At Naples next,for three weeks,was due admiration of the sceneries and antiquities,Bay and Mountain,by no means forgetting Art and the Museum:"to Pozzuoli,to Baiae,round the Promontory of Sorrento;"--above all,"twice to Pompeii,"where the elegance and classic simplicity of Ancient Housekeeping strikes us much;and again to Paestum,where "the Temple of Neptune is far the noblest building Ihave ever seen;and makes both Greek and Revived Roman seem quite barbaric....Lord Ponsonby lodges in the same house with me;--but,of course,I do not countenance an adherent of a beaten Party!"[28]--Or let us take this more compendious account,which has much more of human in it,from an onward stage,ten days later:--"_To Thomas Carlyle,Esq.,Chelsea,London_.
"ROME,13th May,1842,"MY DEAR CARLYLE,--I hope I wrote to you before leaving England,to tell you of the necessity for my doing so.Though coming to Italy,there was little comfort in the prospect of being divided from my family,and pursuits which grew on me every day.However,I tried to make the best of it,and have gained both health and pleasure.
"In spite of scanty communications from England (owing to the uncertainty of my position),a word or two concerning you and your dear Wife have reached me.Lately it has often occurred to me,that the sight of the Bay of Naples,of the beautiful coast from that to this place,and of Rome itself,all bathed in summer sunshine,and green with spring foliage,would be some consolation to her.[29]Pray give her my love.
"I have been two days here;and almost the first thing I did was to visit the Protestant burial-ground,and the graves of those I knew when here before.But much as being now alone here,I feel the difference,there is no scene where Death seems so little dreadful and miserable as in the lonelier neighborhoods of this old place.All one's impressions,however,as to that and everything else,appear to me,on reflection,more affected than I had for a long time any notion of,by one's own isolation.All the feelings and activities which family,friends and occupation commonly engage,are turned,here in one's solitude,with strange force into the channels of mere observation and contemplation;and the objects one is conversant with seem to gain a tenfold significance from the abundance of spare interest one now has to bestow on them.This explains to me a good deal of the peculiar effect that Italy has always had on me:and something of that artistic enthusiasm which I remember you used to think so singular in Goethe's _Travels_.Darley,who is as much a brooding hermit in England as here,felt nothing but disappointment from a country which fills me with childish wonder and delight.
"Of you I have received some slight notice from Mrs.Strachey;who is on her way hither;and will (she writes)be at Florence on the 15th,and here before the end of the month.She notices having received a Letter of yours which had pleased her much.She now proposes spending the summer at Sorrento,or thereabouts;and if mere delight of landscape and climate were enough,Adam and Eve,had their courier taken them to that region,might have done well enough without Paradise,--and not been tempted,either,by any Tree of Knowledge;a kind that does not flourish in the Two Sicilies.
"The ignorance of the Neapolitans,from the highest to the lowest,is very eminent;and excites the admiration of all the rest of Italy.In the great building containing all the Works of Art,and a Library of 150,000volumes,I asked for the best existing Book (a German one published ten years ago)on the Statues in that very Collection;and,after a rabble of clerks and custodes,got up to a dirty priest,who bowing to the ground regretted 'they did not possess it,'but at last remembered that 'they _had_entered into negotiations on the subject,which as yet had been unsuccessful.'--The favorite device on the walls at Naples is a vermilion Picture of a Male and Female Soul respectively up to the waist (the waist of a _soul_)in fire,and an Angel above each,watering the sufferers from a watering-pot.This is intended to gain alms for Masses.The same populace sit for hours on the Mole,listening to rhapsodists who recite Ariosto.I have seen Ithink five of them all within a hundred yards of each other,and some sets of fiddlers to boot.Yet there are few parts of the world where I have seen less laughter than there.The Miracle of Januarius's Blood is,on the whole,my most curious experience.The furious entreaties,shrieks and sobs,of a set of old women,yelling till the Miracle was successfully performed,are things never to be forgotten.