DOI Kapitel:
Chapter I: Naples
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.59000#0024
Naples
lives, and certainly great careers of the last century bear
out the assertion. Since that golden age of poetry
when Shelley and Keats, Landor and the Brownings,
Ruskin and a whole world of gifted travellers, poured
into Italy, the North of Europe has felt a passionate
attraction towards the South. And if the intellectual
charm of Naples is more illusive than that of Rome or
of Florence, its beauty, at least, has no rival. There is
something in the soft and limpid loveliness of the Bay
of Naples that may well appeal to our Northern races
with the intensity of a passion. I do not mean to
include the life there—the life of the great, sordid
“Paris” of Italy, which, with its depths of poverty,
vice, and misery, lies like a great shadow in this world
of sunshine — but only speak of the natural scenery,
which embraces even these dark things with such tender-
ness. It is a beauty which the hand of man cannot
destroy. The midland sea is as blue, the curves of the
bay are as sweeping, as in the days when lovers of Nature
heard there the voices and the songs of their Gods.
To approach Naples to the best advantage, you must
go by sea. A wide view is before us of the headlands,
softened by distance, and of the harbour, which lies like
a great opal reflecting colours and sunshine as glowing
as those of the East, and yet far softer. There is some-
thing Homeric in the setting of this cluster of sea-washed
towns, extending in a wide half-circle from Posillipo
to Sorrento. In the near background rises the most
celebrated volcano in the world, purple Vesuvius, whose
ravelled cloud extends across the heavens. No longer
2
lives, and certainly great careers of the last century bear
out the assertion. Since that golden age of poetry
when Shelley and Keats, Landor and the Brownings,
Ruskin and a whole world of gifted travellers, poured
into Italy, the North of Europe has felt a passionate
attraction towards the South. And if the intellectual
charm of Naples is more illusive than that of Rome or
of Florence, its beauty, at least, has no rival. There is
something in the soft and limpid loveliness of the Bay
of Naples that may well appeal to our Northern races
with the intensity of a passion. I do not mean to
include the life there—the life of the great, sordid
“Paris” of Italy, which, with its depths of poverty,
vice, and misery, lies like a great shadow in this world
of sunshine — but only speak of the natural scenery,
which embraces even these dark things with such tender-
ness. It is a beauty which the hand of man cannot
destroy. The midland sea is as blue, the curves of the
bay are as sweeping, as in the days when lovers of Nature
heard there the voices and the songs of their Gods.
To approach Naples to the best advantage, you must
go by sea. A wide view is before us of the headlands,
softened by distance, and of the harbour, which lies like
a great opal reflecting colours and sunshine as glowing
as those of the East, and yet far softer. There is some-
thing Homeric in the setting of this cluster of sea-washed
towns, extending in a wide half-circle from Posillipo
to Sorrento. In the near background rises the most
celebrated volcano in the world, purple Vesuvius, whose
ravelled cloud extends across the heavens. No longer
2