On July 7, Morse, with four friends, left Rome at four o'clock in the morning for Naples, where they arrived on the 11th after the usual experiences; beggars continually marring the peaceful beauty of every scene by their importunities; good inns, with courteous landlords and servants, alternating with wretched taverns and insolent attendants. The little notebook detailing the first ten days' experiences in Naples is missing, and the next one takes up the narrative on July 24, when he and his friends are in Sorrento. I shall not transcribe his impressions of that beautiful town or those of the island of Capri. These places are too familiar to the visitor to Italy and have changed but little in the last eighty years.
Prom Capri they were rowed over to Amalfi, and narrowly escaped being dashed on the rocks by the sudden rising of a violent gale. At Amalfi they found lodgings in the Franciscan monastery, which is still used as an inn, and here I shall again quote from the journal:—
"The place is in decay and is an excellent specimen of their monastic buildings. It is now in as romantic a state as the most poetic imagination could desire. Here are gloomy halls and dark and decayed rooms; long corridors of chambers, uninhabited except by the lizard and the bat; terraces upon the brow of stupendous precipices; gloomy cells with grated windows, and subterranean apartments and caverns. Remains of rude frescoes stain the crumbling ceiling, and ivy and various wild plants hang down from the opening crevices and cover the tops of the broken walls.
"A rude sundial, without a gnomon, is almost obliterated from the wall of the cloisters, but its motto, 'Dies nostri quasi umbra super terram et nulli est mora', still resists the effects of decay, as if to serve the appropriate purpose of the convent's epitaph. At the foot of the long stairs in the great hall is the ruined chapel, its altar broken up and despoiled of its pictures and ornaments.
"We were called to dinner by our host, who was accompanied by his wife, a very pretty woman, two children, the elder carried by the mother, the younger by the old grandparent, an old man of upwards of eighty, who seemed quite pleased with his burden and delighted to show us his charge. The whole family quite prepossessed us in their favor; there seemed to be an unusual degree of affection displayed by the members towards each other which we could not but remark at the time. Our dining apartment was the old domus refectionis of the convent, as its name, written over the door which led into the choir, manifested. After an excellent dinner we retired to our chambers for the night.
"Tuesday, July 27. We all rested but badly last night. The heat was excessive, the insects, especially mosquitoes, exceedingly troublesome, and the sound of the waves, as they beat against the rocks and chafed the beach in the gusty night, and the howling of the wind, which for a time moaned through the deserted chambers of the convent, all made us restless. I rose several times in the night and, opening my window, looked out on the dark waters of the bay, till the dawn over the mountains warned me that the time for sleep was passing away, and I again threw myself on the bed to rest. But scarcely had I lost myself in sleep before the sound of loud voices below and wailings again waked me. I looked out of my window on the balcony below; it was filled with armed men; soldiers and others like brigands with muskets were in hurried commotion, calling to each other from the balcony and from the terraced steps below.
"While perplexed in conjecturing the meaning of what I saw, Mr. C. called at my door requesting me to rise, as the whole house was in agitation at a terrible accident which had occurred in the night. Dressing in great haste, I went into the contiguous room and, looking out of the window down upon a terrace some thirty feet below, saw the lifeless body of a man, with spots of blood upon his clothes, lying across the font of water. A police officer with a band of men appeared, taking down in writing the particulars for a report. On enquiry I found that the body was that of the old man, the father of our host, whom we had seen the evening before in perfect health. He had the dangerous habit of walking in his sleep and had jumped, it is supposed, in that state out of his chamber window which was directly beneath us; at what time in the night was uncertain. His body must have been beneath me while I was looking from my window in the night.
"Our host, but particularly his brother, seemed for a time almost inconsolable. The lamentations of the latter over the bloody body (as they were laying it out in the room where we had the evening before dined), calling upon his father and mingling his cries with a chant to the Virgin and to the saints, were peculiarly plaintive, and, sounding through the vacant halls of the convent, made a melancholy impression upon us all…. Soon after breakfast we went downstairs; several priests and funeral attendants had arrived; the poor old man was laid upon a bed, the room darkened, and four wax-lights burned, two each side of the bed. A short time was taken in preparation, and then upon a bier borne by four bearers, a few preceding it with wax-lights, the body, with the face exposed, as is usual in Italy, was taken down the steep pathway to its long home.
"I could not help remarking the total want of that decent deportment in all those officiating which marks the conduct of those that attend the interment of the dead in our own country. Even the priests 'seemed to be in high glee, talking and heartily laughing with each other; at what it perplexed me to conjecture.
"I went into the room in which the old man had slept; all was as he had left it. Over the head of the bed were the rude prints of the Virgin and saints, which are so common in all the houses of Italy, and which are supposed to act as charms by these superstitious people. The lamp was on the window ledge where he had placed it, and his scanty wardrobe upon a chair by the bedside. Over the door was a sprig of laurel, placed there since his death.