LADIES' CABINET

OF

FASHION, MUSIC, AND ROMANCE.

BIONDINA;

THE VEILED LADY OF NAPLES.

CHAPTER 1.

ON the 16th of June, 1550, the bells pealed out from the towers of Naples, inviting the pious to the festival of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Old and young, decked in holiday garb, streamed through the streets, in which every balcony was hung with costly tapestry; and innumerable flowers, stirred by the quick west wind, diffused the most exquisite fragrance. A stranger might have supposed the queen of the land was this day expected within the walls of her capital; but Naples saw not her queen, who confined by the gloomy etiquette of Madrid within the palace of the Prado, had never visited her beautiful inheritance. To a greater queen, the Queen of Heaven, was the festival dedicated.

In no country have the festivals of the saints ever been celebrated with more outward splendour than in those days in Naples: there they were not only adorned with all the impressive dignity of religious pomp, but combined with it all that the lively, joyous imagination of the Neapolitans could devise, to render these spectacles as attractive to sense as to soul. It seemed as if here the ancient pagan usages had not been wholly banished from the christian service; for all those immediately engaged in the ceremonies of the day, as well as the multitudes of youths and maidens who followed the procession, or pressed forward to it as eager spectators, were dressed in white garments, and wreaths of manifold flowers shone through their locks.

Within, and in front of the church of Santa Maria del Carmine assembled gentle and simple, dukes and lazaroni, to follow the procession through the streets. The clerical orders, in costly pontificals, stood before the doors awaiting the arrival of JANUARY, 1841.

B