gardens and newly built
houses to the heights of the Vomero, which are covered with a raw suburb.
Moreover our pristine delight in the place is beginning to flag, as we
gradually realise that the city, like the majority of great modern towns,
is being practically rebuilt to the annihilation of its old-world
features, which used to give to Naples its peculiar charm and its marked
individuality amongst large sea-ports. Long ago has disappeared Santa
Brigida, that picturesque high-coloured slum, on whose site stands the
garish domed gallery of which the Neapolitans are so proud; gone in these
latter days is classic Santa Lucia with its water-gate and its fountain,
its vendors of medicated water and _frutti di mare_, those toothsome shell
fish of the unsavoury beach; vanished for ever is many a landmark of old
Naples, and new buildings, streets and squares, blank, dreary, pretentious
and staring, have arisen in their places. This thorough _sventramento di
Napoli_, as the citizens graphically term this drastic reconstruction of
the old capital of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, is no doubt
beneficial, not to say necessary, and we make no protest against these
wholesale changes, which have certainly tended to destroy utterly its
ancient character and appearance. But all seems commonplace, new, smart,
and unpoetic, and we quickly grow weary of Naples now that it has been
turned into a Liverpool of the South without the local colour and the
peculiar attributes of which author and artist have so often raved. The
life of the people, picturesque enough in its old setting, now appears
mean and squalid; the toilers in the streets look jaded, oppressed and
discontented; we search in vain for the spontaneous gaiety of which we
have heard so much. We feel disappointed, cheated even, in our
expectations of Naples, and we begin to understand that its chief
attraction consists in its proximity to the scenes of beauty that mark the
course of its Riviera.

The Riviera of Naples may be said to extend from the heights of Cumae, at
the end of the Bay of Gaeta to the north, as far as Salerno in a southerly
direction, whilst, lying close to this stretch of shore, are included the
three populous islands of Capri, Procida and Ischia, which in prehistoric
times doubtless formed part and parcel of the Parthenopean coast itself.
Our pleasant task it is to write of these classic shores and islands,
where the beauties of nature contend for pre-emi