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NAPLES has been considered by some travellers to rival, and by others to surpass, in beauty, Constantinople, which we have described to our readers.

This ancient and every way remarkable city rises like an amphitheatre at the back of a magnificent bay more than thirty miles in circumference, which, from the beauty and luxuriance of its shores and the picturesqueness of its scattered islands, is perhaps unrivalled even in the Mediterranean. The view of the city from the head of the bay, when seen for the first time, appears too lovely to be real. It runs in a long and gentle curve round the sea-shore, rising inland up the declivities of gentle hills, which above the line of the city are covered with vineyards and gardens, and speckled with villas and monasteries. The summit of one of these hills is crowned by the massive palace of Capo di Monte, that of another by the spacious monastery of San Martino and the castle of St. Elmo, in the rear of which, and high above, stretches the wooded mountain of the Camaldoli, with another picturesque monastery on its brow; and the ridges of these hills immediately behind Naples are fringed in many places with romantic looking villages, and here and there with groups of the graceful Italian pine-tree. To the right of the city, at the distance of about four miles, rises the conical volcano of Vesuvius, at whose feet repose the villages of Portici and

NAPLES, from the Sea, viewed to the right of the CASTEL DEL OVO

Resina, which stand over the ancient city of Herculaneum (buried by an eruption of the mountain) and are connected with the capital by an almost uninterrupted chain of suburbs and hamlets. To the left, starting close from the extremity of the city, projects the gentle promontory of Posilippo, entirely covered with beautiful little villages, country seats, towers, gardens, and groves. And at the back-ground of nearly the whole of this magical picture, tower the bold summits of part of the Apennine chain of mountains.

The view from the city is not less admirable; besides Vesuvius and Posilippo, and the winding shores of the bay, it commands, immediately in front, the rugged and most picturesque cliffs of the island of Capri; a little to the left of that island, Cape Campanella, the extremity of a peninsula as grand as that of Posilippo is gentle; and, glancing along that coast until it is surmounted at a corner of the bay opposite to Vesuvius by the sublime heights of Mount St. Angelo, whose rocky summit is ornamented by a small white hermitage, the eye can take in the towns of Massa, of Sorrento, (the birth-place of the poet Tasso,) of Vico, of Castellamare, and many villages on the declivities of the mountains, or on the cliffs that rise on that side perpendicularly from the bay.

The interior of the city, like Constantinople, is not equal to its external appearance and the scenery around it. How indeed could it be so? But, also like Constantinople, its interior is much better than travellers have generally chosen to describe it. Naples, which occupies the ground of both Palæpolis and Neapolis, towns of ancient and Grecian origin, is an open and irregularly built city; its greatest length is along the sea-shore, where it extends in a curve of about three miles and a half; its breadth is very unequal; at the west end (which, as in London, is now the fashionable part) it is so much contracted between the hills of Vomero and Belvedere and the sea, as only to allow of one or two parallel streets; there is more open space towards the centre, where it extends northward as far as the hills of Capo di Monte and Capo di Chino, between which beau

tiful eminences and the sea stands the most populous part of the town, including the old city, whose ditches and walls are still to be traced in many places. Its greatest breadth from south to north, or from the seashore to the foot of Capo di Monte is little short of two miles. The ground it occupies is of course very uneven, which is the cause of some internal inconvenience and of great external beauty. About 400,000 souls inhabit the space described, so that Naples, as to population, must be reckoned among the great capitals of Europe.

The Strada Toledo, which traverses the city for three quarters of a mile, is the principal street in Naples, and, at least, one of the most populous, busy, and noisy streets in the world. Nothing can be more striking than the contrast between a street of Constantinople, and this or almost any other street of Naples. There the pedestrians are few and taciturn, and there are no equipages; here abound wheeled carriages of every description, from the humble hack corricolo with its single little horse, to the gay carriage of the noble with its pair or double pair of proud steeds; and the noise made by the rattling wheels of these thronging vehicles. is equalled by the vociferousness of the crowding footpassengers, and by the men, women, and children that ply their business by the sides of the streets.

Though the Neapolitan taste in architecture is generally far from good, there are some fine and imposing palaces on the Toledo, where indeed all the houses are lofty; and as, in despite of a faulty government the general civilization of Europe has of late years crept into that extremity of it, many of the nuisances com. plained of in former times have been gradually dis appearing, and the Strada Toledo and some other parts of the town assuming an aspect of general decency and comfort. According to the accounts of those who have known it during all that interval, the progress of Naples has been very considerable since 1815. But, in the lower or old part of Naples, the narrowness of the streets is such as to be ridiculous and almost incredible. There is an extensive quarter called " Napoli sen

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