The narrow lanes have great villas opening into them, whose walls
(outside walls, I mean) are profusely painted with all sorts of
subjects, grim and holy. But time and the sea-air have nearly
obliterated them; and they look like the entrance to Vauxhall
Gardens on a sunny day. The court-yards of these houses are
overgrown with grass and weeds; all sorts of hideous patches cover
the bases of the statues, as if they were afflicted with a
cutaneous disorder; the outer gates are rusty; and the iron bars
outside the lower windows are all tumbling down. Firewood is kept
in halls where costly treasures might be heaped up, mountains high;
waterfalls are dry and choked; fountains, too dull to play, and too
lazy to work, have just enough recollection of their identity, in
their sleep, to make the neighbourhood damp; and the sirocco wind
is often blowing over all these things for days together, like a
gigantic oven out for a holiday.
Not long ago, there was a festa-day, in honour of the VIRGIN'S
MOTHER, when the young men of the neighbourhood, having worn green
wreaths of the vine in some procession or other, bathed in them, by
scores.
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