All over Italy, a peculiar shake of the right hand from the wrist,
with the forefinger stretched out, expresses a negative--the only
negative beggars will ever understand. But, in Naples, those five
fingers are a copious language.
All this, and every other kind of out-door life and stir, and
macaroni-eating at sunset, and flower-selling all day long, and
begging and stealing everywhere and at all hours, you see upon the
bright sea-shore, where the waves of the bay sparkle merrily. But,
lovers and hunters of the picturesque, let us not keep too
studiously out of view the miserable depravity, degradation, and
wretchedness, with which this gay Neapolitan life is inseparably
associated! It is not well to find Saint Giles's so repulsive, and
the Porta Capuana so attractive. A pair of naked legs and a ragged
red scarf, do not make ALL the difference between what is
interesting and what is coarse and odious? Painting and poetising
for ever, if you will, the beauties of this most beautiful and
lovely spot of earth, let us, as our duty, try to associate a new
picturesque with some faint recognition of man's destiny and
capabilities; more hopeful, I believe, among the ice and snow of
the North Pole, than in the sun and bloom of Naples.
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