h born of the
land of opaque mists and rain-burdened clouds, has, notwithstanding
these disadvantages, managed to partly endow his brush with the
exhaustless wealth and glow of the radiant Italian color. I watched the
dance with a faint sense of pleasure--it was full of so much harmony
and delicacy of rhythm. The lad who thrummed the guitar broke out now
and then into song--a song in dialect that fitted into the music of the
dance as accurately as a rosebud into its calyx. I could not
distinguish all the words he sung, but the refrain was always the same,
and he gave it in every possible inflection and variety of tone, from
grave to gay, from pleading to pathetic.

"Che bella cosa e de morire acciso,
Nnanze a la porta de la nnamorata!"
[Footnote: Neapolitan dialect.]

meaning literally--"How beautiful a thing to die, suddenly slain at the
door of one's beloved!"

There was no sense in the thing, I thought half angrily--it was a
stupid sentiment altogether. Yet I could not help smiling at the
ragged, barefooted rascal who sung it: he seemed to feel such a
gratification in repeating it, and he rolled his black eyes with
lovelorn intensity, and breathed forth sighs that sounded through his
music with quite a touching earnestness. Of course he was only
following the manner of all Neapolitans, namely, acting his song; they
all do it, and cannot help themselves. But this boy had a peculiarly
roguish way of pausing and crying forth a plaintive "Ah!" before he
added "Che bella cosa," etc., which gave point and piquancy to his
absurd ditty. He was evidently brimful of mischief--his expression
betokened it; no doubt he was one of the most thorough little scamps
that ever played at "morra," but there was a charm about his handsome
dirty face and unkempt hair, and I watched him amusedly, glad to be
distracted for a few minutes from the tired inner workings of my own
unhappy thoughts. In time to come, so I mused, this very boy might
learn to set his song about the "beloved" to a sterner key, and might
find it meet, not to be slain himself, but to slay HER! Such a
thing--in Naples--was more than probable. By and by the dance ceased,
and I recognized in one of the breathless, laughing sailors my old
acquaintance Andrea Luziani, with whom I had sailed to Palermo. The
sight of him relieved me from a difficulty which had puzzled me for
some days, and as soon as the little groups of men and women had
partially dispersed, I