On the tenth day of this month we arrived early at Naples, for I think
it was about two o’clock in the morning; and sure the providence of God
preserved us, for never was such weather seen by me since I came into the
world; thunder, lightning, storm at sea, rain and wind, contending for
mastery, and combining to extinguish the torches bought to light us the
last stage: Vesuvius, vomiting fire, and pouring torrents of red hot lava
down its sides, was the only object visible; and _that_ we saw plainly in
the afternoon thirty miles off, where I asked a Franciscan friar, If it
was the famous volcano? “Yes,” replied he, “that’s our mountain, which
throws up money for us, by calling foreigners to see the extraordinary
effects of so surprising a phænomenon.” The weather was quiet then, and
we had no notion of passing such a horrible night; but an hour after
dark, a storm came on, which was really dreadful to endure; or even look
upon: the blue lightning, whose colour shewed the nature of the original
minerals from which she drew her existence, shone round us in a broad
expanse from time to time, and sudden darkness followed in an instant:
no object then but the fiery river could be seen, till another flash
discovered the waves tossing and breaking, at a height I never saw before.
Nothing sure was ever more sublime or awful than our entrance into Naples
at the dead hour we arrived, when not a whisper was to be heard in the
streets, and not a glimpse of light was left to guide us, except the
small lamp hung now and then at a high window before a favourite image of
the Virgin.
My poor maid had by this time nearly lost her wits with terror, and the
French valet, crushed with fatigue, and covered with rain and sea-spray,
had just life enough left to exclaim--“_Ah, Madame! il me semble que nous
sommes venus icy exprès pour voir la fin du monde_[1].”
The Ville de Londres inn was full, and could not accommodate our family;
but calling up the people of the Crocelle, we obtained a noble apartment,
the windows of which look full upon the celebrated bay which washes the
wall at our door. Caprea lies opposite the drawing-room or gallery,
which is magnificent; and my bed-chamber commands a complete view of the
mountain, which I value more, and which called me the first night twenty
times away from sleep and supper, though never so in want of both as at
that moment surely.
Such were my first impressions of this wonderful metropolis, of which I
had been always reading summer descriptions, and had regarded somehow as
an Hesperian garden, an earthly paradise, where delicacy and softness
subdued every danger, and general sweetness captivated every sense;--nor
have I any reason yet to say it will not still prove so, for though wet,
and weary, and hungry, we wanted no fire, and found only inconvenience
from that they lighted on our arrival. It was the fashion at Florence
to struggle for a Terreno, but here we are all perched up one hundred
and forty two steps from the level of the land or sea; large balconies,
apparently well secured, give me every enjoyment of a prospect, which
no repetition can render tedious: and here we have agreed to stay till
Spring, which, I trust, will come out in this country as soon as the new
year calls it.
Our eagerness to see sights has been repressed at Naples only by finding
every thing a sight; one need not stir out to look for wonders sure,
while this amazing mountain continues to exhibit such various scenes of
sublimity and beauty at exactly the distance one would chuse to observe
it from; a distance which almost admits examination, and certainly
excludes immediate fear. When in the silent night, however, one listens
to its groaning; while hollow sighs, as of gigantic sorrow, are often
heard distinctly in my apartment; nothing can surpass one’s sensations
of amazement, except the consciousness that custom will abate their
keenness: I have not, however, yet learned to lie quiet, when columns
of flame, high as the mountain’s self, shoot from its crater into the
clear atmosphere with a loud and violent noise; nor shall I ever forget
the scene it presented one day to my astonished eyes, while a thick
cloud, charged heavily with electric matter, passing over, met the fiery
explosion by mere chance, and went off in such a manner as effectually
baffles all verbal description, and lasted too short a time for a painter
to seize the moment, and imitate its very strange effect. Monsieur de
Vollaire, however, a native of France, long resident in this city, has
obtained, by perpetual observation, a power of representing Vesuvius
without that black shadow, which others have thought necessary to
increase the contrast, but which greatly takes away all resemblance of
its original. Upon reflection it appears to me, that the men most famous
at London and Paris for performing tricks with fire have been always
Italians in my time, and commonly Neapolitans; no wonder, I should think,
Naples would produce prodigious connoisseurs in this way; we have almost
perpetual lightning of various colours, according to the soil from whence
the vapours are exhaled; sometimes of a pale straw or lemon colour, often
white like artificial flame produced by camphor, but oftenest blue,
bright as the rays emitted through the coloured liquors set in the window
of a chemist’s shop in London--and with such thunder!!--“For God’s sake,
Sir,” said I to some of them, “is there no danger of the ships in the
harbour here catching fire? why we should all fly up in the air directly,
if once these flashes should communicate to the room where any of the
vessels keep their powder.”--“Gunpowder, Madam!” replies the man, amazed;
“why if St. Peter and St. Paul came here with gunpowder on board, we
should soon drive them out again: don’t you know,” added he, “that every
ship discharges her contents at such a place (naming it), and never comes
into our port with a grain on board?”
The palaces and churches have no share in one’s admiration at Naples,
who scorns to depend on man, however mighty, however skilful, for _her_
ornaments; while Heaven has bestowed on her and her _contorni_ all that
can excite astonishment, all that can impress awe. We have spent three or
four days upon Pozzuoli and its environs; its cavern scooped originally
by nature’s hand, assisted by the armies of Cocceius Nerva--ever
tremendous, ever gloomy grotto!--which leads to the road that shews you
Ischia, an old volcano, now an island apparently rent asunder by an
earthquake, the division too plain to beg assistance from philosophy:
this is commonly called the _Grotto di Posilippo_ though; you pass
through it to go to every place; not without flambeaux, if you would go
safely, and avoid the necessity the poor are under, who, driving their
carts through the subterranean passage, cry as they meet each other, to
avoid jostling, _alla montagna_, or _alla marina_, _keep to the rock
side_, or _keep to the sea side_. It is at the right hand, awhile before
you enter this cavern, that climbing up among a heap of bushes, you find
a hollow place, and there go down again--it is the tomb of Virgil; and,
for other antiquities, I recollect nothing shewed me when at Rome that
gave me as complete an idea how things were really carried on in former
days, as does the temple of _Shor Apis_ at Pozzuoli, where the area is
exactly all it ever was; the ring remains where the victim was fastened
to; the priests apartments, lavatories, &c. the drains for carrying the
beast’s blood away, all yet remains as perfect as it is possible. The
end of Caligula’s bridge too, but that they say is not his bridge, but a
mole built by some succeeding emperor--a madder or a wickeder it could
not be--though here Nero bathed, and here he buried his mother Agrippina.
Here are the centum camera, the prisons employed by that prince for the
cruellest of purposes; and here are his country palaces reserved for the
most odious ones: here effeminacy learned to subsist without delicacy or
shame, hence honour was excluded by rapacity, and conscience stupefied by
constant inebriation: here brainsick folly put nature and common sense
upon the rack--Caligula in madness courted the moon to his embraces--and
Sylla, satiated with blood, retired, and gave a premature banquet to
those worms he had so often fed with the flesh of innocence: here dwelt
depravity in various shapes, and here Pandora’s chambers left scarcely a
_Hope_ at the bottom that better times should come:--who can write prose
however in such places!--let the impossibility of expressing my thoughts
any other way excuse the following