The Letters of Charles Dickens. Vol. 3, 1836-1870Dickens, Charles
General
The Letters of Charles Dickens. Vol. 3, 1836-1870
Dickens, Charles
Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 -- Correspondence; Novelists, English -- 19th century -- Correspondence
Once more in my old quarters, and with rather a tired sole to my foot,
from having found such an immense number of different resting-places for
it since I went away. I write you my last Italian letter for this bout,
designing to leave here, please God, on the ninth of next month, and to
be in London again by the end of June. I am looking forward with great
delight to the pleasure of seeing you once more, and mean to come to
Gore House with such a swoop as shall astonish the poodle, if, after
being accustomed to his own size and sense, he retain the power of being
astonished at anything in the wide world. You know where I have been,
and every mile of ground I have travelled over, and every object I have
seen. It is next to impossible, surely, to exaggerate the interest of
Rome; though, I think, it _is_ very possible to find the main source of
interest in the wrong things. Naples disappointed me greatly. The
weather was bad during a great part of my stay there. But if I had not
had mud, I should have had dust, and though I had had sun, I must still
have had the Lazzaroni. And they are so ragged, so dirty, so abject, so
full of degradation, so sunken and steeped in the hopelessness of better
things, that they would make heaven uncomfortable, if they could ever
get there. I didn't expect to see a handsome city, but I expected
something better than that long dull line of squalid houses, which
stretches from the Chiaja to the quarter of the Porta Capuana; and while
I was quite prepared for a miserable populace, I had some dim belief
that there were bright rays among them, and dancing legs, and shining
sun-browned faces. Whereas the honest truth is, that connected with
Naples itself, I have not one solitary recollection. The country round
it charmed me, I need not say. Who can forget Herculaneum and Pompeii?
As to Vesuvius, it burns away in my thoughts, beside the roaring waters
of Niagara, and not a splash of the water extinguishes a spark of the
fire; but there they go on, tumbling and flaming night and day, each in
its fullest glory.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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