To hire a carriage in Naples for any length of time is by no means an easy thing. It is necessary to hold long commune with the proprietor, to exert all the wiles of masterly diplomacy to circumvent cunning by cunning, to exert patience, skill, and eloquence. After a decision has been reached, there is but one way in which you can hold your vetturino to his bargain, and that is to bind him to it by securing his name to a contract. Every vetturino has a printed form all ready. If he can't write his name, he does something equally binding and far simpler. He dips his thumb in the ink-bottle and stamps it on the paper. If that is not his signature, what else is it? "Thus," said one, "Signor Adam signed the marriage-contract with Signora Eva." After incredible difficulties a contract had been drawn up and signed by the horny thumb of a certain big vetturino, who went by the name of "II Piccolo." It was to the effect that, for a certain specified sum, Il Piccolo should take the party to Paestum and back with a detour to Sorrento. It was a most delightful morning. All were in the best of spirits. So they started. On for miles through interminable streets of houses that bordered the circular shore, through crowds of sheep, droves of cattle, dense masses of human beings, through which innumerable caleches darted like meteors amid the stars of heaven. Here came the oxen of Southern Italy, stately, solemn, long-horned, cream-colored; there marched great droves of Sorrento hogs--the hog of hogs--a strange but not ill-favored animal, thick in hide, leaden in color, hairless as a hippopotamus. The flesh of the Sorrento hog bears the same relation to common pork that "Lubin's Extrait" bears to the coarse scent of a country grocery. A pork-chop from the Sorrento animal comes to the palate with the force of a new revelation; it is the highest possibility of pork--the apotheosis of the pig! Long lines of macaroni-cooks doing an enormous business; armies of dealers in anisette; crowds of water-carriers; throngs of fishermen, carrying nets and singing merry songs--"Ecco mi!" "Ecco la!"--possible Massaniellos every man of them, I assure you, Sir. And--enveloping all, mingling with all, jostling all, busy with the busiest, idle with the idlest, noisy with the noisest, jolly with the jolliest, the fat, oily, swarthy, rosy--(etc., for further epithets see preceding pages)--_Lazaroni_! Every moment produces new effects in the ever-shifting scenes of Naples. Here is the reverse of monotony; if any thing becomes wearisome, it is the variety. Here is the monotony of incessant change. The whole city, with all its vast suburbs, lives on the streets. The Senator wiped his fevered brow. He thought that for crowds, noise, tumult, dash, hurry-skurry, gayety, life, laughter, joyance, and all that incites to mirth, and all that stirs the soul, even New York couldn't hold a candle to Naples. Rabelais ought to have been a Neapolitan.