Neapolitan Music. 247 



similarity in it as one hears it shouted out at the 

 loudest pitch of the voice, the last note dwelt upon 

 and drawn out to an immeasurable length. The 

 words are frequently improvised by the singers, who 

 answer one another from a distance, as they work 

 in the fields. I have been told, this style of chant- 

 ing singing it can hardly be called has been 

 handed down from the most ancient times, and it is 

 said, in the southern provinces, to have descended 

 from the early Greek colonists. The ancient Greeks 

 are supposed to have chanted their poetry to music, 

 as do the Italian improvisatori at the present day. 

 In Tuscany, the words of the songs are often ex- 

 tremely poetical and graceful. Frequently, these 

 verses, called "stornelli" and "rispetti," are com- 

 posed by the peasants themselves, women as well as 

 men ; the language is the purest and most classical 

 Italian, such as is spoken at the present day in the 

 provinces of Siena, Pistoja, &c., very much less 

 corrupted by foreign idioms or adaptations than 

 what is spoken, even by cultivated persons, in 

 Florence itself. The picturesque costumes so uni- 

 versal when I first came to Italy, in 1817, had 

 fallen very much into disuse when, at a much later 

 period, we resided in Home, and now they are rarely 

 seen. 



We hired a handsome peasant girl from Al- 



