As soon as we cross the bay we think of Corunna and Sir John Moore. Afar off are the memorable heights of Torres Vedras. Cape St. Vincent, a bluff sixty feet high, with a convent and a lighthouse, reminds one of the brilliant victory won by Sir John Jervis, with Nelson and Collingwood fighting under him; and in a little while we are at Trafalgar, to which sailors still look as the greatest sea-fight in the history of our land, and as the one that saved the nation; and then you spend a day at Gibraltar. A Yankee friend once said to me, ‘I must go back to America. I can’t stay any longer in Europe; I shall get too conceited if I do.’ I, too, feel conceited as I skirt along that romantic coast, which you sight in a few hours after leaving Plymouth. Englishmen are always grumbling. There is no country like England; and an Englishman who is not proud of his native land, and ready to make every sacrifice for her, ought to be shot, and would be if I had my way.
CHAPTER IV
POMPEII AND VESUVIUS
It is needless to write that no one can go to Naples without paying a visit to Pompeii, if he would get a true idea of a Roman city, with its streets, and shops, and baths, and forum, and temples; and it is as well to read over Bulwer’s ‘Last Days of Pompeii’ – that master work of genius, compared with which our present popular novels are poor indeed – and then let the reader spend an entire day, if he can, among the Pompeiian remains, in the museum at Naples, which Garibaldi, when Dictator of Naples, handed over to the people. Pompeii is easy of access by the railway, which lands you at the very spot, after a short but pleasant trip. Much can be accomplished there and back for a little more than three francs. On Sundays Pompeii can be visited for nothing; on other days the charge is one franc, and when you have paid the guide the franc, I think you will agree with me that in no other part of the world can you see so much that is truly wonderful at so small an expense. Close to the gate are a hotel – the Hôtel du Diomede – and a restaurant, at either of which you can get all the refreshments you require; and if it is too hot to walk – and in the summer months Pompeii is a very hot place indeed – there are chairs in the grounds in which you can be carried all round and see all that is to be seen at very little personal fatigue.
Pompeii is spread out in an elliptical form on the brow of a hill, and extends over a space of nearly two miles. On one side of you is Vesuvius, and on the other the blue waters of the bay. One of the towns through which you pass in the train is Portici, the ancient Herculaneum; as it is, you are lost in wonder at the awful extent of the catastrophe which turned all this smiling land into a scene of desolation and death, and which, at any rate, led to the extinction of one philosophic career – that of the elder Pliny, a real victim to the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties. At the time of its visitation, Pompeii is reputed to have had a population of about 26,000.
Imagination fails to realize the agony of the hour as the swift, black, sulphurous death came down on all – the patrician in his marble halls, the tradesman in his shop, the miser at his desk, the devotees who cried to their gods for safety in vain, the slave, the freedman, the aged, to whom life had nothing to give, the tender, the beautiful, the young, to whom life seemed an exhaustless dream of joy. As in the days of the flood, there was marrying and giving in marriage. Here the baker had fled, and left his loaves in his oven; there was an eating-house, in which were found raisins, olives, and fish cooked in oil. There stands the tavern, indicated by the sign of the chequers, while the amphoræ of wines are still marked with the year of the vintage. An election was going on at the time of the catastrophe, and appeals to the free and independent are still preserved. In one place a schoolboy has scratched his Greek alphabet. In his sentry-box a sentinel was discovered, a grisly skeleton clasping his rusty sword. And the streets tell a piteous tale. In one a young man and woman had fallen together; in another part a lady was discovered attempting to flee with a bag of gold, and then there was seen the skeleton of a mother with her children, whom she was vainly seeking to save. In the house of Diomede, or, rather, in a vaulted cellar underneath, eighteen bodies were found of men and women who had evidently fled there for shelter. The probable proprietor of the house was found near the garden door, with the key in his hand, while beside him was a slave with valuables. It is evident that the city was a scene of vice and dissipation. Some of the inscriptions are too indecent to reproduce. I know not whether for this it becomes us to point the finger of scorn, we who read ‘Don Juan,’ who revel in Fielding, who reverence Dean Swift, who know what goes on in Paris and London by night, when respectability has gone to bed and Exeter Hall is shut up.
Let me turn to the streets – they are very narrow – and to the houses, which strike me as generally very small. In that grand climate the people must have mostly lived in the open air. One of the most elegant houses is that of the Tragic Poet. On the threshold was a dog in mosaic, with the inscription ‘Cave canem’ – now in the museum at Naples. I was much interested in the public baths, or thermæ, which indicate with how much care the ancient Romans attended to cleanliness and health. They must have been on a somewhat extensive scale. A passage leads to the chamber for undressing. Beyond this is the cold bath. Thence we make our way to the warm bath, or tepidarium. The baths also possessed an extensive colonnade, now converted into a garden, besides several other chambers and baths for women, none of which are now open to the public. But we see wonders everywhere, in spite of the fact that all that is best in Pompeii has been moved to the museum at Naples, where remains one of the finest of the Pompeiian mosaics – that representing a battle between Darius and Alexander, which no one who wishes to have a competent idea of ancient art should avoid going to see. Let me add that no visitor should go to Pompeii without having first got a clear idea of what he is going to see. The guides are but poor helps, as mostly they speak nothing but Italian. Further, let me say that if you have at Naples only the day allowed by the Orient Company, while waiting for the overland mails, which generally reach Naples in a little over two days and nights after leaving London, your best plan is to get hold of Cook’s agent, who reaches the ship in a boat with a flag bearing the well-known name. He will take you off, drive you straight to Pompeii, give you time to ‘do’ the place and to get a good lunch there, and bring you back in time to the ship to pursue the even tenor of your way to Egypt, or Ceylon, or Australia, as the case may be. If you have time, pursue your studies by a day in the museum, or more if you can. It is there you can realize best, as you study the grand statues of great men and women and gods and goddesses, the Diana of Ephesus being one of them – statues in which the
‘Majesty of human passion
Is to the life expressed’ —
what men the world’s masters were. Nero has a shocking head; Caligula looks an empty-headed fop; but I gazed admiringly on the grand features of my guide, philosopher, and friend – Marcus Aurelius. And I thought of Voltaire, as I stood opposite the noble statue of Julius Cæsar, on your left just as you enter the museum. Voltaire tells us men may be divided into two classes – hammers and anvils. Julius Cæsar evidently belonged to the former class. It was there, too, I saw a Venus, radiant in innocence and beauty and sweetness and grace, as if new ‘bathed in Paphian foam’ – the only Venus I ever could have loved. But I had no guide-book, and the day was hot, and all the attendants were fast asleep.
Let me add a caution: Never change money if you can help it. You are sure to get a bad franc if you do. At Pompeii the guide tried it on with me. Again, while waiting for the train at Pompeii, I was tempted to have a deal with a pedlar, who asked me ten francs for souvenirs, which I subsequently bought, after a good deal of haggling, for five. Unfortunately, I had only a ten-franc note, and he had to give me change – not in coppers, as they generally do in Naples, where silver is scarce, but in francs; and one of them was bad, as I found out when I went to the museum next day. To my disgust, the civil gentleman who takes the money kindly cut it in two.
‘I will call for you at a quarter-past seven,’ said Cook’s agent to me, as he left the Ormuz.
‘Come at that hour,’ I replied; ‘I will be ready.’
Alas! man proposes – often in vain.