DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.67375#0264
214 NAPLES AND ITS ENVIRONS.
fishermen bear witness to the liberality of this class in the
large collections of votive offerings. Almost every Marina
has its church, and an annual festa is held, when the whole
Marina is illuminated ; these occasions afford an excellent
opportunity for studying the costumes and manners of the
poorer classes, by whom they are principally attended. At
Massa, on August 15, the festa is unusually pretty, and the
women seen there are famed for their beauty.
The people we have described are as poor and wretched
in appearance as any that the usual traveller is likely to
see in Naples, and it would seem to require great patience
to be cheerful, as they are, in the midst of their poverty ;
but when compared with many thousands who exist here,
they are absolutely wealthy and luxurious. The appalling
misery and degradation of the very poorest Neapolitans ex-
ceeds such conditions in other European cities, and cannot
be fully described in language that is not too expressive to
be acceptable. It is estimated that a quarter of a million
of human beings in Naples maintain their lives of absolute
want in a manner that cannot be explained. Thousands
and thousands have no claim on any home whatever; they
crowd into dens and kennels such as decent beasts would
refuse to enter; they have no occupation; coming naked
into the world, they may be said to leave it in the same
condition, for, until recently, they were dropped into a hole
in the cemetery for the poor, in which all who had died on
the same day — most of them with no garments whatever
■—were hidden from the face of the earth.
Eight years ago, in 1876, the Senatore, Professore Pas-
quale Villari, was instrumental in making researches which
divulged horrors not before imagined, in the lives of these
people, as may be read in his “Southern Letters.” Thou-
sands of children who have never known father or mother
live chiefly on the refuse of the streets, and sleep heaven
only knows where. They are seen curled up on church
fishermen bear witness to the liberality of this class in the
large collections of votive offerings. Almost every Marina
has its church, and an annual festa is held, when the whole
Marina is illuminated ; these occasions afford an excellent
opportunity for studying the costumes and manners of the
poorer classes, by whom they are principally attended. At
Massa, on August 15, the festa is unusually pretty, and the
women seen there are famed for their beauty.
The people we have described are as poor and wretched
in appearance as any that the usual traveller is likely to
see in Naples, and it would seem to require great patience
to be cheerful, as they are, in the midst of their poverty ;
but when compared with many thousands who exist here,
they are absolutely wealthy and luxurious. The appalling
misery and degradation of the very poorest Neapolitans ex-
ceeds such conditions in other European cities, and cannot
be fully described in language that is not too expressive to
be acceptable. It is estimated that a quarter of a million
of human beings in Naples maintain their lives of absolute
want in a manner that cannot be explained. Thousands
and thousands have no claim on any home whatever; they
crowd into dens and kennels such as decent beasts would
refuse to enter; they have no occupation; coming naked
into the world, they may be said to leave it in the same
condition, for, until recently, they were dropped into a hole
in the cemetery for the poor, in which all who had died on
the same day — most of them with no garments whatever
■—were hidden from the face of the earth.
Eight years ago, in 1876, the Senatore, Professore Pas-
quale Villari, was instrumental in making researches which
divulged horrors not before imagined, in the lives of these
people, as may be read in his “Southern Letters.” Thou-
sands of children who have never known father or mother
live chiefly on the refuse of the streets, and sleep heaven
only knows where. They are seen curled up on church