SKETCHES IN ITALY—No. 1.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XIX, Issue 6422, 17 June 1882, Page 6

SKETCHES IN ITALY—No. 1.

[by our travelling contributor.] THE QUEEN OF THE MEDITERRANEAN".

Tiik wonderful fascination of Naples consists not less in its beautiful surroundings than ia its own majestic and unrivalled situation. The curving outline of the city and its suburbs, with its mountainous background, and with the impressive mass of Vesuvius to lend additional grandeur and dignity to the scene, more than delights—it satisfies —the eye. And the aspect of the place changes from hour to hour, with the varying position of the sun ; and from day to day, with the vicissitudes of the seasons, and with the greater or less translucency of the atmosphere, and with the fluctuating colour of the sky. In the early morning, when the western arm of the city and the romantic suburb of Poailipo is flushed by the rays of the newly-risen luminary, the whole of that horn of the crescent is bathed in a softened glory; and towards the close of the afternoon, when the declining sun suffuses St. Giorgo a Cremana, Portici, Resina, Torre del Greco, Torro Annun7,iata, and the grand mountain behind them with its ruddy lustre, there is a corresponding veil of splendour thrown over the opposite limb. But out seaward arise fresh and different objects to charm the eye. Tho lovely peninsula of Sorrento, with Castellamare nestling at tho foot of the mountain of San Angelo, and Vico Equense, an'l the villages of Kquano, Sciano, Montcchiaro, i St. Agnello, and L'ozzopiano, scattered over the Piano de Sorrento, and the Sorrento itself, the city of soft zephyrs, which formerly bore the name of Syren, and was the birthplace of the poet Tasso, attracts the eye as well as by the grandeur of its outliuc as by the beauty of its details and the tenderness of its colouring. Farther on, the remarkable island of Capri lifts its ruggedly fantastic silhouette out of the Tyrian purple; and then, as the eye travels round the circle of the horizon, its gaze is arrested by Ischia, Procida, Capo Miseno, and the promontory of Fozzuoli ; and the rest of that green elyaium, as Lamartine baa called it : —

Ou 1" amour cut cacli<S soil Efl&n Au murmure plaintif tie* vagueH Aut rayons enrlonnh tie 1' astre (Slvadfen. AT FAIR SORRENTO.

A steamboat plies daily from Naples to Capri, calling at Sorrento on the way, anil remaining for two hours at the island, which is sufficiently long to enable you to obtain an excellent luncheon or dinner, consisting of soup, fish, roli, an omelette, fruit, and wine, for half-acrovvn, at theGrau Bresagna, where you call obtain board and lodging in full view of the most charming panoramas in the world, for thirty shillings a week. The dining-room, which is on the first floor, with French windows opening out upon a balcony, and the sea beach below commands the ravishing prospect of which I have already enunciated the principal features ; and while you are engaged in satisfying your hunger, sharpened by the pure air of Capri, three vocalists enter, two of them with guitars, and the third with a mandoline —an instrument which lends itself to the tenderly pathetic music of the country, as well as to those livelier compositions in which the countrymen of Puluinello utter the exuberant mirth which is one of the characistics of their mobile and impressionable temperament, while they pass frnm one extreme to the other with the utmost facility. The singers breathe into the beautiful air of "Santa Lucia" an amount of feeling which surprises, you by its force and fervour, and the same remark applies to their delivery of the pathetic composition entitled " L' Adilio a Napoli," in which the poet has set forth the passionate love of the Neapolitan for his native city in accents so expressive that I must venture to quote one verse of the son?: — >

A.ddio, mai bella Xapoli, ruMio, ftddlp ! La tu i souvo immagine clii mai seOrdnr potra? Dal ciol 1* azzario fulgido, la plauida marina, Qualcunro non Inebbrla, non bea-di'Volatta. There is another song wntten/m L ;the Neapolitan dialect, of which the retrain consists of the words "jamma, jamtna" (pronounced " yammah"); anjl meaning andiamo (i.e. "let us go") which ia accompanied by pantomime and dancing, that overflows with the jocund humour, of the national character. I heard it sung the same evening by a vocalist belonging to a little band that played during dinner at the Hotel Vesuivio, where I was stopping in Naples, and to which I can recommend tourists, and the effect upon a body of forty French tourists, who were proceeding to Rome for Easter week, was perfectly exciting, leading to their demanding its repetition with enthusiasm.

THE BLUE GROTTO OF CAPRI. • Every visitor to Capri makes an excursion to the famous Blue Grotto, and the steamer lie 3 outside of it while the boatman rows you into its extraordinary recess. It is not accessible if the wind is blowing from the north or east with anything like force, and the boatmen tell you liow upon one occasion a fisherman entered it one fine afternoon when a storm arose, and, as the angry swell of the sea outside did not subside for three days and nights, he was a prisoner there tho whole time. The ingress to it is so narrow that you are obliged to lie down fiat in the boat and your conductor takes out even the rowlocks of his bark, which would otherwise strike against the rock overhead ; but when you have entered, you find yourself in a lofty and spacious cavern, sufficiently large for half a dozen boats to move about freely in, and branching out into three arms. At one place there is the commencement of a flight of stairs hcvrn out of the solid rock, and conducting, it is said, to the ruins known as the Castle of Barbirossa—a mediaeval structure crowning the promontoiy of Anticapri. According to local tradition, this wonderful cavern was the bath-room of the castle ; it is worthy to have been that ot Venus herself. Tho marvel of it is the luminous and lustrous azure of tho water, which ia reflected from the domed roof of the cavern in ripples of celestial blue. No light enters the place, which may be roughly described as forty feet high, with an average length of a hundred and fifty feet, and au average breadth of one hundred foet, excepting that which penetrates the narrow aperature through which you enter. Nevertheless, the grotto is radiant with light, and any object in the water is covered with a silvery sheen. If you bare your arm aud plunge it in, the part immersed looks a mass of argentiferous metal, while so much of it as is above tho surface seems black by contrast. The chiaroscuro of the place is indescribable. ami none of the views I havo seen of it convey anything like an adequate idea of its marvellous beauty, hccause tho tinted light which is transmitted from without and reflected and refracted from the depths of the transparent water cannot .be represented on tho canvas.

A GARDEN OF EDEN, From the sea beach, which is upwards of a mile distant from the Grotto, a zig*»g road ascends to Capri, the capital of the island, lying on a ledge of rock between the two lofty eminences which constitute the more imposing of the promontories, upon oue of which are the ruins of the Villa of Tiberius, the imperial moustcr whose atrocities both here and in Rome have been held up to the scorn and opprobrium of mankind in tho immortal pages of Tacitus. The road passes through groves of oranges and lemons, with their perfumed blossoms and golden fruit, recalling Sir Lucius O'Trigger's compliment to Mrs. Malaprop ; through vineyards bright with their earliest foliage ; through orchards white with bloom ; through olive groves ; through terraced gardens ; and past farm-houses that look like miniature villas. Men anil women are engaged in road-making, children importune you to buy bunches of orange blossoms or oranges or citrons, and at every turn of the road a fresh prospect and a wider outlook invite you to atop and drink in the loveliness of the scene until you arc literally intoxicated by its beauty. When the whistle of the steamer invites you to descend, you do so by a Slight of stone steps, or rather a succession of llights, between rubble walls tapestried with tin) pendant branches of the blackberry, the raspberry, aiul creepers of unknown designations, which are indigenous to the island ; and awaiting you on the shore are the female vendors of coral necklaces, anions; whom you will meet with young girls of remarkable beauty, their classic heads adorned with curled masses of jot black hair, their eyes full of a winsome and pleading expression, their smiling mouths disclosing teeth as perfect in form as they arc pure in colour, and their protiles denoting the preponderance of Roman blood in tlu'ir veins. Their carriage is easy and dignified, and they patter the curious dialect of the island, which dillcrs considerably from that of Naples, in a way which, as an Irishman would say, might beguile a blackbird oil'its bush.