g all day long,
and begging and stealing everywhere and at all hours, you see upon the
bright sea-shore, where the waves of the Bay sparkle merrily....

Capri--once made odious by the deified beast Tiberius--Ischia, Procida,
and the thousand distant beauties of the Bay, lie in the blue sea
yonder, changing in the mist and sunshine twenty times a day; now close
at hand, now far off, now unseen. The fairest country in the world, is
spread about us. Whether we turn toward the Miseno shore of the splendid
watery amphitheater, and go by the Grotto of Posilipo to the Grotto del
Cane and away to Baiae, or take the other way, toward Vesuvius and
Sorrento, it is one succession of delights. In the last-named direction,
where, over doors and archways, there are countless little images of San
Gennaro, with this Canute's hand stretched out, to check the fury of the
burning Mountain, we are carried pleasantly, by a railroad on the
beautiful Sea Beach, past the town of Torre del Greco, built upon the
ashes of the former town destroyed by an eruption of Vesuvius, within a
hundred years; and past the flat-roofed houses, granaries, and maccaroni
manufacturies; to Castellamare, with its ruined castle, now inhabited by
fishermen, standing in the sea upon a heap of rocks.

Here, the railroad terminates; but, hence we may ride on, by an unbroken
succession of enchanting bays, and beautiful scenery, sloping from the
highest summit of Saint Angelo, the highest neighboring mountain, down
to the water's edge--among vineyards, olive-trees, gardens of oranges
and lemons, orchards, heaped-up rocks, green gorges in the hills--and by
the bases of snow-covered heights, and through small towns with
handsome, dark-haired women at the doors--and pass delicious summer
villas--to Sorrento, where the poet Tasso drew his inspiration from the
beauty surrounding him. Returning, we may climb the heights above
Castellamare, and looking down among the boughs and leaves, see the
crisp water glistening in the sun; and clusters of white houses in
distant Naples, dwindling, in the great extent of prospect, down to
dice. The coming back to the city, by the beach again, at sunset; with
the glowing sea on one side, and the darkening mountain (Vesuvius), with
its smoke and flame, upon the other, is a sublime conclusion to the
glory of the day.

That church by the Porta Capuna--near the old fisher-market in the
dirtiest quarter of dirty Naples, where the revolt of Masan