JOURNEY from NAPLES to ROME.
The morning of the day we left our fair Parthenope was passed in recollecting her various charms: every one who leaves her carries off the same sensations. I have asked several inhabitants of other Italian States what they liked best in Italy except home; it was Naples always, dear delightful Naples! When I say this, I mean always to exclude those whose particular pursuits lead them to cities which contain the prize they press for. English people when unprejudiced express the like preference. Attachments formed by love or friendship, though they give charms to every place, cannot be admitted as a reason for commending any one above the rest. A traveller without candour it is vain to read; one might as well hope to get a just view of nature by looking through a coloured glass, as to gain a true account of foreign countries, by turning over pages dictated by prejudice.
With the nobility of Naples I had no acquaintance, and can of course say nothing of their manners. Those of the middling people seem to be behind-hand with their neighbours; it is so odd that they should never yet have arrived at calling their money by other names than those of the weights, an ounce and a grain; the coins however are not ugly.
The evening of the day we left this surprising city was spent out of its king’s dominions, at Terracina, which now affords one of the best inns in Italy; it is kept by a Frenchman, whose price, though high, is regulated, whose behaviour is agreeable, and whose suppers and beds are delightful. Near the spot where his house now stands, there was in ancient Pagan days a temple, erected to the memory of the beardless Jupiter called Anxurus, of which Pausanias, and I believe Scaliger too, take notice; though the medal of Pansa is imago barbata, sed intonsa, they tell me; and Statius extends himself in describing the innocence of Jupiter and Juno’s conversation and connection in their early youth. Both of them had statues of particular magnificence venerated with very peculiar ceremonies, erected for them in this town, however, ut Anxur fuit quæ nunc Terracinæ sunt[8]. The tenth Thebaid too speaks much de templo sacro et Junoni puellæ, Jovis Axuro[9]; and who knows after all whether these odd circumstances might not be the original reason of Anxur’s grammatical peculiarity, well known to all from the line in old Propria que maribus,
Et genus Anxur quod dat utrumque?
This place was founded and colonised by Æmilius Mamercus and Lucius Plautus, Anno Mundi 3725 I think; they took the town of Priverna, and sent each three hundred citizens to settle this new city, where Jupiter Anxurus was worshipped, as Virgil among so many other writers bears testimony:
Circeumque jugum, queis Jupiter Anxuris arvis
Præsidet[10].
7th Æneid.
Æmilius Mamercus was a very pious consul, and when he served before with Genutius his colleague, made himself famous for driving the nail into Minerva’s temple to stop the progress of the plague; he was therefore likely enough to encourage this superstitious worship of the beardless Jupiter.
Some books of geography, very old ones, had given me reason to make enquiry after a poisonous fountain in the rocks near Terracina. My enquiries were not vain. The fountain still exists, and whoever drinks it dies; though Martial says,
Sive salutiferis candidus Anxur acquis[11].
The place is now cruelly unwholesome however; so much so, that our French landlord protests he is obliged to leave it all the summer months, at least the very hot season, and retire with his family to Molo di Gaeta. He told us with rational delight enough of a visit the Pope had made to those places some few years ago; and that he had been heard to say to some of his attendants how there was no mal aria at all thereabouts in past days: an observation which had much amazed them. It was equally their wonder how his Holiness went o’walking about with a book in his hand or pocket, repeating verses by the sea-side. One of them had asked the name of the book, but nobody could remember it. “Was it Virgil?” said one of our company. “Eh mon Dieu, Madame, vous l’avez divinée[12],” replied the man. But, O dear (thought I), how would these poor people have stared, if their amiable sovereign, enlightened and elegant as his mind is, had happened to talk more in their presence of what he had been reading on the sea shore, Virgil or Homer; had he chanced to mention that Molo di Gaeta was in ancient times the seat of the Lestrygones, and inhabited by canibals, men who eat one another! and surely it is scarcely less comical than curious, to recollect how Ulysses expresses his sensations on first landing just by this now lovely and highly-cultivated spot, when he pathetically exclaims,
——Upon what coast,
On what new region is Ulysses tost?
Possest by wild barbarians fierce in arms,
Or men whose bosoms tender pity warms?
Pope’s Odyssey.
Poor Cicero might indeed have asked the question seven or eight centuries after, in days falsely said to be civilized to a state of perfection; when his most inhuman murder near this town, completed the measure of their crimes; who to their country’s fate added that of its philosopher, its orator, its acknowledged father and preserver.—Cruel, ungrateful Rome! ever crimson with the blood of its own best citizens—theatre of civil discord and proscriptions, unheard of in any history but her’s; who, next to Jerusalem in sins, has been next in sufferings too; though twice so highly favoured by Heaven—from the dreadful moment when all her power was at once crushed by barbarism, and even her language rendered dead among mankind—to the present hour, when even her second splendours, like the last gleams of an aurora borealis, fade gradually from the view, and sink almost imperceptibly into decay. Nor can the exemplary virtues and admirable conduct of this, and of her four last princes, redeem her from ruin long threatened to her past tyrannical offences; any more than could the merits of Marcus Aurelius and Antoninus Pius compensate for the crimes of Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero.—Let the death of Cicero, which inspired this rhapsody, contribute to excuse it; and let me turn my eyes to the bewitching spot—
Where Circe dwelt, the daughter of the day.
That such enchantresses should inhabit such regions could have been scarce a wonder in Homer’s time I trow; the same country still retains the same power of producing singers, to whom our English may with propriety enough cry out;
——Hail, foreign wonder!
Whom certes our rough shades did never breed.
Milton.
That she should be the offspring of Phœbus too, in a place where the sun’s rays have so much power, was a well-imagined fable one may feel; and her instructions to Ulysses for his succeeding voyage, just, apt, and proper: enjoining him a prayer to Crateis the mother of Scylla, to pacify her rapacious daughter’s fury, is the least intelligible of all Circe’s advice, to me. But when I saw the nasty trick they had at Naples, of spreading out the ox-hides to dry upon the sea shore, as one drives to Portici; the Sicilian herds, mentioned in the Odyssey, and their crawling skins, came into my head in a moment.
We have left these scenes of fabulous wonder and real pleasure however; left the warm vestiges of classic story, and places which have produced the noblest efforts of the human mind; places which have served as no ignoble themes for truly immortal song; all quitted now! all left for recollection to muse on, and for fancy to combine: but these eyes I fear will never more survey them. Well! no matter—
When like the baseless fabric of a vision,
The cloud-capt tow’rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea all which it inherit, shall dissolve;
And like some unsubstantial pageant faded
Leave not a wreck behind.