NAPLES The Bay of Naples--Vesuvius--Characteristic scenes of street life--The _alfresco_ restaurants--Chapel of St. Januarius--Virgil's Tomb--Capri, the Mecca of artists and lovers of the picturesque--The Emperor Tiberius--Description of the Blue Grotto--The coast-road from Castellamare to Sorrento--Amalfi--Sorrento, "the village of flowers and the flower of villages"--The Temples of Pæstum. Naples in itself, apart from its surroundings, is not of surpassing beauty. Its claim to be "the most beautiful city in Europe" rests solely on the adventitious aid of situation. When the fictitious charm which distance gives is lost by a near approach, it will be seen that the city which has inspired the poets of all ages is little more than a huge, bustling, commonplace commercial port, not to be compared for a moment, æsthetically speaking, with Genoa, Florence, Venice, or many other Italian towns equally well known to the traveller. This inherent lack is, however, more than compensated for by the unrivaled natural beauties of its position, and of its charming environs. No town in Europe, not Palermo with its "Golden Shell," Constantinople with its "Golden Horn," nor Genoa, the "Gem of the Riviera," can boast of so magnificent a situation. The traveller who approaches Naples by sea may well be excused for any exuberance of language. As the ship enters the Gulf, passing between the beautiful isles of Ischia and Capri, which seem placed like twin outposts to guard the entrance of this watery paradise, the scene is one which will not soon fade from the memory. All around stretches the bay in its azure immensity, its sweeping curves bounded on the right by the rocky Sorrentine promontory, with Sorrento, Meta, and a cluster of little fishing villages nestling in the olive-clad precipices, half hidden by orange groves and vineyards, and the majestic form of Monte Angelo towering above. Farther along the coast, Vesuvius, the tutelary genius of the scene, arrests the eye, its vine-clad lower slopes presenting a startling contrast to the dark cone of the volcano belching out fire and smoke, a terrible earnest of the hidden powers within. On the left the graceful undulations of the Camaldoli hills descend to the beautifully indented bay of Pozzuoli, which looks like a miniature replica of the parent gulf with the volcano of Monte Nuovo for its Vesuvius. Then straight before the spectator lies a white mass like a marble quarry; this, with a white projecting line losing itself in the graceful curve of Vesuvius, resolves itself, as the steamer draws nearer, into Naples and its suburbs of Portici and Torre del Greco. Beyond, in the far background, the view is shut in by a phantom range of snowy peaks, an offshoot of the Abruzzi Mountains, faintly discerned in the purple haze of the horizon. All these varied prospects unite to form a panorama which, for beauty and extent, is hardly to be matched in Europe.