able, that almost all the perfons, of the greatest wealth and power in Naples, are engaged by their own interests to pay these impofitions chearfully, and to fupport the government which has laid them on. For this reafon, though the poorer fort are for the Emperor, few of the perfons of confequence can endure to think of a change in their prefent establishment; though there is no question but the King of Spain will reform most of these abuses, by breaking or retrenching the power of the barons, by cancelling feveral unneceffary employs, or by ranfoming or taking the gabels into his own hands. I have been told too there is a law of Charles the fifth, fomething like our ftatute of mor main, which has laid dormant ever fince his time, and will probably have new life put into it under the reign of an active prince. The inhabitants of Naples have been always very notorious for leading a life of laziness and pleasure, which I take to arife partly out of the wonderful plenty of their country, that does not make labour fo neceffary to them, and partly out of the temper of their climate, that relaxes the fibres of their bodies, and difpofes the people to fuch an idle indolent humour. Whatever it proceeds from, we find they were formerly as famous for it as they are at prefent.

This was perhaps the reafon that the ancients tell us one of the Sirens was buried in this city, which thence received the name of Parthenope.

Defidia

Improbria Siren

Hor. Sat. iii. Lib. ii. v. 14.

Sloth, the deluding Siren of the mind.

-Et

-Et in Otia natam

Parthenopen

--Otiofa Neapolis.

Ovid. Met. Lib. xv. v. 11.

Hor. Epod. 5. v. 43.

Parthenope, for idle hours defign'd,
To luxury and eafe unbends the mind.

Parthenope non dives opum, non fpreta vigoris :
Nam molles Urbi ritus, atque bofpita Mufis
Otia, et exemptum curis gravioribus ævum.
Sirenum dedit una fuum et memorabile nomen
Parthenope muris Acheloias, æquore cujus
Regnavere diu cantus, cum dulce per undas
Exitium miferis caneret non profpera Nautis.
Sil. Ital. Lib. xii.

Here wanton Naples crowns the happy shore,
Nor vainly rich, nor defpicably poor;
The town in foft folemnities delights,
And gentle poets to her arms invites ;
The people, free from cares, ferene and gay,
País all their mild untroubled hours away.
Parthenope the rifing city nam'd

A Siren, for her fongs and beauty fam'd,
'That oft had drown'd among the neighb'ring feas
The lift'ning wretch, and made destruction please.

Has ego te fedes (nam nec mihi barbara Thrace
Nec Libye natale folum) transferre laboro:
Quas et mollis hyems et frigida temper at æftas,
Quas imbelle fretum torpentibus alluit undis:
Pax fecura locis, et defidia Otia vitæ.
Et nunquam turbata quies fomnique perači :

Nulla foro rabies, &c. Stat, Sylv. v. Lib. iii. v. 81.

These are the gentle feats that I propofe,
For not cold Scythia's undiffolving fnows,
Nor the parch'd Lybian fands thy hufband bore,
But mild Parthenope's delightful shore ;

Where hufh'd in calms the bord'ring ocean laves
Her filent coaft, and rolls in languid waves;
Refreshing winds the fummer's heat affuage;
And kindly warmth difarms the winter's rage;
Remov'd from noife and the tumultuous war,
Soft fleep and downy eafe inhabit there,
And dreams unbroken with intruding care.

}

THE

THE

ANTIQUITIES

AND

Natural Curiofities

That lie near the

CITY of NAPLES.

A

T about eight miles distance from Naples lies a very noble Scene of antiquities. What they call Virgil's tomb is the first that one meets with on the way thither. It is certain this Poet was buried at Naples; but I think it is almost as certain, that his tomb ftood on the other fide of the town, which looks towards Vefuvio. By this tomb is the entry into the grotto of Paufilypo. The common people of Naples believe it to have been wrought by magic, and that Virgil was the magician; who is in greater repute among the Neapolitans for having made the grotto than the Æneid.

If

If a man would form to himself a juft idea of this place, he muft fancy a vast rock undermined from one end to the other, and a highway running through it, near as long and as broad as the mall in St. James's park. This fubterraneous paffage is much mended fince Seneca gave fo bad a character of it. The entry at both ends is higher than the middle parts of it, and finks by degrees to fling in more light upon the reft. Towards the middle are two large funnels, bored through the roof of the grotto, to let in light and fresh air.

There are no where about the mountain any vaft heaps of ftones, though it is certain the great quantities of them that are dug out of the rock could not easily conceal themselves, had they not probably been confumed in the moles and buildings of Naples. This confirmed me in a conjecture, which I made at the first fight of the fubterraneous paffage, that it was not at first defigned fo much for a high-way as a quarry of stone, but that the inhabitants, finding a double advantage in it, hewed it into the form we now fee. Perhaps the fame defign gave the original to the Sibyl's grotto, confidering the prodigious multitude of palaces that flood in its neighbourhood. I remember when I was at Chateaudun in France, I met with a very curious perfon, a member of one of the German univerfities. He had flay'd a day or two in the town longer than ordinary, to take the measures of feveral empty spaces that had been cut in the fides of a neighbouring mountain. Some of them were fupported with pillars formed out of the rock; fome were made in the fashion of galleries, and fome not unlike amphitheatres. The gentle

G