carriages and horses and servants in livery there certainly was a considerable display of luxury; many of the equipages were admirably appointed, and the toilets of the ladies were of approved Parisian style. An admirer of the luxury and refinements of civilized life could not help remarking with satisfaction a visible effort on the part of this poorly-fed and flat-pursed aristocracy to keep up the reputation of their city as a "city swelling with all delight, gallantry, and wealth."
My hostess happily had all the good qualities of the Neapolitans without their defects. She was exuberantly gay and vivacious, she liked show and color, she adored music, but she kept a good table. At her house I made the acquaintance of several delicate dishes,—notably fresh anchovies; cucumber-flowers, culled just when the fruit is forming, and fried in oil with a sprinkling of flour; gourds cut into chips and fried in the same way; a salad of sweet pimentoes cut into slices with tomatoes, black olives, capers, and filets of preserved anchovies, the whole dressed with oil and vinegar. But the noblest dish I ate at Naples was a shell-fish soup. The preface of this gastronomic poem is a coulis of smooth-leaved parsley fried in oil, or in butter if you dislike oil; to this basis you add tomatoes already well boiled and drained. This mixture is gently boiled and hot water added to produce the necessary quantity of bouillon. Then the shell-fish—which have been opened in the mean time by being thrown into hot water—are added to the boiling bouillon, and the whole is allowed to simmer gently. The soup thus decocted is poured into a tureen, garnished with croustades of white bread fried golden brown in oil or butter, and so served hot and savory. The shell-fish used are little cockles and different varieties of small flat coquillages.
Of Neapolitan society I cannot boast of having seen much. Our hostess gave one or two dinners in our honor, but they called for no special comment. What struck me most in her existence was the immense rôle played by music and musicians. In the afternoon she was constantly receiving the visit of this and that maestro, who warbled melodies and thrummed guitars; and after dinner we invariably had more music and more maestri, with beautifully-combed hair, glossy moustaches, and immense black eyes. And how delightful it was to sit out on the balcony in the moonlight, listening to the music and gazing at the splendid panorama of the bay, and to need no wrappers or shawls, as one does in Northern summer resorts, with their chilly and treacherous evenings!
Naples has hardly any monuments or objects of interest. The various mighty nations who have successively occupied the city—Greeks, Oscans, Romans, Goths, Byzantines, Normans, Germans, and Spaniards—have left no palaces or castles or churches that especially attract the visitor's eye. The churches are very numerous and contain interiorly great riches, but from the architectural point of view and from the point of view of good taste they are not remarkable. The private palaces, too, and the public edifices have little or no exterior splendor. The street architecture has no particular character; and perhaps what most strikes the Northerner in the houses is the flat roofs, the absence of chimneys, and the brilliant colors with which they are often painted. The general panorama of the town is without magnificence, but it has a dash of color and gaudiness about it which seems thoroughly in harmony with the Southern climate where we are, and where a rose-pink house with ultramarine window-shades does not shock the eye, so intense is the light and so great its harmonizing influence. Indisputably the main charm of the place is its unique situation and its splendid bay, excursions around which naturally occupy most of the visitor's time. In whatever direction one goes, one finds a most lavish display of the gifts of nature, which amply compensates for the paltriness of the works of man.
Naples itself is built in a luxurious
