lighted in the open air water boils and steams, and ragouts are
singing in frying-pans. The smell of fried fish and hot meats
tickles my nose and makes me sneeze. At this moment I find that my
handkerchief has left the pocket of my frock-coat. I am pushed,
lifted up, and turned about in every direction by the gayest, the
most talkative, the most animated and the most adroit populace
possible to imagine; and suddenly a young woman of the people,
while I am admiring her magnificent hair, with a single shock of
her powerful elastic shoulder, pushes me staggering three paces back
at least, without injury, into the arms of a maccaroni-eater, who
receives me with a smile.

I am in Naples. How I ever managed to arrive here, with a few
mutilated and shapeless remains of baggage, I cannot tell, because
I am no longer myself. I have been travelling in a condition of
perpetual fright; and I think that I must have looked awhile ago
in this bright city like an owl bewildered by sunshine. To-night
it is much worse! Wishing to obtain a glimpse of popular manners,
I went to the Strada di Porto, where I now am. All about me animated
throngs of people crowd and press before the eating-places; and I
float like a waif among these living surges, which, even while they
submerge you, still caress. For this Neopolitan people has, in its
very vivacity, something indescribably gentle and polite. I am not
roughly jostled, I am merely swayed about; and I think that by dint
of thus rocking me to and fro, these good folks want to lull me
asleep on my feet. I admire, as I tread the lava pavements of the
strada, those porters and fishermen who move by me chatting,
singing, smoking, gesticulating, quarrelling, and embracing each
other the next moment with astonishing versatility of mood. They
live through all their sense at the same time; and, being philosophers