Of sorrow unfeign’d, and humiliation meek.
Let not this story, however, mislead any one to think that more general decorum or true devotion can be found in churches of the Romish persuasion than in ours—quite the reverse. This burst of penitential piety was in itself an indecorous thing; but it is the nature and genius of the people not to mind small matters. Dogs are suffered to run about and dirty the churches all the time divine service is performing; while the crying of babies, and the most indecent methods taken by the women to pacify them, give one still juster offence. There is no treading for spittle and nastiness of one sort or another, in all the churches of Italy, whose inhabitants allow the filthiness of Naples, but endeavour to justify the disorders of other cities; though I do believe nothing ever equalled the Chiesa de Cavalieri at Pisa, in any Christian land. Santa Giustina at Padua, the Redentore at Venice, St. Peter’s at Rome, and some of the least frequented churches at Milan, are exceptions; they are kept very clean, and do not, by the scandalous neglect of those appointed to keep them, disgrace the beauty of their buildings.
Here has, however, been a dreadful accident which puts such slight considerations out of one’s head. A Friar has killed a woman in the church just by the Crocelle inn, for having refused him favours he suspected she had granted to another. No step is taken though towards punishing the murderer, because he is religioso, è di più cavaliere. What a miracle that more such outrages are not daily committed in a country where profession of sanctity, and real high birth, are protections from law and justice! Surely nothing but perfect sobriety and great goodness of disposition can be alleged as a reason why worse is not done every day. I said so to a gentleman just now, who assured me the criminal would not escape very severe castigation; and that perhaps the convent would inflict such severities upon that gentleman as would amply supply the want of activity in the exertion of civil power.
It is a stupid thing not to mention the common dress of the ordinary women here, which ladies likewise adopt, if they venture out on foot, desiring not to be known. Two black silk petticoats then serve entirely to conceal their whole figure; as when both are tied round their waist, one is suddenly turned up, and as they pull it quick over their heads, a loose trimming of narrow black gauze drops over the face, while a hook and eye fastens all close under the chin, and gives them an air not unlike our country wenches, who throw the gown tail over their heads, to protect them from a summer’s shower. The holiday dresses mean time of the peasants round Naples, are very rich and cumbersome. One often sees a great coarse raw-boned fellow on a Sunday, panting for heat under a thick blue velvet coat comically enough; the females in a scarlet cloth petticoat, with a broad gold lace at the bottom, a jacket open before, but charged with heavy ornaments, and the head not unbecomingly dressed with an embroidered handkerchief from Turkey, exactly as one sees them represented here in prints, which they sell dear enough, God knows; and ask, as I am informed by the purchasers, not twice or thrice, but four or five times more than at last they take, as indeed for every thing one buys here: One portrait is better, however, than a thousand words, when single figures are to be delineated; but of the Grotta del Cane, description gives a completer idea than drawing. Both are perhaps nearly unnecessary indeed, when speaking of a place so often and so accurately described. What surprised me most among the ceremonies of this extraordinary place was, that the pent up vapour shut in an excavation of the rock, should, upon opening the door, gradually move forwards a few yards, but not rise up above a foot from the surface, nor, by what I could observe, ever dissipate in air; I think we left it hovering over the favourite spot, when the poor cur’s nose had been forcibly held in it for a minute or two, but he took care after his recovery to keep a very judicious distance. Sporting with animal life is always highly offensive; and the fellow’s account that his dog was used to the operation, and had already gone through it eight times, that it did him no harm, &c. I considered as words used merely to quiet our impatience of the experiment, which is infinitely more amusing when tried upon a lighted flambeau, extinguishing it most completely in a moment. What connection there is between flame and vitality, those who know more of the matter than I do, must expound. Certain it is, that many sorts of vapour are equally fatal to both; and where fermentation is either going forward, or has lately been, people accustomed to such matters always try with a candle whether the cask is approachable by man or not; and I once saw a terrifying accident arise in a great brewhouse, from the headstrong stupidity of a workman who would go down into a vat, the contents of which had lately been drawn off, without sending his proper præcursor the candle, to enquire if all was safe. The consequence was half expected by his companions, who hearing him drop off the steps, and fall flat to the bottom, began instantly hooking him up again, but there were no signs of life; some ran for their master, others for a surgeon, but we were nearest at hand, and recollecting what one had read of the recovery of dogs at Naples, by tossing them suddenly into the lake Agnano, we made the men carry their patient to the cooler, and plunging him over head and ears, restored his life, exactly in the manner of the Grotta del Cane experiment, which succeeded so completely in this fellow’s case, I remember, that waking after the temporary suspension, we had much ado to impress so insensible a mortal with a due sense of the danger his rashness had incurred.
But it is time to tell of Herculaneum, Pompeia, and Portici; of a theatre, the scene of gaiety and pleasure, overwhelmed by torrents of liquid fire! the inhabitants of a whole town surprised by immediate and unavoidable destruction! Where that very town indeed was built with the lava produced by former eruptions, one would think it scarce possible that such calamities could be totally unexpected;—but no matter, life must go on, though we all know death is coming;—so the bread was baking in their ovens, the meat was smoking on their dishes, some of their wine already decanted for use, the rest in large jars (amphora), now petrified with their contents inside, and fixed to the walls of the cellars in which they stand.—How dreadful are the thoughts which such a sight suggests! how very horrible the certainty, that such a scene may be all acted over again to-morrow; and that we, who to-day are spectators, may become spectacles to travellers of a succeeding century, who mistaking our bones for those of the Neapolitans, may carry some of them to their native country back again perhaps; as it came into my head that a French gentleman was doing, when I saw him put a human bone into his pocket this morning, and told him I hoped he had got the jaw of a Gaulish officer, instead of a Roman soldier, for future reflections to energize upon. Of all single objects offered here to one’s contemplation, none are more striking than a woman’s foot, the print of her foot I mean, taken apparently in the very act of running from the river of melted minerals that surrounded her, and which now serves as an intaglio to commemorate the misery it caused. Another melancholy proof of what needs no confirmation, is the impression of a sick female, known to be so from the stole she wore, a drapery peculiar to the sex; her bed, converted into a substance like plaster of Paris, still retains the form and covering of her who perished quietly upon it, without ever making even an effort to escape.
That one of these towns is crushed, or rather buried, under loads of heavy lava, and is therefore difficult to disentangle, all have heard; that Pompeia is only lightly covered with pumice-stones and ashes, is new to nobody; it is in the power, as a Venetian gentleman said angrily, of an English hen and chickens to scratch it open in a week, though these lazy Neapolitans will leave it not half dislodged, before a new eruption swallows all again.
Our visit to Portici was more than equally provoking in the same way; to see deposited there all the antiques which are so curious in themselves, so very valuable when considered as specimens of ancient art, and of the mode of living practised in ancient Rome, kept at a place where I do sincerely believe they will be again overwhelmed and confounded among the king of Naples’s furniture, to the great torture of future antiquarians, and to the disgrace of present insensibility.
The triclinia and stibadia used at supper by the old Romans prove the verses which our critics have been working at so long, to have been at least well explained by them, and do infinite honour to those who, without the advantage of seeing how the utensils were constructed, knew perfectly well their way of carrying on life, from their acquaintance with a language long since dead, and I am sure buried under a heap of rubbish heavier and more difficult to remove than all the lava heaped on Herculaneum; but it is a source of perpetual wonder, and let me add perpetual pleasure too, to know that Cicero, and Virgil, and Horace, if alive, would find their writings as well understood, ay and as perfectly tasted, by the scholars of Paris and London, as they had ever been by their own old literary acquaintance.
The sight of the curule chair was charming, and one thought of old Papyrius, his long white beard, and ivory stick with which he reproved the insolence of a Gaulish soldier, who, when Brennus entered the city, seeing all those venerable senators sitting in a row, took them for inanimate figures, and stroked Papyrius’s beard, to feel whether he was alive or no. The curule chair was so called from currus a chariot, and this we examined had holes bored in it, where it had been fixed to the car: I do think there is just such a one in the British Musæum, but that did not much engage my attention, so great is the influence of locality upon the mind. The way in which they decypher the old MSS. here likewise is pretty and curious, and requires infinite patience, which as far as they have gone has not been well repaid; the operation laboriosius est quam Sibyllæ folia colligere[4], to use the words of Politian, whose right name I learned at Florence to be Messer Angelo di Monte Pulciano.
May not, however, a more important consequence than any yet mentioned be found deducible from what we have seen this day? for if Jesus Christ condescended to use the Roman, or commonly adopted custom of supping on a triclinium (as it is plain he did by the recumbent posture of St. John), when eating the Passover for the last time with his disciples at Jerusalem; that sect of Christians called Romanists ought sure to be the last, not first, to exclude from salvation all such of their brethren as do not receive the Lord’s Supper precisely in their way; when nothing can be clearer, from our blessed Saviour’s example, than that he thought old forms, if laudable, not necessary or essential to the well-performing a devotional rite; seeing that to eat the Passover according to original institution, those who communicated were bound to take it standing, and with a staff in their hands beside as expressive of more haste.