ad
children play in the dirt; whole families cook and eat in the street;
while liveried turn-outs are dashing hither and thither. No matter in
which direction one may go in or around the city, there looms up
heavenward the sky-piercing summit of Vesuvius, shrouding the blue ether
all day long with its slowly-rising column of smoke, and the sulphuric
breathing of its unknown depths. The burning mountain is about three
leagues from the city, but is so lofty as to seem closer at hand. It is
quite solitary, rising in a majestic manner from the plain, but having a
base thirty miles in circumference and a height of about four thousand
feet. When emitting fire as well as smoke, the scene is brilliant indeed
as a night picture, mirrored in the clear surface of the beautiful bay.

We find ourselves asking, What is the real life of Italy to-day? The
sceptre of Commerce has passed from her; Venice is no longer the abode
of merchant princes; Genoa is but the shadow of what she once was. What
causes a foreign population to circulate through its cities, constantly
on the wing, scattering gold right and left among her needy population?
It is the rich, unique possession which she enjoys in her monuments of
art, her museums, her libraries, her glorious picture-galleries, public
and private, but all of which are freely thrown open to the traveller,
and to all comers. The liberality of her nobles and merchant princes in
the days of her great prosperity has left her now a resource which
nothing can rob her of. Where could money purchase such attractions as
crowd the museum of Naples? The marble groups and statues, mostly
originals, number more than a thousand, including the Dying Gladiator,
the famous group of Ganymede and the Eagle, and that of Bacchus and the
Laocooen. Here also we have Psyche, Venus Callipyge,--this last dug up
from Nero's golden home at Rome,--and hundreds of others of world-wide
fame, and of which we have so many fine copies in America. Rome lies but
a hundred and sixty miles north of Naples, and the "Eternal City" has
largely contributed to the art treasures of the institution of which we
are now speaking, and which secures to the city a floating population
annually of several thousands.

[Illustration: A STREET IN POMPEII.]

One of the greatest attractions of Naples is the partially exhumed city
of Pompeii, three leagues more or less away. The drive thither skirts
the Mediterranean shore, with its beautiful villas