The Neapolitans are indeed a happy people, if such a term may be applied to any fraction of mankind. They know how to enjoy the gifts of nature, and are content, if need be, with very little. Naturally intelligent, they are equal to any enterprise; but, as they hate work, they soon give up what they have begun, and make short of their want of success. Travellers were formerly fond of describing that curious type, the lazzarone, the idle man of pleasure, who, enveloped in a rag, slept on the beach or in the porch of a church, and disdained to work after he had earned the pittance sufficing for his simple wants. There still remain a few representatives of this type, but the material exigencies of our time have absorbed the majority of these idle tatterdemalions, and converted them into labourers. Others have succumbed to disease, for they knew nothing of sanitary laws, and dwelt in damp cellars, or bassi, beneath the palaces of the wealthy. Naples contributes her fair share towards the industrial products of the peninsula. The principal articles manufactured are macaroni and other farinaceous pastes, cloth, silks known as gros de Naples, glass, china, musical instruments, artificial flowers, ornaments, and everything entering into the daily consumption of a large city. Its workers in coral are famous for their skill; and Sorrento, near Naples, supplies the much-prized workboxes, jewel cases, and other articles carved in palm-wood. The ship-yards of Castellamare di Stabia are more busy than any others in Italy, those of Genoa and Spezia alone excepted. The sailors of the bay are equal to the Ligurians in seamanship, and surpass them as fishermen. The inhabitants of Torre del Greco, who engage in coral-fishing, are well acquainted with the submarine topography of the coasts of Sardinia, Sicily, and Barbary, and the least movement of the air or water reveals phenomena to them which remain hidden to all other eyes. They own about 400 fishing-boats, which depart in a body, and their return after a successful season presents a spectacle which even Italy but rarely affords.[103]

NAPLES.

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Naples, with its magnificent bay, and the fertile tracts of the Campania and the Terra di Lavoro near it, could hardly fail to become a great commercial city, and if it holds an inferior rank in that respect to Genoa, this is owing to its not being placed upon a great high-road of international commerce. The country depending upon it is of comparatively small extent; only a single line of rails crosses the Apennines; and travellers who follow the mountain road to Taranto are not, even now, quite safe from brigands. The foreign commerce of the city is carried on principally with England and France, and the coasting trade is comparatively of great importance.[104]

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Fig. 109.—POMPEII.

From the Neapolitan Staff Map. Scale 1 : 35,000.

The university is one of the glories of Naples. Founded in the first half of {302} the thirteenth century, it is one of the oldest of Italy, but has had its periods of disgraceful decay. Up to a recent period, when archæology and numismatics were the only sciences not suspected of revolutionary tendencies, it was a place of intellectual corruption, but its regeneration has been brought about with marvellous rapidity. The young Neapolitans now study science with a zest sharpened by abstinence; and, if the rather gushing eloquence of the South could be trusted, Naples has become the greatest seat of learning in the world. Thus much is certain, that the 2,000 students of the university will give a great impulse to the “march of ideas.”