She was
very pretty, though rather powdered, and when the young man went away
she was sympathetically regretful to me that there was no such sketch,
in place of which she offered me several large histories in more or less
volumes. But why should I have wanted a history of Naples when I had
Naples itself? It was like wanting a photograph when you have the
original. Had I not just come through the splendid Piazza San
Ferdinando, with the nobly arcaded church on one hand and the
many-statued royal palace on the other, and between them a lake of
mellow sunshine, as warm as ours in June?
What I found Naples and the Neapolitans in 1908 I had found them in
1864, and Mr. Gray (as he of the "Elegy" used to be called on his
title-pages) found them in 1740. "The streets," he wrote home to his
mother, "are one continued market, and thronged with populace so much
that a coach can hardly pass. The common sort are a jolly, lively kind
of animals, more industrious than Italians usually are; they work till
evening; then they take their lute or guitar (for they all play) and
walk about the city or upon the seashore with it, to enjoy the fresco.
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