The Press.
London, England, 1858-11-06 00:00:00

THE PRESS,

NOVEMBER 6, 1858:

leaved fig. From the tint of the sky, " less blue
than radiant" with its interpenetrated light, and
showing no cloud but the lazy vapour that rests
on the summit of Vesuvius, to the deep hue of the
wine-coloured sea,where the sun sets daily with im-
perial magnificence, and the dazzling shore backed
by the brown and purple hills,—all is glory and
splendour. Convents and villas crown the wooded
cliffs ; and over the ravines below, dark with mossy
foliage, vocal with blackbirds and nightingale;
and freshened by mountain mill-streams, hang
lofty bridges which carry the road along the
precipitous faces of the rocky shore. From the
beach beneath conies the low plash of the
tideless sea in its windless summer calm, while
from the white-sailed boat on its surface rises
the soft yet distinct murmur of the Latin hymn,
sung by the woman with her distaff, who sits
among the fishermen and implores the Virgin
to bless her children and her people. Inland,
the landscape is still lovely. Above the deep
valleys hang perched the small mountain vil-
lages, each with its white belfry and cluster of
red-roofed houses, or with its ruined convent,
over whose broken arches cluster ivy and clematis,
while delicate fern and wavy maidenhair hang
in its silent and damp recesses. In the desolate
plain, where, " between the mountains and the
sea," stand the three temples, sole relics of a once
populous city,—like the masts of some tall ship
that remain to mark the wreck that decays
below,—the roses of Paestum still bloom on tfie
hedges, and the cyclamen and yellow thistle
spring from the crevices of the mouldering Cyclo-
pean wall. At Amalfi, the domed houses, with
their thick walls and narrow windows, recall the
aspect of some Oriental town, while the lofty
site, steep mountain background, winding valleys
clothed with wood, and fresh breezes, remind the
traveller of spots almost as fair but less luxuriant
in colour, beyond the Alps. Nor would it be
true to say. as regards the inhabitants of these
enviable scenes, that "all but the spirit of man
is divine"—at least if man ' includes woman.'
Witness the following pleasant picture of Miss
Kavanagh's next neighbours :

Carmela is twenty-three, motto vecehia, very old, as she
says herself with demure gravity. She is neither tall nor
short, but slender in figure, light and agile as a deer, and,
above all, graceful from the bend of her slim arched neck
to the springing step of her bare brown feet. She wears
her black hair in the becoming Greek fashion, which, two
thousand years ago, her Greek ancestresses brought with
them to Sorrento. That is to say, she divides it at the
back into two-plaits, with which she braids her head like
a Cr )wn ; two ends of bl:ick ribbon and a long silver
bodkin, which they call spadella from its swordlike shape,
fasten these plaits securely behind. The rest of her attire
offers nothing striking ; a cotton handkerchief around her
neck, white linen sleeves tucked up to her elbow, a short-
waisted little boddiee, a long skirt and a wide apron,
complete her toilet. Like her father, mother, brothers,
and sisters, Carmela wears neither shoes nor stockings.
They are comfortable people ; they have cows and pigs,
and hens and silkworms, sod a good farm of orange, lemon,
and olive trees, bat they would think it a strange luxury to
wear shoes and stockings -in week-days er in summer. It
is only in winter, or o❑ Sundays and holy days, that the
whole family is duly shod.
Carmela is not strictly beautiful, but she is better than
pretty; delightful is the only word that will describe her.
Her features are arched and expressive ; her brown eyes
have the look, soft and wild, of a young kid. There is
mischief in the very sweetness of her smile, but maiden
mischief securely guarded round by maiden innocence.
Camels is guarded too by that other good angel of youth
—active life. Early as I may get up, I see the tremulous
bine smoke rising from her father's chimney amongst the
olive and orange trees, and we rarely go to bed but we
leave a light burning in Carmela's windows and hear the
whole family saying the rosary ; work, and hard work, fills
the interval. Except on Sundays and Festas this family,
seven in all, are never a moment idle.

The father and brethren of Carmela keep cows,
pigs, and poultry ; they rear silkworms, and crush
olives for oil in rude machines which obstinate
prejudice will not allow them to alter. Round
their dilapidated farmhouse, once a country-seat,
and showing in its defaced frescoes and spacious
chambers traces of its former festive destination,
spreads an orange orchard, where the trees are
large as pear-trees, and the fruit as big as small
melons; and an olive-grove, where the germs, if
not cankered by the worm in spring, shower on
the October walks a copious store of black and
teeming fruit. Industry and frugality are the
order of the day, and of every day, among these
Sorrentine people. They eat little enough, and
meat seems an almost unknown luxury. Their
life is one of toil, cheered only by the recurrence
of the Alta, when they dance, and sing, and
make merry, but without quarrelling, fighting, or
drwakaatio, The gis &Wixom! toub who iaabi

Sorrento do not care for politics
clubs, concerts, balls, or promenades. They, are
satisfied (like the Northern Italians with whom
we have on a former occasion made acquaintance
through Signor Grallenga) to meet each other at
church, in the street, or in a dirty cid& Society,
properly so called, there is none. Of the Italian
character, and especially the Sorrentine va-
riety of it, Miss Kavanagh has much to gay.
Its virtues are sobriety and industry, with an
inborn politeness and kindly feeling, which de-
prives them of all vulgarity of mind or affecta-
tion of manner. Except when ungovernable
passion overcomes their habitual self-control,
they are deeply reserved, especially to strangers,
and jealous of allowing any approach to real
intimacy. At the same time, all of themselves
that they allow to be seen is genuine, naive, and
fresh. To the notions that Italians are slaves to
romance, and neglect the actual work. of life for
dreams of poetry and art,—embodied in the lines
of Pope,—

A land of singing and of dancing slaves,
Lovc•whispering words and lute-resauuding wave',
in Cowper's " Boadicea," and in Kingsley's " Two
Years Ago," a passage from which Miss Kava-
nagh selects for comment,—she opposes a tho-
rough denial. Nothing is so matter-of-fact as
an Italian ; at the same time no one is so prac-
tical a philosopher, in a certain way. If there is
no work to be had, he does not pretend to do
any ; and in such a climate it is not difficult to
live somehow. If there is, he does it with all
his might. How were all the cities, roads, acque-
ducts, harbours of Italy, produced, asks Miss
Kavanagh, but by hard work ? The Italian of
the middle classes is least of all romantic in the
affairs of the heart. With him they are con-
fessedly affairs of the pocket. The house is the
first thing to be thought of, not the husband, as
one of the prettiest girls of Sorrento told the
authoress. The parents settle the match. "1
want your daughter for my son," says the
youth's mother—the youth and his betrothed
being the last persons to be consulted. The
practice does not seem to answer well, for
Italian wives are not very happy. Their hus-
bands are jealous, mistrustful, and often brutal,
and some keep their spouses in a sort of Oriental
seclusion.—The matter-of-fact character of the
Italian extends to his appreciation of natural
beauty. He is still in much the same state of
mind as an ancient Greek, according to Mr.
Ruskin's eloquent and ingenious description.
He likes what is comfortable in landscape; he
" blesses the useful light," like the Shepherd in
Pope's Homer. His attachment to his coun-
try is fond and firm, but he loves it, like the
lover of Horace's Pyrrha, because it is "all
gold,"—the home of warmth and cheerfulness
"seas rough with black winds," frowning preci-
pices and eddying mists, " heiFht and cold, the
" splendour of the hills," which inspire in Ten-
tonic races the ideas of sublimity and grandeur,
in him excite only contempt and abhorrence.
He cannot understand the taste of foreigners foi
aspects of scenery, which violate his sense of
harmony and beauty, and are in his mind asso-
ciated with no ideas but those of discomfort.
The naïf and well-known Idyl of Moschus
would most nearly express his feelings:—
When on the grey and glancing sea the light airs grad,

move,
My timid spirit restless grows, the land no more T love:
Fhe Cslmness draws me to itself, and I would fain berme
From trees and fields, to where the sails move slow ILO

stately on.
Bat when the hoary deep resounds, and drumlin groT:

the lee,
And the long billows madly race across the heaving sea,
When curls the green transparent rhige, and freshens int(

foam, -
0 then I look to trees and fields, and wish myself at home,
More grateful is the firm-set earth, %hen darkunne a•ooa'
lands please,
Where softly sings the pine•tree, how strong soc'er
thi
breeze ;
And sweet it is to lie beneath the plane tree's breadth of

shade,
While streams that lull, but not disturb,

through the &ale.
Miss Kavanagh follows up her observations on
this phase of the Italian character by some rather
good remarks on the origin of the modern taste
for the picturesque, in ,isrhich she will be found
to coincide with the views of Mr. Clark in hi,
"Peloponnesus." They are too long for extract,
but wo recommend them to those of our reader'
who desire to tbllow up the Interotting literary
topic ant mooted, we aink, by Mr, Carlyle, 3P‘i

since touched upon or followed up by Dr. Sewell,
Mr. Cope, and Mr. Ruskin.
The second volume of the "Two Sicilies"
pleases us less than the first. At Sorrento, long
residence and quiet observation give a weight to
Miss Kavanagh's writing, in which her visits to
Palermo (all she saw of the other ' Sicily') and
the remaining localities are deficient. To these
she seemed to have paid only the mere flying
visit of an ordinary tourist, and the chapters she
devotes to them are not wholly free from the
suspicion of book-making. Thoroughly known
as Pompeii is, it was hardly necessary to give us
an abridgment of Pliny's account of the eruption
of 79, or to write a chapter on Italian sepul-
ture apropos of the Roman tomb of Ccelia
Metella. That which throws new light on the
character of a people is always interesting ; the
objects of curiosity in their country may easily
be exhausted. In the following eloquent pas-
sage Miss Kavanagh shows so true a sense of
what was needed that we wonder she has not
followed out the notion more faithfully and more
exclusively :
The real mat (pities that speak, and have a lan-
guage both graceful and impressive, are those that are
blended with the lives of the people. They are not the
set ruin which the Cicerone takes you to see, and which
von cannot leave the place without seeing
These are nothing—worse than nothing ; they are delusive
They help to inspire a contempt for the past, which no
past deserves from the present, least of all a past which,
spite all its sins, filled ages with its splendour, and shone
with glorious glow long before our sun had arisen; above
all. they serve to lead away the mind from tree knowledge
and true learning, and to deliver it, bound hand and foot,
to the knowledge and learning of guide-books. The true
antiquities—those truly worthy of our attention—are the
slight, but visible traces of ancient speech and ancient
rue, of ancient feelings and manners to which human
tenacity has clung through ages of vicissitudes, which
barbaric invasions, a new faith, end a new civilization have
not effaced from the land.

They are the half-naked peasant boy, who crosses his
bare legs and leans against a tree with the look and
attitude of the graceful Faun in the Capitol, the brown
girl who binds her hair and pins up her skirt at the sides
like a Grecian Virgin, the priest who throws his cloak
over his shoulder arid across his breast in the folds of the
Roman toga, the jar that has preserved almost unchanged
the shape of the kmphora, the earthen scaldino that seems
the very same held by the statue of the slave in the
Vatican, even as he seems the progenitor of the popular
Roman of today; the fatted calf that is led to the
hatcher's, adorned with flowers like a victim of the ancient
rites, the gay draperies that adorn the church on festive
days, the narrow shop where you can scarcely move, the
narrow street paved with lava like the shops and streets
of buried Pompeii, and, above all, the beautiful graceful
nature, that makes you believe in Virgil in the land where
Virgil sang and died.

The Solfatara, the Museum of Naples, Baia,
and Pozzuoli, are in like manner pleasantly
enough described, but we really do not find more
in these notices than in the accurate but not dry
pages of Mr. Octavian Blewitt. That which is
really valuable in Miss Kavanagh is her pic-
turesque sense of Italian landscape and her sym-
pathy with Italian character, and we should
have been glad, for her own sake, if her
observations had been drawn from even
a wider range. Her book also contains a
good deal of information about the chari-
table institutions of Italy, which will be new
to many readers, though her toleration of
Italian mendicancy seems to us to be carried to
aperfectly ridiculous extent. But, since her
volumes contain much that is new, and as even
those parts which are less so are executed with
practised literary ability, most people will find
them agreeable reading. Certainly, barring the
defects we have noticed, they are among the
pleasantest volumes of travel we have lately met
with, and we can, therefore, cordially recommend
them.