The shopkeeper carries his goods into the street, and spreads them over the ground. The cobbler takes his seat outside the door, thumps his lapstone, and pulls away at his waxed-end, lifting his head at the passer-by, and inquiring, “any shoes to mend?” The confectioner and the baker have their little portable ovens in the street, and offer cakes and comfits piping hot. Cookery of all sorts is going on in the open air, and at every step you may smell the savory steam of the frying-pans, stew-pans, and griddles. The brokers and money-changers sit at their tables, tossing over heaps of silver coin. Old women squat down in the street to darn stockings and patch their gowns: others toddle about with a spindle and distaff, spinning flax. Countrymen, driving their donkeys, loaded with fruit and vegetables, cry their articles for sale: everybody has something to say, and the jargon, clatter and tumult can never be adequately conceived except by an actual witness. The Toledo is about as wide as Washington street, in Boston; but most of the others are very narrow. The houses are seven, eight, and nine stories high. Generally every story is occupied by a separate family. Those who live in the upper stories do not take the trouble to go down if they wish to buy anything that is passing in the street, but lower a basket from the window. In looking through a street, you may see, in the forenoon, sometimes, fifty or a hundred of these baskets at a time, dangling in the air. The houses are built of a coarse, soft stone, and covered with a white plastering. Many of them are painted to resemble brick, which is a more costly and durable material here than the common building stone. A steep and lofty hill rises immediately back of the city, on the top of which stands an old castle. I climbed to the top of the hill by a zig-zag road furnished with stone steps. From this spot I had a most enchanting view of the city and bay. Innumerable domes, covered with glazed tiles of variegated color, sparkled in the bright sun; and the blue waters of the bay spread beautifully out beyond, bounded by the majestic pile of Vesuvius, and the romantic shores of Sorrento. But what struck me as the most novel, was the remarkable hum of the city. It was not the ordinary clatter and roar of carriage wheels, but the audible murmur of three hundred thousand human voices, which broke on my ear in a continuous roll, like the moan of the distant ocean. The city is like a great bee-hive where the inhabitants keep up a constant hum.