelf. When Manfred
fell and his wife, Queen Helena, passed with her
children into lifelong captivity, the House of Hohen-
staufen was not extinct. There remained in Germany
the true heir of Naples, a king with a better title
than Manfred had possessed, Corradino, a boy of
five, who grew up in the keeping of his mother,
Elizabeth of Bavaria ; and as year after year went
by found his pride and fancy stimulated by many
a tale of the rich heritage beyond the mountains
which was his by every right, but was reft from
him by an usurper, and lay groaning under the rule
of an alien and an oppressor. Tales such as these
must have had for the child all the fascination of
a fairy story ; but as his years increased, and he
came to the comprehension of what wrong and injury
meant, they touched him far more nearly, and all
the courage of his high race, all the spirit which
he derived from the blood of emperors and kings,
urged him on to strike one stout blow at least for
the recovery of that land which was his father's, that
sunny kingdom where the blue sea kissed the very
feet of the orange groves, and marble palaces gleamed
A KINGLY ENTERPRISE 151
out of the shade of gardens such as the boy had
never seen except in dreams.
His mother did her best to scatter these dreams,
and bring him back to the plain prose of life. Italy,
she said, had always sucked the blood and strength
of the Hohenstaufen, and if she could, she would
stop the drain ere it robbed her of her only child.
But the task was too great for her. Not from Naples
only, which was really full of nobles ready to revolt
against the tyrant of Anjou and return to their old
allegiance, but from a dozen other cities in northern
Italy, where the Ghibellines waited for the coming
of a leader, the growth of Conradin to manhood
was watched impatiently; and when he was turned
fifteen, strong, handsome, and kingly in every act,
the hopes of his partisans could be restrained no
longer. Pisa sent her embassies to bid him hasten.
Verona, ancient home of the Ghibellines, assured
him of support. Siena, Pavia, implored him to come
and free his people. The task they said was easy,
and the glory great. More than that, it was a
righteous duty to resume what was his own. Many
a burning tale of wrong committed by the French
was poured into the lad's ears ; and the end was
that little Conrad broke away from his mother's
prayers and tears, and crossed the Alps in the
autumn of the year 1267 at the head of 10,000 men,
being then fifteen, and by the universal consent of
all who saw him both handsome in his person and
by his breeding worthy to be the son of many kings.
At first all went well with him. At Verona he
was received with the honours of a conqueror. The
mere news that his standard had been seen coming
down from the high Alpine valleys drew the exiles
of Ferrara, Bergamo, Brescia, and many another city
in crowds to welcome him. Padua and Vicenza sent
152 TWO VERY NOBLE TRAGEDIES
him greeting ; and in January he moved on to Pisa,
where the same joy awaited him. The Pisan fleet
was of high power in those days, and it was sent
at once to ravage the coasts of Apulia and Sicily,
where it inflicted a sound drubbing on the French.
Near Florence, too, Conradin's army gained a victory,
and when he moved on to Rome, where Henry of
Castile, who ruled the city in the absence of the Pope,
had joined his party, the hopes of every Ghibelline
in Italy were high and proud, while Charles of Anjou
was seriously anxious for his throne.
It was on the i8th of August of the year 1268
that Conradin left Rome. Charles expected him by
the ordinary route of travellers which lies through
Ceperano, San Germano, and Capua. That route
was studded with fortresses and was easy to defend
for which sufficient reason Conradin did not take
it. His aim was not to make for Naples by the
shortest way, but rather to get through the mountains,
if he could without a battle, and to raise Apulia,
where he was certain of support, not only from the
Saracens of Lucera, but from many other quarters
also. So he struck off from Tivoli towards the high
valleys of the Abruzzi, through which he found a
way not only unguarded, but cool, well watered and
fresh, considerations of vast moment to the leader
of an army through southern Italy in August. It
was the line of the ancient Roman road, the "Via
Valeria," and he followed it until on the 22nd of
August as his troops came down from the hills of
Alba, debouching on the plain of Tagliacozzo, some
five miles in front, they saw the lances of Anjou
gleaming on the heights of Antrosciano, drawn up
in a position which was too strong for attack.
Conradin's army lay across the road to Tagliacozzo,
offering battle to the king, who looked down upon
A CUNNING STRATAGEM 153
the host of the invaders, and liked not what he saw.
He had pressed on from Aquila, and was uneasy
about the loyalty of that stronghold in his rear.
Night fell ; but before dusk hid the long line of
foes upon the plain, Charles had seen an embassy
ride into their ranks, and men said it came from
Aquila, offering the town to Conradin. This was
what Charles chiefly feared. He would trust no man
but himself to learn the truth ; and spurring his
horse across plain and mountain through the night,
he rode back headlong till he drew rein beneath the
walls of Aquila, and shouted to the warder on the
walls, " For what king are you ? " Sharp and quick
the answer came, "For King Charles" ; and the King,
reassured, rode back wearily towards his camp sleep-
ing round the fires on the mountains.
He slept long that night, notwithstanding the
hazard which lay upon the cast of battle ; and when
at length he woke, the host of the invaders was
already marshalled along the bank of the River
Salto, which formed their front. Charles scanned
their line, and his heart sank, so great was their
multitude. In something like despair he turned for
counsel to a famous warrior who had but just landed
from Palestine, where he had won world-wide renown,
Alard de St. Valery. The wary Frenchman did not
question that the chances of the coming fight were
against Anjou. " If you conquer," he said, "it must
be by cunning rather than by strength." Charles
allowed him to make those dispositions which he
pleased ; and thereupon St. Valery placed a strong
force of lances, with the King himself at their head,
in a hollow of the hills, where they could not be
seen. Then he hurled against Conradin two suc-
cessive attacks, both of which were repulsed with
heavy loss. Charles wept with rage to see his
154 TWO VERY NOBLE TRAGEDIES
knights so broken, and strove to break out to rescue
them, but St. Valery held him back, and Conradin,
seeing no more enemies, thought the battle won.
His men unhelmed themselves. Some went to
bathe in the cool river. Others, after the fashion
of the day, plundered the fallen knights. One large
body under Henry of Castile had pursued the fleeing
French far over plain and mountain. All this
St. Valery lay watching in dead silence from his
hiding in the hollow of the hills.
At last the moment came, and the serried ranks of
the fresh warriors rode down upon their unarmed
and unsuspecting enemies. No time was given to
arm or form up the troops. Some perished in the
water. Others died struggling bravely against the
shock of that horrible surprise. The trap was per-
fect. All either died or fled ; and in one brief hour
Conradin, who had thought himself the conqueror of
his father's throne, was fleeing for his life across the
hills, a fugitive devoid of hope. Never, surely, was
there so sudden or terrible a change of fortune.
With Conradin fled Frederick of Baden, his close
friend, not long before his playmate ; and these two
princely lads were accompanied by a few faithful
followers, the last remnant of what so short a time
before was a noble army. All that night they sped
across the mountains in the direction of the coast,
where they hoped to find some craft which would
carry them to Pisa, a safe haven for them all. They
struck the sea near Astura in the Pontine marshes.
On the shore they found a little fishing boat ; and
having sought out the men who owned it, they
offered large reward for the voyage up the coast.
The fellows demurred that they must have provisions
for the trip ; and Conradin, taking a ring from his
finger, gave it to one of them and told him to buy
A KING BETRAYED 155
bread at the nearest place he could. It was a fatal
imprudence. The sailor pledged the ring at a tavern
in exchange for bread. The host saw the value of
the jewel, and took it instantly to the lord of the
castle near at hand.
Now this noble was of the Frangipani family, on
which honours had been heaped by the grandfather
of the boy-king, thus cast up a fugitive and in peril
of his life in his domain. The only gratitude which
honour demanded of him was to let the lad pass
by and escape in his own way ; but even this was
too much for Frangipani. He saw at once that the
ring must belong to some man of mark escaping
from the fight, and he bade his servants launch a
boat, and bring back the fugitive whoever he might
be.
When Frangipani's boat overtook the other, Con-
radin was not much dismayed. He knew how greatly
the Frangipani were indebted to his house, and he
did not doubt they would show due gratitude. The
poor lad did not know the world. Frangipani fore-
saw that no boon he could ask of Charles would be
too great if he handed him his enemy ; and thus not
many days had passed when Conradin and Frederick
were brought into Naples, and carried through the
streets where they had hoped to ride as conquerors.
Even Charles, bloodthirsty as he was, shrank from
taking his prisoners' life without some legal warrant.
It was so plain that they had played no part but
that of gallant gentlemen, striking a blow for what
was in fact their right, however much the Pope
might question it, or assert his title to bestow the
kingdom where he would. He convoked an as-
sembly of jurists, but found only one among the
number obsequious enough to tax Conradin or his
followers with any crime. Thus driven back on his
156 TWO VERY NOBLE TRAGEDIES
own murderous will as ultimate sanction for the act
he meditated, Charles himself pronounced the death
sentence on the whole number of his prisoners.
On the 2Qth of October a scaffold was raised in
the Mercato. The chronicles say that it was by the
stream which ran past the Church of the Carmine,
a humbler building than that which we see now, but
standing on the same spot. They add also that it
was near the sea, from which we may conclude that
few, if any, houses parted the market-place from the
beach in those days, and that the whole of the most
exquisite coast-line of his father's kingdom stretched
blue and fair before Conradin's eyes as he mounted
the scaffold. Side by side with him came his true
comrade, Frederick of Baden. The united ages of
the boys scarce turned thirty. There was no nobler
blood in Europe than theirs, and among the great
crowd of citizens there were few who did not weep
when they saw the fair-haired lads embrace each
other beside the block. The demeanour of both was
high and bold. Of Conradin, no less than of another
king more than thrice his age, it can be said
" He nothing common did or mean
Upon that memorable scene."
He turned to the people, and avowed he had
defended his right. " Before God," he said, " I have
earned death as a sinner, but not for this ! " Then
he flung his glove far out among the crowd, thus
with his last defiant gesture handing on the right
of vengeance and the succession of his kingdom to
those who could wrestle for it with the French. The
glove was caught up by a German knight, Heinrich
von Waldburg, who did in fact convey it to Queen
Constance of Aragon, last of the Hohenstaufen blood,
of which bequest came many consequences.
AN ACT OF INFAMY 157
Having flung down his gage, Conradin was ready
to depart. He kissed his comrades, took off his
shirt, and then raising his eyes to heaven, said aloud,
" Jesus Christ, Lord of all creation, king of honour,
if this cup of sorrow may not pass by me, into Thy
hands I commend my spirit." Then he knelt and
laid down his head ; but at the last moment earthly
sorrows returned upon him, and starting half up he
cried, " Oh, mother, what a sorrow I am making for
you ! " Having said this he spoke no more, but
received the stroke. As it fell, Frederick of Baden
gave a scream so pitiful that all men wept. A
moment later he had travelled the same path, and
the two lads were together once more.
So died these brave German boys, and so perished
the last hope of happiness for Naples. For if any-
thing in history is sure, it is as clear as day that
Naples never afterwards was ruled by kings so strong
and just as those whose blood was shed in the
Mercato on that October day. As for the slayer,
he has left a name at which men spit. Six centuries
already have execrated his memory. It may well be
that sixty more will execrate it. Yet even while he
lived he ate the bread of tears, and the day came
when in the anguish of his heart he was heard to
pray aloud that God who had raised him to such a
height of fortune might cast him down by gentler steps.
There are countless traditions connected with the
death of Conradin. Men say that as his head fell
an eagle swooped down from the sky, dipped its
wing in the blood, and flew off again across the city.
Another and more constant tale is that the poor boy's
mother, when she heard of his captivity, gathered
a great sum of money to ransom him, and came
herself to Naples, but was too late, and landed in
deep mourning from her ship, and came into the
158 TWO VERY NOBLE TRAGEDIES
Church of the Carmine, poor and mean in those
days, and gave the monks all the money she had
brought to sing Masses for ever for her son's soul.
These may be fables. But to pass to truth, it is a
fact that in the year 1631, when the pavement of the
Church of the Carmine was being lowered, a leaden
coffin was found behind the high altar. The letters
R. C. C. were roughly cut on it, and were interpreted
to mean "Regis Corradini Corpus," the body of King
Conradin. The coffin was opened. It contained the
skeleton of a lad, the head severed and lying on the
breast. There were some fragments of linen, which
turned to dust immediately, and by the side lay a
sword unsheathed, as bright and speckless as if it
had but just come from the maker's hands. One
would give much to know that the boy-king still
slept there with his sword beside him, but when the
coffin was next opened, at the wish of one of his
own family in 1832, the sword had gone.
The Church of the Carmine is, as I have said
already, a vastly different building from that into
which the body of Conradin was carried. Whether
the tradition speaks truly of the benefaction of the
unhappy mother or no, the fact remains that a splen-
did reconstruction of the church took place about
that time. The origin of the church is curious. The
records of the monks declare that towards the middle
of the seventh century the hermits of the Mount
Carmel, fleeing from the persecution of Saracens,
came to Italy, some to one city, some to another. A
handful of them rested at Naples, bringing with
them an antique picture of the Madonna, said to have
been painted by St. Luke, and established themselves
in this spot close outside the city walls, near a hospital
for sick sailors of which in later days they obtained
the site. There they built a humble church, and either
LA BRUNA 159
found or excavated a grotto underneath it, in which
they placed their picture. The image became famous,
and to this day is known amongst the people as " La
Madonna della Grotticella," or more commonly as
" La Bruna." Indeed there was no similitude of Our
Lady of Sorrows in all south Italy which wrought
more wondrous miracles or better earned her sanctity ;
and when the jubilee came round in the year 1500
the Neapolitans could think of no better deed than
to take La Bruna out of her grotto and carry her
in procession to Rome, which they did accordingly,
and many were the marvels which she wrought upon
the long journey through the mountains.
But in Rome La Bruna was not well received
by the Vicegerent of God. That intelligent and
subtle man Rodrigo Borgia was Pope, and his equally
keen-witted son Caesar Borgia was in fact, though not
in name, chief counsellor. Both had schemes for
which much money was needed, and that money they
looked to make out of the jubilee. They looked
about them with their practical clear sight, and took
note of the fact that La Bruna was very active,
working miracles in fact on every side. Had the
proceeds fallen into their pockets this would have
been well, but as they did not it was ill. Madonnas
from other cities must not come emptying the pockets
of the pilgrims in that style, or what would be left
for the Holy Father and the ex-Cardinal, his son ?
So La Bruna was packed off home, and the pro-
cession went back through the mountains. I should
think the Madonna was glad enough to get out of the
Roman stews of the Borgia days, and the Fathers
who accompanied her had cause for thankfulness that
they escaped without tasting those chalices with
which the Pope and Caesar removed all such as
stood in their way.
160 TWO VERY NOBLE TRAGEDIES
The wonders of the Carmine do not begin or
end with La Bruna. There is another miraculous
image in the church, a large figure of the dead Christ
extended on the cross. Now in the year 1439, when
the House of Anjou was tottering to its fall, sustained
only by the feeble hands of Rene, last sovereign of
his house, Alfonso of Aragon was besieging Naples,
pounding the city without much care for considera-
tions other than mere military ones. His brother,
Don Pietro of Aragon, seems to have suspected that
the Carmine was a sort of fort, and indeed its con-
spicuous steeple was used as a battery. Accordingly
he turned his guns upon it, and a ball flew straight
towards the head of our Lord, which lay back slightly
raised as if communing with heaven. The ball carried
away the crown of thorns, and would certainly have
destroyed the head also of the sacred figure had it
not bowed suddenly, as if it were alive, and let the
shot go by. But the miracle did not end there. The
ball, though having struck nothing but the light
tracery of the crown of thorns, was checked in mid-
air, hung there for an instant, and then dropped
within the altar rails.
This very striking miracle is famous yet in Naples.
Brantdme records it, but in his careless way sets
down the wonder as having happened in the days
of Lautrec, and attributes it to a statue of the
Madonna. King Alfonso when he took the city
made a careful examination of the neck of the
figure, to discover whether there were not some
hidden mechanism, but found none, and became con-
vinced that human agency had naught to do with it.
From every point of view this Church of the
Carmine is to me the most interesting of all Naples,
not by reason of its architecture, though even that, as
I suspect and guess, was beautiful before the hideous
EASTER AT THE CARMINE 161
Barocco passion ruined it. Every nook and corner
of it has been filled with vulgar and unmeaning
ornament, so that the old graceful outlines are lost
for ever. But it is for the abounding richness of its
life, both past and present, that I visit it again and
again. Standing in the poorest quarter of the city,
within sight of the swarming population which crowds
the streets and alleys around the Porta Nolana and
the ancient rookeries which abut upon the Church
of St Eligio, endeared to the people by the miracles
of which I have just spoken, there is no feast or
saint's day on which the popolane do not visit it
in thousands. I go to see it in its Easter glory.
The wide vestibule is packed with women of the
people, vilely dirty; and inside the church one can
scarcely move through the swarming crowd, surg-
ing this way and that, now pressing forwards to
the altar rails, where a priest is chanting in a loud
monotone, now clustering thick about the image of
the Madonna, holding on her knees the lifeless bleed-
ing body of the Christ. The women press forward,
kissing her robe with passion and holding up the
babies to do the like. The chairs are packed
with men staring vacantly before them, as if they
wondered what had brought them there, and over
the feverish bustle of the throng the fine grave figure
of Conradin rises carved in snowy marble.
The sanctity of this great and ancient church, its
propinquity to the Mercato and to the teeming
populations of the old alleys of the city, has made
it in all ages a central point of that turbulent hot life
which fills the history of Naples with tales of blood
and terror. The associations of the place are infinite,
and would in themselves fill a portly volume were
they all set down with the detail which their rich
interest demands. One tale there is which must be
M
162 TWO VERY NOBLE TRAGEDIES
told in full, for its tragedy is too great to be for-
gotten, and has indeed rung round all the world.
In the year 1647, when England was convulsed by
civil war, Naples had lain for near a century and a
half beneath the Spanish yoke, governed by viceroys,
some good, others saturated with the greed and
covetousness which have made the name of Pro-
consul odious since Verres drained the lifeblood out
of Sicily. Naples was rich, but not rich enough for
Spanish greed. The huge, unwieldy Spanish Empire
began to fall on troublous days. The old rivalry
with France was pressing hard on the statesmen of
Madrid. Europe was unsettled, and war was con-
stant. Fleets and armies are the most expensive
toys of nations, and all viceroys were given to un-
derstand that the only road to royal favour was to
remit more and still more money. Unhappily at
Naples the effect of this hint on the Duke of Arcos,
who then ruled in the palace often occupied by
wiser men, was to set him angling in a well of which
his predecessors had fished out the bottom. It was
really very difficult to see how another penny could
be got out of Naples, but nothing was more certain
than that the penny must be found. So the Viceroy,
having called a Parliament which met, after the
custom of .that time, in the convent attached to the
Church of San Lorenzo, persuaded that august body
to announce a fresh gabelle, to be levied on all the
fruit brought into Naples.
Nobody who has visited Naples in the summer,
and noted the abounding plenty of the fruit stalls
at every corner of the ancient streets the ruddy
grapes, the vast piles of blackening figs, the immense
water melons, sliced so as to show their black seeds
and their brimming juice, so cool and tempting when
the August sun burns down upon the houses, nobody
A TAX ON FRUIT 163
who has seen how the Neapolitans feed on fruit
throughout the scorching dogdays can doubt that
to tax it must be dangerous. If the risk was not
self-evident, there was example of it to be found
in the memory of men then living. Not fifty years
before the same expedient had resulted in riot. A
prudent governor would have been warned ; the
more so as the people were already oppressed and
sullen, restless and indignant under the unending
exactions of the farmers of the taxes, and divided
by the memory of many bitter outrages from the
nobles of native birth who should have been their
natural leaders and protectors. Naples was full of
a sullen, dangerous temper ; but those who were
responsible for the safety of the city had not wit
enough to understand its state.
The gabelle on fruit was imposed early in the
year ; and on many days of spring, even before the
burden of the tax was felt, crowds ran beside the
Viceroy's coach demanding angrily that the duty
should be repealed. As the warm days drew on,
the angry temper rose. Every market day whipped
it up to fever heat and set the people thinking of
their miseries. It is said and the thing is probable
enough that many days before the actual outbreak
of revolt a rising was being planned by several
agents, of whom one was a Carmelite monk. The
day selected for its commencement was carefully
chosen in such a manner as to secure the patronage
and protection of the most popular Madonna of the
crowded city ; but before it came an accident pre-
cipitated the disturbance.
It was the custom in those days to hold a kind
of popular game in the Piazza del Mercato, a few
days before the Festival of the Madonna of the
Carmine. The ragged population chose a captain,
164 TWO VERY NOBLE TRAGEDIES
under whom they attacked and stormed a wooden
castle reared in the centre of the piazza. In this
year the lot of the people had fallen on Tommaso
Anello, who in their contracted and musical dialect
was known as " Mas'aniello," a native of Amalfi, by
origin, if not by birth, driven perhaps into the city by
fear of the constant incursions of the Turks, which
went near to depopulate the coasts from Salerno
to Castellammare. By one account Mas'aniello was
thirsting to revenge an insult offered to his wife by
one of the collectors. Other writers assert that
chance alone thrust him into the foremost position in
what followed.
On Sunday the 7th of July the Mercato was
seething with life. Out of all the rookeries around
the Porta Nolana, and behind the Church of Sant'
Eligio, the people poured out intent on frolic. Fes-
tivity was in the air that joyousness which in
southern Italy is very apt to smear itself with blood
ere night The women crowded in and out of the
churches. The bells chimed. From all the towns
and villages on either side of Naples the peasant
women had brought in their fruit, and the thirsty
people bought it greedily. Among the crowd
Mas'aniello and his army of ragamuffins were going
up and down armed with canes ; when suddenly
there arose a loud and angry bawling, and everyone
pressed forward to see what had happened.
It was a dispute between the peasants who brought
in the fruit and the keepers of the stalls who sold it.
They could not agree which should bear the burden
of the new tax. The people's magistrate was called
in and decided in favour of the stall men ; on which
a fellow who had brought in figs from Pozzuoli flung
down his baskets on the ground, and trampled on
them in a fit of rage. The guard, insulted by the
AN UGLY RIOT 165
act, and still more by the words which accompanied
it, seized the fellow and beat him. His cries gathered
more and more people. So did the figs, which rolled
about in every direction, while the boys scrambled
for them, and some laughed, while others shouted
angrily, " Take off the gabelle ! " The guard tried to
disperse the crowd ; but scattering in one place, it
reassembled in another. Soon sticks and stones
began to fly even the fruit upon the stalls was used
for missiles. The guard gave way. The magistrate
fled to the beach, with a gang of angry ruffians at his
heels, and got off with difficulty in a boat ; while
Mas'aniello, reuniting his forces, led them against
the office of the Gabelle in the Mercato, wrecked it,
and burnt the books.
By this time all the turbulence of the city was
aroused ; its suppressed passions had found a rallying
point, and from every quarter there poured forth an
army, ragged and dangerous, carrying for the most
part no other weapons than sticks and stones, but
roaring with a single voice for the abolition of the
gabelle. Mas'aniello seized rapidly on these raw
levies, ordered them into bands, and sent them in
various directions through the city with orders to
break down the stalls of the collectors wherever they
found them ; while he himself, at the head of a
mighty crowd, marched up to the Toledo and down
that famous street towards the palace of the Viceroy.
That feeble ruler had come out upon the balcony
of his palace to behold the sight As far as he could
see there stretched a forest of angry men and women,
a sight most terrible and menacing in the eyes of any
ruler. The Spaniard's inclination would have been
to soothe and quiet them with pikes ; but he had not
men enough at his command, and so tried cooing at
them, professing his immediate willingness to do
166 TWO VERY NOBLE TRAGEDIES
everything they wished. It is uncertain what the
result of this accommodating policy might have
been if only the people could have heard him or
would have waited to attend to the written messages
he sent them out. Unluckily neither words nor notes
were heeded. The mob broke into the palace and
swarmed up the stairs, sweeping away the guards.
The Viceroy, impelled by prudence, slipped out down
the secret stair, and entering a private coach, at-
tempted to pass through the mob towards the Castel
delF Uovo. His carriage had not travelled far before
he met a crowd which recognised him and threatened
to drag him out of his carriage. A few handfuls of
gold scattered in the air opened a lane through the
dense ranks of the rioters, and the Viceroy, taking
advantage of the momentary diversion, slipped into
the Church of San Luigi and took refuge there.
Meantime the mob went on to sack his palace.
It must appear passing strange that no effort was
made by the Spanish soldiery in Naples to defend
the authority of the Viceroy. There was a garrison
in each of the three castles, and in the length and
breadth of Naples there must have been a sufficient
number of well-disposed persons to furnish valuable
accessions of strength to any central body of trained
soldiery. But whether it was that the strength of the
garrison had been so far drained off for the wars in
Tuscany and elsewhere that the remnant possessed
no fighting power, or whether, as seems also possible,
the very suddenness of the revolt had paralysed the
regular troops, dreading as all soldiers do a conflict
with an undisciplined and ardent enemy in the streets
of a great city whichever reason may be the true
one, the fact remains that throughout the ten days of
this revolt the mob was not attacked, and its dis-
position to excess was restrained by little else than
PERSEUS AND ANDROMEDA 167
by its own moderation, which by all accounts was
conspicuous and wonderful.
If, however, the Viceroy took no steps to repress
the rising by force of arms, it is not to be supposed
that he lay idle in the Church of San Luigi grasping
the horns of the altar. By no means. On the con-
trary, Don Gabriele Tontoli, an eye-witness of these
disasters, assures us that the great man in this crisis,
while the mob were battering and howling at the
doors of the church, forgot nothing which was due to
his exalted position, but climbed out nobly on the
roof of the church and addressed the people in affec-
tionate accents, seeking to draw them back to the
duteous loyalty which they seemed for the moment
to have forgotten. Oddly enough these paternal
admonitions were little heeded by the mob, who, if
they spared a look for the pleading Viceroy on the
roof, only roared the louder and battered at the door
the harder. Indeed, there can be little doubt that
they would have battered down the door ere long, and
the Viceroy's position was growing so perilous that
Don Gabriele compares it aptly with that of the
innocent Andromeda bound to the rock and awaiting
the onset of the sea monster. But Perseus arrived,
as in the classical tale, just in the nick of time, wear-
ing the odd garb of a cardinal of the Roman Catholic
Church. In fact, he was no other than the Arch-
bishop of Naples, Cardinal Ascanio Filamarino, a
man destined to play a considerable part in the
coming troubles.
Perseus took in the situation at a glance, and being
unluckily unprovided with a Gorgon's head with
which to turn the monster into stone, he saw no
other way of saving the rhetorical Andromeda dis-
canting eloquently on the roof than by translating
some of his promises into actions. Taking his stand,
1 68 TWO VERY NOBLE TRAGEDIES
therefore, on the steps of the church, he sent up word
through the grid that the Viceroy must instantly
make out an order for the abolition of the gabelle
and send it down to him. The Viceroy sent it with-
out delay, and the Cardinal, who appears to have
been one of the very few men of mark in Naples
possessing any credit with the mob, produced an
instant sensation by waving the paper in the air.
With a singular good judgment he allowed no one to
see it on that spot, but getting into his coach, still
waving the document high above his head, he drew
off the people from the church, and so opened a way
for the escape of the Viceroy.
It was perhaps hoped that the remission of the
duty on fruit would quiet the city ; but greater pur-
poses were already taking shape in the minds of
those who led the people. The Spanish tyranny had
bitten deep into their hearts, and the very promptitude
of their success made them hope the moment had
arrived to end many things. The Convent of San
Lorenzo in the Strada Tribunali was an armoury well
stored with pikes and harquebusses. The crowd, led
by a Sicilian who had played a foremost part in a
revolt upon his native island, attacked the convent,
and fierce fighting took place between the citizens
and the small body of defenders who had thrown
themselves into the convent. The Sicilian was shot in
the forehead, but the attacks continued, and a day
or two later the arsenal became untenable, and was
surrendered with the cannon and munitions which it
contained.
The night of Sunday was full of terror. Through-
out the hours of darkness mobs raged through the
city ; and the excellent Don Gabriele, after vainly
endeavouring to sleep, tells us that he got up and
looked out to see what they were doing. They were
A LOYAL MOB 169
going by in gangs, brandishing torches which flared
and dripped with pitch. For standards they bore a
loaf stuck on the point of a pike in derision of its
tiny size, the result of the gabelle on flour. Of
opposition from the guardians of order there was
none at all, and had the mob elected to burn the city
to the ground it is not clear what force could have
restrained them. The strange thing was that the
ragamuffins made so little use of their opportunities.
It was as if already, in these first moments of the
insurrection, the rule of the leaders was respected.
Mas'aniello was busy throughout the night in the
Mercato and the piazza of the Carmine, organising,
directing, and restraining. He must have had some
rare quality of command, some spark of that divine
faculty for swaying men which is recognised and
honoured instinctively in moments of sharp crisis.
Otherwise it could not have happened that the mob,
unbridled and passionate, would have gone through
the streets by night chanting " Viva, viva il re di
Spagna," and abstaining from gross outrages as they
did. Even Don Gabriele, whose mouth is full of
fulsome praises of the powers that were, asserts that
among the rabble, needy and starving as many of
them were, none plundered for himself without being
repressed by his companions, while one who did so
was instantly tossed into the flames of a burning
house, in punishment for an offence which could but
bring disgrace on the whole movement.
So Don Gabriele watched the crowds go by, and
consoled himself amid his natural fears of what
might happen next by the sage reflection that the
whole disturbance had been foretold as long ago as
in the days when the Book of Ecclesiastes was
written. It may probably puzzle even well-read
men to discover any reference to Mas'aniello in that
i;o TWO VERY NOBLE TRAGEDIES
sacred book ; but Don Gabriele was convinced of the
fact, and anyone who desires to verify his references
will find the passages on which he relied in the tenth
chapter.
When morning came all Naples was in arms, and
the authority of Mas'aniello was supreme. In the
Piazza di Mercato, opposite the house in which he
lived, some rope dancers had erected a platform for
their exhibition, and on this throne sat the fisher-
man's boy, in trousers and shirt, both torn and dirty,
girded with a rusty sword, and delivering his orders
like a conqueror, calm and confident in the know-
ledge of his strength. The business which chiefly
occupied his mind was the discovery of fresh arms
and munitions. Early in the day, by the secret help
of a woman, the rioters had discovered five cannon
hidden in the city. Powder they also found, flooded
by the Spaniards, but not beyond the possibility of
being dried. Meantime most of the prisons were
flung open. Hour by hour the forces mustering in
the Carmine increased, and already bands were told
off to destroy the houses and property of those
nobles who were hated by the people.
As for the Viceroy, he saw no resource but in
sending messages of peace. For this purpose he
released from prison the Duke of Maddaloni, head
of the Carafa family, who had incurred the dis-
pleasure of the Crown, and despatched him to the
Mercato, with instructions to use his influence in any
way which seemed to him most likely to disperse
the people to their homes. But, as Don Gabriele
remarks quaintly, the people obstinately refused to
taste the perfect liquor out of this caraffe, esteeming
it indeed rank poison. Nor was their refusal merely
passive. On the contrary, they hunted the Duke
through the piazza till he fled for his life to the
A SKILFUL FOWLER 171
shelter of the Carmine, convinced that he was sent
to play them false and delude them with worthless
promises, in place of the restoration of the privileges
bestowed on Naples by the great Emperor Charles
the Fifth, which charter they were resolved to obtain
and re-establish.
It is quite clear that the nobles of Naples had no
real sympathy with the mob in the most reasonable
of their grievances. Had any one among them come
forward to support and to restrain them, the issue of
the revolt might have been very different. Indeed,
the part played by the nobles rankled in the minds
of the citizens for many a year ; and when, in the
next century, the nobles themselves sought to or-
ganise a rising, an old man who had been out with
Mas'aniello cast it in their teeth and called upon the
people to go to their homes, which they did.
But finding that the rioters would have naught to
say to nobles, the Cardinal Filamarino went himself
to the Mercato. He was received with deference,
if not with enthusiasm. The Cardinal was a cunning
statesman. " Like a skilful hunter," says Don Gabriele,
who is lost in admiration of his wisdom, "he knew
well how to whistle the birds into his net" A
churchman trained at Rome was scarcely likely to
be baffled by the rough sincerity of fishermen and
fruitsellers, ignorant of all the niceties which salve
the conscience of diplomatists. The Cardinal spoke
as one of themselves, as a father to his dear and
faithful children. He sympathised with their com-
plaints. He admitted their grievances, even exag-
gerating them. He commended their courage, and
assured them of entire success if only they would be
guided by his advice. He showed no horror at the
steps taken by the rioters, watching bands told off
to destroy houses, or erect fortifications without
i/2 TWO VERY NOBLE TRAGEDIES
remonstrance. All his efforts were exerted to gain
dominion over Mas'aniello and his followers. To
this end he took up his quarters in the Carmine, and
admitted the fisher's boy to audience at all hours.
He was aided by the natural piety of Mas'aniello,
who looked up to him as little less than divine, and
always fell upon his knees before he spoke to him,
seeking counsel in every difficulty, with absolute
confidence that the church in which he trusted could
not delude or trick him.
It cost the cunning Cardinal but little pains to win
over a man so reverential and so humble. At the
Cardinal's bidding Mas'aniello laid aside his scheme
of punishing the nobles by still further destruction of
their property, and in reward for this mark of obedi-
ence the Cardinal produced the much-desired charter
of Charles the Fifth, with an order of the Viceroy
giving it validity. On the next day Mas'aniello was
to go in state to the palace to receive confirmation of
these privileges, and the night of Tuesday fell upon
a pleasing scene, the good Cardinal receiving the
thanks and blessings of his grateful flock.
During that night, however, somebody, vaguely
described as " a personage," was devising an elaborate
scheme of murder. Don Gabriele is sure it could
not have been the Cardinal, but he does not tell us
who it was. Perhaps some enemy of the worthy
Cardinal, designing to filch his credit while he slept,
posted the murderers in the very Church of the
Carmine, without the knowledge of either the good
Fathers or their excellent Archbishop ! There at any
rate they were, and in the morning Mas'aniello, going
into the church, was greeted by a salvo of balls,
every one of which, by a miracle naturally set down
to the credit of the Madonna della Carmine, flew
past him harmlessly. The people, having wreaked
A FATHER OF THE PEOPLE 173
summary vengeance on the would-be murderers, were
unreasonable enough to suspect the Cardinal of
complicity in the crime. But that good man had
abundant evidence that it was not so, and Mas'-
aniello, yielding to reverence again, publicly declared
his contrition for the unworthy suspicion he had
formed. Whereupon the Cardinal, who was too
great to harbour resentment, mounted the steeple of
the Carmine and blessed the crowd. But still the
identity of the personage is not revealed. Don
Gabriele is contemptuous of his folly in thinking to
kill the hydra by a premature and badly devised
attack. When the personage tried next his scheme
was better laid.
Meantime all went on wheels. An audience with
the Viceroy was appointed, and Mas'aniello, having
with great difficulty been persuaded to array himself
in garments of silver cloth, which splendour he con-
sidered quite unsuited to his humble origin, mounted
a richly caparisoned steed and rode towards the
palace at the head of an innumerable crowd of
people. What a change of state was there ! On
Sunday morning this fellow was among the basest
of a great city, not even a fish-seller, but the ragged
attendant who provided scraps of paper in which to
wrap up the fish. On Wednesday, clothed like an
emperor and followed by a crowd which adored him,
he rode in triumph to meet the Viceroy of the
proudest monarchy on earth. Surely never, save in
the wild fantasy of Eastern fairy tales, has fortune
turned her wheel so swiftly, or given more lightly
what she caught no less rapidly away.
Mas'aniello cast himself humbly at the feet of the
Viceroy, who raised him in the sight of all the people
and embraced him with tears of affection. Don
Gabriele makes no reference to Judas at this point,
174 TWO VERY NOBLE TRAGEDIES
which is odd, seeing how well equipped he was
with apt references to Scripture. The crowd
roared with pleasure at the great man's conde-
scension, making such a noise that no one of the
gracious words used by the Duke of Arcos could
be heard. On this and the fact was noted as a
striking proof of the ease with which the people
could be swayed by one they trusted Mas'aniello
turned towards them and laid his finger on his lip.
Instantly the roars ceased, and all the vast crowd
stood as mute as carven statues. He waved his
hand, in sign that they should go, and as if by magic
the wide piazza, crowded to suffocation only a
moment previously, stood bare and empty. The
Viceroy offered him a rich jewel, but he refused it,
declaring that it was his set purpose to go back to
his lowly station: and indeed, having obtained de-
crees which confirmed the ordinances of the previous
day, Mas'aniello returned to the Piazza, del Mercato,
doffed his splendid raiment, and put on once more
the rags he had been used to wear when he followed
humbly in the rear of his master who sold fish.
The work of quieting the city was almost done.
During Thursday and Friday the tumults were
steadily repressed ; and on Saturday the Cardinal,
leaving his temporary quarters at the Carmine,
returned to his own palace in solemn procession,
followed by Mas'aniello upon horseback. The streets
were decorated. The people thanked and blessed
their saviours. But already the strain of his position
was telling on Mas'aniello. It was noticed that he
did not sleep, but was possessed by a feverish activity
which kept him sitting all day long in the scorching
summer sun, organising, judging, and directing. The
constant apprehension of murder weighed upon him ;
and even on the Wednesday, after discovering the
THE WHEEL TURNS 175
plot to kill him, he was disposed to credit a wild
story that the Viceroy had caused the fountains to
be poisoned, a belief which could only be dissipated
when the Cardinal, sending for a great beaker of
fresh water from the fountain of the Carmine, drank
it off in full sight of the crowd. Fatigue, excite-
ment, some natural fear of death there was nothing
more the matter with the lad than a day's rest with
some peace of mind would have repaired. But fate
gave him the opportunity for neither ; and indeed,
if one calculates the possibilities before him, the
power of the forces which he had offended, and
the treacherous nature of the popular favour which
was his only strength, one may well ask whether
fate, kinder to mankind than they ever realise, did
not show charity and love when she gave him death
as the meed of his unselfish service to the people.
It is certain that ere the week was over Mas'aniello
began to show signs of unsettled brain, infirmity of
temper, extravagance of manner. The people began
to be impatient of him, turning rapidly as ever
against those who serve them best.
" Amor di padrone, e vino di fiasco,
La sera e buono e la mattina e guasto."
The people were Mas'aniello's "padrone," and like
the wine in the flask, their favour was sweet at night
but sour in the morning. There is no need to tell
the history of the next two days in full, or to drag
out the obscure conspiracy which culminated on the
Tuesday morning. The poor lad knew well what
was in store for him, and the knowledge may have
completed his mental agitation. The Feast of the
Madonna del Carmine came at last, and Mas'aniello
went early to the church to await the Cardinal.
When he saw the great man coming he ran to meet
176 TWO VERY NOBLE TRAGEDIES
him and broke out, " Eminence and Lord, I see
already that my people are abandoning me and
betraying me. Now for my consolation I beg that
there may be public procession to this most holy
Lady of the Carmine, headed by the Viceroy, and
I desire that your Eminence will also join it." The
Cardinal embraced the agitated lad, and praised his
devotion, assuring him that all should happen as he
wished.
The Mass began. The church was packed with
people so close that one could scarcely breathe. In
the face of this vast crowd Mas'aniello mounted into
the pulpit, and in burning words reproached the
people for their inclination to desert him, reminding
them of all that he had achieved, not for himself, but
for them. Then turning on his past life, with some
passionate remembrance of the holy character of
the day on which he spoke, he laid bare his sins,
calling loudly on the people to do the like, confessing
them humbly before God. Then as his passion and
delirium increased, he lost control utterly of himself,
stripped off his clothes, and threatened to dash
himself down from the pulpit on the floor of the
church. By sheer force he was restrained, and being
led away into the cloister of the convent, leaned out
of an open window which looked towards the sea,
seeking to cool his head with the fresh breeze that
blew from Capri or from Ischia.
But for the second time the murderers were hidden
in the Carmine. In the cloister they lurked waiting
for the order of the Viceroy. The order arrived.
The murderers came out openly and went along
the corridor, calling " Signor Mas'aniello." The lad
heard them, and went towards them saying, "What
is it, my people?" on which they shot him, and he
fell, crying " Ah, traitors and unjust ! "
HISTORY JUDGES 177
Such was the end of Mas'aniello, a death which
at the moment it occurred seems to have caused no
sort of sorrow to the people. In fact, when the
head of the prince-fisherman was cut off and carried
through the streets on a pike there were few found
who did not curse it, while the headless trunk was
dragged about the Mercato by children in derision.
But not many days passed before the instable people
discovered how great a loss he was to them. The
gabelles were reimposed, bread grew dear again.
There was no longer any protector for the people;
and by a quick revulsion of feeling, when it was too
late, the corpse was dug up, the head reunited to
the body, and those funeral pomps accorded which
I spoke of in a former chapter.
And so the Viceroy and the Cardinal won the
game, as rulers often win it in this world when they
cast aside both faith and honour. But for all such
crimes history reserves its chastisement. She speaks
without fear or favour, and declares that these two
princes cut a sorry figure beside the fisher boy whom
they betrayed and slew. Both alike, whether spiritual
or temporal, are of that poor scum of humanity
which merits nothing but contempt ; whereas
Mas'aniello is heroic, stained by no unworthy action,
and bearing himself right nobly in a crisis as won-
drous as any in the whole history of man.
N
CHAPTER IX
VESUVIUS AND THE CITIES WHICH HE HAS
DESTROYED HERCULANEUM, POMPEII,
AND STABILE
IT is to most strangers approaching Naples for the
first time a matter of surprise to discover that
Vesuvius has two peaks rising out of the same base,
and that far removed from all the range of Apennines
which, dim and distant, hedge in the wide fertile
plain.
When viewed from Naples, Monte Somma, the
landward peak, appears scarcely less conical than its
neighbour, which contains the crater ; but from the
other side it has a wholly different aspect, and if one
looks at it from the Sorrento cliffs one perceives that
it is no peak, but a long ridge, the segment of a circle
which, if completed, would enfold the present eruptive
cone.
The fact is important, for not only is it the key
to all the topography of the mountain, but it is
essential to the comprehension of what happened on
that August day of the year 79 A.D., when the dead
volcano woke to life. The broken circle of Monte
Somma was complete in those days ; and men look-
ing up from Pompeii or Herculaneum saw a mountain
vastly different from that which we behold, yet one
178
*J& f.
'
NAPLES FROM THE COKSU VITTORK) E.M ANL'KI.E
MONTE SOMMA 179
which, from the part before us, can be reconstructed
by an easy use of the imagination.
If a man will take his stand on the lower heights
of the hills behind Castellammare, he will find that
he looks over Pompeii, over Bosco Reale lying on
the first slopes which swell upward from the plain,
into the mouth of the gap which parts Vesuvius from
Somma. Even from that distance he will obtain a
forcible impression of the black cliff of Somma,
towering almost sheer to the height of a thousand
feet above the bottom of the gap, while the outer
face of the same rock wall slopes towards the sunny
plain and the woods of Ottajano with an incline so
gentle as to be comparatively easy of ascent.
Clearly the two faces of Somma have been differ-
ently formed. The sheer one was, at least in part, the
actual wall of the prehistoric crater, that caldron in
which the volcanic forces raged in days so ancient
that they had been clean forgotten when the Romans
ruled the land. The present cone did not exist. The
circuit of Monte Somma was unbroken, and lay
clothed with green meadows up to the very summit.
But where, then, is the rest of that gigantic wall ? It
was blown away by the eruption that destroyed
Pompeii.
This is the first tremendous fact which the visitor
to Naples has to realise ; and it is well worth while to
absorb it thoroughly before setting foot upon the
mountain, for nothing else seen there carries with it
the same impression of overwhelming, cataclysmal
awe. It is from a distance that the terror of the
thing can be appreciated best When one goes
forward from the observatory on the mountain-side,
skirting the flank of the eruptive cone, into that
portion of the gap which is called the Atrio del
Cavallo though it would at certain times be found
1 80 VESUVIUS
as safe to stable a steed in the Kelpie's flow as in this
wilderness of burnt rock the sight of the steep wall
towering on one's left is infinitely striking. But at so
close a distance, and in the immediate neighbourhood
of so many other sights, it is scarcely possible to
concentrate one's thoughts on the girth of the ancient
crater. To comprehend the extent of the wall which
has been blown away one must go further off, till one
can distinguish the shape of Somma's wall, till one's
eye can measure the vast size of the crater which
would be formed by its completion, even allowing for
the doubts which have been raised whether the
circuit could have been so vast as this measurement
would imply. There are some shattered fragments
of the wall to be seen upon the south or seaward side
of the volcano. The ridge where the white observa-
tory building stands is one ; another, named the
" pedementina," appears as a shoulder of the moun-
tain, clearly distinguishable from Naples. But these
scattered remnants help little towards the general
impression. It is by contemplating Somma that one
learns to comprehend the appalling nature of the
convulsion which, with little warning, blasted away
so immense a portion of the mountain regarded by
those who dwelt beneath it as one of the eternal
hills.
Far from having any title to immortality Vesuvius
is among the youngest and most mutable of moun-
tains. The present cone is, as I said, the creation of
the last eighteen centuries, piled up by successive
eruptions to something more than the height of
Somma, which once, as its name implies, towered far
above it. Even though the antiquity of the mountain
be reckoned by the age of Somma, or of some earlier
cone, on the ruins of which Somma may have reared
itself, it is as nothing when set beside the great wall
THE BIRTH OF VESUVIUS 181
of mountains which sweeps round the plain and ends
in the great crags of St Angelo and the cliffs of
Capri. Those hills may be termed " eternal " by as
true a warrant as any on the earth. But long after
they were shaped and fashioned the sea flowed over
the Campagna Felice and the site of Naples.
Vesuvius was a volcanic vent-hole underneath the
water, like many another which now seethes and
hisses deep down in the blue bay, forming lava reefs
about which the best fish always cluster. Then came
the upheaval of the sea floor, and Vesuvius stood on
dry land, no longer a sea-drenched reef or islet, but
a hill of ashes and of lava piled over a crack in the
earth's crust, which belched forth fiery torrents for
unnumbered years, and sank at last to rest after an
outburst which, if one may judge by the hugeness of
the crater it scooped out, must have been terrible
almost beyond conception.
Yet it was completely forgotten ! How many
centuries of rest must it not have needed to erase
from the minds of men all memory of a cataclysm
so tremendous ! In the days when doom was draw-
ing near to the cities of the Campagna, an old tra-
dition was current that fire had once been seen coming
out of the summit of Vesuvius. Doubtless many
people looking up at the green mountain pastures
shrugged their shoulders at the tale. Yet Strabo, the
geographer, remarked that the rocks upon the surface
of the mountain looked as if they had been sub-
jected to fire. It is difficult for us to detach the idea
of terror from Vesuvius, and to contemplate it with
thoughts at all resembling those which the dwellers
in the buried cities bestowed upon it. There has,
however, been one period when the summit of the
mountain presented an aspect probably not far un-
like that which a Pompeiian would have seen, had
1 82 VESUVIUS
curiosity led him to the top after visiting his vine-
yards or his pastures on the lower slopes. That time
was in the years immediately preceding the eruption
of 1631. Vesuvius had been almost at rest for near
five centuries, and there were many who believed its
fires to be extinct.
The Abate Braccini ascended the mountain in 1612,
nineteen years before the outbreak. Vesuvius was
then, as it is now, somewhat higher than Somma,
though the comparative level has been changed more
than once in the last three centuries. On the summit
Braccini found a profound chasm, a mile in circuit,
surrounded by a bulwark of calcined stones, on which
no vegetation grew. Having crossed it, he descended
to a little plain, where he found plants of divers
kinds, though in no profusion. But from that point
there was a gulf of verdure. One could descend it by
tortuous paths, which led to the very bottom of the
abyss, and were used not only by woodcutters plying
their trade among the dense forest trees which had
grown up to maturity on the lava soil, but also by
animals which strayed down to browse on the succu-
lent, rich grass. Neither men nor cattle retained any
fear of the green crater depths. Only the rim of
calcined stones at the summit seems to have betrayed
the volcanic fire of old days, except that here and
there a wreath of smoke coiled away across the elms
and oaks and the pleasant scrub of broom and other
underwood.
About the same time a Neapolitan descended to
the bottom of the crater. He found there a flat plain
with two small lakes, the crater walls all pierced with
caverns, through some of which the wind whistled with
a noise which sounded awfully on that dim, lonely
spot. There were tales of treasure hidden in the
caves, but no man had dared explore them. The
VESUVIUS STIRS 183
crater was so deep that the descent and ascent
occupied three hours.
Such was the aspect of the mountain in days when
it had certainly rested for a shorter space than in the
great age of Pompeii and Herculaneum. All men
must have known what none remembered in either of
those doomed cities. The tales of terror spreading
from the mountain were still fresh, yet they inspired
no more fear than there is in Ischia to-day of Monte
Epomeo ; and the herdsmen sat and whistled all day
long upon the slopes as they do now within an hour's
climb of Casamicciola.
To this false security must be ascribed the fact
that those who dwelt about the mountain paid little
heed to the indications of an approaching break in
its long rest. Profound changes were taking place
within the abyss which Braccini has described ; and
on the 1st or 2nd of December, 1631, an inhabitant
of Ottajano, visiting the summit, found the woods
gone, the chasm filled up to the brim. A level plain
had replaced the yawning gulf. The bold Ottajanese
walked across from one side to the other, surprised,
no doubt, to see what had occurred, but, so far as
we can judge from Braccini's narrative, by no means
afflicted with any sense of awe at the magnitude of
the event, still less inclined to see in it a foretaste
of danger for the country.
A few nights later the peasants of Torre del Greco
and of Massa di Somma began to complain that the
growlings of the demons confined within the moun-
tain disturbed their rest. Religious ceremonies were
carried out, but the growls continued. On the
night of the I5th, the air being extraordinarily clear,
there hung in the sky above the mountain a star of
strange size and brilliance. Dusk fell upon that day,
and still there was no alarm ; but somewhat later in
1 84 VESUVIUS
the evening, a servant crossing the Ponte della
Maddalena, on his way home from Portici, saw a
flash of lightning strike the mountain ; while at
Resina a deep red glow appearing on the summit
perplexed the villagers, for no such sight had been
seen within the memory of living man.
As night passed and day approached, the reports
of those who had ventured up the slopes grew more
awful. Peasants between Torre del Greco and Torre
dell' Annunziata had seen smoke pour in volumes
out of the Atrio del Cavallo. A herdsman on the
mountain saw the pastures rent, and the sweet herb-
age turned into a raging blast furnace. Santolo di
Simone ventured some way up to ascertain the truth.
He saw the ground cleft in divers places, out of which
poured smoke and flame, while all the air was filled
with thunderous reports, and great stones cast out of
the fiery gulfs were hurled about the slopes. Mean-
time dawn in Naples was at hand ; and as the light
increased, men going about the common affairs of
their existence began to take note of an extraordinary
cloud which hung above Vesuvius, having the precise
shape of a gigantic pine tree. Some wondered and
some feared, but none understood what was the terror
which had come upon them, till Braccini, going into
his library and taking down his Pliny, read them that
vivid passage which describes the sight young Pliny
saw when he looked towards Vesuvius from Misenum.
" There," said Braccini, as he closed the book, " there,
in the words of sixteen centuries ago, is depicted
what you see to-day."
That pine tree has become awfully familiar to most
Neapolitans now alive ; and to some of those who
visit the city during an eruption it seems as if
familiarity had bred contempt, and caused the occa-
sion to be regarded as one for merriment, since it
A HORRIBLE SURPRISE 185
draws strangers there in countless numbers, and en-
riches every trader on the coast. But there is terror
also in the streets when the shocks come rapidly,
when doors and windows rattle with continuous
concussions, and all the city reeks with sulphurous
stenches coming one knows not whence. To this
natural and human fear there was added, in the days
of which Braccini wrote, the shock of a horrible sur-
prise. The people were not dreaming of eruptions.
They thought of them as little as did their far-distant
kinsmen, who occupied the lovely shore when Pompeii
was a city of the quick, not of the dead. That is
what makes Braccini's tale so interesting. It repro-
duces for us, as nearly as is possible, a picture of
what must have happened in the city streets on that
morning when Pliny came sailing from Misenum at
the urgent cry of Herculaneum for help, only to find
his ships beaten off the coast by a hail of fiery
stones.
The Cardinal Archbishop of Naples was at Torre
del Greco on that fateful morning. He hurried back
to the city, and having celebrated the Sacrament, and
given orders for the rite to be solemnised throughout
the city, he went up to the treasury where the relics
of the saints were kept, intending to arrange a solemn
procession. The blood of San Gennaro was found
already liquefied and boiling ! Great crowds accom-
panied the procession, the superstitious Neapolitans
turned to their priests and saints at the first sign of
danger, and marched behind the relics with effusion
of piety, the men scourging themselves till the blood
ran from their shoulders, the women dishevelled and
weeping, while crowds of boys chanted the Litany
with extraordinary tenderness. The shops were shut.
Naples had become a city of devotees.
But San Gennaro, though his blood had boiled,
1 86 VESUVIUS
was not ready to disperse the peril. The shocks of
earthquake grew louder. The concussions rattled
faster from the mountain. Towards noon thick
darkness stole down upon the city, as it had upon
Misenum sixteen hundred years before. The smell
of sulphur in the streets was choking. Men asked
themselves if so strong a reek could possibly travel
from Vesuvius, and whether some vent had not
opened close at hand. The houses, says Braccini,
were swaying like ships at sea, and in the air there
was a horrible roaring sound like the blast of many
furnaces. The darkness grew more dense, and tongues
of lightning flashed continuously out of the mirk sky.
The crashes became quite appalling. Naples went
wild with terror. The Viceroy sent drummers round
the city appealing to the people to live cleanly in
that which appeared to be the supreme moment of
the created world. Men and women utterly unknown
to each other ran up and embraced, seeking comfort,
and crying, " Gesu, misericordia ! "
So passed the first day of the reawakened activity
of Vesuvius. The night brought no abatement of
terror. Early in the morning the crashes redoubled.
The whole mountain seemed to be springing into the
air, and all the surface of the earth rocked like water
in a vessel which is violently shaken. At the same
moment the sea retreated for near half a mile, and
then swept back to a point far above its level. At
Naples nothing more than that was seen, but the
miserable inhabitants of Resina perceived that those
mighty birth throes had ended in the ejection of a
vast flood of lava, which was pouring down the
mountain on the seaward side. The fiery torrent
came on with such speed that it had reached the sea
in less than an hour from the outbreak. As it ad-
vanced it split into seven streams, each one of which
DEVASTATING LAVA 187
took a different course of devastation. One flowed
in the direction of San Jorio, which it destroyed,
engulfing, it is said, no less than three thousand
persons, including a religious procession. A second
arm of the flood destroyed Bosco Reale and Torre
dell' Annunziata, running out more than two hun-
dred yards into the sea, where it formed a reef so hot
that the water round about it boiled for days. A
third wrecked Torre del Greco, a fourth poured over
Resina, and a fifth, passing westwards, ruined San
Giorgio a Cremano, and touched Barra and San
Giovanni. Meantime a sixth stream, after filling the
valleys divided by the ridge on which the observatory
stands now, swept down on Massa di Somma, and
reached San Sebastiano.
In this point the eruption of 1631 differed from
that which destroyed Pompeii. In the latter there
was no lava, but only falling stone and ash, either
dry, or compacted into mud by storms of rain and
showers of water thrown out of the crater. But it
was not by lava only that the country was devastated
three centuries and a half ago. Ashes fell also in
such masses that near Vesuvius they were heaped up
twelve feet deep, and great quantities of them drifting
across southern Italy fell upon the shores of that
lovely bay where Taranto looks across to the snow-
topped mountains of Calabria. Stones fell also of
astounding weight. One which was thrown into
Massa di Somma is reported to have weighed 50,000
pounds ; while another, which fell as far away as Nola,
was of such dimensions that a team of twenty oxen
could not stir it.
When this great eruption ended, the relative heights
of Vesuvius and Somma were reversed, and the erup-
tive cone, which had risen 50 feet above its neighbour,
stood nearly 200 feet below it. It is almost the
1 88 VESUVIUS
rule that in great eruptions Vesuvius suffers loss of
height, while the cone is piled up by smaller ones.
Such is the country in which a teeming population
elects to live. It is said that no less than 80,000
persons have their homes on the slopes of the moun-
tain a fact which appears inexplicable to those who
do not know by experience how small the loss of life
may be in the greatest eruption. It is true that in
1631 a vast number of persons perished. But this
was due probably in some measure to the fact that
they did not know their danger and took no proper
measures to avoid it. The men then living had seen
nothing like the sudden peril which beset them. But
every peasant of our day is well aware what lava
floods may do, and how their course will lie. All
have their little images of San Gennaro, which they
set up in their cottages, and many can tell how the
good saint has averted from his vineyard a fiery
torrent which crawled on to the point when it seemed
as if not even heavenly power could avert destruction,
yet twisted off to one side and left him scatheless.
At times, of course, the velocity of the lava is so
great that no man can do aught but flee. In 1766
Sir William Hamilton saw a stream which ran in the
first mile with a velocity " equal to that of the River
Severn at the passage near Bristol," while in 1794 the
lava ran through Torre del Greco at the rate of one
foot in a second. Yet the loss of life was small.
" Napoli fa i peccati," say the people, " e Torre li
paga ! " Naples commits the sins and Torre pays for
them. It is true enough ; yet the toll is taken more
in property than life. Moreover, the after-fruits of an
eruption are worth rubies to the people, so fertile
is the soil created by the decaying lava.
That the loss of life remains so small is the more
surprising in view of the fact that Vesuvius can by
THE CAPRICE OF THE MOUNTAIN 189
no means be trusted to discharge itself on all occa-
sions by the main crater. In fact, the flanks of the
mountain, strengthened and compacted as they are
by the outflow of countless lava streams, are yet
seamed and fissured by the rupture of the surface
to form other vents. Occasionally these "bocche"
mouths, as the Italians call them, have opened far
down the slopes among the cultivated fields and vine-
yards. It was so in 1861, not fortunately one of the
greatest of eruptions. The bocche of that year are
on the hillside no great way above Torre del Greco.
Nothing, in fact, is certain about the operation of
volcanic forces, and this is a fact which may be borne
in mind by those who elect to ascend the mountain
during an eruption. Sir William Hamilton in 1767
had a narrow escape. " I was making my observa-
tions," he says, "upon the lava, which had already
from the spot where it first broke out reached the
valley " that is, the Atrio del Cavallo " when on a
sudden, about noon, I heard a violent noise within
the mountain, and at a spot about a quarter of a mile
off the place where I stood, the mountain split, and
with much noise from this new mouth a fountain of
liquid fire shot up many feet high, and then like a
torrent rolled on directly towards us. The earth
shook, and at the same time a volley of stones fell
thick upon us ; in an instant clouds of black smoke
and ashes caused almost a total darkness ; the ex-
plosions from the top of the mountain were much
louder than any thunder I ever heard, and the smell
of the sulphur was very offensive. My guide, alarmed,
took to his heels ; and I must confess I was not at
my ease. I followed close, and we ran near three
miles without stopping."
To run three miles over the broken and uneven
lava reefs of the Piano, with a fiery torrent hunting
190 VESUVIUS
close behind, is not an experience which would be
relished by the ordinary tourist, however far it might
be sweetened in the retrospect to the adventurous man
of science. Yet happy is the man who in such a
case gets off with a sharp run. In 1872 a party of
tourists were less happy. The terrible eruption of
that year deserves attention, being certainly the
greatest within the present generation, and fortunately
it has been described with knowledge and precision
by Professor Palmieri who, with noble devotion to the
cause of science, had spent so many years in the ob-
servatory planted on the barren ridge of trachyte
which divides the two valley-arms which the Atrio
del Cavallo projects towards Naples. Those valleys
receive the streams of lava which are ejected into the
Atrio, and when the volume of the flow is large, it has
happened that the observatory has been almost en-
girdled with the red-hot torrents a position of which,
if the danger may be exaggerated, the awe certainly
cannot, and which must fill all men with admiration
for the illustrious scientists who endure it.
Palmieri regarded the eruption as the last phase of
a series of disturbances which began at the end of
January, 1871. From November, 1868, until the end
of December, 1870, the mountain had been almost
quiet. Only a few fumaroles discharging smoke bore
witness to the need for watchfulness. " Early in 1871
the delicate instruments of the observatory which
register earth tremors were observed to be slightly
agitated, and the crater discharged a few incandescent
projectiles, detonating at the same time, but not re-
markably. On the 1 3th of January an aperture
appeared on the northern edge of the upper plain
of the Vesuvian cone ; at first a little lava issued
from it, then a small cone arose which threw out in-
candescent projectiles and much smoke of a reddish
*
A GREAT ERUPTION 191
colour, whilst the central crater continued to detonate
more loudly and frequently. The lava flow continued
to increase until the beginning of March, without
extending much beyond the base of the cone, although
it had great mobility. In March the little cone
appeared not only to subside but even partly to give
way, as almost always happens with eccentric cones
when their activity is at an end. ... A little smoke
issued from the small crater, and a loud hissing from
the interior was audible. By lying along the edge I
could see a cavity of cylindrical form about ten metres
deep. . . . The bottom of the crater was level, but in
the centre a small cone of about two metres had
formed, pointed in such a manner that it possessed
but a very narrow opening at the apex, from which
smoke issued with a hissing sound, and from which
were spurted a few very small incandescent stones and
scoriae. This little cone increased in size as well as
in activity until it filled the crater and rose four or
five metres above the brim. New and more abun-
dant lavas appeared near the base of this cone, and
pouring continually into the 'Atrio del Cavallo'
rushed into the ' Fossa della Vetrana ' in the direction
of the observatory, and towards the Crocella, where
they accumulated to such an extent as to cover the
hillside for a distance of about three hundred metres.
. . . For many months the lava descended from the
cone and traversed the ' Atrio del Cavallo.' . . . On
the 3rd and 4th of November a copious and splendid
stream coursed down the principal cone on its western
side, but was soon exhausted. The new small cone
appeared again at rest, but did not cease to emit
smoke. . . ."
In the beginning of January, 1872, the little cone
again became active, the crater of the preceding
October resumed strength, there were bellowings,
192 VESUVIUS
projectiles, and copious outflows of lava. In February
the action of the hidden forces abated somewhat ; but
in March, at the full moon, the cone opened on the
north-western side, the cleavage being marked out by
a line of fumaroles, and a lava stream issued from
the lowest part without any noise and with very little
smoke, pouring down into the Atrio del Cavallo as
far as the precipices of Monte Somma. This lava
ceased flowing after a week, but the fumaroles still
pointed out the clefts, and between the small re-made
cone and the central crater a new crater of small
dimensions and interrupted activity opened. On the
23rd of April, another full moon, the observatory
instruments were agitated, the activity of the craters
increased, and on the evening of the 24th splendid
lavas descended the cone in many directions. The
spectacle was of superb beauty, There was clear
moonshine, and from Naples the outline of a vast
fiery tree was seen to be traced on the black side
of the mountain. Strangers poured into the city.
The long period of activity without destruction dis-
posed them to regard the show as a display of
fireworks. Half Naples set its heart on ascending
the mountain by night, and little wonder, for the
moonlit bay reddened by the wide reflection from
the burning breast of the volcano made a sight on
which no man could look without the sense of
witnessing a thing which was absolutely unearthly
in the splendour of its beauty.
But on the following morning the flow was nearly
spent. One stream only continued to flow from the
base of the cone. And this one was almost in-
accessible, by reason of the roughness of the ground.
As night fell the visitors began to arrive. No less
than 1 20 carriages are said to have passed the
hermitage by dusk. Palmieri tried to dissuade the
A TERRIBLE DISASTER 193
sightseers from going on, but in vain. The display
of the previous night had been too splendid. They
hoped continually that the show might be repeated.
It was, but in a manner which they little looked for.
The crater was casting out huge stones, with de-
tonations resembling the discharge of whole parks
of artillery at once. From time to time the din
ceased absolutely, then low and softly it began again,
and gained force quickly till it crashed as loudly as
before. When midnight was past, immense clouds
of smoke began to pour out of all the craters, and
lava broke out simultaneously from many points upon
the slopes. Out of the chief crater rose the awful
pine tree. The detonations grew more constant.
There was still time to flee; but the spectacle was
growing grander every moment, and inexperienced
guides led forward a large party into the Atrio, where
they stood watching such a sight as living men have
rarely seen. At half-past three came the catastrophe.
The whole of the great cone rent itself from top to
bottom with an appalling crash, casting out a huge
stream of fiery lava. At the same moment two
large craters formed upon the summit, discharging
showers of red-hot scoriae, while the pillar of the
pine tree rose up to many times more than even
the vast height which it then stretched across the
sky. A cloud of choking blinding smoke enveloped
the visitors, a fiery hail rained down on them, the
lava broke out immediately by them, and barred
their retreat to the observatory. Eight medical
students were engulfed by the fire, with others who
were not known. Eleven more were grievously
injured ; and when the survivors were able to reach
the observatory, it was in several cases but to die.
The lava flow from this grand fissure was restrained
for some time within the Atrio ; but issuing thence
o
194 VESUVIUS
at last divided, one branch threatening Resina, but
stopping happily almost as soon as it reached the
cultivated ground, while the larger branch ran through
the Fossa della Vetrana, traversing its whole length
of 1,300 metres in three hours. It dashed into the
Fossa della Faraone, then again divided, one arm
of the diminished stream destroying a great part
of the villages of Massa and San Sebastiano, and
flowing on so far in the direction of Naples that
had it continued but for four-and-twenty hours longer
it must have flowed into the city streets.
It may be supposed that whilst this awful eruption
was proceeding, the position of the courageous men
of science in the observatory was rather glorious than
safe. Nothing can exceed the value of the services
rendered to science by these gentlemen who elect
to spend their lives upon a spot which is always
dreary and exposed to constant danger. They are
of the outposts of mankind. I take my cap off to
their stout hearts and their keen intellects. To them
their danger is a little thing, and they would not
thank me if I were to dwell too long on it. But
I will take Professor Palmieri's own words, and beg
those who read to ponder over what is involved
in them. "On the night of the 26th of April the
observatory lay between two torrents of fire. The
heat was insufferable. The glass of the windows
was hot and crackling, especially on the side of the
Fossa della Vetrana. In all the rooms there was
a smell of scorching."
Meantime the spectacle of the mountain must have
been bewilderingly grand. The cone was seamed
and perforated on every side, and the fiery lava
issuing from the vents covered it so completely
that, in Palmieri's picturesque expression, Vesuvius
"sweated fire." On the 27th of April the igneous
A ROYAL PALACE 195
period of the eruption was over, though the rain of
ashes and projectiles became more abundant, the
crashes were louder than ever, the pine tree was of
a darker colour, and was continually furrowed by
flashes of lightning; while on the 29th stones fell
at the observatory of such size that the glass of the
unshuttered windows was broken. By midnight,
of that day, however, there was a marked improve-
ment, and on the ist of May the eruption was at
an end.
The visitor who strolls to-day through the main
street of Portici sees nothing but a continuation
of the squalid life and poverty of building which
have followed him continuously from the eastern
quarters of the city. The mean aspect of the
town is unexpected. One had not looked for any
striving after the dream of classical beauty, once
so frequent and so great upon the Campanian shore.
But this was the chosen pleasure resort of the
Bourbon kings; and some greater dignity might
have been expected in the close neighbourhood of
a palace.
The palace is there still. The noisy street runs
through its courtyard. Poor deserted palace ! It
has lost its royalty of aspect, and for all one sees
in passing by the discoloured walls and shuttered
windows it might be any poverty-stricken crowded
palazzo in Naples. But turn in beneath the archway
on the right, and go by the large cool staircase, across
the clanking stones, until you emerge into the hot
spring sun again. There is a noble semicircular
expanse, flanked on either hand by a terrace, adorned
with busts and vases, and with stairs descending to
the garden, which stretches down to a belt of pine
trees, cut away a little in the centre to reveal that
196 VESUVIUS
band of heavenly blue which is the sea. The
young trees standing by the pine are in fresh leaf;
the grass is full of poppies ; white butterflies are
skimming to and fro across it; all is silent and
deserted. A bare-armed stable-boy comes out to
train a skinny pony round the terrace. The stucco
of the walls is peeling off; the long rows of windows
are shuttered ; the sentry boxes stand empty. It is
forty years since any courtier came out to taste
the evening freshness on this spot where Sir William
Hamilton talked of the wonders of the buried cities
so long and eagerly that he forgot to watch the wife
and friend whose sins the world forbears to reckon
when it remembers the beauty of the one and the
valour and wisdom of the other.
It is but a little way beyond the palace to the spot
where the Prince d'Elboeuf is said, while sinking
a well in the year 1709, to have chanced on things
of which he did not know the meaning. This is one
of the fables which demonstrate the extreme difficulty
of speaking the truth, even about important and
world-famous matters. Nothing is more certain than
that the prince sank his "well" with the hope and
intention of drawing up not water, but antiquities.
The fact is, that in the year just mentioned he
bought a country house, which stood near the site
of the present railway station. It was perfectly well
known that Herculaneum lay buried underneath
Portici or Resina, and the prince began excavating
of set purpose. It was mere chance which guided
him to a spot where his first shaft came right down
on the benches of the theatre, thus letting in to
Herculaneum the first gleam of daylight which had
entered there for more than sixteen centuries. Not
much more than that stray glimmer has enlightened
the old academic city even now ; for none of the
HERCULANEUM 197
energy and learned patience lavished daily on
Pompeii has been expended here.
Herculaneum as it lies to-day, awaiting its turn
for excavation, creates in one respect an impression
which Pompeii excites in a far less degree. It
retains the visible aspect of a buried city. The
sense of overwhelming tragedy is never lost.
Pompeii stands free and open under the clear sky ;
so large, so perfect, that in the fascination of its
archaeology one is somewhat led away from the
disaster. It is a deserted city. One knows what
it was that drove the people out, but it is easy to
forget. Perhaps one cares more to gloat over the rich
old life laid bare so freely than to burden one's mind
with memory of that day when the glow of August
sunshine turned to darkness " as of a room shut up,"
and death came down from the mountain into the
crowded streets.
At Herculaneum the mere fragment of a street,
the few half-buried houses, the pit in which they lie,
the cavernous darkness which hides the amphitheatre,
stimulate the imagination till it leaps to a sudden
comprehension of what it was that happened on that
day of woe. One passes from the dirty street of
Resina into a building of no dignity, somewhat like
the entrance to the public baths of some small
English town. A guide appears and guides one
down a flight of steps which are at first palpably
modern. But ere long the tread changes. One is
on an ancient stair, and almost immediately the
guide pauses in a vaulted corridor running right and
left through perfect darkness. The height is hardly
more than permits a tall man to walk upright. Here
and there an arched opening in the corridor goes
one sees not whither. Passing under such an arch
one may descend four steps, beyond which rises
198 VESUVIUS
another wall. That wall is tufa ; it is no part of
the structure. It flowed or fell here when it was half
liquid ; it came out from Vesuvius, and it is what
overwhelmed the city.
The steps, thus interrupted by the intrusion of
what are now stone walls, are the upper tier of seats
in the amphitheatre. A gleam of daylight breaks
the darkness : it comes from the Prince d'Elbceuf s
shaft, which pierces the stone steps and goes down
far below them. One looks up the tubular wet
boring and then plunges forward to the bottom of the
theatre through blackness barely scattered by the
candles which the guide carries.
A short descent of nineteen steps in all brings one
to the floor of the theatre, at the spot appropriated
to the orchestra. The stage is a low platform,
approached on either hand by steps. It is deprived
of some part of its original depth by pillars and
barriers hardened out of that choking mud which
poured down from the mountain. Such barriers
present themselves on every side ; they leave the
theatre formless ; they create gangways where none
existed, walls where the spectators had clear line of
vision, darkness where the sun shone freely eighteen
centuries ago. In one of these gangways behind
the stage the clear impression of human features
looks down from the rough wet ceiling ; it is the
impression of a player's mask. There were doubtless
many in the theatre when the seething flood rolled in.
Among this darkness and these sights the sense
of tragedy tightens on the imagination. The cruelty
of the ruin stands before one and is not to be set
aside. There are remains of frescoes here and there ;
but they are almost destroyed, and serve only to
increase the pity that a theatre which once rang with
laughter and glowed so richly with soft light and
THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CITY 199
colour should lie wet, buried and forsaken in the
darkness.
It is sometimes said that Herculaneum was des-
troyed by lava the guides use the word to this day.
But Vesuvius threw out no lava in the great eruption
which destroyed the cities. It ejected much in pre-
historic times. Pompeii itself is built upon a lava
ridge, which in the old days was quarried for mill-
stones, thus giving rise to an important industry.
But in historic times lava did not flow if we may
trust geologists till the year 1036 A.D.
Herculaneum was destroyed by fragments of
pumice stone and ashes, scarcely distinguishable
from those which one may see raked away from the
half-uncovered walls of some new house at Pompeii.
With this storm of falling cinders how dense and
thick one may picture dimly by remembering once
more that all the seaward wall of the vast old crater
was being blown away with this crushing, choking
shower, came torrents of rain, enough to turn the
falling ashes to a sort of mud, which hardened into
tufa. Indeed, just as the yellow tufa of Posilipo is
composed of volcanic ash ejected underneath the sea,
and is thus formed of ash and water, such precisely
is the crust which hardened over Herculaneum, and
holds the city in its clutch unto this hour. Perhaps
the mud formed on the mountain slopes, and came
rolling down upon the town. Professor Phillips
thought it formed within the crater. Some obvious
warning of great peril there must have been, and that
quite early on the fatal 24th of August ; for it was
not long past noon when a message reached Pliny at
Misenum, begging for his ships, since escape was
even then impossible except by sea. Already Pliny,
looking from Misenum, saw the mountain topped by
that vast and awful cloud shaped like a pine tree, out
200 VESUVIUS
of which ashes were raining down on the three cities.
His ships, approaching the coast towards even-
ing, ran into a hail of pumice stone. The ashes fell
hotter and hotter on the decks, and in continually
larger masses. The sea ebbed suddenly. Ruins
were tumbling from the mountain. There was no
possibility of giving help to the doomed city, and
Pliny gave orders to steer off the coast. No eye has
seen Herculaneum from that day to this. What
became of the citizens is not known. Comparatively
few bodies have been found ; but the excavations
were too imperfect to prove that somewhere in the
city bounds they do not lie in heaps.
Such was the end of Herculaneum, by ashes, not
by lava. It is true that lava beds lie above the city
now. Probably the lava of 1631 passed over it.
Sir William Hamilton distinguished the debris of
no less than six eruptions besides that which des-
troyed it. Sir Charles Lyell also thought that a large
part of the covering of the city was subsequent to its
first destruction.
At Herculaneum all that is most interesting lies
underground, and nearly all is still invisible. But
little effort has been made at any time to disinter
the city. The searchers who dug there at the com-
mand of Charles of Bourbon between the years 1750
and 1761 to which period we must refer nearly all
the most precious discoveries contented themselves
with sinking shafts in likely spots, from which they
mined and tunnelled as far as seemed possible to
them, and then filled up the shaft again and sank
another. Thus the notices of what they found, and
still more of how they found it, are imperfect. They
have, moreover, been carelessly preserved. Some
were even wantonly destroyed in the last century
by men who did not appreciate their value. Yet
HERCULANEUM
A SPLENDID VILLA 201
enough has been retained to stimulate the highest
interest in Herculaneum, if not indeed to justify the
belief that whenever it shall be possible to overcome
the obvious difficulties of excavation, treasures will
be found which may far exceed in quantity and
beauty those which Pompeii has yielded.
This will be better understood by considering
what has been written by Signor Comparetti and
Signor de Petra concerning a single villa of Hercu-
laneum, now, alas ! buried up once more in darkness.
It stood between the "new diggings" and the royal
palace of Portici. I will preface my abstract of the
treatise of the two scholars by some passages taken
from the letters of Camillo Paderni, director of the
excavations, to Mr. Thomas Hollis, in 1754.
" This route," says Paderni, " led us towards a
palace, which lay near the garden. But before they
arrived at a palace they came to a square . . . which
was adorned throughout with columns of stucco.
At the several angles of the square was a terminus
of marble, and on every one of these stood a bust of
bronze of Greek workmanship, one of which had on
it the name of the artist. A small fountain was
placed before each terminus, which was constructed
in the following manner. Level with the pavement
was a vase to receive the water which fell from above.
In the middle of this vase was a stand of balustrade
work, to support another marble vase. This second
vase was square on the outside and circular within,
where it had the appearance of a scallop shell ; in the
centre whereof was the spout which threw up the
water that was supplied by leaden pipes within the
balustrade. Among the columns . . . were alter-
nately placed a statue * of bronze and a bust of the
* Paderni is wrong here. Signor de Petra shows us that the busts
only were in the peristyle. The statues were all in the garden.
202 VESUVIUS
same material, at the equal distance of a certain
number of palms. . . . The statues taken out from
April 1 5 to September 30 are in number seven, near
the height of six Neapolitan palms, except one of
them, which is much larger, and of excellent ex-
pression. This represents a faun lying down, who
appears to be drunk, resting upon the goatskin in
which they anciently put wine. . . . September 27.
I went myself to take out a head in bronze, which
proved to be that of Seneca, and the finest that has
hitherto appeared. . . . Our greatest hopes are from
the palace itself, which is of a very large extent As
yet we have only entered into one room, the floor
of which is formed of mosaic work, not inelegant.
It appears to have been a library, adorned with
presses inlaid with different sorts of wood, disposed
in rows. I was buried in this spot more than twelve
days, to carry off the volumes found there, many of
which were so perished that it was impossible to re-
move them. Those which I took away amounted to
the number of 337, all of them at present incapable
of being opened. These are all in Greek characters.
While I was busy in this work I observed a large
bundle, which from the size I imagined must contain
more than a single volume. I tried with the utmost
care to get it out, but could not, from the damp and
weight of it. However, I perceived that it consisted
of about eighteen volumes. . . . They were wrapped
about with the bark of a tree, and covered at each
end with a piece of wood.
" November 27th. We discovered the figure of an
old faun, or rather a Silenus, represented as sitting on
a bank, with a tiger lying on his left side, on which
his hand rested. Both these figures served to adorn
a fountain, and from the mouth of the tiger had
flowed water. From the same spot were taken out,
GREEK STATUARY 203
November 29th, three little boys of bronze of a good
manner. Two of them are young fauns, having the
horns and ears of a goat. They have likewise silver
eyes, and each of them the goatskin on his shoulder,
wherein anciently they put wine, and through which
here the water issued. The third boy is also of
bronze, has silver eyes, is of the same size with the
two former, and in a standing posture like them, but
is not a faun. On one side of this last stood a small
column, upon the top of which was a comic mask
that served as a capital to it and discharged water
from its mouth. December i6th. In the same place
were discovered another boy with a mask and three
other fauns. . . . Besides these we met with two
little boys in bronze, somewhat less than the former.
These likewise were in a standing posture, had silver
eyes, and had each a vase upon his shoulder whence
the water flowed. We also dug out an old faun,
crowned with ivy, having a long beard, a hairy
body, and sandals on his feet. He sat astride
upon a goatskin, holding it at the feet with both
his hands. . . ."
Thus far Paderni ; and I have made this long ex-
tract to little purpose if the reader has not already
recognised some among the finest objects in the
great museum at Naples. This villa, with its garden
full of statues, its cool peristyle all humming with
the plash of falling water, its shadowy colonnade
sheltering the marvellous bronzes, must have been
a place of wonderful beauty. He was a rare collector
who dwelt there. He had twenty-three large bronze
busts and eight small ones, thirteen large bronze
statues and eighteen small ones. In his garden stood
not less than nine marble statues, and of marble busts
he had certainly seven and probably seven more.
Among these not one is of mean workmanship. The
204 VESUVIUS
greater part are famous all round the world for
beauty. They are unsurpassed, and they all came
from a single villa just beyond the walls of this
buried city.
Who was the man who made himself a home so
splendid ? The style of the decorations points to the
latter years of the Republic. It is in marked dis-
tinction from the more ornate style which prevailed
under the Empire, and of great mythological pictures
there was none. One thing only enables us to guess
with something like assurance who among the patri-
cians of those days owned the villa namely the
library. The mode of inference is curious.
It was no small library which was lifted by Paderni
from the presses where it had lain for seventeen
centuries. The papyri numbered 1,806, though by
no means all were separate treatises, while some were
mere scraps. All were charred and damaged to such
a degree as to render their examination a work
whose difficulty baffled many men of science. At
length the task was accomplished by an ingenious
arrangement of silk threads, which unfolded the
papyrus upon a false back made partly of onion
skins, and laid it open to investigation. The results
are curious. Indeed, they are something more than
curious ; and making due allowance for the fact that
wise men do not permit themselves to be ruffled by
the tricksy mockeries of time, it must be admitted
that the story of this library is exasperating.
All the world knows how small a space the trea-
sures of Greek and Latin literature occupy upon our
shelves compared with that which they would fill
were they intact. What melancholy gaps ! How
much pure delight has not been reft from us! Where
is the scholar who in moments of low spirits has not
roamed round his library reckoning up his losses?
THE MOCKERY OF TIME 205
Livy shorn of more than half his bulk, Terence
mangled, Cicero lacking heaven knows how many of
his finest compositions! Petrarch had the treatise
of the great orator " De Gloria," but nobody has seen
it since. It is a painful subject the canker at the
heart of learned men, the skeleton at the feasts of all
academies.
So much the greater, then, was the joy when the
news ran round Europe that a library, formed in the
best age of Latin literature, was discovered at Her-
culaneum. Now, surely, some of the lost treasures
would be restored ! All the universities chuckled and
stood on tiptoe. Humanity, with the help of a
volcano, had scored a point against time at last.
But the rolls of papyri were sadly like mere lumps
of charcoal. Paderni saw a letter here, a letter there,
but on the whole could make nothing of them. The
smile died on the faces of the scholars. The trick
was not won yet. Who would unroll these charred
manuscripts, and who could possibly read them when
unrolled ?
Many people tried and failed, Sir Humphry Davy
among the number. Learned hearts sank, and hope
flickered almost to extinction. At length Padre
Piaggi invented an ingenious arrangement of silk
threads, whereby the charred and brittle rolls were
unwrapped in the manner described above. It was
a slow and weary process, but the wit of man has
devised no better. One by one the treasures of the
past were read. It took a century and a half, but we
know the contents of some three hundred and fifty of
them now.
Broadly stated, the outcome of all the pother has
been to restore to an unthankful world what is pro-
bably a complete set of the works of Philodemus !
" Philodemus ! " gasp the scholars. " Who wanted
206 VESUVIUS
him ? " A fifth-rate Greek philosopher and a fourth-
rate poet, who lived at Rome in the days of Cicero,
better esteemed for his verses than his reasoning, and
not much for either. But no Livy? No Terence?
No Cicero ? Not one line ; hardly anything but the
prose treatises of Philodemus, concerning which
Signer Comparetti observes with emphasis that the
oblivion they lay in was anything but undeserved.
Such is the greatest practical joke played on us by
the Time Spirit in the present age. But now, laying
aside our disappointment and bad temper, let us see
what can be made out of this curious, if worthless,
discovery. Who could have cared to collect the
works of Philodemus, large and small, even to the
notes he made from other books? The philosophy
was Epicurean, but the chief works of the leaders of
that school are with few exceptions not there. Who
could it be but Philodemus himself, the only man,
surely, for whom such a collection would have value ?
But what, then, was the library doing in this splendid
and costly villa at Herculaneum? Philodemus was
a poor Greek scholar, the last man who could have
afforded to collect fine marbles or to house them
nobly. The villa must have belonged to his patron
and protector. Cicero names for us the patrician
who enjoyed the privilege of hearing Philodemus
reason when he would. It was Piso, Lucius Calpur-
nius Piso Caesoninus, attacked by Cicero in one of
the greatest of his orations. Piso had known this
poor scholar from a boy, learnt the philosophy of
Epicurus from him, and gave him rooms in his own
house. To Piso, probably, belonged this villa. Here
he may have ended his stormy life in the society of
Philodemus ; and when that learned man ascended
to Parnassus, his books remained in what had been
his study, preserved perhaps by some lingering attach-
PISO'S TREASURES 207
ment to his memory, perhaps by such a superstitious
pride in what is never read as may be seen in certain
country houses of to-day, where the squire believes
the dusty volumes collected by his grandfather are a
credit to the house, and chides the housemaid if he
ever finds a cobweb on the peaceful shelves. It will
also be remembered that, unless you want the space
very much, it is easier to leave books alone than to
destroy them. On the whole, I do not think the
discovery of this library affords any evidence of
the prevalence of cultivated taste in Herculaneum.
Rather the opposite, indeed, for whatever value the
owners of the house may have attached to the library
the fact remains that they added to it nothing in the
hundred years which followed the decease of Philo-
demus.
As for the statues and the bronzes, the finest were
doubtless part of the spoils of Piso's proconsulate
in Macedonia. Cicero taunted him with having
stripped Greece of its treasures, as Verres ransacked
those of Sicily. The conduct of both men was
barbarous perhaps; but the candid visitor will look
many times at the Sleeping Faun, or the Mercury in
repose, before daring to ask himself whether he
would have come home from Macedonia without
them. If he discover that he would, he may yet
find cause to rejoice that Piso was less virtuous ; for
a very short reflection on the state of Greece during
the last twenty centuries suggests that if a moralist
had been proconsul we should have lacked many
pleasures which we now enjoy.
The " Scavi Nuovi " lie at a little distance from the
theatre. One goes down a steep street sloping to
the sea, the Vico di Mare. A gate in the wall gives
admission to what seems at first a quarry, but a
second glance shows one a short street of roofless
208 VESUVIUS
houses, emerging from the hillside and running
straight in the direction of the shore until stopped
by the opposite bank. Beneath and behind these
walls, bright with mesembryanthemums and wild
roses, lies all the city save this little fragment, this
portion of a street, this poor two dozen houses, with
the remnants of four insulae, of which three are
occupied by private houses and the fourth by some
rooms belonging to the baths, of which the greater
part are buried still. The houses of the south-west
insula are the most interesting. At the corner is a
shop with marble counter, and close to that is a
dwelling of rare beauty, the so-called " Casa d' Argo."
At the door there are four pillars, and on either side
a bench. Out of this entrance one passes through a
larger room into the xystos, colonnaded on three
sides. A row of rooms open from it, all frescoed in
the architectural style of which we shall see much at
Pompeii, and giving on the garden. Beyond these
rooms there is a second peristyle, all very beautiful
clearly the dwelling of a man of taste and means.
But in all this there is no source of pleasure which
cannot be enjoyed far better at Pompeii. It is there
and not to Herculaneum that the traveller goes
to see the results of excavation. On this spot, I say
again, it is the tragedy that counts ; and as I turn in
the warm sunshine and look up the broken street,
where rose bushes bloom profusely in the untended
gardens and the brown lizards slip in and out among
the cold and empty hearths, I see above the houses
of the dirty modern town the huge cone of Vesuvius
fronting me directly. So he stands, looking down
upon the ruin he has made, while the long train of
sulky smoke which stains the clear blueness of the
April sky flaunts itself like a warning to mankind
that it is vain to set human forces against his, and
POMPEII 209
that what he wills to hide shall lie lost and hidden in
the earth for ever.
A man willing to go on foot from Resina to
Pompeii might find much to amuse him by the way,
especially if he have any care for tracing out the
ravages of eruptions. The seashore is not unpleasant.
The lava reefs that fringe it are curious, and the
ports of Torre del Greco and Torre dell' Annunziata
have their share of interest and picturesqueness.
But the crumbs of knowledge to be picked up during
such a walk seem insignificant beside the banquet
which lies waiting at Pompeii ; and only those who
have already tasted the last dish of that banquet will
care to loiter on the way.
I do not propose to add one more to the countless
unscholarly rhapsodies which have been produced by
visitors to Pompeii. Certain tragic feelings strike
every one who enters the old grey streets. They are
too obvious to need description. All else belongs to
the domain of the guide-book or of the expert
to the latter more than to the former, since the best
of guide-books is a sorry companion to a man who
has neglected the works of Helbig or August Mau.
It is not to be expected that the detailed descriptions
of Murray or of Gsell-Fels can supply the broad
principles and the general ideas which would have
been a constant delight if acquired in advance. Many
of the best intellects in Europe have been engaged in
estimating the significance of the objects found from
day to day in Pompeii. It is in their works that
knowledge should be sought ; for there is scarce any
subject on which so much has been written, both
so badly and so well, as on this lost city of the
Campanian Plain.
It is, as I have said already, by wandering up and
down the Strada Tribunali in Naples that one may
p
210 VESUVIUS
prepare oneself to picture what would have struck
a stranger on first entering Pompeii. A man passing
to-day beneath the vault of the Porta Marina sees a
grey street, its house-fronts perfect, but empty, and
startlingly silent. This street runs into the Forum,
and is in easy hearing distance of the babel of noise
which issued constantly from that centre of the city.
Under the colonnade of the Forum tinkers mended
pots with clatter and din of hammers. Women
hawked fruit and vegetables up and down, chanting
their praises doubtless as loudly as the " padulani " of
to-day in Naples. Ladies met their shoemakers
under the cool shadows of the great arcade; and
there, too, children chased each other up and down,
screaming at their games like any urchins of to-day
upon the steps of San Giovanni Maggiore. We know
it, for they are all depicted in paintings found in
neighbouring houses. There is the seller of hot food
with his caldron, not unlike the stall at which the
workman stops to-day in the Piazza Cavour and pays
a soldo to have his hunch of bread dipped into hot
tomato broth. What cheerful sounds must have
risen up from all these occupations ! How shall one
picture them, except in the streets of some other
crowded city? On the left, abutting on the south-
west angle of the Forum, is the Basilica, a broad hall
used as an extension of the market-place, and con-
taining at the rear the tribunals of justice ; while at
the opposite, or north-east corner of the Forum, is the
market proper, the Macellum, where the fish were
sold. Certainly they were brought in by this Porta
Marina, far nearer to the shore in those days than
now. The scales scraped off the fish in the Macellum
were found there in great numbers. Close by were
pens for living sheep and counters for the butchers.
What a reek of odours, what a hum of eager voices,
TRADE AND LOVE 211
must have risen up from this dense quarter of the
busy, active town ! The Pompeiians traded with
their very hearts. " Lucrum gaudium ! " " Oh, joyous
gain ! " such were the exclamations which they
painted on their walls. And gain they did ! Trans-
mitting over the seas the commerce from Nola and
Nocera, trading doubtless with ships of Alexandria,
as Pozzuoli did ; harbouring at their piers upon the
Sarno, round which a suburb had sprung up, galleys
of many a seaport city, Greek or Barbarian, carrying
the industries, and not a few among the vices of the
East. Both found a ready welcome in this full-
blooded city, intensely alive to all delights and
interests, whether pure or impure. Venus was pro-
tectress of the city, and was worshipped without stint.
There were some within the city whom loathing of
its wickedness had impelled to prophecy, so at least
one must infer from the fact that the words " Sodoma
Gomora " are scratched in large letters on one of the
house-fronts.
To whom in that pagan city could Hebrew history
have suggested so apt and terrible a foreboding?
A Jew, perhaps, of whom there were multitudes in
Rome ; even possibly a Christian, but there is scant
evidence of that. Doubtless the Pompeiians read
those words without comprehending their horrible
significance, and went their way to theatre or to
wineshop, a laughing people, a gay, light-hearted
nation, a mixed race, the blood of Oscans and of
Samnite mountaineers mingling with the languid
graces of the degenerating Greeks, loving easily,
forgetting lightly, careless, passionate, and intensely
human.
Such was Pompeii, a seething, noisy, eager city,
filled with the reek of dense humanity. But now
it is swept clean by winds and sunlight. Its very
212 VESUVIUS
stews are fragrant. In the morning sweet air blows
in from the sea ; at night it steals down no less
sweetly from the mountains. In all the city there
is not one stench. The freshness and the silence
of the long streets weigh upon the nerves. There
is so little evidence of ruin, not an ash left, not
a bank of earth in all the wide district which one
enters first, nothing to remind us by the evidence
of sight what it was that drove out the people
from these once crowded streets and left the houses
and the colonnades open to the whispering sea wind.
It was not so before the great director Fiorelli
came. He it was who stopped haphazard digging,
and cleared each quarter completely before beginning
work upon another. Since, then, his methods have
in great measure freed the city already of its debris,
and set its inanimate life before us as it was, the
wiser part at Pompeii is to try to grasp the arrange-
ments of a Roman city, leaving the necessary musings
on the tragedy to be got through elsewhere.*
It is beyond my scope, as I have said already, to
assume the authority of an expert on Pompeii. More
experts are not wanted. The lack, at least in England,
is of readers for those who exist. A man intending
a tour in Italy will lay out ungrudgingly ten pounds
upon his travelling gear, but he will scout the idea
of spending the price of a new hat-box on August
Mau's treatise, Pompeii, its Life and Art, though it
would increase his pleasure tenfold more. Still less
will he buy any book in a foreign tongue. I must,
therefore, in my unlearned way, set down some few
facts which will with difficulty be discovered in the
guide-books or from the guides. And firstly as to
the houses.
It will occur to any man that a town so large
as Pompeii must have been built in many fashions,
POMPEII AN HOUSES 213
old and new. New types grew popular, while old
ones still persisted. There is no town in the world
in which many manners cannot be traced. At
Pompeii, where building was arrested eighteen
hundred years ago, the changes of taste are plain
and interesting. Indeed, while the houses all possess
the atrium, that is the large square or oblong hall
in front, open to the sky, with chambers surrounding
it on every side, and most have also the peristyle,
the colonnaded court behind ; yet there are some
which are built without the peristyle, and which by
other points in their construction give witness of
belonging to an earlier and simpler age.
One of these antique houses is easily found by
passing through the Forum, across the Strada delle
Terme and up the Strada Consolare, almost to the
Herculaneum gate. It is called the House of the
Surgeon ; and as in all the city there is no other
which retains so largely the aspect and arrangements
of the earlier time, before Greek influence was para-
mount, it should certainly be visited first
It appears at once on entering the house that the
peristyle is lacking. One may stand within the
courtyard of the atrium, and, looking through the
house, see no such vista of colonnaded quadrangle,
of fountains, busts, and splendid distances, as grati-
fied the eye within the larger and more modern
houses. Those beauties were the contribution of the
Greeks to the old simple Latin life. This was the
abode of a "laudator temporis acti," a lover of
the old homely times, when the single courtyard
of the atrium sufficed alike for the master, his
family and clients, when the wife sat spinning with
her maidens by the scanty light, as in Ovid's im-
mortal description of Lucretia, and the slaves came
and went about the household duties close at hand.
214 VESUVIUS
A colonnade there is certainly, but of only one
arcade, and giving on the garden. There was but
little splendour in such a dwelling. Only when
Greek influence destroyed the simplicity of earlier
life was the family quarter distinguished from that
of slaves and clients and relegated to the peristyle,
the inner courtyard. There is no trace in the
Surgeon's house of the rich ornament which became
so popular in Pompeii, neither mosaics nor wall
paintings. The very building stone differs from
that used in later years ; for the house is built of large
square limestone blocks, while the immense majority
of houses in the city are constructed of tufa, quarried
chiefly from the ridge on which the city stands. All
these facts mark the Surgeon's house as belonging
to the earliest Pompeiian age of which traces still
exist. It is certainly older than the year 200 B.C.,
and we may picture the city, while still untouched
by the rare sense of beauty which was flowering in
the Greek coast towns, as consisting largely of houses
on this model, with others of a fashion older and
more humble, of which we now know nothing.
From the House of the Surgeon it is but a little
way to that of Sallust, a larger residence, and one
of later date, when tufa had displaced limestone as
a building material. It belongs, therefore, to the
same period as the vast majority of houses in the
city, yet in that period it is of the most antique,
the work of a day when Greek influence was not yet
paramount in architecture or in private life. It has
no peristyle, if a late Roman addition be excepted ;
the family life was not yet divided. From the
atrium one looked through to colonnade and garden,
much as in the Surgeon's house. The only paintings
are in imitation of slabs of marble on the walls.
To reach the House of the Faun we must return
THE HOUSE OF THE FAUN 215
to the Strada delle Terme and follow it towards
the north-east until it merges in the Strada della
Fortuna, in which, upon the left, stands the once
magnificent dwelling which takes its name from the
beautiful bronze of the Dancing Faun now in the
Naples museum. It is much to be wished that the
treasures of this noble house could have been left
in it. It may in part be older than the house of
Sallust, though belonging like it to the Tufa period,
and possessing the additional apartments prescribed
by the influx of Greek taste. Indeed the added
rooms, like all the other portions of the house, were
planned with magnificence ; and as there are two
atria, so there are two peristyles, each of singular
beauty and built in the purest taste. There is no
house in Pompeii in which a man should pause so
long, or to which he should come back so often ;
for this is the most perfect specimen of the best
age of building in the city. It is the fruit of a
long age of peace, during which the people drank
in thirstily the exquisite sense of beauty diffused
from the Greek coast towns. It is not difficult to
understand how these rough townsmen, bred of sturdy
mountaineers, and inheriting no tradition of fine
culture, must have been affected when they went
across the sea to Cumae or to Paestum, saw the
austere glory of the temples rising near the shore,
talked with the men whose brains schemed out that
splendour and whose hands learnt how to fashion
it, craftsmen who wrought nothing destitute of loveli-
ness, whose coins were as noble as their temples,
whose hearts must have been afire to spread more
widely their own perception of line and form, and
who were doubtless no less eager to teach than the
Pompeiians were to learn. There is nothing in the
world to-day comparable to the magic of that
2i6 VESUVIUS
influence which spread like sunshine out of the Greek
cities on the Campanian coast, no teachers so noble,
no scholars so devoted and receptive, no people who
surrender themselves so absolutely to the dominion
of beauty, and will have it pure, and none but it.
Under the first passion of this enthusiasm Pompeii
was transformed. Almost all the public buildings
received their present shape from this wave of pure
Greek art. Almost every one is graceful and lovely,
the columns and architraves were white, the ornament
not overloaded, the decorations simple. The artists
who tinted the walls confined themselves to pro-
ducing masses of colour. Wall pictures there were
none ; but the mosaics of the floors were wrought
with curious beauty, and reproduced the first com-
positions of great painters. The House of the Faun
is beautified by no wall pictures, but it contained
on the floor of the room which divided the two
peristyles one of the finest mosaics ever found, that
which depicts the battle of Alexander the Great
upon the I$sos.
The stream of Greek influence ran pure for some
four generations. After that it was contaminated.
Man can keep no beauty in his hands for long
unspoilt The change is manifest in Pompeii. The
Roman influence stole in. A muddy taste obscured
the simple grace of the Greek lines, tortured the
architecture, piled up unmeaning ornament, and
degraded all the city. There were many stages
between the first step and the last, not a few still
beautiful, though the downward tendency is plain.
The house of the Vettii is the finest of the later
period. There one may see wall-paintings of rare
charm, mingled with others of far inferior taste, as
if the gallery of some fine connoisseur had fallen
by mischance into the hands of men who did not
POMPEIIAN PAINTINGS 217
understand its worth, and placed the compositions
of degraded artists side by side with the masterpieces
of an olden time.
Exact descriptions of these houses are the business
of the guide-book. But there are certain observa-
tions which I think it necessary to make about the
paintings though if anyone would read the work
of Helbig on the subject, it would be much better.
No one who visits Pompeii, no one who has seen
in the most hasty way the collections of the Naples
Museum, can fail to be impressed, first with the worth
of the pictures, their dramatic force, their exquisite
grace, their rich and tender fancy ; and next by their
vast profusion. What manner of city was this which
worshipped art so devoutly that scarce a single house
is without pictures more beautiful than any save a
few collectors can obtain to-day? Helbig, writing
more than twenty years ago, described and classified
two thousand. Others perished on the walls where
they were found. More still are being dug up day
by day. No ancient writer has told us that Pompeii
was renowned for the multitude of its paintings. The
city bore almost certainly no such reputation. It was
a provincial town of little note, remarkable for nothing
in the eyes of those who visited it. Yet what a world
of beauty must have existed on the earth when these
were the common decorations of a fourth-rate town,
excelled by those of Rome, or even Ostia, in propor-
tion to the higher wealth and dignity of those imperial
haunts ! What were the decorations to be seen at
Baiae, when Pompeii was adorned so finely ! That
group of palaces must surely have drawn more noble
craftsmen, and in greater numbers, than ever visited
the town of trade and pleasure on the Sarno. As in
a great museum we stand before the gigantic bone of
some lost animal, striving to picture in our minds the
2i8 VESUVIUS
creature as he lived, getting now a dim conception of
great strength and bulk which is lost again by the
weakness of our fancy ere half realised, so in presence
of these pictures at Pompeii we are tormented by
flashing visions of the grace and splendour of the
ancient world which so many centuries ago was
shattered into fragments, and which it may be that
no human intellect will ever reconstruct before the
earth grows cold and man fails from off its surface.
Whence came these pictures, these noble visions of
Greek myth, austere and restrained, these warriors,
these satyrs, these happy, laughing loves? Is it
possible that one small city can have bred the artists
who dreamed all these dreams and yet have left no
mark in history of such great achievement ? Clearly
not. The artists cannot have been Pompeian. The
elder Pliny tells us that in his day painting was at the
point of death, while Petronius declares roundly that
it was absolutely dead. One walks round the Naples
Museum and recalls these judgments with astonish-
ment. Can this art be really moribund, this Iphigenia,
spreading her arms wide to receive the stroke, this
Calchas, finger on lip, watching for the fated moment,
this Perseus, this Ariadne ! If this is dying art,
Heaven grant that English art may ere long die of
the same death.
But it is not. No man can judge it so. Pliny and
Petronius meant something else, and the key to their
despondency is produced by the discovery that many
of these Pompeian pictures are replicas. The same
subjects recur, with almost the same treatment. Some-
times the figures are identical. Sometimes the painter
has elected to reduce the composition. The painting
of Argos watching lo occurs four times in Pompeii.
It has been found also in Rome ! the same picture,
but containing figures which the Campanian artist
WHAT PLINY MEANT 219
thought proper to omit. There is evidence, too, that
the picture was diffused over an area far wider than
that lying between Rome and Pompeii. It appears
on reliefs, on medals, and on cameos. Lucian had it
in his mind when he wrote a famous passage in his
poem, and it suggested an epigram by Antiphilos.
The case is similar with the fresco of Perseus and
Andromeda. Both were world-known pictures, the
composition of a great artist Helbig suggests that
it was the Athenian Nikias and both were copied
far and wide by craftsmen who could merely re-
produce.
This is what Pliny and Petronius meant. They
looked about them and found only copyists. The
great school of painting was dead, and those who
reproduced its works did so without heart or under-
standing. This was sorrowful enough for them ; but
we may regard their woeful faces cheerfully. Time
and the volcano have done us the good service of pre-
serving to our day copies of some masterpieces of
ancient painting. The copyists were often treacher-
ous. There is a fresco of Medea at Pompeii in which
the figure of the mother brooding over the thought
of murdering her children is weak and unconvincing.
But at Herculaneum was found a Medea who is
terrible indeed, wild-eyed and murderous, such a
figure as none but the greatest artist could conceive
and few copyists could reproduce. Set this Medea
in her place in the Pompeian fresco and the result
may well be the Medea of Timomachus, one of the
most famous pictures of all antiquity.
The school in which these artists, Pompeians or
travelling painters, found their models was Hellenist,
Greek art of the period subsequent to Alexander
the Great. They did not draw by preference upon
its highest compositions. Serious treatment of the
220 VESUVIUS
ancient myths, that treatment which revealed the great
and elemental facts from which they sprang, was not
popular in Pompeii, where the citizens appear to have
preferred a lighter and more artificial view of life
love without its passion, the comedy of manners rather
than the tragedy. These gay feasters desired to see
no skeletons among their roses and their winecups.
They preferred light laughing cupids, kind towards
the human frailties of both men and women. It was
a joyous, light-hearted, unreflecting society on which
this terrible destruction fell, luxurious and vicious.
The realisation of that fact tightens the sense of
tragedy, as the sudden annihilation of a group of
children playing with their flowers seems more pitiful
than the death of men.
There are a thousand things still to say of Pompeii,
but they are beyond my scope. The westering sun
has turned all the hills above Castellammare into
purple clouds. The heat lies among the broken city
walls. It is enough. I turn away, and take up anew
the course of my journey.
It is no long way from the turfed ridges which
conceal Pompeii to the first rises of the Castellam-
mare Mountains. The road crosses the Sarno, and
cuts straight and dusty through wide fields of beans
and lupins, with here and there a gaunt farmhouse,
or massaria, bare of all attempt to make it pleasant
to the eye. The bitter lupins are almost, if not
quite, the cheapest food that can be bought in Naples,
and are accordingly sold principally to the very poor
by the " lupinaria," who may be seen any day in the
precinct of the Porta Capuana, or in the byways
round about the Mercato. Does anyone ask how the
beans became so bitter? It was by the curse of our
Lord, who was fleeing from the Pharisees, and hid
Himself in a field of lupins. The beans were dry,
TOMBS OF NAEVOI.EIA TYCHE AND CAI.VENTIUS QUIETUS, POMPEI
THE GOTHS 221
and betrayed His movements by their rustling; where-
upon He cursed them, and they have been bitter ever
since.
There is no doubt that the Sarno was navigable
when Pompeii was a living city, but these many
centuries it has been a rather dirty ditch, unapproach-
able by shipping. Its chief interest for me lies in
the fact that along its bank, and across all the fertile
country up to the base of the great mountains, was
fought the last great battle of the Goths, those brave
Teutons out of whom, as Mr. Hodgkin says, "so
noble a people might have been made to cultivate
and to defend the Italian peninsula." Heaven had
been very kind to Italy in this sixth century after
Christ It had sent down upon her from the north
a race of conquerors, barbarian, it is true, but brave,
honourable, sincere, and possessing every capability
for government. They conquered Italy from end to
end. No province, no city, held out against them.
From the Alps to Sicily they were supreme, and
their genius, humane and not disdainful either of the
arts or Christianity, was rapidly fusing every warring
element of the peninsula into a mighty nation
Germanic earnestness infused with Latin wit when
the lord of the world, the Roman Emperor in distant
Constantinople, resolved to put forth his strength and
drive out these strangers, these builders of a nation,
who were tending what he had neglected, defending
what he had left open to attack, and reaping harvests
of which he, out of all men, was least entitled to pro-
claim himself the sower.
So the Emperor sent first Belisarius, and then
Narses, and long and bitter was the war which fol-
lowed. Mr. Hodgkin, in his fourth volume, has told
it in a style which is beyond all praise. Upon these
plains was fought out the last battle of the Goths.
222 VESUVIUS
Here Narses brought them to bay. For two months
they lay along the line of the Sarno, while Narses,
baffled by the river, plotted how to take them in the
rear. At last he won over some traitor of an admiral,
who surrendered to him the Gothic fleet, lying, per-
haps, at Castellammare ; and the Goths, finding that
the port was no longer theirs, fell back upon the hills,
entrenching themselves upon the spot where the
ruined castle of Lettere now stands. But their
supplies were cut off it was impossible to feed an
army on the barren mountains and adopting counsels
of despair, they descended to the plain and gave
battle to the Imperial troops.
It was a great and terrible fight. Goths and
Romans fought on foot. Teias the king fell after
bearing himself right nobly ; but the Goths fought
on, and when darkness interrupted the engagement
they did but pause in order to renew it with no less
desperation when the light returned. When both
armies were nearly wearied out the Goths sent a
messenger to Narses. They perceived, they said,
that God had declared against them, and that the
strife was hopeless. If terms were granted they
would depart from Italy. The Imperial general ac-
cepted their proposals, and the Goths, the noblest
invaders who ever entered Italy, turned their backs
for ever on the fertile land where they had made their
homes, crossed the Alps in order, and were never
heard of in Italy again. So perished, until our day,
the last hope of unity for Italy, and for full thirteen
centuries that unhappy land was drenched in constant
blood the prey of conquerors who could not conquer,
and the sport of statesmen who never learnt to govern.
For the Roman Emperor could build no state com-
parable to the one he had destroyed, and what Italy
owes to him is forty generations of unhappiness.
ROMAN COUNTRY LIFE 223
In travelling through this country one is haunted
by the perpetual desire to look back into past ages,
and admonished almost as often that as yet one
cannot do so. Indeed, one looks forward almost as
often, anticipating that day when scholars will com-
bine to assist in the excavation of all the buried
regions, when every villa shall be disinterred, and the
secrets hidden underneath the vineyards be exposed
to the light of day again. Here on the first slopes of
the hills around Castellammare lay the groups of
country villas which formed ancient Stabiae, and
every man who goes this way longs to see them
disinterred. For what is seen at Pompeii is but half
the life of Roman days a city stripped of its coun-
try villas and all its rustic intercourse. Pompeii
stood in the heart of the country. Its citizens must
have had farms upon the mountain slopes; they
must have had concern in husbandry as well as trade ;
there must have been hourly comings and goings be-
tween the crowded streets and the sweet hillsides of
Varano, where the grapes ripened and the wine-vats
gathered the crushed juice, where the oil dripped
slowly from the olive-presses, and the jars stood wait-
ing for the mountain honey.
The day will come when all this great life of
Roman husbandry will be disclosed to us, and we
shall know it as we now know the city streets ; for
it is here still upon the mountain slopes, buried safe
beneath the vineyards, waiting only till its vast in-
terest is comprehended by people in sufficient num-
bers to provide the funds to excavate it Stabiae was
by no means another Pompeii. It was no city, but a
group of farms and country villas, and has countless
things to teach us which cannot be seen or learnt
beside the Sarno. The very houses were of other
shapes and plans ; for the Romans did not reproduce
224 VESUVIUS
town houses in the country, but designed them for
different uses, and embodied apartments which had
no matches in the city. There are the residences of
wealthy men, adorned with noble peristyles, mosaics,
and fine statues, and side by side with them the
home farms if one may use a modern term the
chambers of the husbandmen, and the courts in which
they worked. There, too, are buildings far too large
for any family and differing in arrangement from any
private dwelling yet discovered. The use of these
great buildings can only be conjectured. Ruggiero,
whose self-denying labour has collected in one monu-
mental work all the information now obtainable upon
the subject, suggests that they may have been
hospitals, a supposition probable enough when we
remember that the Romans must have been no less
aware than we ourselves how potent a tonic is the
mountain air for patients suffering from the fevers
bred upon the plains. In Ruggiero's pages one may
see the scanty and imperfect plans sketched out by
those who dug upon the site more than a century
ago. Posterity owes those hasty workers but
little gratitude. They were inspired by hardly more
than a mean kind of curiosity. They were treasure-
seekers, pure and simple ; and what they judged to
be of little value they broke up with their pickaxes.
Swinburne, the traveller, watched a portion of the
excavations, but without intelligence, and has nothing
to tell us of much interest. "When opened," he
says, speaking evidently of a villa on Varano, it may
be the very one in which Pliny passed the last night
of his life, "the apartment presented us with the
shattered walls, daubed rather than painted with
gaudy colours in compartments, and some birds and
animals in the cornices, but in a coarse style, as
indeed are all the paintings of Stabiae. In a corner
THE NEEDLE'S EYE 225
we found the brass hinges and lock of a trunk ; near
them part of the contents, viz. ivory flutes in pieces,
some coins, brass rings, scales, steelyards, and a very
elegant silver statue of Bacchus about twelve inches
high, represented with a crown of vine leaves,
buskins, and the horn of plenty." With this per-
functory account we must rest content, until some
millionaire shall conceive the notion of delighting all
the world instead of building a palace for himself.
But the camel will have gone through the needle's eye
before that happens.
CHAPTER X.
CASTELLAMMARE : ITS WOODS, ITS
FOLKLORE
AND THE TALE OF THE MADONNA OF POZZANO
MARZO e pazzo " (" March is mad ") say the
Neapolitans, contemptuous of his incon-
stancies. God forbid that I should try to prove the
sanity of March ; but it is long odds if April is one
whit the better. His moon is in its first quarter,
and still sirocco blows up out of the sea day by day.
The grey clouds drift in banks across Vesuvius and
hide the pillar of his smoke, dropping down at whiles
even to the level of the plain. From time to time
it is as if the mountain stirred and shook himself,
flinging off the weight of vapour from his flanks and
crest, so that again one can see the rolling column
of dense smoke, stained and discoloured by the re-
flection of the fires far down within the cone, now
rosy, now a menacing dull brown which is easily
distinguishable from the watery clouds that gather
in the heavens. Yet slowly, steadily the veil of mist
returns, while mine host murmurs ruefully, "Sette
Aprilanti, giorni quaranta ! " But it is not the seventh
of April yet, so we may still be spared the sight of
dripping trees for forty days. An hour ago, when
I ventured up the hill towards the woods, a tattered,
226
APRIL SHOWERS 227
copper-coloured varlet of a boy looked out of the
cellar where his mother was stooping over the smok-
ing coals in her brass chafing-dish. " Aprile chiuove,
chiuove," he bawled, as if it were the greatest news
in the world. He thinks the harvest will be mended
by the April rains ; though if he and others in this
region knew whence their true harvest comes, they
would humbly supplicate our Lady of Pozzano to give
fine weather to the visitors.
To be stayed at the gate of the Sorrento peninsula
by doubtful weather is by no means an unmixed
misfortune. It may be that our Lady of Pozzano
sometimes employs the showers to bring hasty
travellers to a better way of thinking. Certainly
many people hurry past Castellammare to their own
hurt. The town is unattractive, and may, moreover,
be reproached with wickedness, though it suffers, as
is said, from the low morality of Greek sailors, rather
than from any crookedness of its homeborn citizens.
But the mountain slopes behind it are immensely
beautiful. No woods elsewhere in the peninsula are
comparable to these. No other drives show views so
wide and exquisite framed in such a setting of fresh
spring foliage, nor is there upon these shores an
hotel more comfortable or more homelike than the
" Quisisana," which stands near the entrance of the
woods ; and this I say with confidence, though not
unaware that the judgments of travellers upon hotels
are as various as their verdicts on a pretty woman,
who at one hour of the day is ten times prettier than
at another, and may now and then look positively
plain.
Castellammare possesses an excellent sea-front,
which would have made a pleasant promenade had
not a selfish little tramway seized upon the side next
the shore, guarding itself by a high railing from the
228 CASTELLAMMARE
intrusion of strangers in search of cool fresh air.
Thus cast back on a line of dead walls, house-fronts
as mean as only a fourth-rate Italian town can boast,
one has no other amusement than gazing at the
mountains, which in truth are beautiful enough for
anyone. Very steep and high they tower above
Castellammare ; not brown and purple, as when
I looked up at them across the broken walls of
Pompeii, but clad in their true colours of green
of every shade, dark and sombre where ravines are
chiselled out upon the slopes, or where the pines
lie wet and heavy in the morning shadow. Higher
up, the flanks of the mountains are rough with
brushwood, while on the summits the clear air blows
about bare grass deepening into brown. Sometimes
sloping swiftly to the sea, but more often dropping
in sheer cliffs of immense height, this dark and
shadowy mountain wall thrusts itself out across the
blue waters, while here and there a village gleams
white upon some broken hillside, or a monastery
rears its red walls among the soft grey of the olive
woods. There lies Vico, on its promontory rock,
showing at this distance only the shade of its great
beauty ; and beyond the next lofty headland is
Sorrento, at the foot of a mountain country so
exquisite, so odorous with myrtle and with rosemary,
so fragrant of tradition and romance, that it is, as
I said, a good fortune which checks the traveller
coming from the plain at the first entrance of the
hills and gives him time to realise the nature of the
land which lies before him.
It needs no long puzzling to discover whence the
importance of Castellammare has been derived in all
the centuries. The port offers a safe shelter for
shipping, which of itself counts for much upon a
coast possessing few such anchorages; and it lies
TRADING WAYS 229
near the entrance of that valley road across the
neck of the Sorrento peninsula, which is the natural
route of trade between Naples and Salerno. The
road is of much historical interest, as any highway
must be which has been followed by so many
generations of travellers, both illustrious and obscure ;
and any man who chooses to recollect by what
various masters Salerno has been held will be able
to people this ancient track with figures as picturesque
as any in the history of mankind. He will observe,
moreover, the importance of the Castle of Nocera,
which dominates this route of traders. I confess to
being somewhat puzzled as to the exact course by
which the commerce of Amalfi extricated itself from
the mountains and dispersed itself over the mainland.
Doubtless the merchants of La Scala and Ravello
followed the still existing road from Ravello to
Lettere, and thence to Gragnano, whence comes
the ancient punning jest, "L'Asene de Gragnano
Sapevano Lettere." This road is certainly ancient,
and early in the present century it was the usual
approach to Amalfi, whither travellers were carried
in litters across the mountains. The little handbook
of Ravello, based on notes left by the late Mr. Reid,
seems to account this road more recent than the
age of Ravello's commercial greatness. Probably
a recency of form rather than of course is meant ;
but in any case, I cannot believe that the merchants
of Amalfi sent out their trade by a route which
began for them with an ascent so very long and
arduous. Possibly they approached Gragnano by a
road running up the valley from Minori or Majori.
Of course the traders of old days were very patient
of rough mountain tracks, and did not look for the
wide beaten turnpikes which we have taught ourselves
to regard as essential to commerce. Doubtless, there-
CASTELLAMMAKE
fore, many a team of mules from Amalfi, laden with
sflks and spices from the East, came down through
Lettere, where it would scarce get by the castle
of die great counts who held that former stronghold
of the Goths without paying toll or tribute for its
safety on the mountain roads. And so, passing
through Gragnano and beneath the hillsides where
the palaces of ancient Stabiae lie buried, the wearied
teams would come down at last to Castellammare,
where they would need rest ere beginning the hot
journey by die coast road into Naples.
Both the roads which diverge from Castellammare,
the one heading straight across the plains towards
the high valley of La Cava, the other clinging to the
fresh mountain slopes, are therefore full of interest.
Of Nocera, indeed, its castle full of memories of
Pope Urban VI., and its fine church Santa Maria
Maggiore, some two miles out, any man with ease
might write a volume. But we stayed long scorching
on the plains among the buried cities ; and the hill
route is the more inviting now. The weather is
disposed to break A gleam of sun sparkles here
and there upon the water. Let us see what the
hillsides have to show us.
Castellammare is a dirty and ill-odorous town.
As I hurry through its crowded streets, brushed by
women hawking beans and dodging others who are
performing certain necessary acts of cleanliness at
their house doors, I occupy myself in wondering
whether there is in all southern Italy a city without
smells. From Taranto to Naples I can recall none
save Pompeii. It is, doubtless, an unattainable ideal
to bring Castellammare to the state of that sweet-
smelling habitation of the dead; though it would
be unwise to prophesy what the volcano may not
yet achieve on the scene of his old conquests. There
OLD FORGOTTEN THINGS 231
are so many things lost and forgotten upon this
coast. I see that Schulz, whose great work still
remains by far the best guide through the south
of Italy, describes vast catacombs in the hillside at
Castellammare. I must admit that I do not know
where these catacombs are. Schulz, who visited
them before 1860, found in them pictures not older
than the twelfth century, and resembling in many
details those which are seen in the catacombs of
Naples. Certainly the old grave chambers are no
longer among the sights of this summer city. But
the whole region impresses one with the constant
sense that the keenest interest and the longest know-
ledge spent upon this ground which is strewn with
the dust of so many generations, will leave behind
countless undiscovered things. The world seems
older here than elsewhere. And so it is, if age be
counted by lives and passions rather than by geologic
courses.
As one goes on up the ascent, the narrow alleys
break out into wider spaces, and here and there a
breath of mountain air steals down between the
houses, or the ripe fruit of an orange lights up a
shadowy courtyard with a flash of colour; till at
last the houses fall away, and one climbs out on
a fresh hillside, where a double row of trees gives
protection from the sun. Two sharp turns of the
steep road bring one into a small village, of which
the first house is the Hotel Quisisana. But I have
nothing to say to hotels at this hour of the morning,
and accordingly trudge on a little further up the hill,
till I come to the Vico San Matteo, a lane branching
off along the hillside on my right, which brings me
to a shady terrace road, rising and falling on the
hillside just below the level of the woods. At this
height the air blown down from sea and mountain
232 CASTELLAMMARE
is sweet and pure. The banks are glowing with
crimson cyclamen and large anemones, both lavender
and purple, while the hillside on the right, dropping
rapidly towards the town, is thick-set with orchards,
through whose falling blossoms the sea shines blue
and green, while across the bay Vesuvius pours out
its rosy vapour coil by coil.
It is a wide and noble view, one of those which
have made Castellammare famous in all ages, as the
first slopes of the cool wooded mountains must needs
be among all the cities of the scorching plains. In
Roman days, just as in our own, men looked up
from Naples long before the grapes changed colour
or the figs turned black, pining for the sweet breezes
of Monte Sant' Angelo, and the whispering woods of
Monte Coppola, where the shadows lie for half the
day, and the only sounds are made by the busy
hacking of the woodcutters. There is no caprice of
fashion in this straining to the hills, but a natural
impulse as strong as that which stops a hot and
weary man beside a roadside well. Every generation
of Neapolitans has come hither in the summer ; every-
one will do so to the end of time. I shall go up this
evening to the Bourbon pleasure-house ; and here, set
before me at the turning of the road, is the ancient
castle of the Hohenstaufen, built by the great
Emperor Frederick the Second, and added to by
the foe who seized his kingdom and slew his son,
yet came to take his pleasure on the same spot.
Underneath the round towers of the crumbling
ruin an old broken staircase descends towards the
town, skirting the castle wall. It is from this ancient
ladder, ruinous and long disused, that Castellammare
looks its best. The harbour lies below, and a fishing
boat running in furls its large triangular sail and
drops its anchor. The long quay is a mass of moving
AN ANCIENT TALE 233
figures. The tinkle of hammers rings through the
quiet air. Here in the shadow of the woods time
seems to pause, and one sees the hillside, the stair-
case, and the old town below much as they must have
looked when Boccaccio came out hither in his hot
youth, inflamed with love for Marie of Anjou, and
heard, perhaps, on some summer night within the
woods the story which he tells us of the base passion
which beset the fierce King Charles in his old age,
and how he overcame it. The tale, though possibly
not true, is worth recalling, if only because not many
kingly actions are recorded of the monarch who slew
Conradin.
An exile from Florence had come to end his days
among these mountains, one Messer Neri Degli
Uberti. He was rich, and bought himself an estate
a bowshot distant from the houses of the town, and
on it made a shady garden, in the midst of which he
set a fishpond, clear and cool, and stocked it well
with fish. So he went on adding beauty upon beauty
to his garden, till it chanced that King Charles heard
of it, when in the hot summer days he came out to
his castle by the sea for rest, and desiring to see the
pleasaunce sent a messenger to Messer Neri to say
that he would sup with him next evening. The
Florentine, bred among the merchant princes, received
the King nobly ; and Charles, having seen all the
beauties of the garden, sat down to sup beside the
fishpond, placing Messer Neri on one side and on
the other his own courtier, Count Guido di Monforte.
The dishes were excellent, the wines beyond praise,
the garden exquisite and still. The King's worn
heart thrilled with pleasure. Cares and remorse fled
away, and the charm of the soft summer evening
reigned unbroken.
At that moment two girls came into the garden,
234 CASTELLAMMARE
daughters of Messer Neri, not more than fifteen.
Their hair hung loose like threads of spun gold.
A garland of blue flowers crowned it, and their
faces wore the look of angels rather than of sinful
humankind, so delicate and lovely were their features.
They were clad in white, and a servant followed them
carrying nets, while another had a stove and a lighted
torch. Now the King wondered when he saw these
things ; and as he sat watching the girls came and
did reverence to the old, grim monarch, and then
walking breast deep into the fishpond, swept the
waters with their nets in those places where they
knew the fish were lurking. Meanwhile one of the
servants blew the live coals of the stove, while his
fellow took the fish ; and by-and-by the girls began to
toss the fish out on the bank towards the King, and
he, snatching them up with jest and laughter, threw
them back ; and so they sported like gay children
till the broil was ready. Then the girls came out of
the water, their thin dresses clinging round them ; and
presently returning, dressed in silk, brought to the
King silver dishes heaped up high with fruit, and
then sang together some old song with pure childlike
voices, so sweet that as the weary tyrant sat and
listened it seemed to him as if some choir of angels
were chanting in the evening sky.
Now as the old King rode homeward to his castle, the
gentle beauty of these girls stole deeper and deeper
into his heart, and one of them especially, named
Ginevra, stirred him into love, so that at last he
opened his heart to Count Guido, and asked him how
he might gain the girl. But the Count had the courage
of a noble friend, and set the truth before him, showing
how base a deed he meditated. " This," he said, " is
not the action of a great king, but of a cowardly boy.
You plot to steal his daughter from the poor knight
FIAMMETTA 235
who did you all the honour in his power, and brought
his daughters to aid him in the task, showing thereby
how great is the faith which he has in you, and how
firmly he holds you as a true king, and not a cowardly
wolf." Now these words stung the King the more
since he knew them to be true ; and he vowed he
would prove before many days were over that he
could conquer his lusts, even as he had trodden
down his enemies. So, not long afterwards, he went
back to Naples ; and there he made splendid
marriages for both the girls, heaping them with
honours, and having seen them in the charge of
noble husbands, he went sorrowfully away into
Apulia, where with great labours he overcame his
passion. " Some may say," adds Fiammetta, who
told the tale on the tenth day of the Decameron,
" that it was a little thing for a king to give two girls
in marriage ; but I call it a great thing, ay, the
greatest, that a king in love should give the woman
whom he loves unto another."
Fiammetta should have known of what she spoke
none better. I wonder why Boccaccio chose to
put an impossible circumstance into this story. If
the tale be true of anyone, it cannot be one of the
Uberti family who settled in the territory and near
the castle of the great Guelf king. For the Uberti
were all Ghibellines, supporters of the empire and
deadly enemies of him who slew Manfred. Not one
of them ever asked or obtained mercy from Charles,
who was the butcher of their family. Boccaccio
certainly did not forget this. No Florentine could
have been ignorant even momentarily of circum-
stances so terrible, affecting so great a family. No
carelessness of narrative could account for the intro-
duction of one of the Uberti into the story. It
must have been deliberate, though I do not see the
236 CASTELLAMMARE
reason. It may have been that he desired only to
accentuate the magnanimity of Charles, to whose
grandson, King Robert, he owed much, and chose
the circumstances, whether true or false, which made
that magnanimity most striking. I can find no more
probable explanation.
The road which goes on past the castle undulates
beneath an arch of beech trees, just unfurling their
young leaves of tender green, and in half a mile or
so comes out at the ancient monastery of Pozzano, a
red building of no great intrinsic interest, but recalling
the name of Gonsalvo di Cordova, " il gran capitano,"
to whose piety the foundation of the convent is
frequently ascribed, though in truth there had been
an ecclesiastical foundation on the spot for three
centuries before Gonsalvo's time, and all he did was
to restore it from decay. I doubt if many people
remember the great soldier now. The peasants who
go up and down the slope before the convent doors
know far better the tale of the mysterious picture
of the Madonna which was found buried in a well,
but is now hung up in glory in the church.
It is worth while to stop and hear the story of
this picture. Long before the present convent was
built, when the hillside at this spot lay waste and
covered with dense herbage, through which the mules
going to Sorrento forced their way with labour, the
people of Castellammare noticed a flame which
sprang up night by night like a signal fire lit to
warn ships off the coast. The people looked and
trembled, for there were strange beings on the
mountain, dwarfs, and what not ! No mortal man
would make a fire there. So the signal blazed, but
none went near it, till at length some fishers casting
their nets in the bay, and wondering among them-
selves what could be the meaning of the flame which
THE MADONNA OF POZZANO 237
was then burning on the hill, saw the Madonna come
to them across the sea, all clothed in light. The
radiant virgin stood looking down upon them kindly
as they sat huddled in their fear, and bade them tell
their Bishop to search the ground over which the fire
hovered, for he would there find an image of herself.
The poor men took no heed of what they thought
a vision of the night ; nor did they obey the Virgin
when she came again. But when on the third night
the Queen of Heaven descended to this murky world,
she towered above their boat incensed and awful,
denouncing against them all the pains of hell and
outer darkness if they dared neglect her bidding.
The fear-struck fishers hastened to their Bishop on
the first light of morning and told him their tale.
He too had seen a celestial vision, warning him of
the coming of the sailors. There was no room for
doubt or hesitation. He put himself at the head
of a long penitent procession, went up the hill, dis-
covered a well just where the flame had burnt, and
in the well the marvellous picture which now adorns
the church.
How came the picture there ? If one could answer
that question some light would be thrown on the
age of the relic. The country people when they see
any work of ancient art are disposed to say, " San
Luca 1' ha pittato"! (" St. Luke painted it "), as he did
the Madonna of the Carmine in Naples ; and ac-
cordingly this picture also has been ascribed to the
brush of the Evangelist. The priests themselves do
not claim an origin so sacred for their canvas, but
maintain that it is an early Greek work, buried for
safety in the days when, at the bidding of the
iconoclastic Emperor, Leo the Isaurian, an attempt
was made to root out image worship from the land.
I do not know whether any competent expert has
238 CASTELLAMMARE
pronounced the painting to be of an age which
renders the story probable. Ecclesiastical traditions
are frequently inspired rather by piety than truth,
and for my part, when I remember what ravages the
Turks committed along these coasts up to the boy-
hood of men not long dead, I can find no reason for
going back to the eighth century to discover facts
which may have led either priests or laymen to bury
sacred things.
In these days the Madonna of Pozzano walks no
more upon the sea. Yet she remains, in a particular
degree, the protectress of all sailors ; and one may very
well suspect that the priestly tale of the miraculous
light, the hidden well, and the long-forgotten picture,
does but conceal some record of kindness done to
mariners which we heretics might prize more highly.
For in old days, when ships approaching Naples may
have found it hard to set their course after the light
faded, and harder still to anchor off a lee shore, a
beacon fire on the monastery roof would have been
a noble aid, such as must have saved many a tall
ship and brought many a sailor home to his wife in
safety. Surely in some such facts as these lies the
explanation of the traditional attachment of the
sailors to the Madonna of Pozzano. "Ave Maria,
Stella Maris ! " a star of the sea indeed, if it was the
beacon kindled by her servants by which poor
mariners steered back to port.
It needs not much faith to believe some portion of
this pretty story. Incredulity is generally stupid ; but
he who most sincerely desires to be wise must needs
ponder when he finds that almost every town through-
out the peninsula possesses a Madonna found in some
wondrous way. At Casarlano, for example, Maria
Palumbo was feeding a heifer when she heard a
voice issuing from the bushes, which said, " Maria,
LA MADONNA DELLE GALLINE 239
tell your father to come and dig here, and he will
find an image of me." Maria, seeing no one, did not
understand, but the same thing happened on the
next day and the next, while at length her compre-
hension was quickened by a light box on the ear,
which might have changed into a heavy one had
she waited for another day. But, growing prudent
by experience, she told her father all ; and he,
knowing that it was not for him to reason concerning
heavenly monitions, went and dug in the spot in-
dicated, and there found an image which has been
of peculiar sanctity ever since. In fact its sensi-
bilities were so keen, that when the Turks ravaged
the country in 1538 it wept tears mingled with drops
of blood.
When speaking of these Madonnas it would be
wrong to omit the one most honoured in Nocera, and
in many other places round about. She is known as
" La Madonna delle Galline " the Madonna of the
cocks and hens and her image was found, according
to one version of the tale, by the scratching of hens
in the loose soil which covered it. Her feast is on
Low Sunday, or rather on the three days of which
that Sunday is the centre ; and most visitors who
stay at Castellammare in the spring must have seen
some trace of the festa. The procession starts from
Nocera, and as the crowds of chanting priests and
pious laity go by, every good peasant woman looses a
hen, or else a pigeon, which she has previously stained
bright purple. The purple hens perch on the base of
the Madonna's statue, made broad and large for
their accommodation, and are then collected by the
master of the ceremonies, who sells them to devout
persons. In many a village from Gragnano to La
Cava the purple hens may be occasionally seen peck-
ing in the dust, a marvel and astonishment to English
240 CASTELLAMMARE
visitors, who, being unaware how much their plumage
owes to the dye-bag, are disposed to barter at a high
price for animals so certain to create sensation at the
next poultry show.
At the foot of the slope which drops from Pozzano
into the highway from Castellammare to Sorrento is
a little roadside shrine, set deeply in the rock, over
which pious hands have inscribed one of those
pathetically appealing calls to wayfarers which seem
to penetrate so rarely the hearts to which they are
addressed
" Non sit tibi grave
Dicere Mater ave."
" Let it not be a burden to say, Hail, Mother ! " It is a
gentle appeal, a light act of devotion, yet few there
are who care to claim the blessing. The peasants,
men and women, go by without an instant's pause in
their chatter, or the slightest glance towards the
shrine. They do not want even the human love
which is offered to them so simply. In Naples, on
the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, is another Madonna,
who has put on even more passionately the accents
of a human mother brooding over sorrow-stricken
children, and all the strong feeling is expressed in
verses, of which the burden runs
"... C'e un' allegrla
Incontrar la Madonna in sulla via "
'It is a joy to meet the Mother of mankind beside
the way." In the last verse the pleading becomes
more eager, giving utterance to the cry of a lost and
frightened child seeking the protection which will
never fail it
". . . O mamma mia
Venite incontrarmi in sulla via 1 "
BRIGANDAGE 241
But neither does this call find a ready answer, and
I think the appeal of the verses falls more often on
the hearts of strangers and aliens in creed than on
those which it seeks to comfort
The steep slope before the convent at Pozzano was
the end of the ancient mule track from Sorrento, the
same, I imagine, by which St. Peter travelled after
landing at Sorrento, as I shall tell in the next chapter.
Anyone who cares to penetrate behind the convent
can trace it still meandering up hill and down dale
with a pleasant indifference to gradients which is
characteristic of highways of measureless antiquity.
Over the crest of Capo d' Orlando and many another
headland it climbs, as if its main object were to take
one up into the clear, silent air, over the sweet-smell-
ing brushwood, where myrtle and rosemary scent the
air, and the white gum-cistus grows like a weed. No
one follows that lonely track in these days, yet it is
worth while to walk along it, if only that one may see
how easy it made the respectable, but now decadent,
trade of brigandage, which in days not yet far distant
was the sweet solace of all the men and most of the
women in the towns, and yet more in the mountain
villages of the peninsula. Castellammare, placed so
as to command the highway from Naples to Salerno,
as well as those coast roads which were more fre-
quented by wealthy tourists of all nations, was in
high favour with men who practised the gentle art
of stopping travellers, and many a heavy purse was
eased of its burden upon the lonely roads. Fra
Diavolo was well known here ; in fact, it was among
the mountains above this very road to Sorrento that
he tried his 'prentice hand at the profession in which
he afterwards became so great a master.
The Convent of Santa Marta lies towards Vico
Equense, high up in the olive woods, in a lonely
242 CASTELLAMMARE
situation, guarded by its sanctity. That had been
quite enough, until Fra Diavolo came into the world,
to keep safe not only the nuns, but even their gold
statue of the Madonna, which is perhaps more
wonderful, though both are sterling proofs of the
excellent and reverential morals of the people.
One Scarpi dwelt in the woods above Castellam-
mare, with a faithful band of followers who loved
him. I fear he is forgotten now, which is scarcely
just, for he was a bold and bloodthirsty bandit. But
as is said in the Purgatorio on a similar occasion
"... Credette Cimabue nella pintura
Tener lo Campo ! ed ora ha Giotto il grido."
In Brigantaggio it is just the same, and Scarpi's
just celebrity is obscured by the greater fame of Fra
Diavolo.
Scarpi was torn two ways ; cupidity reminded him
that the golden statue was easily obtained, piety in-
terposed that it would be a shocking crime. Nothing
worse was set down against him than the usual tricks
on travellers, slitting their ears, and dismissing them
upon occasion to a better world. It was a pity to
spoil so fair a record. But Fra Diavolo, boy as he
was when he joined Scarpi's band, possessed the
great advantage of a single heart. Cupidity was not
thwarted by any opposing force of piety, and craft
came to make the weak arm strong.
He dressed himself like a novice, and going up
boldly to the gate of the convent proclaimed himself
a penitent, and sought admission to the Order. I
doubt not he had an innocent face. The mother
superior welcomed him, and straightway shut him up
in solitude for the usual three days' communing with
heavenly powers, which was to prepare him for the
FRA DIAVOLO 243
spiritual life to which he aspired. The boy naturally
wished to make this intercourse as direct as possible,
and making his way unobserved into the chapel he
seized the golden Madonna and hid her under some
straw in a cart belonging to a peasant whom some
lawful occasion had brought up to the convent.
Having done this, he presented himself before the
Mother Superior, telling her reflection had convinced
him he was not fitted for a heavenly life which was
indeed no more than the truth and so departed
with her approval.
The poor peasant driving down among the olive
woods somewhat later, all unconscious of the riches
in his creaking cart, was probably at a loss to under-
stand why Scarpi's faithful followers should stop him,
and insist on rummaging in the straw. His emotions
when he saw what they fished out would be a fit
subject for a dramatic monologue. Horror at the
sacrilege must have struggled with regret that he
had not himself thought of fumbling in the straw.
Had he done so, would he not have driven off the
other way, and melted down the Madonna in his
own cottage ? To be made the tool by which sinners
acquire wealth is surely bitter, and often in after life
the poor man must have cursed the fate which did
not whisper in his ear what it was he carried in the
cart.
But Scarpi's bandits carried off the statue, and Fra
Diavolo gained great honour with them. This early
fame he never lost. And the common people, hold-
ing that priests and devils are, however opposite in
all their qualities, the only classes of mankind who
are uniformly cunning and successful in all they
undertake, combined the titles into one cognomen,
no whit too glorious for the chieftain, who in his
untutored youth had proved greater than all the
244 CASTELLAMMARE
restraints which hamper greedy men, and had laid
hands on the Madonna.
So Fra Diavolo became a mighty leader, and woe-
ful are the tales which travellers told of him. Yet
I should be unjust if I did not mention that his most
brutal outrages were sometimes capable of being
dignified by the name of politics, if not of loyalty
to an exiled king. For Ferdinand of Bourbon when
he fled from his throne of Naples at the end of the
last century, skulking from revolutionary outblasts
and the coming of the French, was not so far untrue
to the traditions of his race as to despise the help of
any agents, however rascally. It might have seemed
incongruous if we had found the inheritor of the
name of the constable Bourbon who led Frunds-
berg's Lanzknechts down on Rome in 1527, and cast
the treasures of ages as a prey to the scum of Europe,
if we had found this monarch saying to himself "Non
tali auxilio," and indulging in the luxury of scruples.
But Ferdinand despised no man who would help
him ; and so Fra Diavolo, the murderer and bandit,
became a secret agent of the exiled king, working
hand in hand with that even more atrocious scoundrel
Mammone, whose habit it was to dine with a newly
severed human head upon the table, and whose cold-
blooded assassinations were more in number than
any man could count. So these murderous devils cut
off French couriers on the mountain roads, attacked
small parties in overwhelming numbers, and per-
formed other gallant deeds in the service of their
king, who was not ungrateful, but rewarded them
after his kind and theirs.
I can find but little in the streets of Castellammare
which invites me to linger in them. There are
mineral baths just outside the town, but Providence
gave me no occasion for visiting them, and I dislike
QUARESIMA 245
the apparatus of ill-health. I went past the baths,
therefore, and strolled on through the crowded, evil-
smelling streets till I came out again at the foot
of the hill leading to the woods of Quisisana, and
went up once more beneath the green arches of the
budding leaves, till I saw from time to time a snatch
of sea above the houses and the wide sunlit plain
revealed itself stretching far and distant round the
base of the great volcano.
As I went through the little village of which I
spoke before, I noticed hanging on a wire which
crosses the road a doll made in the likeness of an
old grey-haired woman, adorned with a tuft of
feathers growing somewhat bare. As it swung to
and fro in the light wind it had the aspect of a
child's plaything which had fallen there by chance ;
but I had seen a similar doll hanging from a balcony
in Castellammare, and knew the thing to be no toy.
Such dolls are seen commonly hanging in the air
at this season in the Sorrento peninsula. The old
woman is Quaresima, or Lent, and she is provided
with as many hen's feathers as there are weeks in
that period of fasting. Every Sunday one feather
is plucked out ; and when the last is gone Quaresima
is torn down with rejoicing. On the first Sunday
of her exaltation a playful diversion is carried on
at the cost of poor Quaresima. A boy or girl,
chosen by lot, is blindfolded and armed with a long
stick, with which he strikes in the air, groping after
the swinging figure. At last he finds it, and a sharp
blow breaks a concealed bottle, letting out a red
fluid the blood of Lent ; the ceremony is diversified
by a good deal of horseplay.
I know not how ancient these superstitious cere-
monies may be. Italy, perhaps southern Italy in
particular, is crowded with usages handed down
246 CASTELLAMMARE
from days so old that it sometimes causes me a
shudder to remember how many ages of mankind
have passed by them in procession off the earth.
The toy, the trivial folly persisting still, more than
half meaningless, century after century, while the
bright eyes and laughing lips, all that we call life,
pass on like shadows when the sun goes in. It is
the doll, the grotesque Quaresima, which has life and
endures, not we, however distasteful it may be to
realise it.
But if our time be shorter, and we shall see fewer
springs than the absurd Quaresima, we may at least
rejoice in the beauty of this one. For as unsettled
weather brings the loveliest days, so the country has
put on its rarest beauty. The blue sky hangs like
a tent overhead, the clouds are driven back behind
the mountains and lie there piled in heavy ranks
of tower and column ; while through the brown
trunks of the trees and the green mist of their
lower twigs I can see all the mountains behind
Nola and towards Caserta rise one above the other
into the far blue distance. For from the clouds of
heaven there dropped light on some peaks and
shadows on the others, purple lights and dark brown
shadow deepening into indigo, so that some looked
near and others far away, and some were sulphurous
and others green, while all the Campagna laughed
in the sunshine, and the houses white and pink
flashed on the margin of the turquoise sea.
There are lovely villas on these fringes of the
wood, stately houses with terraced gardens occupying
the high slopes. The road twists upwards by sharp
inclines, catching at each turn more of the freshness
of the mountain, till at length it runs into the gate-
way of the old royal villa, a refuge used when heat
or pestilence made Naples unendurable by almost
QUISISANA 247
every sovereign since the days of Charles the Second
of Anjou. It was once the property of that shocking
scoundrel, Pierluigi Farnese, most unsavoury and
least respectable even among Popes' children, who
do so little credit to St. Peter's chair. But it was as-
sociated more particularly with Ferdinand of Bourbon,
who rebuilt the place. He is said to have given it
the name " Quisisana " (" Here one gets well ") ;
but I think that name, or at least as much of it as
" Casa sana," is found in records much older than
his time.
The villa is no longer royal, but it retains the
aspect of old splendour. In these spring days it is
empty and silent, lying with barred windows in ex-
pectation of those guests who will climb up the hill
in crowds when the figs ripen and the sultry weather
comes, and all Italy begins to dream of cool, green
shades. For three summer months the place is an
hotel, the " Margherita" ; but now, when I walk
round towards the wide terrace which overhangs the
grass-grown courtyard, the sound of my steps echoes
through the still air, and the red walls are eloquent
of vanished royalty.
A formal air of ceremonial stiffness clings about
the garden walks, suggestive of hoops and powder,
of polished courtliness, and the old, stately manners
which vanished from the earth in the crash of
the Revolution. I pass out through the gate by
which the courtiers entered the woods, and have
hardly gone a hundred yards beneath the tender
green of the young beech trees when I come to a
shady fountain set round with stone seats, a pleasant
spot in which the court used to linger on hot summer
days, greeting the riders who mounted at the moss-
grown block, so long disused except by peasants going
to and fro with their rough carts. There were lovely
248 CASTELLAMMARE
roads laid out for those royal pleasure parties ; but
as I plunge further into the woods courts and kings
are driven out of my mind by a sharp whirring sound
breaking the silence of the treetops. Across an island
of blue sky, in an ocean of green boughs, a bundle of
faggots was flying like a huge brown bird. I watched
it going with extraordinary speed. Hard on its heels
came another, and then a third, while by watching
closely I perceived that slanting downwards through
the woods from the height of the next mountain there
ran a stout wire, to which the faggots were slung by
hooked sticks cut on those high uplands where the
woodmen were working. Presently a sharp turn of
the path brought me out at the last station of the
wire. The faggots were piled high in stacks, the air
was full of the scent of fresh-sawn wood, and a fire
burning by the wayside sent up coils of thin blue
smoke among the trees. Half a dozen men were
piling cut staves upon a cart; and from time to
time there was a jangling of bells as the mules
tossed their heads or shivered, and all the brass
contrivances set upon the harness to keep off the
evil eye clashed together in the sunlight. Far away
across dipping woods the logs came whirring down
from Monte Pendolo. All the mountain tops are
connected by these wires, and in every direction as
one wanders through the silent woods the strange and
not unmusical humming of the flying faggots is the
only sound audible.
A little further wandering brings me to a glen,
whose steep slopes are brown with fallen leaves and
green with budding brushwood. A stream runs down
through the ravine, and a stone bridge is flung across
it. Here the road divides, one branch going more
directly to those uplands whence the faggots start
upon their journey, and by this route bare-legged
MONTE COPPOLA 249
children hurry up carrying baskets of the forked
sticks by which the bundles hang. But I go on-
wards by the other road, winding upwards by slow
inclines, now deep in glades where large blue
anemones glow in the long grass, and bee orchids
hide among the shadows, now emerging in full sight
of the wide blue gulf and the smoking volcano which
towers over it, till at last I reach the top of Monte
Coppola, where once more seats and tables set
beneath the trees mark a spot at which the Bourbon
court used to revel in the mountain breezes. I lean
over the low breastwork, and enjoy the splendour of
the prospect.
It is late afternoon, and the westering sun leaves
the great bulk of Monte Faito in deep shadow, cast-
ing only here and there a fleck of warm gold light on
the pines that clothe some shoulder, and throwing
into deeper shade the ravines and scars which are
chiselled out of his grey flanks. Yet even in the
dark clefts there are gleams of yellow broom or
cytisus ; for the cuckoo is calling all over the sunny
country, the trees are in their brightest leaf, and all
the slopes of oak and chestnut that sweep down to
the margin of the bay are like a cataract of vivid
green tumbling down the mountain. Here, on the
summit, it is very still. The silence of the mountains
holds the air, and scarce a bird twitters in the gold
light. The ridge of Faito, like a gigantic buttress,
cuts off all the western promontory towards Sorrento,
and falls into the sea across the peak of Ischia.
As the sun sank lower, and the warm light grew
deeper and more golden, a great bar of cloud formed
across the western sky. The sun was now above
and now below it. Ischia grew shadowy, and then
caught the most delicate light imaginable, swimming
like an impalpable fairy island on a sea of darkest
250 CASTELLAMMARE
blue. Then, at some unseen change in the order of
the heavens, suddenly the craggy island lost its
colour, and Monte Epomeo stood out sharp and
black against the flushed sky. So one saw it for
a few brief moments. But all the while a rosy glow
was spreading over Cape Miseno, it ran along the
coast of Baiae, and caught Posilipo with a delicate
radiance. Then all at once Ischia sprang again into
light, quivering with every shade of rose and purple,
till the sun sank down behind its blackening peak,
and the stars hung large and luminous in a space of
clear green sky.
CHAPTER XI
SURRIENTO GENTILE : ITS BEAUTIES AND
BELIEFS
I SUPPOSE I need remind no one that the coast
roads between Castellammare and Salerno are
famous round all the world for beauty. No great while
ago there were but two. A third has placed herself
between them now, and many are the disputes as to
which bears off the palm. In these bickerings it is
to be feared that the way from Castellammare to
Sorrento must needs go to the wall ; for indeed it
does not possess the grandeur of the others. The
northern face of the peninsula has an aspect wholly
different from that of the precipices which look
towards Paestum and the islands of the Sirens. It
is softer, more exquisitely wooded ; its hillsides sink
more often into valleys and ravines ; its cliffs are
certainly not awful ; its mountain slopes are sweet
and homely, clad with olive groves and pastures,
studded with villas and with monasteries. It is a
land which lies in the cool shadow of the mountains
for full half the day, so that the scorching sun does
not strike it until he is well past the middle of his
course towards the Tyrrhene Sea.
I left Castellammare on an uncertain morning.
Large grey clouds had sunk far down over the green
slopes of Monte Faito ; even the wooded cone of
Monte Coppola had caught a wreath of vapour
as i
252 SURRIENTO GENTILE
which lay drifting across the trees with menace of
rain and mist. But here and there a gleam quivered
on the woods ; and presently far-distant Ischia was
all a-glimmer, while the dark sea in between flashed
into tender shades of blue. Then came the sunlight,
warm and soft, casting sharp shadows in the gloomy
town, while out on the low road beyond the arsenal
the colour of the waves was glorious, and all the
long beaches of the curving shore shone like silver.
A heavy shower in the night had clogged the level
road with white mud. Out of the quarry, half a
mile beyond the town, came five men pushing a cart
of stones through the slush swarthy ruffians, clad
in blue trousers, with coloured handkerchiefs knotted
on their heads. And there, descending by a rocky
path from the Monastery of Pozzano, was a solitary
monk, with flapping hat, a grey old man with a
bleached, sunken face, the very opposite of the
bright, lusty day. It is thus, so slow and lonely,
that " 'O Munaciello " comes, that ghostly monk
whom all the children hope and fear to see; for if
they can but snatch his hat from off his head, it will
bring a fortune with it. But " 'O Munaciello " does
not come down the mountain paths in this bright
daylight ; nor is there time to think of spirits at this
moment. For the beauty of the road is growing
strangely. Round the shoulder of a sheer grey cliff
which overtops the road, there is suddenly thrust out
into the sea a craggy precipice, in which one recog-
nises the familiar face of Capri, unseen since we
passed Torre dell' Annunziata. A moment later a
long, sharp promontory like a tooth emerges in the
nearer distance. That is " Capo di Sorrento," but
one has scarce time to identify it when the far loftier
cliff of " Punta di Scutola " appears, dropping from
a vast height almost sheer into the sea, while on
VICO EQUENSE 253
a nearer and a lower cliff rests the white town of
Vico, flashing in the sun.
Among the pleasures of the road it is not the
least that the traveller coming from Castellammare,
as long as this most lovely scene extends before his
eyes, is compelled to saunter. No man may hurry, for
the road winds continually upwards, and one pauses,
now to look down upon a little beach, where the blue
tide washes in over white gravel, now to notice how
the slopes are cut in terraces of vines ; while in every
sheltered cleft the golden fruit of orange trees hangs
in the shadow of the brown screens put up to guard
them from the sun. The vegetation is extraordinarily
rich ; as well it may be, for the limestone mountain
is overlaid with volcanic tufa for full half its height
though Heaven only knows where the tufa came
from. A hundred yards beyond the beach there is
once more deep water, dark and unruffled, up to the
very base of the high cliff; and further out the sea
is stained with turquoise changing into green that
recalls in some dim way the colour of a field of flax
when the blue flowers are just appearing. But this
is fresher, alive with light and sparkles, flashing with
the soft radiance of the sky, while the olive woods
upon the lofty headland behind the town change
from grey to dusk as the shadows of the clouds are
flung upon them or dispersed by the returning sun.
Vico, no less than Pozzano, has its miraculous
Madonna. She was found long ago by one Catherine,
a poor crippled girl, to whom the Virgin appeared in
a dream, saying, " Go, Catherine, to the Cave of Vil-
lanto, and there, before my image, you will be healed."
Now the Cave of Villanto was occupied by cows, and
seemed a most unlikely place to contain even the
least sacred statue. But Catherine did not stay to
reason ; she went and found it, was healed according
254 SURRIENTO GENTILE
to the promise, and now on the third Sunday in
October the image is borne in solemn procession
from the Church of Santa Maria del Toro through
the streets of Vico, in glorious memory of this strik-
ing miracle.
There is no end to these marvels of Madonnas. At
Meta, just where the road drops into the plain of
Sorrento, an old woman, attending on her cow, was
amazed to see the beast drop on its knees in front of
a laurel tree. She kicked and poked the creature,
but in vain ; Colley continued her devotions with
placid piety, and the natural amazement of her
mistress was increased when she saw a flame spring
up at the foot of the tree, in which flame presently
appeared not only a statue of the Madonna, but a
hen and chickens of pure gold !
It may be mere accident that, while the legend
goes on to describe fully what became of the statue,
it says nothing more about the golden hen and
chickens worthless dross, of course, yet surely not
without some interest for the finder! Perhaps the
silence hides a tragedy. It had been prudent if the
old woman had allowed no mention of those gewgaws
to be made. She was probably a gossip, and could
not hold her tongue in season. These are fruitless
speculations, and yet I think some charm is added to
the loveliest of countries by the knowledge that such
gauds as a hen and chickens of pure gold are to be
picked up there by the piously observant.
But to return to Vico. I should do that townlet too
much honour if I left it to be supposed that its only
traditions are concerned with heavenly presences.
The truth is otherwise, and it would be improper to
conceal it. Vico, indeed, shares with no few other
townlets on the peninsula the discredit of having
been afflicted sorely by witches. Once upon a time
WITCHCRAFT 255
the nuisance grew unbearable. A farm close to the
town had long been the centre of uncanny noises,
such as terrified the peasants almost to death, and
might have gone near to depopulate the neighbour-
hood had not some very bold people gone over to
inspect. There were the witches sure enough. They
had bells tied to their heels, and were leaping like
monkeys from one tree to another, while the bells
tinkled and the air was full of weird noises. Fortu-
nately the investigators carried guns, and the witches,
seeing that their enemies were ready to shoot, de-
cided to come down, whereupon they received such a
trouncing with sticks that they learnt better manners
and left the neighbourhood at peace.
If one is so defenceless, is it worth while to be a
witch in Italy at all ? The point is arguable, and it
is important to be right on it ; for many children of
both sexes become witches without knowing it, by the
mere fact of being born on Christmas night, or on
the day of the conversion of St. Paul. If, therefore,
the parents do not wish the bairns to retain the
entrte of the witches' Sabbath held always at
Benevento it behoves them to take prompt action.
The remedy is simple. You cut a slip of the vine,
set fire to one end, and pass it over the child's arm in
the shape of a cross. The flame burns out, and
Satan's spell is broken.
I do not find anyone who can tell me why the
witches have bells on their heels. Bells throughout
the peninsula are sacred to Sant' Antuono, called
Antonio elsewhere. In old times the bell of- Sant'
Antuono was carried round from house to house, and
mothers would bring out their sucking children to sip
water from it, in the hope that they might learn to
speak the sooner. Even now a little bell is often
hung round a baby's neck, where it serves the purpose
256 SURRIENTO GENTILE
of the horn, the half- moon, or the hand with out-
stretched ringers ; that is to say, it keeps off the evil
eye. What can there be in common between the
babies and the sinful witches that both should be
followed by the same tinklings ?
Vico, as I have said, lies on a plateau, and when
the road has traversed the clean town how different
from the foulness of Castellammare or Nocera ! it
drops into a ravine of very singular beauty, a wind-
ing cleft which issues from the folds of Faito and
St Angelo, brimming over with vineyards and orange
groves, and opening at last upon the sea, where
through the soft grey foliage one looks to Ischia, far
away across the blue. Having traversed the bridge
which spans this shadowy valley, the road mounts
again, rising through dense woods of olive, till at last
the summit of Punta di Scutola is won, and all the
plain of Sorrento lies below.
There is no hour of dawn or dusk in which this
view is otherwise than exquisite. In the morning
light the plain is full of shadows, for the sun has not
yet travelled westwards of St. Angelo, and the mighty
mountain towers dark over the whole peninsula. It
is the evening sun which shines most beautifully here,
and no one who has climbed up this road when the
plain is full of soft, gold light, when Ischia turns rosy
and the jagged peak of Vico Alvano soars up dark
against the pale green sky, is likely to forget it when
he thinks of Paradise.
Sorrento lies upon the western side of the plain,
almost touching the rim of the mountains that inclose
it, so that one has hardly left the streets before the
mountains close in and the plain is lost. A little way
beyond the houses the hill upon one's left is already
high and sheer, a broken outline of sharp limestone
jags, clothed with cytisus and broom and slopes of
THE RAVINE OF CONCA 257
sweet short grass, out of which rings the plashing of
a stream, for there has been rain upon the mountains,
and all the clefts and runnels are brimming over
with fresh fallen water. So one goes on among the
whispering sounds of tree and brook until a mightier
noise surpasses them, and one pauses at the foot of
the ravine of Conca to behold the waterfall.
So high and dark is this ravine that though the
sun is almost exactly above it, its light catches only
the bushes at the very top, and penetrates not at all
into the sheer funnel down which the water plunges,
scattered into spray by the force of the descent, until
a hundred feet below it drops upon a jut of rock and
so pours down in a succession of quick leaps from
pool to pool.
It is a wild and beautiful sight to watch the down-
pour of this water on the days succeeding rain. But
in the warm weather the ravine is dry, and an active
climber might go up it without much trouble. There
is some temptation to the feat ; for men say a treasure
lies hidden in a cave which opens out of the sheer
walls, and the gold is enough to make a whole village
rich. If any doubt it, let him go there on the stroke
of midnight. As the hour sounds, he will see the
guardian of the hoard appear at the top of the ravine,
a dark mailed warrior, mounted on a sable steed,
who leaps into the gulf and vanishes when mortal
men accost him. There was once a wizard living
at no great distance from Sorrento whose dreams
were haunted by the craving for this treasure. He
must have been a half-educated wizard, for he knew
no spell potent enough to help him towards his
object. One day there came to him three lads who
had possessed themselves, I know not how, of a
magic book, a work of power such as might have
been compiled by the great enchanter, Michael Scot,
258 SURRIENTO GENTILE
who toiled in Apulia for the welfare of the Emperor,
reading the secrets of the stars with little thought
of the pranks that would one day be played on him
by William of Deloraine in Melrose Abbey. It is
rather odd that though our generation turns out so
many kinds of books, both good and bad, it seems
unable to produce the magic sort. But the three
lads got one, and they brought it to the wizard
of Sorrento ; and all together one May night, casting
a rope ladder into the ravine of Conca, climbed down
until they reached the entrance of the cave.
They found it buried in black darkness, and waited
there trembling till the grey dawn stole down the
rocks, and a gold beam from the rising sun quivered
into the mouth of the grotto. As the light shot
through the opening, all the treasure-seekers shouted
together ; for walls and roof were crusted over with
gold and gems, and marvellous flashes of soft colour
glowed in the heart of rubies and of emeralds. They
stood and stared awhile, then one of them tried to
break off a mass of jewels, but had no sooner touched
it than the rocks rang with a crash of thunder, the
magic book whirled away in a livid flame, wizard and
lads fled trembling up the ladder. It was a melan-
choly rout. I fear the party was too large for
prudence. The local proverb says, " When there are
too many cocks to crow, it never will be day."
A little further up the road a stair ascends the
fresh and sunny hillside. It winds upwards through
green grasses and grey rocks till it attains a level
plateau, where a few olives grow detached and
scattered. At that point I turn to look down upon
the plain and the long line of cliff which holds the
sea in check, so black and sheer, so strangely even in
its height. It is still early on this bright mid-April
morning, but the sun has force and power, and all the
LAVA BEACHES 259
sea is radiantly blue. Immediately below me is
a little beach, the Marina Grande, the opening of the
westerly ravine, small, yet much the largest which
the town possesses, and there most of the boats lie
hauled up on the black sand. Another fringe of
lava sand runs under the dark cliff below the great
hotels. Sometimes in the early morning the traveller,
waking not long after dawn, may hear a low monotone
of chanting down beneath his window, and flinging
it open to the clean salt wind that breathes so freshly
over the grey sea dimpling into green, ere yet the
sun does more than sparkle on the water, he will see
far down below him the barefooted women tugging
in the nets, while the fish glitter silvery on the red
planking of the boat that rocks on the translucent
water twenty yards from shore.
Beyond these beaches the straight sheer cliff
sweeps on with what looks like an unbroken wall,
though in truth it is gashed by creeks and inlets,
while one beach, the Marina di Cassano, has in its
time done yeoman's service to the trade of all the
plain. There clings to it a tale of witches too. But
really, I must turn aside less readily at these beckon-
ings of Satan. Let the witches wait It is the lava
which attracts me now. Anybody else would have
noticed it long since, and turned his mind to the
wonders of creation first.
Most people expect to have done with volcanoes
and their products when they climb up out of the
Campagna Felice on to the hillsides of Castellammare.
Yet we heard of lava soil at Vico ; and here are the
lava cliff, the lava sand, and the abounding vegeta-
tion just as lush as if Vesuvius, or some other like
him, were close behind the hilltop. Was I not told
that the peninsula is built of limestone, showing no
trace of fire, shaped and chiselled as it stands to-day
260 SURRIENTO GENTILE
before the earth's crust broke at any spot in all
Campania, or fire burst forth from any fissure? It
is limestone too ! What other rock could so ridge
its precipices, or give so vivid a freshness to the
green pastures on its slopes? Whence, then, came
the lava?
Well, that is in some degree a mystery. Swin-
burne, to whose travels I have referred already,
thought he had solved it, and declared that the
Isles of the Sirens, commonly known as " I Galli,"
for reasons which we shall come to in good time,
he declared these islands to be nothing but the
relics of a crater. The rocks were visited so seldom
a century ago that no one could contradict him at
the moment. But in Naples a geologist lay waiting
disdainfully to demolish him. It was no other than
Scipione Breislak, a formidable man of science, and
an authority even now, which is something more than
can be said of Swinburne. Breislak got a boat and
went himself to the Galli to see what nonsense it
was that the Englishman had been talking. Alas !
he found no trace of fires or crater! Thus one
more nail was driven into the coffin of English
scholarship, and since that day no one has even
guessed where the lava came from.
What may be regarded as fairly certain, however,
is that it was not ejected on this spot. The Piano
di Sorrento, sweet country of perpetual summer, of
which more truly than of many parts of Italy, the
poet might have written
" Hie ver assiduum, atque alienis mensibus aestas,"
is in no danger of being blown to fragments. Per-
haps the lava came from some volcanic outburst
under the sea, from some islet formed and washed
away again it matters little. Somewhere under-
A LAND OF SPRING 261
neath the soil lies the clean, firm limestone, and the
volcanic matter, whencesoever it came, did no more
than fill a hollow of the hills, and turn it into the
loveliest valley in the world. Sorrento, the very
name whispers of smiles and laughter, and the
people, softening it still with the incomparable music
of their speech, modulate it into " Surriento," just
as they turn " cento " into " ciento," and drop a liquid
vowel into the harshness of Castellammare, calling
it " Castiellammare." " Surriento ! " How it trembles
on the air ! Had ever any town a name so fit for
love !
And was any ever set in a fairer country ? It is
a plain, yet no monotony of level, for a spine of the
encircling hills tilts the gardens to the evening sun,
while the shadow of the mountains wards off the
fierce glare of the heat till long past noon. And
what fertility! Is there on the surface of the earth
such a lush wild glade of orange groves, three genera-
tions, " father, son, and grandson," as the Sorrentines
say, hanging on a single tree ; while as they hang and
ripen, the scented flowers are continually budding in
the shadow of the dark green leaves, and every waft
of air is sweetened by the fragrance of the blossom.
But at Surriento all the airs are sweet. If they do
not blow across the orange groves they carry down
the scent of rosemary and myrtle from the moun-
tains, which are knee-deep in delicious scrub ; or
they come off the sea in sharp, cool breezes, bringing
the gladness and fresh movement of the deep, scat-
tering the stagnant heats and making all the plain
laugh with pleasure in the joy of life. How long
the lovely summer lasts at Surriento, and how short
are the bad winter days ! " A Cannelora," say the
peasants, " state rinto e vierno fora ! " What is
"Cannelora"? It is the second day of February,
262 SURRIENTO GENTILE
when England still has full three months of winter!
Then it is that summer returns to the Piano di
Sorrento and chases winter away across the hills.
Is it true ? " Chi lo sa." Perhaps not quite, but
what of that? The Sorrentines themselves have
another saying, which runs thus : " A neve 'e Marzo
nu' fa male," that is, " Snow does no harm in
March." So the summer which comes at Cannelora
is not incompatible with snow ! Yet even in fibs
there must be probability, or where would be the
use of them? To declare that an English summer
began at Cannelora would be simply dull.
The plain, I say, is not one unbroken level, nor
is it wide enough to be monotonous. One cannot
look out far in any direction over the olive woods
which like a soft grey flood surge over the fertile
country, without being checked by the cool, shadowy
mountains, St. Angelo vast and lovely, Vico Alvano
thrusting up an almost perfect cone ; and many
another peak showing towards Sorrento a slope of
crag and pasture-land which on its other face drops
in sheer precipices to the Gulf of Salerno. One
knows that from the summit of the ridge there is
an outlook over both the gulfs ; and from my post,
here on the hillside known as Capo di Monte, I can
see the red monastery called the Deserto, because it
was indeed erected in a solitary waste, where the
soul of man might hope to tread down underfoot
him who, in the language of the place, is rarely
spoken of by name, but indicated more gently as
" Chillo che sta sotto San Michele " " He who lies
beneath St. Michael."
The pleasantest way to the Deserto is on foot.
One goes on up the stairs from Capo di Monte,
stopping gladly enough to chaffer with the children
who offer flowers or early fruits, and are contented
IL DESERTO 263
with so very little coin in exchange, then climbing
on past hillside cottages and orange groves within
high walls, which only now and then admit a glance
across the sea to Vesuvius smoking, or the blue hills
beyond Nola so far away, until at last the stairs are
left behind and one passes on through vineyards into
a wood which occupies the higher slopes of the open
hillside, a mossy, fragrant wood, whose spring foliage
is not yet so dense as to bar the sunlight from the
anemones, lilac and purple, which grow in profusion
out of the trailing ivy and the dead leaves of last
year's fall. After the wood, the gate of the Deserto
is close at hand : it gives access to a straight, steep
drive, at the end of which stands a tower over-
topping a red group of buildings, and on it the
words
" Ego vox clamantis
In Deserto
Tempus breve est."
An old monk admitted me, and without waste of
words, pointed out the staircase which gave access to
the upper story. He did not offer to accompany me,
but went back along the silent corridor like a man
contemptuous of earthly things, even of the im-
measurable beauty which lay stretched out on every
side of that high eminence. So I went up the stairs
alone, listening to the echoes of my feet, until I came
to a doorway whence I passed out on the wall which
surrounds the garden quadrangle ; and here I turned
instinctively to seek for Capri, unseen since the
glimpse I caught of its high precipices on approaching
Vico Equense.
Looking northward from the monastery wall I had
the island on my left, the sheer cliff called the Salto
turned towards me, the island rocks of the Faraglioni
264 SURRIENTO GENTILE
standing out distinctly, the little marina sparkling in
the sun, while high above it, like an eagle's nest,
towered the crags of Anacapri and Barbarossa's
castle. The morning sun had transformed the island
wondrously. Grey and green by nature, some suf-
fusion out of the warm sky had showered down deep
purple on it, and from end to end it lay glowing with
the colour of an evening cloud. Whence that light
came was a marvel that I could not guess ; for the
nearer slopes of Punta di Campanella caught not a
trace of it, but ravine and mountain pasture lay there
in the sunlight grey and green as ever, while across
the narrow strait Capri had all the tremulous beauty
of the coasts of fairyland. Far away northwards,
across a space of the loveliest sea imaginable, lay the
craggy peak of Ischia, the low reef of Procida, and
the mountains of the Campanian coast ; while on the
hither side of that blue land of cloudy peaks the sun
had flung a heavy shadow over Monte Sant' Angelo,
and all his towering slopes lay black and lurid.
The southward view is scarcely so fine. For the
Deserto is built on the Sorrento side of the ridge,
so that even from its roof one surveys a part only
of the vast waters which owned the domination of
Salerno, of Amalfi, and in far older days submitted
to the rule of that great city Paestum, whose shattered
temples are still, unto this day, a prouder relic than
any left by the commonwealths which rose in later
times upon the gulf. One looks across the blue
moving waters towards the flat where Paestum stood.
Behind it rise the mountain peaks in long succession,
flashing here and there with fields of snow, while
further off, scarce seen by reason of its distance, the
headland of Licosia marks the limit of the bay.
Such is the Deserto, a solitude among the moun-
tains. When I came down once more into the cool
VAI.I.EY OK MILLS, SOKKENTO
THE RAVINES 265
corridors, the old monk acknowledged my benefaction
with a solemn bow, but let me go without a word.
Silence hung over the building like a spell. It played
its part in the great charm and beauty of the spot ;
and I was well content that nothing broke it. It
was past noon, and the sun was dropping westwards.
All the hillsides were glowing in gold light. The
budding woods, so shadowy as I climbed up, were
full of glimmering radiance ; and as I descended
further, and all the plain lay before me, its olive
woods, its orange groves, and the long line of white
villas cresting the black cliff were suffused in one
wide glory of warm colour. As I went across the
bridge into the city, I turned off from the main street,
and found what is left of the old wall, guarding the
ancient ducal domain, though indeed one might have
thought the deep ravines had fenced it sufficiently on
three sides, while on the fourth the sea protects it
strong and well. The gates have gone, under which
in the old days of festival, when Carnival pranced up
and down the streets, the grisly figure of death, " la
morte di Sorrento," used to lurk, waiting to mow
down the rioter as the hour struck which marked
the approach of Lent. But there is still enough left
of the massive fortifications to show that a rich city
once occupied this site.
It is a pleasant spot at this hour of evening
shadows. The deep ravine is filled with the whisper-
ing echoes of a stream, which does not fill the bottom
of the hollow, but leaves space for orange groves,
deep thatched with boughs. Cottages are built out
on jutting rocks, overhanging the precipice with
strange indifference to the probable results of even
little earthquakes ; and the lanes are alive with
brown, half-naked children. The sheer rocky chasms,
the swarming population, the ancient walls, recall
266 SURRIENTO GENTILE
memories of an older Sorrento than one can recover
easily upon the sea-front, or in the tortuous streets
which skirt it. One sees here the system of defence,
and can believe that in its day Sorrento was a fortress,
though its great days of independence passed so
early, and its dukes were tributaries long ere the
Normans came and coveted these shores. Yet the
ducal days, the " Giorni Ducheschi," are by no means
forgotten in Sorrento. Indeed, if their natural glories
had passed out of mind, the nocturnal ramblings
of Mirichicchiu would serve to refresh the memory
of every man and child, terror being, as Machiavelli
puts it, a better remembrancer than love.
Mirichicchiu, "the little physician," was a dwarf.
He lived in the time of the dukes, and was unwise
enough to conspire against his lord, who promptly
cut his head off and caused the body to be thrown
into the fields outside the castle walls, where its
several parts appear to have been dispersed by the
operations of husbandry, since Mirichicchiu to this
day has not been able to recover them.
Night by night he goes searching up and down
the fields, stooping with a lantern over the clods,
until the cock-crow frights him back to the place
from whence he came. Sometimes the lonely little
dwarf will go up to a cottage and tap at the door.
When that light knocking rings through the startled
house the inmates know that Mirichicchiu is hungry,
and they prepare his breakfast. The dish must be
cooked specially for him, and no one else must taste
it. If he finds it to his mind he leaves coins in the
plate.
There can, I think, be few districts in which the
folklore is richer or more romantic than in this
region of Sorrento. The peasants are soaked in
superstition. The higher classes are scarce more
MARINA DI PUOLO 267
free from it. Those who loiter at midnight near
the Capo di Sorrento, whither every tourist goes
to see the ruins of the Villa Pollio and the great
cool reservoir of sea- water known as "111 Bagno della
Regina Giovanna," may see a maiden clad in white
robes rise out of the sea and glide over the water
towards the Marina di Puolo, the little beach which
lies between the Punta della Calcarella and the
Portiglione. She has scarce touched land when
she is pursued by a dark rider on a winged horse,
who comes from the direction of Sorrento, and hunts
her shrieking all along the shore. There are spectres
on every cliff and hillside, witches on the way to
their unhallowed gatherings at Benevento, and
wizards prowling up and down in the shape of goats
or dogs. At night the peasants keep their doors
and windows closed ; if they do not, the Janara
may come in and cripple the babies. You may
sometimes keep out evil spirits by setting a basin
full of water near the door; the fiends will stop
to count the drops, which takes a long time, probably
enough to occupy them until day drives them home.
If anyone be out after dark it is better not to
look round. The risk is that one may be turned
into stone.
Here and there one may see ruined churches in
the country, but no peasant will go near them after
nightfall; for he knows that spectral Masses are
celebrated there, solemn services chanted by dead
priests, who are thus punished for neglect of their
offices in life, and whose congregation is made up
of worshippers who forgot their religion while they
lived.
The Italian fancy begets things terrible more easily
than it conceives a lovely dream. Even the tales of
fairies turn more readily on fear than on the merry
268 SURRIENTO GENTILE
pranks with which our northern legends associate the
dwellers in the foxglove bells. But on a fine spring
evening, when the sun is glowing over the plain, there
are pleasanter things to think of in Sorrento than the
spirits of the other world. I turn gladly away from
the ravines into the broad main street, and passing
by the cathedral, pause in the piazza., where the life
of the pleasant little town is busiest and gayest. It
is here that one should call to mind the poet Tasso,
whose tragedy was cast into noble verse by Goethe ;
for his statue stands in the square, looking down
gravely on the rows of vetturini cracking whips, the
children coming or going to the fountain, the babble
of strange tongues from lands which never dreamt of
Surriento when he dwelt on earth. But I think the
days are gone in which English people can delight in
the sixteenth-century poets of which Italy was once
so proud. Tasso and Ariosto may have every merit
save sincerity ; but that is lacking, and Italy has so
many noble poets who possess it ! I care little for
the memories of Tasso, save in Goethe's verse, and
as I go down to the marina it is of older visitors,
welcome and unwelcome, that my mind is full
St. Peter, for example. There is a constant legend
that he came this way after the death of Christ,
landing perhaps from some galley of Alexandria that
touched here on its way to Pozzuoli, and set down
the apostle to win what souls he could among the
rough dwellers in the mountains. The saint preached
his first sermon by the roadside near Sant" Agnello, a
village between Sorrento and the Marina di Cassano ;
and then went over the hills towards Castellammare,
where he rewarded the hospitality of the dwellers at
Mojano, near the roots of Faito, by making springs of
water gush out of the thirsty rock.
Doubtless the apostle was on his way to Rome.
FABLE AND TRUTH 269
I know no reason why we should distrust the tale
that he did indeed pass through this country. The
water-way from the East around the coasts of
southern Italy is of mysterious antiquity. Paestum
was a mighty trading city many centuries before
St. Peter lived, and its sailors may well have in-
herited traditions of navigation as much older than
their day as they are older than our own. I do not
know whether it was indeed upon the islands under
the Punta di Campanella that Ulysses, lashed to the
mast, heard the singing of the Sirens, but the tradition
is not doubted in Sorrento; and without leaning on
it as a fact, one may recognise at least that the tale
suggests the vast antiquity of trade upon these waters.
Else whence came the heaps of whitening bones of lost
sailors, among which the Sirens sat and sang ? Here
year by year we learn more of the age of man, and
of the countless centuries he has dwelt by the shore
of the great deep. We cannot tell when he first
adventured round the promontories with sail and
oar ; but it is safe to believe that those early voyages
were made unnumbered centuries before any people
lived whose records have come down to us, and that
those sailors whom we discern when the mists are
first lifted from the face of history were no pioneers,
but followed in a well-worn track of trade, beaten out
who knows how long before their time.
It is said that in old days the city of Sorrento
stretched farther out to sea than it does now. The
fishers say they could once go dryfoot from one
marina to the other. There are ruins underneath the
water. The two small beaches have but cramped
accommodation now, and if trade settled there, as
it did in the days of Tiberius, a harbour of some
sort must have existed. A city on the coast may
last without a harbour which has once brought it
2;o SURRIENTO GENTILE
consequence; but would it have grown without one to
a place of power? It is profitless speculation, per-
haps. But no one wandering along these coasts,
which played so great a part in early maritime
adventure, can easily refrain from wondering at the
tricks of destiny which brought the stream of com-
merce now to one spot, now to another; and then,
wresting away the riches it had given, left the busy
quays to silence, and made one more city of the
dead.
The hotels which line the summit of the cliff
conceal the remnants of great Roman villas. The
Hotel Vittoria is built over one of the finest. On
that spot, in 1855, were found the remains of a small
theatre, destroyed to make the terrace of the hotel.
The tunnel by which one goes down to the sea is the
same by which the Roman lord of the mansion de-
scended to his boat. Beneath the Hotel Sirena there
are large chambers which once formed part of such
another villa. I cannot tell how many other traces of
old days may be left scooped out of the black rock.
As the dusk descends upon Sorrento, and the sea
turns grey, the narrow, tortuous streets resume an
appearance of vast age. They are very silent at this
hour ; the shops are mostly closed ; the children
hawking woodwork have gone home. One's footsteps
echo all down the winding alleys, and the tall houses
look mysterious and gloomy. Such was the aspect
of the town on the evening of Good Friday, when
I took my stand in the garden of the Hotel Tra-
montano to see the procession of our Lady of
Sorrows, who, having gone out at daybreak to seek
the body of the Lord, has now found it, and is
bearing it in solemn mourning through the city
streets.
Along the narrow lane which passes the hotel a
OUR LADY OF SORROWS 271
row of lamps has been set, and little knots of people
are moving up and down, laughing and jesting, with
little outward recognition of the nature of the rite.
The procession has already started ; it is in a church
at the further end of the long alley, and every ear is
strained to catch the first sound of the chanting
which will herald its approach. Wherever the houses
fall back a little the space is banked up with curious
spectators. Some devout inhabitant hangs out a
string of coloured lamps, and is rewarded by a
shower of applause and laughter, which has scarcely
died away when a distant strain of mournful music
casts a hush over the throng. Far down the alley
one sees the glittering of torches, and a slow, sobbing
march, indescribably weird and majestic, resounds
through the blue night, with soft beat of drum and
now and then a clash of cymbals. Very slow is the
approach of the mourners, but now there is no move-
ment in the crowd. Men and children stand like
ranks of statues, watching the slow coming of the
torches and the dark waving banners which are borne
behind them.
So the heavy rhythm of the funeral march goes up
into the still air, knocking at every heart ; and after
the players, treading slow and sadly, come the
young men of Sorrento, two and two, at wide in-
tervals, hooded in deep black, their eyes gleaming
through holes in the crape masks which conceal their
faces. Each bears some one among the instruments
of the divine passion the nails, the scourge, and
scourging pillar, the pincers while in their midst
rise the heavy folds of a huge crape banner, drooping
mournfully from its staff. Next comes a silver
crucifix raised high above the throng, and then, as
the head of the procession winds away among the
houses, the throbbing note of the march changes to
272 SURRIENTO GENTILE
a sweeter and more plaintive melody, while from
the other hand there rises the sound of voices chant-
ing " Domine, exaudi." In a double choir come the
clergy of the city and the country round, all robed in
solemn vestments, and between the two bodies the
naked figure of our Lord is borne recumbent on a
bier, limbs drawn in agony, head falling on one side,
pitiful and terrible, while last of all Our Lady of
Sorrows closes the long line of mourners.
When she has passed, silence drops once more upon
the dusky alleys. Far off, the sound of chanting rings
faintly across the houses, and the slow music of the
march sighs through the air. Then even that dies
away, and on the spot where Tasso opened his eyes
upon a troubled world there is no sound but the wind
stirring among the orange blossoms, or the perpetual
soft washing of the sea about the base of the black
cliffs.
GATEWAY OF CAI'KI
CHAPTER XII
CAPRI
IT is a common observation among those who visit
Capri that the first close view of the island is
disappointing. The distant lights and colours are
all gone. The cliffs look barren. The island has
a stony aspect, inaccessible and wild. The steamer
coming from Sorrento reaches first the cliff of the
Salto, concerning which I shall have more to say
hereafter, and only when that tremendous precipice
has been rounded does one see the saddle of the
island, a neck of land which unites the two mountain
peaks so long watched from the mainland, a con-
tinuous garden, at the head of which stands the town
of Capri, while the Marina is at its foot.
It must be admitted that the landing-place of
Capri is on the way to lose its quaintness, and is
even in some danger of taking on the aspect of an
excursionists' tea-garden. Hotels and restaurants
spring up on every side, and a broad, winding road
has been carried in long convolutions from the sea up
to the town. Capri is striving hard to provide con-
veniences for her visitors, and no longer conducts
them up the hill by the ancient staircase, which was
good enough for friends and enemies alike in all ages
till our own, and is still so broad and easy that a
donkey can go up it with less distress than it will
T 273
274 CAPRI
experience on the hot and dusty road. However,
the staircase is still there, and as it is my odd whim
to care nothing for the nice new road, but to prefer
entering Capri by the old front door, I consign my
l u gg a S e to the strapping, stout-armed sirens who
pounced upon it as soon as the landing-boat touched
shore, and go up the cool and shadowy steps between
walls of ivy and deep-rooted creepers, over which
the budding vines project their tendrils, and blossom-
ing fruit trees send a drift of petals falling on the
stair. From time to time I cross the noisy road, and
go on in peace again with greater thankfulness, till,
after some twenty minutes' climb, I emerge beneath
an old vaulted gateway, from the summit of which
defence unnumbered generations of Capriotes must
have parleyed with their enemies, fierce Algerines,
followers of Dragut or of Barbarossa, merciless sea-
wolves who descended on this luckless island again
and again, attracted, no doubt, by its proximity to
the wealthy cities of the mainland and the streams of
commerce which were ever going by its shores.
The gate is flung wide open now, and the group of
women sitting in its shadow eye the coming stranger
with a friendly smile. I step out of the archway on
to the Piazza, the prettiest and tiniest of squares,
bordered with shops on two sides. On the third
side stand the cathedral and the post office, while
the fourth is occupied by a wall breast high, over
which one may look out across the fertile slopes
bounded by the huge cliffs of Monte Solaro all
burning in the midday sun.
From the Piazza two or three arched openings give
access to narrow, shady lanes. One of these is the
main street of the town, and meanders down the
opposite side of the saddle, passing Pagano's Hotel
and the " Quisisana," whereof the former is as old as
AUGUST KOPISCH 275
the fame of the island among tourists ; for they,
although the great interest and beauty of Capri were
well known, came here rarely before the discovery of
the Blue Grotto caught the fancy of all Europe. I
shall not go to see that marvel of the world to-day,
for the hour of its greatest beauty is past already ;
and I will therefore spend the hours of heat in setting
down how the grotto was recalled to memory some
seventy years ago by August Kopisch. The story is
sold everywhere in Capri, but as it happens to be
written in German, hardly any English visitors take
the trouble to look at it
There can be no doubt that when Kopisch landed
in Capri during the summer of 1826 the blue grotto
was practically unknown. There are, it is true, one
or two vague passages in the writings of early topo-
graphers Capaccio, Parrino which appear to be
based upon some knowledge of it ; and it is said that
in 1822 a fisherman of Capri had dared to enter the low
archway. If so, he kept his knowledge to himself; for
when Kopisch landed, and went up the old staircase to
Pagano's Hotel a humble hostelry it was in those
days ! he knew nothing of the grotto, and his host,
though very ready to talk about the wonders of the
island, required some pressing before he would explain
the hints he dropped of an enchanted cave below the
tower of Damecuta, a place which boatmen were
afraid to visit in broad day, and which they believed
to be the habitation of the devil. " But I," went on
Pagano, "do not believe that. Many times, when I
was a lad, I begged friends of mine, who were strong
swimmers, to swim into the cavern with me, but in
vain ; the fear of the devil was too strong in them !
But listen ! I once learned from a very aged fisher
that two hundred years ago a priest swam with one
of his colleagues a little way into the cave, but turned
276 CAPRI
and came out at once in a terrible fright ; the legend
says that the priests found the entrance widen out into
a vast temple, with high altar, set round with statues
of the gods."
Pagano's story fell on the enthusiastic fapcy of the
young German artist like flint on steel, and the
Capriote, catching his guest's excitement, went on to
say that he himself believed the tower of Damecuta
to be a relic of one of the palaces built by the
Emperor Tiberius, who constructed no pleasure-
house without a secret exit. Might not the hidden
way go through the grotto ? And if so, what strange
things might they not find if they dared explore it !
Perhaps a temple of Nereus, the shrine of some sea
deity, left unworshipped and forgotten through all
the ages since the Roman Empire fell !
Both men had heart for the adventure, undismayed
by prophecies of mischief from devils, mermen, or sea
monsters, though quaking secretly at the recollection
of the sharks, which, however, rarely come close into
shore. Wondrous tales were told them of things
seen near the fabled grotto. Sometimes the frightened
fishers had watched the glow of fire from within
trembling on the waves. Beasts like crocodiles were
seen to look in and out; seven times a day the
entrance changed its shape and windings ; at night
the Sirens sang there among dead men's bones; the
screams of little children in agony rang often round
the rocks, and it was no uncommon thing for young
fishermen to disappear in the neighbourhood of the
ill-famed cavern. Many an instance could be quoted,
and one tale in particular was brought up to show
how mad they were who loitered on that sea. A
fisherman went out to spear fish near the grotto. It
was a lovely morning, and he could distinguish the
shellfish creeping on the bottom, though the water
A TALE OF A MERMAN 277
was ten fathoms deep. Suddenly he saw all the fish
scurry away into hiding, and just underneath his boat
came swimming in concentric circles a vast sea
monster, rising at each turn nearer and nearer to the
surface. The fisher was uneasy, but instead of calling
on the Madonna as a Christian would, he trusted
in his own strength, and hurled his spear at the
monster in the devil's name. He saw it strike the
creature's neck, but from the wound there came such
a gush of blood as clouded all the water so that he
could see nothing. He thought joyfully that he had
killed the fish ; but the thong of his spear hung slack,
and when he pulled it in the point of the harpoon
was gone not broken off, but fused, as if it had been
thrust into a furnace !
The poor fisherman, terrified to death, dropped the
spear and seized his oars, longing only to get away
from that accursed place. But row as he might he
could not progress. His boat went round in circles,
as the sea monster had swum, and finally stood still
as if anchored, while out of the reddened water rose
a bloodstained man, with the spear sticking in his
breast, and threatened the fisher with his fist. The
poor man sank down fainting, and when he came to
life again he was being tended by his friends at the
Marina of Capri. For three days he was dumb.
When he could speak and tell what had befallen him
he began to shrivel up. First his right hand withered,
then his arms and legs, till finally, when he died,
he had lost the aspect of a man, and was like nothing
but a bundle of dried herbs in an apothecary's shop.
Such were the tales with which the Capriotes
sought to dissuade Kopisch from paying heed to the
suggestions of Pagano, but in vain. Early in the
morning the party started, having with them Angelo
Ferraro, a boatman, with a second boat in which they
278 CAPRI
had packed a small stove, with all the materials
necessary for kindling a fire. When they came to
the low entrance of the cave not one of them was
quite at ease, and Kopisch, who was in the water
first, begged Angelo, the boatman, for a fresh assur-
ance that sharks never came between the rocks.
Angelo was labouring to kindle his fire, and gave
a hasty confident reply, which provoked the German
to the natural reflection, " It's all very well for him to
be sure. His legs are in the boat ! "
But when the resinous wood shavings caught and
blazed up brightly all fear was gone. Angelo pulled
in under the low archway, pushing the smaller boat
with the lighted stove before him. Close behind
came Kopisch, Pagano, and a second German traveller,
half blinded by the smoke which blew back in their
faces, and full of natural excitement and anxiety
concerning what might befall them in this bold
quest. For a time they could see nothing save a
dim, high vault; but when Kopisch turned to look for
his companions he, first of all men of our age and
knowledge, saw that sight which for absolute beauty
and wonder has no superior in all the world.
" What a panic seized me," he says himself, " when
I saw the water under me like blue flames of burning
spirits of wine ! I leapt upwards, for, half blinded
as I was by the fire in the boat, I thought first of
a volcanic eruption. But when I felt the water cold
I looked up at the roof, thinking the blue light must
come from above. But the roof was closed. . . . The
water was wonderful, and when the waves were still,
it seemed as if I were swimming in the invisible blue
i
sky. . . .
I have told this adventure at some length because,
in mere justice, Kopisch and Pagano ought not to
be forgotten by the crowds of pleasure seekers who
THE BLUE GROTTO 279
visit Capri, and for whom, however much or little
they may take pleasure in the other immense beauties
of the island, the Blue Grotto still remains the chief
delight. It may not be necessary to claim for Kopisch
that he was indeed first of all men to see its marvellous
beauty ; nor e.ven that, but for his bold adventure, its
low gateway would have remained closed to all the
world. Discoveries such as this are made at their
appointed time, and Kopisch may perhaps have had
precursors. But it remains true that his audacity
first threw wide the gate for us ; and for my part I
acknowledge gladly a deep debt of gratitude.
No wise man goes to the Blue Grotto from the
steamer by vhich he travels from Naples or Sorrento.
When one las crossed the ocean, and journeyed
thousands of miles, to see a sight so wonderful,
why should ore be content to hurry round it in the
few minutes g'ven by a boatman eager for other
fares ? There i: but one way to see the Blue Grotto,
and that is by hiring a boat at the Marina on a
still, sunny mornng, bargaining carefully that there
shall be no compulsion to leave before one wishes.
Then as the boatnan rows on slowly beneath the
luxuriant vineyard; and the green slopes of the
saddle of the islanc, he will point out the baths of
the Emperor Tiberiu , low down by the shore, indeed,
partly covered by tie clear green water, and will
go on to talk of the Grange life led by the imperial
recluse, who studded te island with palaces and left
it teeming with unsolvel mysteries. Twelve villas he
built, so says Tacitus, upn this narrow space, and in
these solitary palaces bycliff and shore he lived a life
of nameless tyranny ant wickedness. Who can tell
the uses of the strange nasses of broken masonry
which one finds in climbii^ up and down the lonely
cliff paths? With what Abject did he build tower
280 CAPRI
and arched vault in spots where only sea-birds could
have the fancy for alighting ? What secret chambers
may not still be hidden in these ruins ! What
passages leading deep into caverns of the hillside !
What mysteries ! What treasures for those who
have the heart and courage of the German artist !
Such are the suggestions of the brown-faced boat-
man bending towards me across his oars, while in
a hushed whisper he points out now one and now
another chasm of the limestone which gi\es access,
so he tells me, to a cavern of unmeasured size. And
still, as he talks eagerly and low, the sheer cliff rises
higher and darker overhead ; for the ssddle of the
island is long past, the towering precipices of Monte
Solaro are above me, and high up o> some eyrie
which the sight straining from the water cannot
reach is the white mountain town o.' Anacapri.
Presently the coast-line sinks to a more moderate
height. The tower of Damecuta is seen ahead, and
below it a stair, cut in the face o* the rock, leads
down to a low arched opening, tfrough which the
blue sea is washing in and out. A couple of women
in gay dresses are sitting in the shade upon the stair.
A few boats are rocking on the bue water, strangely,
intensely blue, even in the moving shadow which
the cliffs fling out across the >ea. It was not the
rich, royal colour which one ma' see about the shores
of western England, nor y<t the exquisite soft
turquoise which glows by all tie bays and headlands
of this coast, but a darker ;nd more watery blue,
verging on indigo rather th.n on any other single
colour.
The boat approached the opening. The boatman,
warning me to lie flat in tts stern, shipped his oars,
grasped a chain which v^s fastened to the rock,
and, at the lowest point ofthe wet, winding entrance,
THE COLOUR OF THE GROTTO 281
flung himself backward on my body, while the boat
shot into what for an instant seemed a moonlit
darkness. But on struggling up erect I became
conscious of a strange, milky radiance, which grew
and brightened as the sight adjusted itself, until
I saw that the waves washing round the boat were
of a silvery blue, which is like nothing else, lambent,
incandescent, flashing with the softest glow imagin-
able. One thinks of the shimmering flashes in the
heart of an opal, of the flame of phosphorus, of
the most delicate colour on a blue bird's throat
there is no similitude for that which has no match,
nothing else upon, the earth which is not gross when
set beside these waves of purest light, impalpable,
unsubstantial, and radiantly clear. " Che colore ? "
I asked in wonder ; and the boatman, no less awed
by the strange beauty, answered very low, " II cielo,"
and sat silent, stirring his oar gently, so as to make
spouts of light among the blue reflections.
The roof of the Blue Grotto, low-spreading near
the entrance, rises at the centre into a domed vault.
It is not dark nowhere in the grotto is it dark it
is neither light nor dark, but blue ; blue pervades the
air, and plays about the crannies of the roof like
flame, far paler than the sea, yet quick and living.
Far back in the cave, where the blue shades are
deepest, is a shelf of rock, the only place within
the grotto at which one can land. It is usually
occupied by a boy who pesters visitors by offering
to dive in return for as many francs as he can extort.
The sight of his body in the silvery water has ex-
cited various writers to high flights of eloquence,
one of them indeed assuring us that here alone we
can realise what we shall look like in heaven, when
the grossness of our bodies has been purged away
into the radiance of ethereal light. If this is so one
282 CAPRI
should rejoice, though on more human grounds I
regret the presence of the boy, whose avarice de-
tracts from the charm of the grotto. The aspect
of his body in the water is less wonderful than he
believes. Moreover, the shelf which he has turned
into a bathing board has a higher interest than any
which it derives from him.
For at this spot, and this only, is conclusive
evidence that other eyes, in ages far distant from
our own, have beheld this grotto, though, for reasons
to be given presently, it is practically certain that
those eyes saw a different sight. It is easy to discern
a squared opening, like a door or window, in the
rock above the ledge. Probably such visitors as
notice it regard this as a modern contrivance to
serve some purpose of the guides ; but it is not
so. It stands untouched since Kopisch saw it when
he swam in half blinded by the smoke. When he,
first of all men of our age, climbed up on the rock
ledge and peered through the opening he felt con-
fident that he had found the secret exit from the
palace of Tiberius at Damecuta ; and nothing has
yet been discovered which disproves the possibility
of this.
The boatmen will have it that the passage goes
to Anacapri. Mine was positive upon the subject,
and though constrained to admit that his conclusion
had not been proved, yet did not regard it as open
to discussion. Tradition has a certain value where
proof is not available ; and as the passage is blocked
at no great distance from the grotto, it may be long
before the boatman's faith is shaken. Kopisch fol-
lowed it as far as possible. He describes several
corridors radiating in different directions through
the hillside, forming a sort of labyrinth in which
his party almost lost themselves, and in which they
THE BLUE GROTTO 283
were finally checked by the presence of mephitic
vapours.
Now, whatever may be the secret of these passages,
it scarcely admits of doubt that they were designed
for an entrance to the grotto from the island. Capri
is so thickly studded with Roman works of the
emperors Augustus and Tiberius, and possesses so
few others, that there is little risk in attributing the
construction of this passage to Roman hands. But
what did the Imperial courtiers see, if they did
indeed come down those winding passages and stand
on the rock shelf where the greedy boy now bargains
loudly for francs? Was it the same blue wonder
that we see? The answer is certain. The miracle
of colour depends directly on the level of the water,
and in Roman days the arch was far too high to
permit the necessary refraction or colouration of the
rays of sunlight
This is proved in two ways. Firstly, there is
unanswerable evidence in the hands of geologists
and naturalists that the level of the sea in Roman
days was many feet lower than at present. Secondly,
the fact that there was more of the archway to be
uncovered has been proved by Colonel MackOwen,
who explored it by diving, and who found not only
that the original height of the entrance was six feet
and a half, of which three feet are under water, but
also that the base of the opening is formed by a flat,
projecting sill, which appeared to have been set there
by human hands. Moreover, this archway, which is
now the sole entrance to the grotto, is but a poor
substitute for a more ancient and incomparably
larger doorway still existing, but now submerged,
and measuring as much as fifty feet by forty feet,
which must have let white sunlight into the cavern
as long as it stood above the water.
284 CAPRI
There is thus not much reason for supposing that
Roman eyes ever beheld this wonder of the world.
Whether seen or not seen by an occasional bold
intruder, this unique marvel lay silent and unvisited
through all the Middle Ages, accounted even by
our grandfathers as a haunt of fiends and a centre
of mysterious terrors. It is not easy now to catch
a moment in which the cave is silent. Only early in
the morning one may find its charm completely
undisturbed, and carry away a recollection of un-
earthly mystery and beauty which will remain a
precious possession throughout life.
There is much in Capri that is unparalleled. If
I have set the Blue Grotto first, that is not because
more beauty is found there than exists elsewhere
upon the island. It may be beauty of a rarer kind ;
I do not know. All Capri is a gem, and that which
one sees from the island is lovelier still than anything
upon its shores.
Only one driving road exists in Capri, yet that one
serves the purpose of a score, so rich is it in a charm
that perpetually changes. It leads to Anacapri, and
is cut along the precipices of Monte Solaro, doing
violence to the face of those solitary cliffs on which
the winding staircase offered until recently the only
mode of approach. Here and there one may find a
few yards of the stair still clinging to the front of
the abyss, and by its narrow steepness it is possible
to gauge the desperate courage of those Turkish
rovers who, coming up this way, stormed and de-
stroyed the castle overhead. Perhaps, however,
what we should measure by the dangers of the
approach is the faint spirit of the defenders, who
could not even keep a path by which every enemy
was under full arrowshot a dozen times while toiling
up the cliff". One ought to visit Anacapri on a clear
A NOBLE VIEW 285
morning, early, because the sunshine is then softer ;
and having seen what is of interest in that white-
washed hamlet, leaving Monte Solaro for another
day, it is well to loiter down the road on foot the
way is far too beautiful to drive.
First, in coming down, one's eye is caught by the
incomparable loveliness of the channel that parts the
island from the peninsula. High on the right hand
towers the dark headland named " Lo Capo," and
when one has dropped upon the hillside to the point
at which the strait appears about to close, and the
height of Capri seems almost to touch the tower on
the Punta di Campanella, just so much of the coast
towards Amalfi has disclosed itself as looks like the
shores of fairyland skirting a magic sea. Behind the
green slope of the Campanella, with its humps close
to the water's edge, drops the purple ridge of the
St. Angelo, with an islet at its base, shadowy and
having the colour of an amethyst. Upon the great
slopes of St. Angelo one can see every jag and cleft,
while further off lie the blue mountains, vague, soft,
melting imperceptibly into the pale sky. Away
beyond Salerno, where the mountains join the
purple sea, a solitary snow-capped cone towers up
radiant and flashing, while as one watches the
changes of the light, now one peak and now another
is lit up, and disappears again under the returning
shadow.
But if I turn in the direction of the north, there
lies extended the whole length of the Sorrento penin-
sula, the little town of Massalubrense exactly op-
posite, with the low point of Sorrento jutting like a
tooth, while further off the Punta di Scutola rises out
of the sea, all purple in the warm sun, with the
further cliff that hides Castellammare Capo d'Or-
lando the people call it, talking still of a great sea
286 CAPRI
fight that occurred there six hundred years ago, when
the Admiral Roger di Loria shattered the fleet of
Sicily, which in other days he had led to victory.
There is all the curving strand of the Campagna
Felice, backed by its mountains, brown and blue,
ridged here and there with snow ; and then one sees
Vesuvius with his smoky pillar, the reflection of
which lies across the bay, discolouring the water, and
Somma, wonderfully shadowed by the clouds ; while
further north again, gleaming so splendidly, rising so
pure and white into the heavens that one has to look
more than once to make sure they are not piles of
cumulus, stretches the snowy line of Apennines, peak
rising over peak till the gleam upon their summits
dissolves in the great distance. Lower down in the
vast prospect is the chain of Campanian mountains,
which seem so lofty when one cannot look beyond
them ; and at their feet lies Naples, that queenly
city with the long sweep of coast from Posilipo
to Miseno, where the flames rose from the pyre of
the Trojan trumpeter. Further off again is craggy
Ischia, while blue and infinitely vague upon the sky-
line one can see the mountains behind Gaeta.
There is surely in the whole world scarce any other
view at once so wide, so beautiful, and so steeped in
the associations of romance. The sun climbs higher,
the light increases, the coast towards Amalfi is as
purple as a violet. The sea, unruffled 
