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fisher-market in the dirtiest quarter of dirty Naples
where the revolt of Massaniello began - is memorable for
having been the scene of one of his earliest proclama-
tions to the people, and is particularly remarkable for
nothing else, unless it be its waxen and bejewelled Saint
in a glass case, with two odd hands; or the enormous
number of beggars who are constantly rapping their chins
there, like a battery of castanets. The cathedral with the
beautiful door, and the columns of African and Egyptian
granite that once ornamented the temple of Apollo, con-
tains the famous sacred blood of San Gennaro or Januarius:
which is preserved in two phials in a silver tabernacle,
and miraculously liquefies three times a year, to the great
admiration of the people. At the same moment, the stone
(distant some miles) where the Saint suffered martyrdom,
becomes faintly red. It is said that the officiating priests
turn faintly red also, sometimes, when these miracles occur.

The old, old men who live in hovels at the entrance
of these ancient catacombs, and who, in their age and in-
firmity, seem waiting here, to be buried themselves, are
members of a curious body, called the Royal Hospital,
who are the official attendants at funerals. Two of
these old spectres totter away, with lighted tapers, to
show the caverns of death - as unconcerned as if they
were immortal. They were used as burying-places for
three hundred years; and, in one part, is a large pit full of
skulls and bones, said to be the sad remains of a
great mortality occasioned by a plague. In the rest, there
is nothing but dust. They consist, chiefly, of great wide

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