But, merciful heavens! what were my sensations at finding in the lower depth of my pocket another purse also filled with Napoleons in rouleaux! Then it all flashed upon me. Samuel, the careful, had left his purse lying on the table, and I had supposed it was mine! I felt as wretched as if I had lost instead of won.
When I got to Naples I found a letter from my cousin bewailing his loss. He implored me, if I knew nothing about it, not to tell it to a human soul. There was a M. Duclaux in Marseilles, with whom we had had our business dealings, and from him Sam had borrowed what he needed. I at once requested Captain Olive, of the steamer, to convey the purse and its contents to M. Duclaux, which I suppose was done secundem ordinem.
Poor Sam! I never met him again. He died of consumption
soon after returning home. He was one of whom I can say with truth that I never saw in him a fault, however trifling. He was honour itself in everything, as humane as was his grandfather before him, ever cheerful and kind, merry and quaint.
The programme of the steamboat declared that meals were included in the fare, “except while stopping at a port.” But we stopped every day at Genoa or Leghorn, or somewhere, and stayed about fifteen hours, and as almost every passenger fell sea-sick after going ashore, the meals were not many. On board the first day, I made the acquaintance of Mr. James Temple Bowdoin, of Boston, and Mr. Mosely, of whom I had often heard as editor of the Richmond Whig. Mr. Bowdoin was a nephew of Lady Temple, and otherwise widely connected with English families. He is now living (1892), and I have seen a great deal of him of late years. With these two I joined company, and travelled with them over Italy. Both were much older than I, and experienced men of the world; therefore I was in good hands, and better guides, philosophers, mentors, pilots, and friends I could hardly have found. Left to myself, I should probably ere the winter was over have been the beloved chief of a gang of gypsies, or brigands, or witches, or careering the wild sea-wave as a daring smuggler, all in innocence and goodness of heart; for truly in Marseilles I had begun to put forth buds of such strange kind and promise as no friend of mine ever dreamed of. As it was, I got into better, if less picturesque, society.
We came to Naples, and went to a hotel, and visited everything. In those days the beggars and pimps and pickpockets were beyond all modern conception. The picturesqueness of the place and people were only equalled by the stinks. It was like a modern realistic novel. We went a great deal to the opera, also to the Blue Grotto of Capri, and ascended Mount Vesuvius, and sought Baiæ, and made, in fact, all the excursions. As there were three, and sometimes
half-a-dozen of our friends on these trips, we had, naturally, with us quite a cortége. Among these was an ill-favoured rascal called “John,” who always received a dollar a day. One evening some one raised the question as to what the devil it was that John did. He did not carry anything, or work to any account, or guide, or inform, yet he was always there, and always in the way. So John, being called up, was asked what he did. Great was his indignation, for by this time he had got to consider himself indispensable. He declared that he “directed, and made himself generally useful.” We informed him that we would do our own directing, and regarded him as generally useless. So John was discarded. Since then I have found that “John” is a very frequent ingredient in all societies and Government offices. There are Johns in Parliament, in the army, and in the Church. His children are pensioned into the third and fourth and fortieth generation. In fact, I am not sure that John is not the great social question of the age.
There was in Philadelphia an Academy of Fine Arts, or Gallery, of which my father had generously presented me with two shares, which gave me free entrance. There were in it many really excellent pictures, even a first-class Murillo, besides Wests and Allstons. Unto this I had, as was my wont, read up closely, and reflected much on what I read, so that I was to a certain degree prepared for the marvels of art which burst on me in Naples. And if I was, and always have been, rather insensible to the merits of Renaissance sculpture and architecture, I was not so to its painting, and not at all blind to the unsurpassed glories of its classic prototypes. Professor Dodd had indeed impressed it deeply and specially on my mind that the revival of a really pure Greek taste in England, or from the work of Stewart and Revett, was contemporary with that for Gothic architecture, and that the appreciation of one, if true, implies that of the other. As I was now fully inspired with my new resolution to become an architect, I read all that I could get on the subject, and
naturally examined all remains of the past far more closely and critically than I should otherwise have done. And this again inspired in me (who always had a mania for bric-à-brac and antiquity, which is certainly hereditary) a great interest in the characteristic decoration of different ages, which thing is the soul and life of all æsthetic archæology and the minor arts; which latter again I truly claim to have brought, I may say, into scientific form and made a branch of education in after years.
I think that we were a month in Naples. I kept a journal then, and indeed everywhere for three years after. The reader may be thankful that I have it not, for I foresee that I shall easily recall enough to fill ten folios of a thousand pages solid brevier each, at this rate of reminiscences. As my predilection for everything German and Gothic came out more strongly every day, Mr. Mosely called me familiarly Germanicus, a name which was indeed not ill-bestowed at that period.