eo a ES 
1826. wf BRG <7 
ya ; THE CUP OF HONOURS. jlonia B 9464 
r + - C7 - "C6 . > 
1h Was one of the finest evenings that ever shone on the shore of 
Naples. The, sea lay under the sun-beams like a huge golden plateau, 
edged with the innumerable buildings of the city and the suburbs, ‘that 
looked in the distance like incrustations of silver. The echoes of music 
from the various boating parties, and even the sounds of the city that 
came up softened and mingled, filled the air with harmony, The eye 
ranged from Miseno, with its bold purple promontory overshadowing the 
waters, to Vesuvius, on the opposite side of the most lovely of all bays, 
sitting like a gigantic guard of this fairy region, crowned with a diadem 
of cloud and fire. All the heights were filled with travellers enjoying 
the magnificent landscape in the cool of the sea-breeze; even the 
peasantry, accustomed as they were to the sight, stopped on their way 
home up the hills, and exulted in their having a country which the 
world could not equal. 
‘But in the midst of all this beauty and exultation there sat a man, 
who seemed neither to see the one nor share in the other. He was 
evidently young, and as evidently under some heavy misery of mind; 
for, as he sat on the side of the Solfatara, he was observed to start up 
frequently and hurry forwards, as if he had forgotten the hazar- 
dous height, or had intended to throw himself down the precipices on 
whose very edge he was treading; he would then lift his eyes to heaven, 
beat his forehead, and tear his hair, with the violence of Italian passion. 
Those extraordinary gestures naturally caught the eyes of the strangers 
on the different points of the mountain; but the difficult spot on 
which he had fixed his seat repelled the generality, and those who 
at last reached him received such repelling answers, that they soon left 
him to himself. 
_ The general eye, too, was now fixed upon a more amusing object ; 
there was a felucca race from the point of Capri. The king’s barges 
were on the water, followed by a large train of the nobility in their boats, 
and the whole swept and sparkled along like a flight of flying-fish. But 
as they came towards the centre of the bay, a boat with a single rower 
suddenly took the lead, beating all the ten and twenty-oared chaloupes, 
‘barges, sparonaroes, every thing. The sea-breeze had now sprung 
up, all the feluccas hoisted their sails; they were not a foot the 
‘nearer, the vigorous rower alone kept them behind, and evidently did 
not exert half his strength. As he came nigher the shore, the thousand 
‘telescopes that were pointed to the water had but one object, the 
extraordinary boatman. To the general surprise, he seemed scarcely to 
touch the oars; he sat, throwing an occasional look back at the crowd of 
‘gilded’ vessels that’were ploughing the sea’into foam far behind, then 
‘dipped his oar into the water, and then paused again, while the boat 
labsolutely shot along over the surge. 
Night falls rapidly in the south; the scene below had been gradually 
darkening for some time, and the boatman had scarcely darted in and 
disappeared under one of the little wooded hills at the foot of Puzzuoli, 
when the whole royal show sank in shade, and but for the innumerable 
lamps that twinkled on their tops and rigging, would have been invisible. 
But they were still at some distance from land, when the cloud that had 
sat during the day, gathering upon Vesuvius, moved towards Capri, and 
began to discharge its thunders and lightnings. The rapidity and fierceness 
3D2 
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