Here, the railroad terminates; but, hence we may
ride on, by an unbroken succession of enchanting bays, and
beautiful scenery, sloping from the highest summit of Saint Angelo,
the highest neighbouring mountain, down to the water's edge--among
vineyards, olive-trees, gardens of oranges and lemons, orchards,
heaped-up rocks, green gorges in the hills--and by the bases of
snow-covered heights, and through small towns with handsome, dark-
haired women at the doors--and pass delicious summer villas--to
Sorrento, where the Poet Tasso drew his inspiration from the beauty
surrounding him. Returning, we may climb the heights above Castel-
a-Mare, and looking down among the boughs and leaves, see the crisp
water glistening in the sun; and clusters of white houses in
distant Naples, dwindling, in the great extent of prospect, down to
dice. The coming back to the city, by the beach again, at sunset:
with the glowing sea on one side, and the darkening mountain, with
its smoke and flame, upon the other: is a sublime conclusion to
the glory of the day.
That church by the Porta Capuana--near the old fisher-market in the
dirtiest quarter of dirty Naples, where the revolt of Masaniello
began--is memorable for having been the scene of one of his
earliest proclamations to the people, and is particularly
remarkable for nothing else, unless it be its waxen and bejewelled
Saint in a glass case, with two odd hands; or the enormous number
of beggars who are constantly rapping their chins there, like a
battery of castanets.
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