The mystery of this placidity had been already solved by our captain, whom I had asked what price I should bargain to pay from the steamer to the shore.  “There is a tariff,” said he, “and the boatmen keep to it.  The Neapolitans are good people, (buona gente,) and only needed justice to make them obedient to the laws.”  I must say that I found this to be true.  The fares of all public conveyances are now fixed, and the attempts which drivers occasionally make to cheat you, seem to be rather the involuntary impulses of old habit than deliberate intentions to do you wrong.  You pay what is due, and as your man merely rumbles internally when you turn away, you must be a very timid signorin, indeed, if you buy his content with any thing more.  I fancy that all these things are now much better managed in Italy than in America, only we grumble at them there and stand them in silence at home.  Every one can recall frightful instances of plunder, in which he was the victim, at New York—­in which the robbery had none of the neatness of an operation, as it often has in Italy, but was a brutal mutilation.  And then as regards civility from the same kind of people in the two countries, there is no comparison that holds in favor of us.  All questions are readily and politely answered in Italian travel, and the servants of companies are required to be courteous to the public whereas, one is only too glad to receive a silent snub from such people at home.

II.

The first sun that rose after our arrival in Naples was mild and warm as a May sun, though we were quite in the heart of November.  We early strolled out under it into the crowded ways of the city, and drew near as we might to that restless, thronging, gossiping southern life, in contrast with which all northern existence seems only a sort of hibernation.  The long Toledo, on which the magnificence of modern Naples is threaded, is the most brilliant and joyous street in the world; but I think there is less of the quaintness of Italian civilization to be seen in its vivacious crowds than anywhere else in Italy.  One easily understands how, with its superb length and straightness, and its fine, respectable, commonplace-looking houses, it should be the pride of a people fond of show; but after Venice and Genoa it has no picturesque charm; nay, even busy Milan seems less modern and more picturesque.  The lines of the lofty palaces on the Toledo are seldom broken by the facade of a church or other public edifice; and when this does happen, the building is sure to be coldly classic or frantically baroque.