Pæstum—Temple of Neptune—Departure from Elba—Ischia—Bay of
Naples—The Toledo—The Young Queen—Conspiracy against the
King—Neapolitans Visiting the Frigates—Leave the
Bay—Castellamare.
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 glens, 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, cannot 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 towards 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 towards 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 towards 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 3rd of June. The inhabitants, 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 Baiæ 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-coloured 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, 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 Sonnambula_. The king
and queen were present, with the dissolute old queen-mother and her
gray-headed 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, hence the tragedy I have just related.
The ships have been thronged with visitors 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—contadini 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
class 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
harbour 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 neighbourhood 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!”
* * * * *
* * * * *