the midday sun
Naples , more than any other city of Italy , is full of the violent contrasts which belong to great old cities everywhere , and the absence of which makes new cities dull , be they as well built , as well situated , as civilized and as beautiful as they can be made by art handling nature for the greater glory of modern humanity . In Naples , there is a fashionable new quarter , swept , watered , and garnished with plants and trees , but many of the great palaces stand in old and narrow streets , rising up , grim and solemn and proud , out of the recklessly vital life of one of the worst populaces in the world . Fifty paces away , again , is a wide thoroughfare , perhaps , raging and roaring with traffic from the port . A hundred yards in another direction , and there is a clean , deserted court , into which the midday sun pours itself as into a reservoir of light , -- a court with a quiet church and simple old houses , through the doors of which pale-faced ecclesiastics silently come and go . Round the next corner leads a dark lane , between hugely high buildings that press the air and keep out the sun and all sky but a thin ribband of blue . And the air is heavy with all vile things , from the ill-washed linen that hangs , slowly drying , from the upper windows , thrust out into the draught with sticks , to the rotting garbage in the gutters below . The low-arched doors open directly upon the slimy , black pavement ; and in the deep shadows within sit strange figures with doughy faces and glassy eyes , breathing in the stench of the nauseous , steamy air , -- working a little , perhaps , at some one of the shadowy , back-street trades of a great city , but poisoned to death from birth by the air they live in , diseased of the diseased , from very childhood , and prolific as disease itself , multiplying to fatten death at the next pestilence .