A VINTAGE SONG.
Abridged from Béranger.
"Amidst the Celtic hordes of old
That gather'd round his wayworn band,
The cumbrous booty to behold
Brought from Ausonia's sunny land,
Thus Brennus spake—'This lance of mine
Bears Rome's best gift—Behold—the Vine!
Plant, plant the Vine, to whose fair reign belong
The arts of Peace, and all the realms of Song!
"'They told us of its wondrous juice;
We fought to taste it, and have won!
Now o'er your hills new wealth diffuse
And cherish well the warrior's boon.
Plant, plant the Vine, &c.
"'Nor for ourselves alone we tore
That stem away; your ships shall bear
The freighted joy to many a shore,
And spread the unknown gladness there.
Plant, plant the Vine, &c.'
"He ended, and in face of all,
While deep in earth he strikes the lance
And plants the shoot—unconscious Gaul
Prepares the world's vast vineyard—France!"[[9]]
The Palace of Caserta.
About thirteen miles from Naples is one of the finest kingly residences in Europe—so say all the guide-books, and they are right. Vanvitelli is the very Michael Angelo of palace-rearing! Its shape is a parallelogram approaching to a square. Counting mezzanines, it has six stories besides the attics; and is pierced with no less than 1700 windows. Its stair, the very perfection of that sort of construction, is vast in all its dimensions, and so very easy, that you look down from its summit admiring, with untried lungs, the enormous height you have reached. It starts double from the ground, and twenty persons might ascent either branch abreast, and meet one another at the spot where it begins to return upon itself; so that the noble octagonal landing above finds itself just over the starting-place below. From this post four large windows command four spacious courts, and the simple construction of this gigantic edifice stands unveiled. You now begin your journey through vast, lofty, magnificently marbled, and very ill-furnished apartments, of which, before you have completed the half circuit of a single floor, you are heartily tired, for, beyond the architecture, there is nothing to see. The commonest broker's shop would furnish better pictures. Boar-hunts of course, to represent how Neapolitan kings kill boars at Portici, and shoot wild-ducks on the Lago di Fusina. There is also an ample historical fresco on the ceiling of the antechamber to the throne-room, on which Murat had caused to be represented some notable charge where he proved victorious; but after he was shot, Ferdinand, with great taste, judgment, and good feeling, erased, interpolated, and altered the picture into a harmless battle of Trojans against Greeks, or some such thing! The palace has two theatres and a chapel; and you must change your conductor four times if you would be led through the whole. For this enormous edifice boasts of only twelve servants, at eleven dollars a-month from the privy purse. Caserta, which, even in its present imperfect state, has cost 7,000,000 scudi, is raised amidst a swarm of paupers, who are permitted to besiege the stranger, and impede his progress, with an importunity such as could be shown by none but men on the eve of famishing. We never saw such a population of beggars as those which infest the walls of this most sumptuous palace and its park—but the park is a park indeed! It may have something of the formality of Versailles or Chantilly; but its leading features are essentially English; its thickets and copses abound in hares and pheasants. The ilex attains twice the height we remember to have seen it reach elsewhere. Its islands and fishponds, its kitchen and flower-gardens, put one in mind of a first-rate English country-seat. The ornamental water is fetched, by an aqueduct worthy of old Rome, from mountains seven miles off, first emptying its whole charge over a high ledge of rock, making a waterfall (which you see from the drawing-room window) over a series of steps and terraces, which get wider as they get lower, till they terminate in a superb basin within a quarter of a mile of the palace, where the water makes its last bound, and forms a broad lake fit for Diana and her nymphs, amidst woods fit for Actaeon and his dogs. Of course we asked to be conducted to these stone terraces, over which the dash of the mountain stream into the lake is effected: but as we passed the latter, we were surprised by our guide approaching the water, and, beginning to whistle, he begs us to observe the water begins to be troubled at a distance, and the more he whistles the more the commotion increases. Ten, twenty, and in half a second hundreds of immense fish come trooping up, and, undeterred by our presence, approach as near as they dare to the surface of the water where he stands; they swim backwards and forwards, and lash the water with their tails. What is the matter? Why! they come to be fed! and such is the ferocious impatience of this aquatic menagerie, that we long to assist in quelling it; and so we dip our hand into the man's basket of frogs, and drop a few right over the swarm—and now the water is bubbling and lathering with the workings and plungings of these mad fish; and so large are they, so strong, so numerous, that, all angler as we are, we really felt unpleasantly, nor would we, after what we saw, have trusted hand or foot in the domain of such shark-like rapacity. They consume five basketsful of frogs and minnows a-day. Except that of the Caserta beggars, we never saw any thing like the hunger of the Caserta fish.
The Silk Manufactory.
The silk manufactory at Caserta is worth a visit. The labour is chiefly accomplished by the hand, as is all labour in Naples. Silk is wound off into skeins by a mill turned by the artificial falls of the aqueduct. At one extremity you see the unpromising cocoons; at the other the most rare and beautiful velvets and gros de Naples. The locality of this manufactory is delightful, and the old queen preferred its comforts and cheerfulness to the solitary grandeur of the palace in the plain. In place of occupying and paying the poor round his palace to make silk and satins for his court and the Pope, the present king spends his money in gunpowder and soldiering. They accuse him of having less compassion for the misfortunes of the poor than even his father Francis, or his grandfather Ferdinand of blessed memory. The view from this spot of the huge palace itself, with Vesuvius smoking to our right, and Capri shining before it, is one of those not to be forgotten.
The Snake Tamer.
Behold the old snake-finder with his sack! "Ola! vecchio, che cosa avete pigliato quest' oggi?" was a question put from our one-horse cart, till then going at a great rate through the village of Somma, to a little old man, with a humpback, a sack, and a large shallow box. He was dressed in a queer costume, had a wolf's brush in his hat, and remarkably tight-fitting leather leggings. "Tre! fra altri una vipera meschia." "Oh! oh! aspetta," added we—we must see the viper. Upon which there was a broad grin all round the circle; but the driver stopped, and down we got. The old man, seeing our intention to be serious, got a chair for us from a cottage, and putting his box on his knee, looked knowing, and thus began.
"Gentlemen, you have all seen a viper, basta feroce—a reptile that every one runs from except me, and those who know, as I do, how to humour him. I have a viper in this box whom I have so perfectly tamed, that he lives with two others, and never quarrels with them. I will open the box, and, as you will see, they will all lie as if they were dead, until I notice one, when he will put up his head that I may take him out."