Capua, Caserta, Campagna Felice, Naples. 271 



more wisely give as a saccharine and grateful food to horses, 

 are exposed for sale in the square of the town of Caserta. 



Campagna Felice is the title given to the extensive level 

 tract of land which lies between the mountains to the north- 

 east of Caserta and Naples, and the Mediterranean ; perhaps 

 to distinguish it from the Campagna of Rome, so much the 

 reverse of " felice." But why should the Neapolitan plain, 

 which is a dead level, be free from fever, and the Roman 

 Campagna, which has a much more undulated surface, and is 

 130 miles farther north, be the prey of malaria? This is a 

 mystery of which no satisfactory solution has been offered ; for 

 the supposed noxious influence of volcanic substrata exists 

 here in as great a degree as around Rome. The whole of the 

 Campagna Felice is cultivated like a garden, precisely on the 

 same general plan as the plain of Lombardy, which it resem- 

 bles alike in fertility and insipid sameness to the traveller. 

 Rows of lopped elms or poplars intersect the fields, at the 

 distance of 40 or 50 ft. between each row, to which vines are 

 trained : and the intermediate space is occupied by luxuriant 

 wheat, in some fields of which, parties of twenty or thirty 

 men and women were weeding ; lupines, pulled green for 

 fodder ; garden beans, now mostly in flower ; or ground pre- 

 pared for ploughing by two oxen, without a driver, for Indian 

 corn, &c. This is one of the grand advantages of the climate 

 of Italy, that, while in northern Europe vast tracts of land are 

 devoted to the exclusive growth of barley for beer, the Italians 

 obtain a far better beverage from the very same land that 

 supplies their bread corn, and without materially interfering 

 with its produce : for both the vines and the trees that support 

 them are planted so deep as to consume only the manure, 

 which, in any case, would be washed away ; and their slight 

 shade is rather beneficial than injurious to the crops below. 



Naples. — Vegetables in the markets of the same kinds as at 

 Rome, with an equal abundance of gobbo and fennel roots, 

 and green peas in greater plenty. Grapes, of several varie- 

 ties, kept through the winter, not much shrivelled, and quite 

 free from mouldiness. Two or three sorts of apples, but only 

 one of winter pears, as is the case also at Florence, Pisa, and 

 Rome ; and apparently the same variety, which is good, but 

 hardly so superexcellent as to deserve to exclude all other 

 kinds. Oranges, in glorious profusion (chiefly from Sorrento, 

 fifteen miles distant), and so cheap as to allow the poorest of 

 the poor to enjoy (what Dr. Johnson complained he had 

 never had of peaches but once) their fill of them, and that 

 daily. The middle-sized ones (which are the best) sell at four 

 for a grano, which is at the rate of ten for a penny English ; 



