A stroll through Torre Annunziata, although it possesses not a few drawbacks, can be made both amusing and instructive; we can even find something attractive in the quality of the local atmosphere, which suggests at one and the same time sunshine, garlic, incense, stale fish and wood smoke; it is the pungent but characteristic aroma of the South, filled “with spicy odours Time can never mar.” And what truly charming pictures do the family groups present in the wide archways giving on the untidy courts within, full of sun and shadow and gay with bright-coloured garments swaying in the wind! The ebon-haired young mother with teeth like pearls and with warm-tinted cheeks sits fondling the last helpless little addition to her growing family, whilst toddlers of any age from two to seven, unkempt but bright-eyed and engaging, play around the door-step, watched over by their grandmother, or may be their great-grandam, who with her wizened face enfolded in her yellow kerchief, her skinny neck, and her distaff in the bony fingers, looks as if she had stepped out of some Renaissance painting of the Three Fates in a Florentine gallery. Crimson carnations in earthenware pots stand on the steps of the outside staircase, giving a touch of refinement to the squalid home, and from the balcony overhead the glossy-black, yellow-billed _passer solitario_, the favourite cage-bird of the Neapolitan poor, chirrups with apparent cheerfulness in his wicker-work prison. Behind, in the dim shadows of the large room, which serves as sole habitation, we can espy the inevitable household altar with the oil lamp glimmering before the little crude-coloured print of the Virgin and Child, and its usual accessory, the piece of palm or olive that was blessed by the priest last Palm Sunday; poor and mean though the chamber be, its bed linen and simple appointments are more cleanly than might perhaps be inferred from the appearance of the family itself. In a shady corner close by, three or four young labourers at their mid-day rest have finished their frugal repast of bread and beans, and are now playing eagerly the popular game of _zecchinetto_ with a frayed and grimy pack of cards. Wives or sweethearts watch with anxious faces from a respectful distance, for it is not meet to disturb the lords of creation when they happen to be engaged in a game of chance. What possibilities of farce and tragedy can be drawn from so simple, so common a scene upon these shores, where human life is less artificially conducted than elsewhere in Europe, and where human passions are kept under less restraint? Terrible are the tales of jealousy and revenge, of deliberate treachery and of uncontrolled violence, which are related of these quick-tempered grown-up children of the South, who seem to love and hate with the blind intensity of untutored savages.