On leaving San Domenico Maggiore, my desire is to pass into the Strada Tribunali, the largest and most important of the three streets which still cleave the city as they did in ancient days. The cross ways turning up by San Domenico are devious and narrow, evil alleys darkened sometimes by the high dead wall of a church or convent, at others bristling with life, from the foul "bassi," the cellars which are the despair of Neapolitan reformers, where ragged women crouch over a chafing-dish of bronze, their only fire, and all the refuse is flung out in the gutter, up to the high garrets where the week's wash is hung out on a pole to dry. Not the freshest wind which blows across the sea from Ischia can bring sweetness to these alleys, or expel the wandering fever which on small inducement blazes to an epidemic and slays ruthlessly. There were high hopes of Naples when the "risanamento" was begun, that great scheme of clearance which was to let in fresh air and sunshine among the rookeries. But already the new tenements begin to be as crowded and as filthy as the old ones, and the better era is soiled at its very outset. One cannot make a people clean against its will. And then the sunshine! Week after week it is a curse in Naples. The old narrow streets made shadow, the new wide ones do not. Who knows whether the city will escape more lightly when the next epidemic comes? God grant it may! For the days of cholera in 1884 were more awful than one cares to think about. Among these devious lanes lies the Chapel of San Severo, a shrine which everyone should visit, but one concerning which I have nothing to say that is not set forth in the guide-books. Had it been the Church of San Severo and San Sosio indeed, I could have told a grisly tale of poisonings; but that lies far down towards the harbour and we shall not pass it. At length I emerge in the narrow Street of Tribunals, and turning eastwards behold it running straight and crowded further than the eye will reach, a wilderness of bustling figures, a maze of balconies and garrets, bright shops high piled with fruit and vegetables, and butchers' stalls dressed with green boughs to keep off the flies. At a corner stands the booth of a lemonade seller, one of the most picturesque of all street merchants in this busy city. His golden fruit is heaped up underneath a canopy which shades it from the sun. Brown water-jars are reared among the fruit and a jet of water sparkling up sheds a cool dewy spray over oranges and lemons, dripping off their dark green leaves like dew. Many a passer-by stops to look at the pretty sight, and the vendor's tongue is never still, "A quatto, a cinque, a sei a sordo, 'e purtualle 'e Palermo." In another month or two his stall will be far gayer, for the figs and melons will come in, and the "mellonaro" will pass the day in shouting "Castiellamare! che maraviglia! so' di Castiellamare! mellune verace! cu' 'no sordo vevo e me lavo 'a faccia!" With a water-melon