While the poor meet with the fate of the “unhonoured dead,” the taste of the Neapolitans of means is for gorgeous funerals. I have met several in the streets, in which there was more of pageantry than about any private ceremonies of the sort I have ever witnessed. Led horses are one of the standing honours of a gentleman,--I presume, from some connexion with a chivalrous origin. We observe the same usage, even to this day, in all our own military funerals of field-officers. The body, I find, is often exposed here, as in other parts of Italy, though I have not yet seen it on any of the great occasions just named. Naples has a corso in the Toledo; but at this season the carriage promenade appears to be by the Chiaja and along a road that leads to the south-western point of the bay. This is one of the most delightful drives in the world. The road follows the strand for two miles, having houses and villas on one hand, and the water on the other. It passes the Villa Reale, one of the prettiest gardens imaginable, and the celebrated gallery of Pozzuoli, or the grotto, as it is usually called. This passage, which is of great antiquity, is of immense convenience, though of no great cost or labour, the rock through which it is cut being soft. The effect on looking through it is singular, for it is never empty, during the day at least; and as a proof of its utility, it smells like a stable. The reputed tomb of Virgil is on the side of the hill, immediately over the entrance of this grotto. The best reason for believing it to have been erected in honour of the Great Mantuan, is, that if it be not his tomb, no one can say whose tomb it is. After all, Virgil had a tomb, he died here, and this is an ancient work. It may be the tomb of Virgil. The mole of Naples, and the entire strand from the Castle Nuovo, near it, to the eastern extremity of the town, offer extraordinary exhibitions. This was the region of the Lazzaroni; and finer-looking or merrier vagabonds than those who are now found in it, it is not easy to meet. The streets that they frequent, and in which they may be said to live, lie in this quarter, and are altogether unique. Brawling, laughing, cooking, flirting, eating, drinking, sleeping, together with most of the other concerns of life, are all transacted here beneath the canopy of heaven. The throng resembles the quays of Paris in the neighbourhood of the Pont Neuf during a fête, with this difference, that as _everybody_ of a certain class appears to be out in the French capital on such occasions, the streets of Naples also include every _thing_. The serenity, and, what is of more influence, the security of the weather, converts the streets into dwellings; and if these people have lodgings at all, they must be far less agreeable than the open air.