University of Virginia Library

66. LETTER LXVI.

Salvator Rosa studied the scenery of La Cava — the
country between Pompeii and Salerno, on the road to
Pæstum. It is a series of natively abrupt giens, but
gemmed with cottages and hanging gardens, through
which the wildness of every feature is as apparent as
those of a savage through his trinkets. I was going
to Pæstum with an agreeable party, and we came out
upon the bluffs overhanging Salerno and the sea, an
hour before sunset. We darted down upon the little
city lying in the bend of the bay, like a bird's descent
upon her nest. The road is cut through the side of
the precipice, and runs to the bottom with a single
sweep. We were to pass the night here and go to
Pæstum the next morning, see the ruins, and return
here to sleep once more before returning to Naples.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sail was shortened last night, and we lay to under
the shore of Ischia, to enter the bay of Naples by
daylight. As the morning mist lifted a little, the peculiar
shape of Vesuvius, the boldness of the island

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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