of Rome, and was seeking to extend his dominion over all the peninsula when he died from excessive indulgence in pleasures. Another very curious mausoleum by Ciccione is that of ser Gianni Caracciolo, the lover and minister of the second queen Giovanna, a kind of Nea-politan senate ordered them to afford politan Earl of Essex. The catastrophes of these lovers, these minions of sovereigns, excite but little commiseration; they seem much more the victims of ambition than of love we feel, that they obtained favour by obsequious subserviency rather than personal attractions or real merit, and that they are but another sort of courtiers more confidential and a little more assiduous than the rest, Caracciolo, as well as his mistress, was sirty when assassinated; his death, the consequence of his cupidity and resulting from a palace intrigue, cannot be attributed to the workings of a violent passion. The grand frescos of this chapel are by Gennaro di Cola, a Neapolitan | painter of the fourteenth century, and are fine for the time. The chapel of the Marquis Caracciolo di Vico, adjoining, has six statues of apostles by Giovanni of Nola, Santa Croce, Annibale Caccavello, the worthy pupil of Giovanni of Nola, and by the celebrated Spanish sculptor Pedro della Plata: the bassorelievo of the Epiphany, by the lastmentioned, is perfect. The Miroballi chapel, though not altogether irreproachable, may be nevertheless regarded as one of the most regular and elegant that preceded the revival. had been sent to the convent of Saint John Carbonara to take copies of manuscripts, make a return of their titles, and to seek for various readings; after some resistance and false pretexts on the part of the monks, the chief of the Nea freer access to their library; but they were so much afraid of this kind of service, that, to be left undisturbed, they preferred making a voluntary offer of the manuscripts to the emperor Charles VI. In the church della Pietatella, is a Purification, by Curia, which has been cited as one of the best paintings in Naples, and Spagnoletto proposed it to his pupils as a model. The frescos of the brilliant church of the Holy Apostles have some celebrity: the roof, the angles of the cupola, the gallery of the choir, the choir, a fine Pool of Bethesda over the door, the perspective of which is by Viviani, are by Lanfranco; the cupola is by Benasca. We are told that the Neapolitan masters, after frequently comparing the two St. Michaels of the two last painters, in this church, could not decide which ought to be preferred. The four paintings of the window recess, by Luca Giordano; the lunettes of the nave, by Solimene, are some of their esteemed works. In the Filomarino chapel is the celebrated Concert of Angels, a bassorelievo by Fiammingo, an artist of Brussels who settled at Rome, and who was indebted to the friendship and counsels of Poussin for his ability to surpass, perhaps, the other sculptors of his day. The ancient library of Saint John Carbonara, founded by Cardinal Geronimo Seripandi, to whom Janus Parrha- A great subterranean cemetery, in sius bequeathed his Greek manuscripts which the Cav. Marini reposes, apperand several unpublished manuscripts of tains to this church. The sepulchral his own-this celebrated library, so stone of the poet is very simple; but the highly extolled by Montfaucon and still quatrain inscribed for epitaph is singuoften alluded to as being in its place, has larly laboured; if the panegyric were less ceased to exist more than a century. extravagant, it might easily be supposed The chief part, including the manuscript he had composed it himself. The cemeof Tasso's Gerusalemme conquistata, tery of the Holy Apostles, when I viwhich wants the first canto, was trans-sited it on All Saints day, had become a ported to Vienna in 1729 and is there still; the rest was added to the Royal library at Naples. The circumstances attending the dispersion of this library are characteristic of Neapolitan and monastic indolence: some German literati J. Lambecil Comment. de bibliotheca Cæs. Vindob., vol. 1, col, 763 seq. ed. Kollarii, sort of garden planted with boughs and shrubs ready for the funereal festival of the morrow. On that day, the coffius are opened, the corpses, the bones are dressed up, with long inscriptions commemorative of what all these dead were once; and the people walk about amongst them, recognising and contemplating them in transports of delight. The vene ration due to tombs is then degraded into an uproarious theatrical orgie. The church of Santa Maria del Carmine, the most frequented and popular church of Naples, recalls one of the most tragical catastrophes in history, and the first example of regicide in Europe; the remains of young Conradin and his cousin Frederick are deposited there, obscurely concealed behind the high altar the inscription cannot be read without a lamp, and this sort of mystery still increases the emotion. Conradin, when on the scaffold, only uttered the exclamation: "O mother! how great will be your grief to hear such news of me!" This mother, the empress Margaret, hastened from the extremity of Germany to redeem his life; she arrived too late, and therefore devoted the sum of the useless ransom to found the monastery del Carmine, in which a statue represents her with a purse in her hand. It is not known whether Margaret was received by Charles of Anjou, or whether she claimed her son's body; if so, such | an interview would surpass in pathos the scene of Priam at the feet of Achilles. A chapel, under the invocation of the Cross, was erected on the place of his execution, at the corner of the houses beside the church del Carmine, where a coffee house stands at present. Opposite, in the new church of Santa Croce al Mercato, may be seen the small porphyry column that was reared on the very spot of the murder it lies prostrate, exposed to all the filth of a Neapolitan sacristy, and the following dreadful quodlibet in Lombard characters is still legible: Asturis ungue leo pullum rapiens aquilinum A fact but little noticed may however be adduced to prove how sacred royalty was then held: when the executioner had cut off Conradin's head, another who stood by stabbed him with a poniard, so that, says the historian, the vile instrument who had shed the blood of a king, might not be left alive.” ■ Asturis means Giovanni Frangipani, lord of Astura, who took Conradin and basely delivered him up. The lion was formerly in the arms of France. Daute alludes to this emblem when be applies the word lion to Charles of Valois, who. in taking possession of Florence, was the cause of his exile. The church del Carmine, though rich in marble and stucco, has little beauty: an Eternal Father, with the Holy Ghost, is by Giordano; the Assumption and the frescos of the window, an Elijah and an Elisha, are by Solimene. In this church, the best attended in Naples, on the day after Christmas every year, the miraculous crucifix is exposed, which in the siege of 1439 stooped its head, to avoid a cannon ball; a crucifix exceedingly venerated by the Neapolitans, who on that day flock thither in crowds to adore it, and the magistrates go in a body to pay their homage. The spacious market-square was the scene of the insurrection of Masaniello, a real Neapolitan tribune, not a Roman, who preluded his insurrection by going with the other gamins of the time to show his backside under the viceroy's windows. The people of Naples, in spite of our new claims, must be considered the best in the world for rioting: there is a book in Italian entitled, A Relation of the twenty-seventh revolt of the MOST FAITHFUL city of Naples. But these seditious, passionate men are neither cruel nor furious, and notwithstanding their vivacity and the burning heat of the climate, their bistory presents none of those great popular massacres of which there are too many instances in the colder and more civilised nations; the horrors of the revolution of 1799 sprung from Nelson and the court; true Neapolitans would never have dismissed Saint Januarius as a Jacobin and protector of Jacobins, to replace him, as was the case, by Saint Anthony. The domination of the different foreign powers that have occupied this country, successively Greek, Arabian, Norman, Spanish, Austrian, French, doubtless produced in the inhabitants the perpetual habit and facility of imitation. their present manners there are many Spanish peculiarities, as exaggeration, boasting, love of ceremony, and for the last twenty years the soldier bas aped the French, the English, and the Austrians, one after the other, ever taking, In Acciò vivo non rimanesse un vile ministro che aveva versato il sangue d'un re. Biancardi, le Vite de' rè di Napoli; Vita di Carlo d'Angiò, p. 134, quoted by Ginguené, Hist. litt. d'Il., t. 1, 356. companion, a man of sense and a practised musician, remarked to me that this rhythm was Rossini's model for one of the choruses of his Mosè. These popular Neapolitan songs are changed from time to time, but the authors remain unknown. The prisoners for debt are said to compose a part of them. This is one of the stanzas which were then sung at Naples: as usual with such copyists, whatever is | and melancholy, and my Neapolitan worst in their models. If the character of the Neapolitan has little elevation, his disposition is good, compassionate, and though ignorant and untrained, he bas imagination and an acute mind very susceptible of culture; his language is picturesque, figurative, occasionally eloquent. When the Archduchess Maria Louisa came to Naples in 1824, she was pointed out at a distance to a man of the lower orders, with the remark that she was la vedova di Napoleone (Napoleon's widow).-Che la vedova? replied the Lazzarone, è il suo sepolcro (His widow! No; his tomb). The Neapolitan dialect is sonorous, redoubled," musical, and the ingenious but partial Galiani applies thereto Horace's remark on his ancestors: Grails ingenium, Gralis dedit ore rotundo Che bella cosa è de morire acciso How happy is the lover's fate There are a great many poems in the Neapolitan dialect.3 Capasso, a distinguished jurisconsult and man of letters of the eighteenth century, has translated or rather humorously parodied in this Boccaccio was pleased to write in this dialect to Francesco di Messer Alessandro de' Bardi, his countryman, a merchant settled at Gaeta; Sannazzaro did not disdain to employ it in his Glio-dialect the seven first books of the Iliad; mero, the oldest specimen of the opera buffa, and it was esteemed by Metastasio. The popular songs that I often heard in the streets at night had neither the buffoonery nor licentiousness that I expected to find; many couplets were a series of moral precepts on the conduct of life and the frailty of all sublunary things; they were like a paraphrase of Linquenda tellus et domus; the rhythm was serious 'It is no unusual thing to see poor people take charge of forsaken children, and sometimes adopt them in the place of those they have lost. These children take the touching name of figli della madonna (children of the Madonna). Naples, the third city in Europe for population, bas fewer foundlings by far than London and Paris, as may be seen from the following comparison: at London, with one million two hundred thousand inhabitants and forty-four thousand births, there are twenty thousand infants exposed; at Paris, with eight hundred thousand inhabitants and twentynine thousand births, ten thousand infants exposed; at Naples, with four bundred thousand inhabitants and fifteen thousand births, two thousand infants exposed. Hence we find that the infants exposed amount, at London, to nearly half the births; at Paris, to more than a third; and at Naples, less than one seventh. This last is also the proportion at Bologna; at Florence It is less than one fourth. It must, however, be observed that the necessaries of itfe are much less expensive at Naples than at the Eneid has been well translated in ottava rima by Giancola Sitillo: the most esteemed of these translations of epics is that of the Gerusalemme, by the celebrated Neapolitan poet, Gabriele Fasano, printed at Naples in 1689 with all the magnificence of the epoch. On a public-house of Posilipo, some twenty years ago, one might have read the following pretty inscription, composed London and Paris. The proportion of suicides, another symptom of nearly the same kind, is no less in favour of Naples. In 1824, at Paris, there were three hundred and seventy-one; in 1825, three hundred and ninety-six; in 1826, five hundred and eleven; whilst at Naples, there were, in 1828, fourteen only, which was reckoned a great number, being much less generally. It is a matter of regret that in 1834, there were twenty-nine, and thirty-one in 1835; but in 1837, only sixteen. It is by no means uncommon to find persons a hundred years old at Naples; in 1835, they were fourteen in number; two men and twelve women; three had reached a hundred and five; in 1837 there were sixteen, two men and fourteen women. * In pronouncing the word Napole, they give the Na ringing sound, and some Neapolitan authors have donbled that letter. 3 The collection of poems in the Neapolitan tongue, published by Porcelll, from 1783 to 1789, forms twenty-eight volumes 12mo. by Nicolao Valletta, which has since been effaced as too Epicurean : Amicl, alliegre magnammo e bevimmo of Giovanni of Nola, and are the last good sculptures executed at Naples. There are also other works attributed to this artist of a talent so sweet and graceful, who touched on the period of decline, but remained unaffected thereby, and seems the Domenichino of sculpture-namely, the tombs of young Andrea Bonifazio and of Giambattista Cicara, though the former appears by Pedro della Plata. In the cloister, is still admired, after four centuries, the vast fresco of Zingaro, his most famous work, which represents with infinite variety the Life of St. Benedict. The refecfrescos by Corenzio: a Miracle of the tory and the chapter offer other good loaves and fishes, which contains as many as one hundred and seventeen personages, was finished in forty days. The Annunziata, of the architecture of Vanvitelli, one of the fine churches of Naples, has several good works by different Neapolitan masters frescos, by Corenzio, on the roof of the sacristy and the treasury; the Life of Jesus Christ, sculptured in wood on the cupboards, by Giovanni of Nola; the statue on the tomb of Alfonso Sancio, by Auria; a Descent from the cross, in demirelievo, by Giovanni of Nola, or Santa Croce. Before the high altar is the humble tomb of the second queen Giovanna: some of the ornaments have been cut off her mantle of gold brocade. The repaired church of Saint Peter Monastery of San Gregorio Armeno.-Taking the ad aram is reckoned the most ancient in Naples. A basso-relievo, representing a Descent from the cross, and a St. Michael, are by Giovanni of Nola. The small church of the Bank of the two Sicilies has an Assumption, the chef-d'œuvre of Ippolito Borghese, a Neapolitan painter of the seventeenth century, which deserves notice. Saint Severin, a fine church by Mormandi, a clever Neapolitan architect of the sixteenth century, is remarkable for many of its paintings and its sculptures especially. The ceilings of the choir of the cross-aisle are some of the best works of the cruel Corenzio, who died in his eighty-fifth year, through falling from a scaffold when about to retouch them, a just but long-delayed chastisement for his misdeeds. The Baptism of the Redeemer is by Perugino; the fine painting of the chapel of the Holy Family, by Joseph Marullo; the three tombs of the brothers Jacopo, Ascanio, and Sigismundo Sanseverino, poisoned by the wife of their uncle Geronimo, that she might possess their rich inheritance, contributed to extend the deserved renown "Friends, let us joyously eat and drink while there is oil in the lamp; who knows that we shall meet in another world? Who knows that we sball find a tavern there?" Valletta, who died at Naples at the close of last century, is the author of a witty little work entitled Cicalata sul fascino, CHAPTER XII. veil. I had the honour to be invited in 1826 to witness the taking of the veil by Signora Teresa B*********, daughter of the prince of R******, which was to be performed at the convent of San Gregorio armeno. This ancient nunnery of Benedictines, which, it is pretended, dates from Saint Helena, Constantine's mo ther, formerly exacted such proofs of nobility, that Queen Caroline of Austria, who visited it with one of her daughters, is reported to have told her jestingly that she could not obtain admission if she wished to do so. A strange institution for a religion of which equality is the principle and spirit! The brilliant church, ornamented with paintings by Spagnoletto and Giordano, assembled the highest society of Naples; ladies bedecked with diamonds, and many men in uniform or costume; the music consisted of airs from Rossini and the opera of the Last day of Pompeii. Here for the first time I heard the sonorous voice of a soprano, which, notwithstanding its melody, gave me disagreeable sensations. The young nun was not yet in the place reserved for her in the choir: the three days previous to her taking the veil, she mixes with the world; the family diamonds are lent to her, and that morning she was gone to bid adieu to the nuns of several convents where she had relations or friends. She arrived splendidly dressed during the celebration of mass; two ladies accompanied her, and the band of a regiment of the guard, placed in the vestibule, announced her entrance by flourishes. Her behaviour was perfectly simple and natural; it was evident there was no victim there, and that the cruel expression of Mélanie: On ne meurt point, ma fille, et l'on fait son devoir, flowers in her hair, long gilt chains, and several rows of large pearls around her neck and falling over her vest of amaranth silk sprigged with gold. When the nun appeared at the grating, the archbishop addressed her in a cold, formal speech, and put on the veil, inviting her to perseverance; for this proceeding was only preliminary, as there is a year's noviciate. The ceremony being concluded, we went to the convent gate, to which the nun came again, and remained a long time receiving the adieus, the felicitations, the embraces of her friends and kindred; but there were no scenes on either side; on the contrary all was good-humour and gaiety. This Italian taking the habit was very different from the description of René: there was no appearance of melancholy or excited feelings, and refreshments, sweetmeats, and sonnets' were profusely distributed among the persons invited. CHAPTER XIII. Posilipo. Grotto.-Virgil's tomb.- Mergellina.- The melancholy grotto of Posilipo, a gloomy, vaulted, ill-lighted road, seems placed there to render the vivid brilliancy of the light at Naples more sensible. This celebrated and far too much admired grotto, for the mountain is of tufo, and not rock, is well described by Seneca, a peevish painter well suited for the picture, when he calls it a long prison, an obscure corridor, and disserts thereon respecting the involuntary force of our impressions. ■ had never been pronounced. After the mass she knelt before the archbishop, who officiated, and he uttered several prayers to which his clergy and the nun responded. She afterwards went out, holding a small cross in one hand and a taper in the other, and entered the convent, where the nuns were in attendance; they received her at the door, and embraced her, and she there changed her dress. In the mean time the persons left in the church had quitted their places, and gone into the choir, to approach the grate which led into the convent, and near to which the new nun was to return to receive the veil from the hands of the archbishop through a kind of turning box. The two sides of this grating then presented a striking contrast: there, the austerity, the solitude, and the silence of the cloister; here, the Close by are the remains of a Columfrivolity of people of the world, talking, looking, pressing each other impatiently, barium, called the tomb of Virgil, a and the hubbub of persons waiting for tolerably picturesque ruin, mixed with verdure, and surmounted by a holm-oak, something; it was a real rout by the light of tapers, and on the steps of the the roots of which descend into the elealtar. The only collected person in the vated part of the rock adjoining. Despite midst of this tuinult, was a poor girl of the uncertainty attached to the monuAversa, who was to be chamber-maidment, it still appears venerable from the to Signora B. in the convent, and for that purpose she was about to be obscurely made a nun. She had the picturesque costume of her country, natural Tasso bas composed some very fine sonnets on mon cazioni (taking the bebit). Rome, part in. 4. 32, 68. Every body knows Montl's sonnet. Fuggta Licors al chiostro, which ends with this bold passage. Sorrise acerbo la donzella forte, multitude of great men who have visited Chiuse le sacre porte, e con disprezzo ⚫ Nibil illo carcere longius, nibil llits faucibus obscurius. Epist. 57. |
