Читать книгу An Australian Ramble; Or, A Summer in Australia онлайн

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Judging by the number of bookstalls, the Neapolitans must be very great readers, for I never saw so many anywhere else. In many of the streets that run between the leading thoroughfares, the passage is so narrow that it would be almost easy to shake hands across. All the lofty houses are yellow, with green latticed windows and balconies. In many of the churches into which I peeped Mass was in progress, and the attendance was large of men as well as women. In some of the streets the shops were handsome, though quite small, while in the great arches between were caves, as it were, where carriages and horses waited, apparently for hire, while in others the cave had been fitted up as a café. The further one got from the harbour, the finer were the shops and streets. In one I saw a statue of Petrarch, and in another of Dante. The place is like a rabbit warren, and just as populous. Priests and policemen were everywhere. Here and there was a religious painting on the side of a house, before which tapers were burning, and in one street I observed a crucifix, to which the passers-by took off their hats. I went into a café and watched some play at a billiard-table, much smaller and with much bigger balls than those in use among us. Omnibuses and tramcars abounded. Perpetual motion seemed to be the order of the day. Some of my friends patronized the English hotels, where the charges seemed to me dear. One thing, and one thing only, amused me; I stumbled on a kind of eating-house; on the outside was inscribed, Déjeuner à la fourchette, which was Englished underneath as follows: ‘Breakfast to the fork.’ I did not enter. I feared, as the English was so bad, that the cooking might be worse. Altogether, my impression is that Naples looks best at a distance and by moonlight, when a halo of soft light is thrown over bay and street and mountain far away, and the hoarse cry of its thousand street-sellers and cabmen and guides is unheard; when even the distant tinkling of the bells of its many churches no longer reaches the ear; when between you and the crowded city is a world of water calm and still.