Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-05-10
PICTURES FROM ITALY.
Trip by Steamer From Palermo to
Naples-First Glimpse OF the Gulf.
One Taken Back in Thought to the Time When
Gods We're Hsls Men and Men Were DemI-
Confessional Museum.
Copyright, 1901

lCopyr1ghts l69O-l
NAPLES ITALY, April 9.-There
can be nothing more restful and
delicious than the trip by steamer from
Palermo, Sicily, across the Italian arm
of the Mediterranean to the bright and
slovenly, magnificent and detsstable
metropolis of Italy, landlord +,
nobility housing, revolution breeding
lazzaroni-produoing, retrosressiye, yet
always progressive, Naples. "a,
Aside from the soft and tender skies,
the landward perfumes which, despite
ones highest efforis.at- mental activity,
insiduously lmpel siesta and sleep, and
s6ch intoxicating zephyrs that one no
Longer wonders at the inspiration to an
art which left us the Fsrnese Naroissus,
the Venus of Capua, or Milo. the i'm
palpable echo turned to an eternal
human listener In countless forms by
brush or chisel, or as many matches
Dlanas bending over their white and
slumberful Endymions TO kiss them
back TO consciousness, all the way
eastward toward the Neapolitan
shore the mind and heart are
msrvelously wrought oy the story of the
peoples and places of this wave washed
western peninsula edge of Italy. The
sky, air and sea are tenderly enthralling
TO the physical sense; but there is an in-
lengthy of mental interest that fills the
soul of thought with as tender and
bushed soiemnity. In front of this
shore one stands face to face with human
tragedies of the densest of oid-world
populations and activities for 5000 years;
aWaAg ffvNan NH - ha1n uxv
tells us gods were half men and men were
dsmi-gods, down past that almost incon-
eeivRble reach OF time in which the very
face OF sea and earth were changed, in
Vulnerable races and dynasties grew TO
perfection and passed away, miracles of
cities were built, lost from sight, dug out
again and repeopled, and the splendid
yet pathetic Italy OF to-day sits buried
IN bloom and vine above the halt-known
monuments of past no renaissance of
power and art can ever again produce.
The night, the sea, the balmy airs and
the glowing stars
COMPEL THE MOOD
for these wondrous sweeps of thought
life. resist them as you may. But when
the morning comes and sets just there
before you an hundred miles of stored
shore-the sunny islands nearest, the
background OF green aud purple
mountains with Vesuvius looming over
all, the splendid city of Naples, reaching
ITS shsainR arms to the right and left about
the luminous bay, and then half hun
dred cities and villages climbing the
oraggy shore, like professions of covled 4
monks pilgriming TO as many mountain
shrines-the consciousness Of presence
and reality, where in ones thought
throughout tbs lifetime before all had
been as vague and misty dream. stlrs
the mind and heart magioally TO their
profonndest depths.
The first completes view of the CALF Of
Naples sweeps the thought TO time
when, even AGES back OF the peopling OF
the first Naples, old Parthenope, by the
Greeks. the present conformation of
shore, outreaohing promontories, and
farther vine-cled islands was made By
the action OF some monstrous prehistoric
volcano with crater an hundred times
as vast IS that possessed By either Etna