There is very little beauty among the common people, and you have plenty of scope for observation, as women dress their back hair in the broad streets, and the babies are washed in the same public manner. Nor can you wonder that this is so, as you contemplate the dingy streets and high houses, divided by narrow lanes, just like Yarmouth Rows, where no fresh air can enter, no ray of sunlight can shine. What strikes a stranger especially is the awful noise. There is an everlasting clatter of wheels and cracking of whips, and braying of donkeys—and in Naples they bray louder than anywhere else; and how the hawkers shout! and they are numerous, and seem to supply everyone. It is amusing to see them transacting business. The customer is high up in the balcony, suspended in mid air. She needs a bit of fish, and she lets down a basket to the hawker below. That gives rise to a good deal of talk, as the Neapolitans are a much-gesticulating people. If a bargain is struck, the basket is hauled up with the fish inside. An old French writer complained of the English people that they were very ignorant, as they never spoke French. In a similar spirit the ignorance of the Neapolitans struck me. None of them could speak a word of English. There are others who call it the City of Flowers. This is nothing but a mistake. But the cactus grows everywhere, and thus, wherever you go—on the rail, or by the villa, or the flat-roomed cabin where the poor peasant lives—you have a good display of green; and in the public gardens the palm-tree grows luxuriantly, and you are reminded of the tropics at every step; and thus the hot hours glide peacefully on, while the retailers of lemon and water do a roaring trade, and the ragged who have no money curl themselves in the dark arches, met with at every corner, and sleep the sleep of the just. All Naples is asleep in the middle of the day, and even the policeman nods. Happily he has little to do, as, ignorant and priest-ridden as the people may be, they never get drunk. At night the city is gay, as families, old and young, rush off to the music-hall, or to hear the bands play, or to navigate the peaceful waters by the light of Chinese lanterns. I suppose they fancy they cool themselves. The fact is, Naples is always hot in summer. All day long the burning sun bakes up the streets and the shops, and the old bits of rocks, all built over; and the heat seems to me to radiate from them all night long. If it were not for the tramcars, which are numerous and cheap, and the conductors of which are uncommonly civil and well-behaved, locomotion would be impossible. There are no flags more trying than those of Naples, and as the cabs drive all over the road you are never safe. People who are deaf, who are old and infirm, are in constant danger, in spite of the thundering crack of the cabman’s whip, or the ear-splitting note of the conductor’s horn. Motion seems to begin about