ielded to later and
worthier impressions I need hardly say; and he had never in his life, he
told me afterwards, been so moved or overcome by any sight as by that of
the Coliseum, "except perhaps by the first contemplation of the Falls of
Niagara." He went to Naples for the interval before the holy week; and
his first letter from it was to say that he had found the wonderful
aspects of Rome before he left, and that for loneliness and grandeur of
ruin nothing could transcend the southern side of the Campagna. But
farther and farther south the weather had become worse; and for a week
before his letter (the 11th of February), the only bright sky he had
seen was just as the sun was coming up across the sea at Terracina. "Of
which place, a beautiful one, you can get a very good idea by imagining
something as totally unlike the scenery in _Fra Diavolo_ as possible."
He thought the bay less striking at Naples than at Genoa, the shape of
the latter being more perfect in its beauty, and the smaller size
enabling you to see it all at once, and feel it more like an exquisite
picture. The city he conceived the greatest dislike to.[98] "The
condition of the common people here is abject and shocking. I am afraid
the conventional idea of the picturesque is associated with such misery
and degradation that a new picturesque will have to be established as
the world goes onward. Except Fondi, there is nothing on earth that I
have seen so dirty as Naples. I don't know what to liken the streets to
where the mass of the lazzaroni live. You recollect that favourite
pigstye of mine near Broadstairs? They are more like streets of such
apartments heaped up story on story, and tumbled house on house, than
anything else I can think of, at this moment." In a later letter he was
even less tolerant. "What would I give that you should see the lazzaroni
as they really are--mere squalid, abject, miserable animals for vermin
to batten on; slouching, slinking, ugly, shabby, scavenging scarecrows!
And oh the raffish counts and more than doubtful countesses, the noodles
and the blacklegs, the good society! And oh the miles of miserable
streets and wretched occupants,[99] to which Saffron-hill or the
Borough-mint is a kind of small gentility, which are found to be so
picturesque by English lords and ladies; to whom the wretchedness left
behind at home is lowest of the low, and vilest of the vile, and
commonest of all common things. Well! well! I have often tho