Santa Lucia will be an ordinary street, shut in among
huge houses, with no view at all. Ah, the nights that one lingered
here, watching the crimson glow upon Vesuvius, tracing the dark line of
the Sorrento promontory, or waiting for moonlight to cast its magic
upon floating Capri! The odours remain; the stalls of sea-fruit are as
yet undisturbed, and the jars of the water-sellers; women still comb
and bind each other's hair by the wayside, and meals are cooked and
eaten _al fresco_ as of old. But one can see these things elsewhere,
and Santa Lucia was unique. It has become squalid. In the grey light of
this sad billowy sky, only its ancient foulness is manifest; there
needs the golden sunlight to bring out a suggestion of its ancient
charm.

Has Naples grown less noisy, or does it only seem so to me? The men
with bullock carts are strangely quiet; their shouts have nothing like
the frequency and spirit of former days. In the narrow and thronged
Strada di Chiaia I find little tumult; it used to be deafening. Ten
years ago a foreigner could not walk here without being assailed by the
clamour of _cocchieri_; nay, he was pursued from street to street,
until the driver had spent every phrase of importunate invitation; now,
one may saunter as one will, with little disturbance. Down on the
Piliero, whither I have been to take my passage for Paola, I catch but
an echo of the jubilant uproar which used to amaze me. Is Naples really
so much quieter? If I had time I would go out to Fuorigrotta, once, it
seemed to me, the noisiest village on earth, and see if there also I
observed a change. It would not be surprising if the modernization of
the city, together with the state of things throughout Italy, had a
subduing effect upon Neapolitan manners. In one respect the streets are
assuredly less gay. When I first knew Naples one was never, literally
never, out of hearing of a hand-organ; and these organs, which in
general had a peculiarly dulcet note, played the brightest of melodies;
trivial, vulgar if you will, but none the less melodious, and dear to
Naples. Now the sound of street music is rare, and I understand that
some police provision long since interfered with the soft-tongued
instruments. I miss them; for, in the matter of music, it is with me as
with Sir Thomas Browne. For Italy the change is significant enough; in
a few more years spontaneous melody will be as rare at Naples or Venice
as on the banks of the Thames.

Hap