HE who sets sail from NAPLES, when the wind 1 Tasso. Sorrento, his birth-place, is on the south side of the gulf of Naples. To be the scorn of them that knew him not, There would I linger-then go forth again, As in that elder time ere Man was made. There would I linger-then go forth again; The time has been, 1 'Amalf fell after three hundred years of prosperity; but the poverty of one thousand fishermen is yet dignified by the remains of an arsenal, a cathedral, and the palaces of royal merchants.'-GIBBON. Then were the nations by her wisdom swayed; And every crime on every sea was judged According to her judgments. In her port Prows, strange, uncouth, from NILE and NIGER met, People of various feature, various speech; And in their countries many a house of prayer, And many a shelter, where no shelter was, And many a well, like JACOB's in the wild, Rose at her bidding. Then in PALESTINE, By the way-side, in sober grandeur stood A Hospital, that, night and day, received The pilgrims of the west; and, when 't was asked, 'Who are the noble founders?' every tongue At once replied, 'The merchants of AMALFI.' That Hospital, when GODFREY scaled the walls, Sent forth its holy men in complete steel; And hence, the cowl relinquished for the helm, That chosen band, valiant, invincible, So long renowned as champions of the Cross, In RHODES, in MALTA. For three hundred years There, unapproached but from the deep, they dwelt; Acknowledging no master. From the deep And INDIAN spices. Through the civilized world And, when at length they fell, they left mankind 1 There is at this day in Syracuse a street called La Strada degli Amalfitani. A legacy, compared with which the wealth They are now forgot, And with them all they did, all they endured, There now to him who sails Under the shore, a few white villages Scattered above, below, some in the clouds, A lonely watch-tower on the precipice, Their ancient land-mark, comes. Long may it last; Though now he little thinks how large his debt, 2 1 In the year 839. See MURATORI: Art. Chronici Amalphitani Fragmenta. 2 By degrees, says Giannone, they made themselves famous through the world. The Tarini Amalfitani were a coin familiar to all nations; and their maritime code regulated every where the commerce of the sea.. Many churches in the East were by them built and endowed; by them was founded in Palestine that most renowned military Order of St. John of Jerusalem; and who does not know that the mariner's compass was invented by a citizen of Amalfi? Glorious was their course, MONTE CASSINO.1 'WHAT hangs behind that curtain ?'-'Wouldst thou learn? If thou art wise, thou wouldst not. 'T is by some Believed to be His master-work, who looked Beyond the grave, and on the chapel-wall, As tho' the day were come, were come and past, 'Tis in an ancient record of the House; And may it make thee tremble, lest thou fall! 1 The abbey of Monte Cassino is the most ancient and venerable house of the Benedictine Order. It is situated within fifteen leagues of Naples on the inland-road to Rome; and no house is more hospitable. 2 Michael Angelo. 1 3 There are many miraculous pictures in Italy; but none, I believe, were ever before described as malignant in their influence.-At Arezzo in the church of St. Angelo there is indeed over the great altar a frescopainting of the Fall of the Angels, which has a singular story belonging to it. It was painted in the fourteenth century by Spinello Aretino, who has there represented Lucifer as changed into a shape so monstrous and terrible, that he is said in that very shape to have haunted the Artist in his dreams and to have hastened his death; crying, night after night, "Where hast thou seen me in a shape so monstrous?" In the upper part St. Michael is seen in combat with the dragon: the fatal transformation is in the lower part of the picture. VASARI. |