The travellers arrived at Naples in May, and fortunately procured cool
and healthy lodgings. Here they visited the English Ambassador, Sir
William Hamilton, whose acquaintance they had made in London, and whose
lady was not only a very agreeable person, but a charming performer on
the harpsichord. She trembled on playing before Mozart. The concerts
given by the Mozarts in Naples were very successful, and they were
treated with great distinction; the carriages of the nobility, attended
by footmen with flambeaux, fetched them from home and carried them back;
the queen greeted them daily on the promenade, and they received
invitations to the ball given by the French Ambassador on the marriage
of the Dauphin.

If Mozart had not been engaged to compose the carnival opera for Milan,
he might have written that for Bologna, Rome, or Naples, as at these
three cities offers were made to him, a proof of what his genius had
effected in Italy.

* * * * *

The epoch at which Mozart's genius was ripe may be dated from his
twentieth year; constant study and practice had given him ease in
composition, and ideas came thicker with his early manhood--the fire,
the melodiousness, the boldness of harmony, the inexhaustible invention
which characterize his works, were at this time apparent; he began to
think in a manner entirely independent, and to perform what he had
promised as a regenerator of the musical art. The situation of his
father as Kapell-meister, in Salzburg, indeed gave Mozart some
opportunities of writing church music, but not such as he most coveted,
the sacred musical services of the court being restricted to a given