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.