LETTER LXIII.

NAPLES CONTINUED-CHURCHES-CATHEDRAL-MIRACLE OF ST. JANUARIUS-RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS-ST. SINCERO-MUSEUM-KING'S PA

LACE.

May, 1826.

WITH the exception of its charming scenery, its climate, and its interesting environs, Naples presents much fewer attractions to the traveller, than either Florence or Rome. The style of architecture is generally in bad taste, from the King's Palaces downward; and the churches will bear no comparison, either externally or internally, with those upon the Tiber and the Arno. We visited the most celebrated of the three hundred, which the city contains! The Cathedral, notwithstanding its porphyry portals, its hundred columns of Egyptian granite, its Mosaic pavement, the embellishments of its high altar, and its candelabra of jasper, is a heavy, uninteresting building, presenting few objects to detain the visitant. It was our misfortune to miss the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius, the Patron of the city. One of the three annual miracles occurred a few days before our arrival. A surgeon in the United States Navy, alluded to in some of my former letters, witnessed the ceremony, and described it to us. It was a rare show, and the priests succeeded in the experiment to a charm, with peals of applause from the audience! In the opinion of our philosophical friend, the whole miracle is wrought by the natural warmth of the hand, operating upon the bottle, as upon a pulseglass. A French juggler at the Café des Aveugles, would show off a hundred such tricks in a night. It is a moot point, whether the priests believe in this miracle or not. The faith of the multitude is undoubted, and their hopes of the year rise and fall with the thermometer, charged with the blood of the Saint! If it melts speedily, then prosperity awaits them; but if the fusion is obstinate, they rend the air with cries, believing that earthquakes, war, famine, and pestilence, are in store.

With all their vices and moral degradation, there is not probably so superstitious a nation in christendom as the Neapolitans. Half of their time is occupied in marching about the streets, from church to church in ragged and masked processions, bawling the ora pro nobis. We

were at several of their great religious festivals.* On these occasions, temporary altars were erected at short intervals along the Toledo and other principal streets, at which the priests officiated in turn, the assembled city kneeling upon the pavement. The windows and balconies of every house were hung with awnings and crimson banners; and galleries of ladies above, in full dresses and with angel faces, scattered showers of roses, for monks to trample upon, in their migrations from one altar to another. Females are not exempts in these musters. They do not indeed bear arms like the other sex, each of whom carries a lighted candle, chanting all the while. A line of servants on each side hold the hats of the priests, flanked by another line of boys catching the grease of the candles. The royal family join in the mummery. A band of Austrian soldiers always precedes and closes these religious processions to keep them in order! Some one of the pious throng picked my pockets, while I was gazing to see the queen passthe only accident of the kind which has befallen me in all sorts of crowds, and which amounted merely to the loss of a handkerchief.

In the Chiara, one of the largest and handsomest churches at Naples, the cicerone shows a spiral, fluted pillar, which he declares belonged to the temple of Solomon at Jerusalem. It is evidently Gothic in its origin. There are more ruins of this description in Italy, than would make a mountain twice the size of Moriah. The church of the Jesuits, near the Chiara, has been rent asunder by an earthquake, in one of the cruptions of Vesuvius. A wide fissure is still visible in the frescoed ceiling. In our rounds among the priesthood, a stripling was found in a black coat and cocked hat, who could not read his own language. He was however a placeman, and did not officiate at the altar.

The church of St. Sincero is decidedly the most interesting at Naples, on account of three curious specimens of the arts it contains, original both in design and execution. One of these is an image of the Saviour after his crucifixion, in white marble, with a veil thrown over the corpse, cut from the solid material. It appeared to me not only a novelty, but a masterpiece of sculpture, in form, feature, and attitude. But above all, the veil strikes the spectator with admiration. It is so true to nature, that its folds actually appear moistened with the sweat of death, and so transparent as not in the least to conceal the expres

* On the feast of Corpus Domini, one of the public squares was embowered with evergreens, and a two story Ionic temple erected pro tempore in the centre-the whole illuminated at night.

sion of the face. The other two statues are of similar workmanship. One of them represents Modesty, entirely covered with a marble veil, apparently as fine as lace, and wrought in the most exquisite manner. The statue itself is bad, being too gross for a less delicate goddess than Modesty a general fault in female figures among Italian artists, even to their Venuses, arising perhaps from the fulness of the originals. Some of our guide-books call the remaining statue "the victim of Vice extricating himself from a net, by aid of the Genius of good sense." If this long label be correct, the Virtue is very oddly personified; for he appears in the questionable shape of the urchin Cupid, casting a sly look at the victim entangled in his meshes, raising a portion of the net with one hand, and with the other pointing to the globe, to express the ubiquity of his empire. The shoemaker who keeps the keys of the church, and who is perhaps a descendant of the one that criticised the work of Apelles, gave it as his decided opinion, that the winged boy is an angel-probably so christened like David and Judith, to qualify him for his present situation. In drapery and execution, this group is not inferior to the others. There are many sepulchral monuments in this church, and much good sculpture.

The Studii Pubblici, or Royal Academy of the Arts, is such an immense building, and contains such a multiplicity of objects, that I almost recoil from the task of retracing its halls. A few only of the most interesting articles will be selected for notice. The Museum occupies two stories, ranged in long galleries round a spacious court, which is filled with antiquities, embracing numerous specimens of the fine arts, as well as utensils, illustrative of domestic life among the ancients. The apartments in the basement are appropriated chiefly to statuary, either in marble, bronze, or terra cotta, (baked earth.) Most of the articles in this endless collection were found in Herculaneum and Pompeii.

In the hall to the left, on entering the front door, and after passing Jupiter and Juno, still claiming the right to preside over their quondam votaries, the visitant finds the whole family of the Balbi, two of them equestrian statues, in Greek marble-all disinterred from Herculaneum. There is no room for doubting the antiquity of these specimens of the arts. Here they are, just as they were taken from a bed of lava, in which they lay embalmed for some two thousand years. The mind reposes on them with confidence, as a connecting link between the ancient and modern world. It is not a little humiliating to the pride of man, prone to fancy the present age always the wisest, and to regard those that are past as comparatively barbarous, to contemplate these undoubted specimens of the fine arts, which the

skill of the greatest masters of the present day could scarcely hope to equal. So has it been with painting, with architecture, with poetry, history, and eloquence. In the exhibition of genius, taste, and refinement, it may be asked with emphasis, what has the world gained since the Augustan ages of Greece and Rome?-In some of the above-mentioned departments, particularly in architecture, a declension is obvious; and every deviation from the Grecian orders has been a departure from taste. It is enough to say, that Canova at the height of his fame could not have fashioned a finer horse, than that on which the younger Balbus is seated.

In the same gallery is the colossal Hercules, found in the Baths of Caracalla at Rome. The demigod is represented at the moment previous to his apotheosis, after having finished his labours. He is in the attitude of leaning on his club, and expresses great composure both in his face and position. On the pedestal is the label of the old Greek-"Glycon, the Athenian, made it." By the bye, I observe in these inscriptions, that the imperfect tense and the first aorist of the Greek verb are used indiscriminately; and as the action in all these instances must have been precisely the same, the usages of common life are good authority for proving, that there is not a shade of difference in those two tenses.

me.

Near to Hercules stands the colossal Flora, dug from the same ruins. Her proportions have been much admired; but she has no charms for Gigantic females are always monsters, and look even worse than the other sex, when overstepping the modesty of nature. The Faun and infant Bacchus are beautiful. Extravagant eulogies have been lavished on Agrippina, the mother of Nero, seated, and taken at the moment of receiving the intelligence of her proscription by her unnatural son. It is a good statue; but the exquisite poetry and pathos, which others have found in the face, could not be discovered. As for the torsos ascribed to Phidias and Praxiteles, I leave them to artists and amateurs, preferring myself to look at whole subjects rather than at broken limbs. The vases, candelabra, and other marbles found at Herculaneum and Pompeii, are highly interesting. Here is a magnificent porphyry basin, or reservoir, taken from the temple of Æsculapius. Corn-mills and oil-mills, curiously constructed of lava, elucidate the ancient state of the useful arts. In the article of grinding, the moderns have decidedly the advantage of the old Greeks and Romans! Nati consumere panes.

In the hall of the Muses, the whole sisterhood are assembled, wearing their appropriate emblems. They have the room entirely to themselves, and appear to be engaged in a private concert. They were

uninjured by the burning torrents of lava, which once rolled above them. The group is highly interesting, both as specimens of the arts, and as furnishing a hundred illustrations of the classics. Another apartment is appropriated almost exclusively to Venuses. Here may be seen all sorts of images of the goddess of beauty and love, though in some of her forms and attitudes, she appears neither beautiful nor lovely. One of them is set up as the rival of the Venus de Medicis; but she has a scornful curl of the lip, and is unworthy to be the chambermaid of the latter. The "Venere Callipyge" is the most popular of the group. She is enamoured of her own charms, which are indescribable.* The "Venus Genetrix" appeared to me the finest of the lot. Her expression is good, and her hands admirable; but peacocklike, her feet are shocking, looking as if she laboured under a fit of the gout.

source.

The Halls of Atlas and Antinous are filled with authentic busts of the philosophers, poets, orators, and other great men of Greece and Rome. Most of them were found in the ruins of Herculaneum, and are invaluable, both as works of art, and as furnishing more probable likenesses of the distinguished originals, than can be obtained from any other An examination of this collection has had a strong tendency to strengthen my faith in antiques. The disinterment of these treasures carries us back with absolute certainty to the commencement of the Christian era; and this is of no sinall moment, considering what Gothic ages are to be waded through, in reaching that period. As the Greek artists were remarkable for their accuracy in the delineation of natural objects, they probably exhibited the same skill and fidelity in copying the human face; and while surveying the busts of Homer, Anacreon, Herodotus, Thucydides, Lycurgus, Solon, Periander, Demosthenes, and a hundred others, I really began to think, for the first time, that we have something like a correct idea of their countenances. There are here several heads of Cicero, which date back almost to his own period. The bust of Aristides is reckoned one of the most admirable productions of Grecian skill. But a gallery is the dullest of all places to a reader; and a catalogue of statues is as uninteresting as a catalogue of books. Let us therefore vary the topic.

A large apartment on the opposite side of the court is appropriated to Egyptian antiquities, which are extremely valuable as being authen

* Indelicate as this statue is, we saw a gentleman and two ladies, genteel in their appearance, walk up and examine it without the least reserve, conversing freely of its merits. The modesty, or squeamishness if you please, of American ladies is worth more than all the fine arts in Italy.