dom of Naples attract many a scholar and savant to
this city. There are in this collection (which is kept in the monastery
adjoining the Church of San Severino) over forty thousand Greek
manuscripts, some of which date back to the year 700. The Naples Museum
is the great repository of all Pompeian art, and it is rich in
sculpture; but it is badly arranged and the vast series of galleries and
the long flights of stairs make any study of its work so fatiguing that
a visit to it might rank as one of the seven labors of Hercules.

In the royal museum of the Palazzo di Capodimonte, which is located on
the beautiful height bearing that name, there are some pictures that are
well worth visiting, not because they are particularly good art, but
because of the interest attaching to the subjects. This gallery is
largely the work of modern Neapolitan artists. Here is the celebrated
picture of Michael Angelo bending over the dead body of Vittoria
Colonna, kissing only her hand, and haunted by the after-regret that he
did not kiss her forehead. Virginia Lebrun has here portraits of Maria
Theresa and of the Duchess of Parma; there is one canvas (by Celentano)
showing Benvenuto Cellini at the Castel Sant'Angelo; a scene depicting
the death of Caesar and a few others of some degree of interest.

Curiously, Naples has never produced great art. Salvator Rosa was, to be
sure, a Neapolitan, but his is almost the only name that has made itself
immortal in the art of this city. Domenico Morelli, who has recently
died, made himself felt as an original painter with certain claims that
arrested attention. He is not a draughtsman, but he is a colorist of
passionate intensity; he has original power and, more than all, he has a
curious endowment of what may be called artistic clairvoyance.
Transporting himself by the magic of thought to places on which his eye
never rested, he yet sees as in vision their special characteristics.
In one of his most important works, the motive of which is the
temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, he has painted the desert with a
startling reality. Here is a great plain, the stony, parched Judean
plain, with the very feeling of its desolation pervading the atmosphere.
The Royal Chapel in Naples was decorated by Morelli, the ceiling painted
with an "Assumption of the Virgin," which stands alone in all the
interpretations of this theme; not by virtue of superior artistic
excellence,--on the contrary its art does not ma