Drunkenness, one of the great causes of quarrels and of bloodshed, and an invariable source of poverty, distress, and consequently of robbery, is very seldom observable, and thus one of the incentives of so many dangerous passions is extinguished, and all their perilous effects prevented. When to this exemption we add, that, there are few temptations to perjury, a crime to which the regulations of our system of taxation exposes our people in too many occasions, we shall be obliged to acknowledge that the Neapolitans are not infected by so many vices, and cannot be such a vile degraded race as some travellers have represented them. I speak not here however of the inhabitants of the whole kingdom of Naples, as I am aware that the oppression of the barons, the injustice of magistrates partial and mercenary, as too many of them are said to be, and the folly of former governments alternately negligent and cruel, have almost barbarized certain districts in Calabria, and peopled the mountains and forests with outlaws and banditti. I confine my observations and panegyric to the inhabitants of Campania, Samnium, and Picenum, and of them I will say that they are in general gifted with some great, and many amiable qualities, and I will even venture to apply to them the poetical compliment which Tasso has paid to a tribe in mind and body, as in country and climate far inferior. La terra molle, e lieta, e dilettosa, We are now about to take our leave of this people and the Felix Campania, and we regret that circumstances had not permitted us to make our visit at an earlier season, and do not allow us to prolong our stay for some months. The beauty of the country is unequalled, and leisure is required to see it in perfection; the climate is delicious, but to enjoy its sweets, leisure again is indispensable; excursions are both instructive and amusing, but here also leisure is essential both to pleasure and improvement: the heat of summer, tolerable to those who repose on the verge of the sea, or in the numberless recesses of the bay, and circumjacent islands, may be rendered insufferable by perpetual motion. Tours succeeding each other, with little or no interval of repose, harass the body, and new objects crowding on each other too rapidly leave nothing in the mind but confused images and shadowy recollections. In short, leisure is the very genius of the place, and still as anciently reigns over Parthenope, in otia natam*. In this respect indeed, and in many others, Naples still retains its ancient character; the same ease, the same tranquillity, the same attachment to literary pursuits, and the same luxurious habits of the Greeks, so often ascribed to it by the ancients, still distinguish it, and render it as formerly the favorite retreat of the aged and the valetudinarian, the studious and the contemplative. Pax secura locis et desidis otia vitæ Et numquam turbata quies, somnique peracti. Stat. Sylv. 111.5. To enjoy such a place in all the vicissitudes of season and * Ovid. Met. xv. + The reader will recollect that this expression, and others of a similar tendency employed in a former chapter, do not extend to the nobility. + Strabo, v. scenery; to observe such a people in all their variations of character; to visit all the towns and isles, and mountains of ancient fame, without hurry or fatigue, is a most desirable object, and may claim a whole year, and fill up every day with pleasure and improvement. But our time was no longer at our disposal, and on the seventh of July we were dragged reluctantly from Parthenope and the Campanian coast*. "Pansilypi colles, et candida Mergellina, Et myrteta sacris consita littoribus.” Me tibi, terra beata, dico; tu meta laborum, Jamque senescentis grata quies animi. Tu, dum fata sinunt, lucemque; auramque ministra Such were the wishes of Flaminius; such would be mine were not England my country! The first stage from Naples is Aversa, a well-built modern town. A few miles from thence we crossed the Clanis, now called Chiagno, and sometimes Lagno, and proceeded rapidly over the plain of Campania. We arrived at Capua rather too late to visit the ruins of the ancient city of the same Naples retains all the features of its Grecian origin, excepting its language, which at present is more Roman than ever, it was in ancient times; it is a singular circumstance that Latin, though spoken in Gaul, Germany, Britain, Spain, and Africa, with their dependent islands, yet never became the language of all Italy. Greek still kept its ground in the southern provinces, and enjoyed a pre-eminence over the imperial language, even to the fall of the western empire, and during the two succeeding centuries. name, which lie about two miles from the modern town. They are shapeless masses spread over a vast extent of ground, or so at least they appear when viewed from the walls of the present city the theatre retains somewhat of its original form, and if disinterred, might perhaps display some remains of the grandeur for which it was once celebrated. So great indeed was the magnificence of Capua, that while Carthage stood it was compared to it, and long after the fall of Carthage, and even after its own humiliation and disfranchisement, it is represented by Cicero* himself as superior to Rome, for the wideness, convenience, and appearance of its streets and edifices. It was built by the Etrurians, that singular nation to which Italy owes its arts, and its noble tuition; then it was occupied partly by force and partly by treachery by the Samnites; afterwards united to the Romans by interest and alliance; then hostile to Rome under the influence of Hannibal, and soon after taken, plundered, and stripped of all the honors of a city, that is, of its senate, its magistrates, and its popular assemblies. In this chastisement the Romans punished the body of the state, that is, the ringleaders only, but spared the populace, and the town itself, which continued to stand a monument of the power, the justice, and the clemency of the conquerors. "Consilio ab omni parte laudabili,” says Titus Livius, "severe et celeriter in maxime noxios animadversum . non sævitum incendiis quæsita lenitatis ruinisque in tecta innoxia murosque species incolumitate urbis nobilissimæ, opulentissimæque." He adds a consideration that had no small influence in the decision of the senate on this occasion, "confessio expressa hosti, quanta vis in Romanis ad expetendas pænas ab infidelibus sociis, et quam nihil in Annibale auxilii ad tuendos." In truth, Capua was taken, and its magistrates put to death, almost in Hannibal's presence, and in spite of all his efforts to save his allies from ruin and himself from disgrace. There are few events recorded in Roman history, that display the great prominent features of the character of that magnanimous people to more advantage, than the siege and fall of Capua. Their perseverance, justice, and humanity, here shine in their full lustre; the reader shares their well earned triumph, and only laments that Corinth, a city more renowned and less guilty than Capua, was not treated with the same indulgence, and like it allowed to stand a monument of Roman forbearance. Capua therefore still flourished, not as a corporate body, but as a delicious residence, surrounded with beauty and pampered with plenty. It was reserved for a more ignominious fate, and destined under the feeble Honorius to fall by the hands of Genseric king of the African Vandals. It never recovered from It this catastrophe, and has remained a heap of uninhabited ruins ever since. The modern town was built about the middle of the ninth century by the count and bishop of the title of Capua, on the site of the ancient Casilinum, remarkable for its fidelity to the Romans in the second Punic war, but decayed and sunk into insignificance even in the time of Pliny. This city is neither large nor well-built, and contains no very remarkable edifice; its greatest recommendation is its name. The cathedral supported |