Thursday
Went a long and most beautiful ride up to the Camaldoli, from which the view extends over sea and land to an immense distance in every direction.
Thus was this place
A happy rural seat of various views.
The convent was once very rich, but the French stripped all the convents of their property, which they have never since recovered. It is remarkably clean and spacious. Each monk has a house of his own containing two or three little rooms, and a little garden, and they only eat together on particular days. The old man who took us about said he had been there since he was eighteen, had been turned out by the French, but came back as soon as he could, and had never regretted becoming a monk. He showed me a bust of the founder of their order (I think San Romualdo), and when I asked him how many years ago it was founded, he said, ‘Perhaps 2,000.’ I said when I became a monk I would go to that convent, when he asked very seriously if I was going to be a monk. I said, ‘Not just yet.’ ‘Very well,’ he said; ‘you must pay 120 ducats, and you can come here.’ We went down a road cut for miles in the mountain, very narrow and steep, through shady lanes, groves, and vineyards (with magnificent views), through Pianura to Pozzuoli, entering by the old Roman road and Street of Tombs. The columbaria in the Street of Tombs are the best worth seeing ejus generis of any. Went to the Temple of Jupiter Serapis, of which there are very curious remains. RUINS ABOUT NAPLES
Hard by the reverent ruins
Of a once glorious temple, reared to Jove,
Whose very rubbish (like the pitied fall
Of virtue, most unfortunate) yet bears
A deathless majesty, though now quite rased,
Hurl’d down by wrath and lust of impious kings,
So that where holy Flamens wont to sing
Sweet hymns to Heaven, there the daw and crow,
The ill-voiced raven, and still chattering pie
Send out ungrateful sounds.
Marston.
To the ruins of the Amphitheatre, from the top of which there is one of the finest views I ever saw of the Bay of Baiæ and the islands; and then to the Solfaterra. The ruins scattered about Naples (those at Pozzuoli, for instance) are far more extensive than most of those at Rome, but partly ‘carent quia vate sacro,’ and partly because there are no well-known names attached to them, the ground is not so holy, and little is said or thought about them. If these temples were at Rome, what an uproar they would cause! The Solfaterra is remarkable as a sort of link between the quick and the dead volcanoes; it is considered extinct, but the earth is hot, the sulphur strong, and at a particular spot, when a hole is made, it hisses and throws up little stones and ashes, and exhibits a sort of volcano in miniature, but the surface of the crater is overgrown with vegetation. The road to Naples by the convent of the Jesuits and Chapel of St. Januarius is the most beautiful I ever saw, particularly towards sunset, when the colouring is so rich and varied. It lies over a crest commanding a prospect of the mountains on one side and the sea on the other.
Quid mille revolvam
Culmina visendique vices.