NAPLES. (continued 2)

Well! if the palace at Caserta must be deemed more heavy than handsome, I fear the gardens must likewise be avowed to be laid out in a manner one would rather term savage than natural: all artifice is banished however: the king of Naples scorns petty tricks for the amusement of petty minds;—he turns a whole river down his cascade,—a real one; and if its formation is not of the first rate for assuming an appearance of nature, it has the merit of being sincerely that which others only pretend to be: while I am told that his architects are now employed in connecting the great stones awkwardly disposed in two rows down each side the torrent, with the very rocks and mountains among which the spring rises; if they effect this, their cascade will, so far as ever I have read or heard, be single in its kind.

Van Vittelli’s aqueduct is a prodigiously beautiful, magnificent, and what is more, a useful performance: having the finest models of antiquity, he is said to have surpassed them all. Why such superb and expensive methods should be still used to conduct water up and down Italy, any more than other nations, or why they are not equally necessary in France and England, nobody informs me. Madame de Bocages enquired long ago, when she was taken to see the fountain Trevi at Rome, why they had no water at Paris but the Seine? I think the question so natural, that one wishes to repeat it; and one great reason, little urged by others, incites me to look with envy on the delicious and almost innumerable gushes of water that cool the air of Naples and of Rome, and pour their pellucid tides through almost every street of those luxurious cities: it is this, that I consider them as a preservative against that dreadfullest of all maladies, canine madness; a distemper which, notwithstanding the excessive heat, has here scarcely a name. Sure it is the plenty of drink the dogs meet at every turn, that must be the sole cause of a blessing so desirable.

My stay has been always much shorter than I wished it, in every great town of Italy; but here! where numberless wonders strike the sense without fatiguing it, I do feel double pleasure; and among all the new ideas I have acquired since England lessened to my sight upon the sea, those gained at Naples will be the last to quit me. The works of art may be found great and lovely, but the drunken Faun and the dying Gladiator will fade from one’s remembrance, and leave the glow of Solfaterra and the gloom of Posilippo indelibly impressed. Vesuvius too! that terrified me so when first we drove into this amazing town, what future images can ever obliterate the thrilling sensations it at first occasioned? Surely the sight of old friends after a tedious absence can alone supply the vacancy that a mind must feel which quits such sublime, such animated scenery, and experiences a sudden deprivation of delight, finding the bosom all at once unfurnished of what has yielded it for three swiftly-flown months, perpetual change of undecaying pleasures.

To-morrow I shall take my last look at the Bay, and driving forward, hope at night to lodge at Terracina.