Naples and Garibaldi

This short book derives from an article published in the periodical Vacation Tourists and Notes of Travel, edited by Francis Galton, in 1860. W. G. Clark (1821-78) was most famous as co-editor of the Cambridge Shakespeare, but was originally a classical scholar, whose Peloponnesus (1858) is also reissued in this series. This lively account of a critical period in Italian history, ‘during the occurrence of events so strange and sudden that they resembled incidents of a romantic melodrama rather than real history’, deliberately avoids the usual landscapes, ruins and peasants to give a day-by-day description of events in Naples at the time when Garibaldi had arrived in the city during his campaign for the liberation of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. However, as well as narrating political and military developments, Clark introduces some picturesque notes, including an account of the famous ‘miracle’ of the liquefaction of St Gennaro’s blood.