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I do not know that Naples is very beautiful in certain phases in which
Venice and Genoa are excellent. Those cities were adorned by their sons
with palaces of an outlook worthy of their splendor. But in the other
Italian cities the homes of her patricians were crowded into the narrow
streets where their architecture fails of its due effect. It is so with
them in Naples, and even along the Villa Nazionale, where many palatial
villas are set, they seclude themselves in gardens where one fancies
rather than sees them. These are, in fact, sometimes the houses of the
richest bourgeoisie--bankers and financiers--and the houses which have
names conspicuous in the mainly inglorious turmoil of Neapolitan history
help unnoted to darken the narrow and winding ways of the old city. A
glimpse of a deep court or of a towering facade is what you get in
passing, but it is to be said of the sunless streets over which they
gloom that they are kept in a modern neatness beside which the dirt of
New York is mediaeval.
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