KIDD'S OWN JOURNAL. 



343 



tions. Looking from the sea-margin to its 

 utmost heights, it rather resembled a city of 

 giants than the selectest abode of pleasure. 

 Lovely, no doubt — very lovely — are some of 

 the details which its towering succession of 

 houses, gardens, and terraces present to the 

 view of an observer so placed ; but these, 

 breaking the mass of buildings, augment the 

 effect of vastness by instructing the eye to 

 appreciate their extent as it rises from point 

 to point to the summit. But a walk amidst 

 its mazes, when the sea and the great out- 

 lines of the city are lost, bewilders and 

 sickens. The height of the houses which 

 border the steep and narrow ways, equalling 

 the loftiest in the old town of Edinburgh ; 

 the dangling lamps, suspended by ropes, 

 which cross the arduous passages ; the loud 

 babble of strange tongues, often accompanied 

 by fierce gestures ; and the unceasing rattle 

 of carriages of all kinds, driven with reck- 

 less disregard of foot-passengers, as if the 

 coachman set human life at a pin's fee — may 

 well astonish the Englishman who expected 

 an epicurean paradise. 



Panting for some silent and green relief 

 from this noisy confusion, my son and I 

 endeavored to reach the country, if country 

 there should be, above this magnificent 

 Tartarus of a city, and accordingly threaded 

 and picked our way up one of its central 

 heights, by alleys as steep as one of the iron 

 cascades down which the ore thunders from 

 a Welsh mountain mine ; then along almost 

 interminable avenues between blank walls ; 

 then up flights of stone and lava steps 

 polluted by tilth of the most shocking kind. 

 At last we reached a bastion, and peeped 

 over a battlement into a barrack-yard, which 

 bore traces of a less degraded humanity ; 

 but we could find no opening to a prospect ; 

 and not a blade of grass, not a fountain, not 

 a breath of untainted air refreshed our fruit- 

 less labor. 



How it is possible for Englishmen and 

 women to pass months in such a place, and 

 " bless their stars and call it luxury," even 

 if the satiated mosquitos give them leave to 

 sleep, is a mystery which has doubtless a 

 solution — which I sought in vain. Yet the 

 groups we saw from cur windows, which 

 overlooked tbe best area for the exhibition 

 of the graceful side of Neapolitan life, were 

 usually instinct with a careless grace, and 

 often presented surprising harmonies of 

 color. The best were supplied by the 

 peasants bringing to market, in the early 

 morning, the spoils of the country in huge 

 baskets, where grapes, apricots, and other 

 fruits and vegetables were heaped up and 

 capped with fresh flowers ; sometimes borne 

 on the heads of young girls, treading with a 

 cheerfulness which heightened the grace of 

 their movements, but often by haggard 



women, grown prematurely old in sunburnt 

 labor, or bare-legged tawny men, who looked, 

 on near approach, as if they had crept out 

 of earth-holes ; — but all, as they streamed 

 along, or clustered for gossip, unconsciously 

 forming lively pictures. 



JOURNEY IN THE SOUTH OF FRANCE. 



The first two stages, slowly performed in 

 the waning light,were to us of the outside de- 

 lightful ; but two circumstances suggested 

 distrust of the promised termination of our 

 journey at dawn ; first, that our diligence, a 

 miniature specimen of its formidable class, 

 about the bulk of an auld-world English six- 

 in sided stage, which had left Avignon in 

 gallant trim with three respectable horses, 

 dropped its leader at the first change, and 

 struggled on with a pair of wretched animals 

 which might have acted as skeletons in the 

 train of the Wild Huntsman ; second, that 

 our " little bark" moved servilely attendant 

 on a full-sized four-horsed diligence ; stopped 

 behind it whenever it stopped, even for some 

 momentary adjustment in the middle of the 

 road, like the attendant on a tragic queen ; 

 while the greater adventurer never returned 

 the compliment, but — unmindful of the 

 silent homage we had paid it on many 

 stoppages, and our duteous admiration as it 

 crawled up the hills, like a huge sea-monster, 

 — at our first extra stoppage, rumbled majes- 

 tically out of sight, and was seen no more. 



Our pace then became slower : night 

 closed over us with a curtain of the heaviest- 

 laden clouds, from behind which the moon 

 sometimes spitefully peeped to show us the 

 dreariness of the country, which it did not 

 condescend to adorn ; and we began to freeze 

 in our lofty seats — less from absolute cold, 

 than from a frigid sympathy with the icy 

 character of our motion. The stages were 

 short ; the pauses long ; until one pause, 

 which followed our attainment of the edge 

 of a wide- spread table-land, threatened to be 

 endless. The vehicle stood as if rooted, in 

 the middle of one of those straggling French 

 villages of ponderous homesteads, which, at 

 their best, look like logwood towns in slow 

 progress ; and at their worst (of which this 

 seemed a model specimen), like savage 

 hamlets grown prematurely old. The coach 

 stood " full inside" outwards in utter deso- 

 lation, with its broken pole bound up by a 

 dirty rope, which, dangling down, had been 

 gradually growing spectral to our strained 

 eyes, before a hovel much larger than its 

 neighbors ; this we guessed to be an inn, by 

 a broken horse-trough in front, guarded by 

 a pump without a handle. With a desperate 

 purpose to find relief in a crust of black bread 

 and a bottle of sharp wine, not for refreshment 

 but for change of sensation, I quitted my 

 perch, pushed open a rough-hewn unpainted, 



