Transcriber’s Note: Evident printing errors have been changed, but otherwise the original (and antiquated) spelling has been preserved, in both English and other languages. The errata have been corrected.

A
VIEW
OF
SOCIETY and MANNERS
IN
ITALY:

WITH
ANECDOTES relating to some EMINENT CHARACTERS.

BY JOHN MOORE, M.D.

VOL. II.

Strenua nos exercet inertia: navibus atque

Quadrigis petimus bene vivere. Quod petis, hic est.

Hor.

THE SECOND EDITION.

LONDON:
Printed for W. Strahan; and T. Cadell, in the Strand.
MDCCLXXXI.

CONTENTS
OF THE
SECOND VOLUME.

A
VIEW
OF
SOCIETY and MANNERS
IN
ITALY.

LETTER XLVI.

Rome.

I beg you may not suspect me of affectation, or that I wish to assume the character of a connoisseur, when I tell you, that I have very great pleasure in contemplating the antique statues and busts, of which there are such numbers in this city. It is a natural curiosity, and I have had it all my life in a strong degree, to see celebrated men, those whose talents and great qualities can alone render the present age an interesting object to posterity, and prevent its being lost, like the dark ages which succeeded the destruction of the Roman empire, in the oblivious vortex of time, leaving scarcely a wreck behind. The durable monuments raised to fame by the inspiring genius of Pitt, and the invincible spirit of Frederick, will command the admiration of future ages, outlive the power of the empires which they aggrandized, and forbid the period in which they flourished, from ever passing away like the baseless fabric of a vision. The busts and statues of those memorable men will be viewed, by succeeding generations, with the same regard and attention which we now bestow on those of Cicero and Cæsar. We expect to find something peculiarly noble and expressive in features which were animated, and which, we imagine, must have been in some degree modelled, by the sentiments of those to whom they belonged. It is not rank, it is character alone which interests posterity. We know that men may be seated on thrones, who would have been placed more suitably to their talents on the working-table of a taylor; we therefore give little attention to the busts or coins of the vulgar emperors. In the countenance of Claudius, we expect nothing more noble than the phlegmatic tranquillity of an acquiescing cuckold; in Caligula or Nero, the unrelenting frown of a negro-driver, or the insolent air of any unprincipled ruffian in power. Even in the high-praised Augustus we look for nothing essentially great, nothing superior to what we see in those minions of fortune, who are exalted, by a concurrence of incidents, to a situation in life to which their talents would never have raised them, and which their characters never deserved. In the face of Julius we expect to find the traces of deep reflection, magnanimity, and the anxiety natural to the man who had overturned the liberties of his native country, and who must have secretly dreaded the resentment of a spirited people; and in the face of Marcus Brutus we look for independence, conscious integrity, and a mind capable of the highest effort of virtue.

It is natural to regret, that, of the number of antique statues which have come to us tolerably entire, so great a proportion are representations of gods and goddesses. Had they been intended for real persons, we might have had a perfect knowledge of the face and figure of the greatest part of the most distinguished citizens of ancient Greece and Rome. A man of unrelaxing wisdom would smile with contempt, and ask, if our having perfect representations of all the heroes, poets, and philosophers recorded in history, would make us either wiser or more learned? to which I answer, That there are a great many things, which neither can add to my small stock of learning nor wisdom, and yet give me more pleasure and satisfaction than those which do; and, unfortunately for mankind, the greatest part of them resemble me in this particular.

But though I would with pleasure have given up a great number of the Jupiters and Apollos and Venuses, whose statues we have, in exchange for an equal, or even a smaller, number of mere mortals whom I could name; I by no means consider the statues of those deities as uninteresting. Though they are imaginary beings, yet each of them has a distinct character of his own of classical authority, which has long been impressed on our memories; and we assume the right of deciding on the artist’s skill, and applauding or blaming, as he has succeeded or failed in expressing the established character of the god intended. From the ancient artists having exercised their genius in forming the images of an order of beings superior to mankind, another and a greater advantage is supposed to have followed; it prompted the artists to attempt the uniting in one form, the various beauties and excellencies which nature had dispersed in many. This was not so easy a task as may by some be imagined; for that which has a fine effect in one particular face or person, may appear a deformity when combined with a different complexion, different features, or a different shape. It therefore required great judgment and taste to collect those various graces, and combine them with elegance and truth; and repeated efforts of this kind are imagined to have inspired some of the ancient sculptors with sublimer ideas of beauty than nature herself ever exhibited, as appears in some of their works which have reached our own times.

Though the works of no modern artist can stand a comparison with the great master-pieces now alluded to, yet nothing can be more absurd than the idea which some people entertain, that all antique statues are of more excellent workmanship than the modern. We see, every day, numberless specimens of every species of sculpture, from the largest statues and bassos-relievos, to the smallest cameos and intaglios, that are undoubtedly antique, and yet far inferior, not only to the works of the best artists of Leo the Tenth’s time, but also to those of many artists now alive in various parts of Europe. The passion for sculpture, which the Romans caught from the Greeks, became almost universal. Statues were not only the chief ornaments of their temples and palaces, but also of the houses of the middle, and even the lowest, order of citizens. They were prompted to adorn them with the figures of a few favourite deities, by religion, as well as vanity: no man, but an atheist or a beggar, could be without them. This being the case, we may easily conceive what graceless divinities many of them must have been; for in this, no doubt, as in every other manufactory, there must occasionally have been bungling workmen employed, even in the most flourishing æra of the arts, and goods finished in a very careless and hurried manner, to answer the constant demand, and suit the dimensions of every purse. We must have a very high idea of the number of statues of one kind or other, which were in old Rome, when we consider, how many are still to be seen; how many have at different periods been carried away, by the curious, to every country in Europe; how many were mutilated and destroyed by the gothic brutality of Barbarians, and the ill-directed zeal of the early Christians, who thought it a duty to exterminate every image, without distinction of age or sex, and without considering whether they were of God or man. This obliged the wretched heathens to hide the statues of their gods and of their ancestors in the bowels of the earth, where unquestionably great numbers of them still remain. Had they not been thus barbarously hewed to pieces, and buried, I had almost said, alive, we might have had several equal to the great master-pieces in the Vatican; for it is natural to imagine, that the rage of the zealots would be chiefly directed against those statues which were in the highest estimation with the heathens; and we must likewise imagine, that these would be the pieces which they, on their part, would endeavour, by every possible means, to preserve from their power, and bury in the earth. Of those which have been dug up, I shall mention only a very few, beginning with the Farnesian Hercules, which has been long admired as an exquisite model of masculine strength; yet, admirable as it is, it does not please all the world. I am told that the women in particular find something unsatisfactory, and even odious, in this figure; which, however majestic, is deficient in the charms most agreeable to them, and which might have been expected in the son of Jupiter and the beauteous Alcmena. A lady whom I accompanied to the Farnese palace, turned away from it in disgust. I could not imagine what had shocked her. She told me, after recollection, that she could not bear the stern severity of his countenance, his large brawny limbs, and the club with which he was armed; which gave him more the appearance of one of those giants that, according to the old romances, carried away virgins and shut them up in gloomy castles, than the gallant Hercules, the lover of Omphale. Finally, the lady declared, she was convinced this statue could not be a just representation of Hercules; for it was not in the nature of things, that a man so formed could ever have been a reliever of distressed damsels.

Without such powerful support as that of the fair sex, I should not have exposed myself to the resentment of connoisseurs, by any expression which they might construe an attack upon this favourite statue; but, with their support, I will venture to assert, that the Farnese Hercules is faulty both in his form and attitude: the former is too unwieldy for active exertion, and the latter exhibits vigour exhausted. A resting attitude is surely not the most proper in which the all-conquering god of strength could be represented. Rest implies fatigue, and fatigue strength exhausted. A reposing Hercules is almost a contradiction. Invincible activity, and inexhaustible strength, are his characteristics. The ancient artist has erred, not only in giving him an attitude which supposes his strength wants recruiting, but in the nature of the strength itself, the character of which should not be passive, but active.

Near to Hercules, under the arcades of the same Palazzo Farnese, is a most beautiful statue of Flora. The great advantage which ancient artists had in attending the exercises of the gymnasia, has been repeatedly urged as the reason of their superiority over the moderns in sculpture. We are told, that besides the usual exercises of the gymnasia, all those who proposed to contend at the Olympic games, were obliged, by the regulations, to prepare themselves, by exercising publicly for a year at Elis; and the statuaries and painters constantly attended on the Arena, where they had opportunities of beholding the finest shaped, the most graceful, and most vigorous of the Grecian youth employed in those manly sports, in which the power of every muscle was exerted, and all their various actions called forth, and where the human form appeared in an infinite variety of different attitudes. By a constant attendance at such a school, independent of any other circumstance, the artists are supposed to have acquired a more animated, true, and graceful style, than possibly can be caught from viewing the tame, mercenary models, which are exhibited in our academies. On the other hand, I have heard it asserted, that the artist, who formed the Farnesian Flora, could not have improved his work, or derived any of its excellencies, from the circumstances above enumerated; because the figure is in a standing posture, and clothed. In the light, easy flow of the drapery, and in the contour of the body being as distinctly pronounced through it, as if the figure were naked, the chief merit of this statue is thought to consist. But this reasoning does not seem just; for the daily opportunities the ancient artists had of seeing naked figures, in every variety of action and attitude, must have given them advantages over the moderns, in forming even drapery figures. At Sparta, the women, upon particular occasions, danced naked. In their own families; they were seen every day clothed in light draperies; and so secondary was every consideration, even that of decency, to art, that the prettiest virgins of Agrigentum, it is recorded, were called upon by the legislature, without distinction, to shew themselves naked to a painter, to enable him to paint a Venus. Whilst the moderns, therefore, must acknowledge their inferiority to the ancients in the art of sculpture, they may be allowed merit, on account of the cause, to which it seems, in some measure at least, to be owing.

The finest specimens of antique sculpture are to be seen in the Vatican. In these the Greek artists display an unquestionable superiority over the most successful efforts of the moderns. For me to attempt a description of these master-pieces, which have been described a thousand times, and imitated as often, without once having had justice done them, would be equally vain and superfluous. I confine myself to a very few observations. The most insensible of mankind must be struck with horror at sight of the Laocoon. On one of my visits to the Vatican, I was accompanied by two persons, who had never been there before: one of them is accused of being perfectly callous to every thing which does not immediately touch his own person; the other is a worthy, good man: the first, after staring for some time with marks of terror at the groupe, at length recovered himself; exclaiming with a laugh,—“Egad, I was afraid these d——d serpents would have left the fellows they are devouring, and made a snap at me; but I am happy to recollect they are of marble.”—“I thank you, Sir, most heartily,” said the other, “for putting me in mind of that circumstance; till you mentioned it, I was in agony for those two youths.”

Nothing can be conceived more admirably executed than this affecting groupe; in all probability, it never would have entered into my own head that it could have been in any respect improved. But when I first had the happiness of becoming acquainted with Mr. Lock, a period of my life which I shall always recollect with peculiar pleasure, I remember my conversing with him upon this subject; and that Gentleman, after mentioning the execution of this piece, in the highest terms of praise, observed that, had the figure of Laocoon been alone, it would have been perfect. As a man suffering the most excruciating bodily pain with becoming fortitude, it admits of no improvement; his proportions, his form, his action, his expression, are exquisite. But when his sons appear, he is no longer an insulated, suffering individual, who, when he has met pain and death with dignity, has done all that could be expected from man; he commences father, and a much wider field is opened to the artist. We expect the deepest pathos in the exhibition of the sublimest character that art can offer to the contemplation of the human mind: A father forgetting pain, and instant death, to save his children. This Sublime and Pathetic the artist either did not see, or despaired of attaining. Laocoon’s sufferings are merely corporal; he is deaf to the cries of his agonizing children, who are calling on him for assistance. But had he been throwing a look of anguish upon his sons, had he seemed to have forgotten his own sufferings in theirs, he would have commanded the sympathy of the spectator in a much higher degree. On the whole, Mr. Lock was of opinion, that the execution of this groupe is perfect, but that the conception is not equal to the execution. I shall leave it to others to decide whether Mr. Lock, in these observations, spoke like a man of taste: I am sure he spoke like a father. I have sensibility to feel the beauty and justness of the remark, though I had not the ingenuity to make it.

It is disputed whether this groupe was formed from Virgil’s description of the death of Laocoon and his sons, or the description made from the groupe; it is evident, from their minute resemblance, that one or other must have been the case. The Poet mentions a circumstance, which could not be represented by the sculptor; he says that, although every other person around sought safety by flight, the father was attacked by the serpents, while he was advancing to the assistance of his sons—

—auxilio subeuntem ac tela ferentem.

This deficiency in the sculptor’s art would have been finely supplied by the improvement which Mr. Lock proposed.

Reflecting on the dreadful condition of three persons entangled in the horrid twinings of serpents, and after contemplating the varied anguish so strongly expressed in their countenances, it is a relief to turn the eye to the heavenly figure of the Apollo. To form an adequate idea of the beauty of this statue, it is absolutely necessary to see it. With all the advantages of colour and life, the human form never appeared so beautiful; and we never can sufficiently admire the artist, who has endowed marble with a finer expression of grace, dignity, and understanding, than ever were seen in living features. In the forming of this inimitable figure, the artist seems to have wrought after an ideal form of beauty, superior to any in nature, and which existed only in his own imagination.

The admired statue of Antinous is in the same Court. Nothing can be more light, elegant, and easy; the proportions are exact, and the execution perfect. It is an exquisite representation of the most beautiful youth that ever lived.

The statue of Apollo represents something superior, and the emotions it excites are all of the sublime cast.

LETTER XLVII.

Rome.

The present Pope, who has assumed the name of Pius the Sixth, is a tall, well-made man, about sixty years of age, but retaining in his look all the freshness of a much earlier period of life. He lays a greater stress on the ceremonious part of religion than his predecessor Ganganelli, in whose reign a great relaxation of church-discipline is thought to have taken place. The late Pope was a man of moderation, good sense, and simplicity of manners; and could not go through all the ostentatious parade which his station required, without reluctance, and marks of disgust. He knew that the opinions of mankind had undergone a very great change since those ceremonies were established; and that some of the most respectable of the spectators considered as perfectly frivolous many things which formerly had been held as sacred. A man of good sense may seem to lay the greatest weight on ceremonies which he himself considers as ridiculous, provided he thinks the people, in whose sight he goes through them, are impressed with a conviction of their importance; but if he knows that some of the beholders are entirely of a different way of thinking, he will be strongly tempted to evince, by some means or other, that he despises the fooleries he performs, as much as any of them. This, in all probability, was the case with Ganganelli; who, besides, was an enemy to fraud and hypocrisy of every kind. But, however remiss he may have been with regard to the etiquette of his spiritual functions, every body acknowledges his diligence and activity in promoting the temporal good of his subjects. He did all in his power to revive trade, and to encourage manufactures and industry of every kind. He built no churches, but he repaired the roads all over the ecclesiastical state; he restrained the malevolence of bigots, removed absurd prejudices, and promoted sentiments of charity and good-will to mankind in general, without excepting even heretics. His enemies, the Jesuits, with an intention to make him odious in the eyes of his own subjects, gave him the name of the Protestant Pope. If they supposed that this calumny would be credited, on account of the conduct above mentioned, they at once paid the highest compliment to the Pope and the Protestant religion. The careless manner in which Ganganelli performed certain functions, and the general tenour of his life and sentiments, were lamented by politicians, as well as by bigots. However frivolous the former might think many ceremonies in themselves, they still considered them as of political importance, in such a government as that of Rome; and the Conclave held on the death of the late Pope, are thought to have been in some degree influenced by such considerations in chusing his successor. The present Pope, before he was raised to that dignity, was considered as a firm believer in all the tenets of the Roman Church, and a strict and scrupulous observer of all its injunctions and ceremonials. As his pretensions, in point of family, fortune, and connexions, were smaller than those of most of his brother cardinals, it is the more probable that he owed his elevation to this part of his character, which rendered him a proper person to check the progress of abuses that had been entirely neglected by the late Pope; under whose administration free-thinking was said to have been countenanced, Protestantism in general regarded with diminished abhorrence, and the Calvinists in particular treated with a degree of indulgence, to which their inveterate enmity to the church of Rome gave them no title. Several instances of this are enumerated, and one in particular, which, I dare say, you will think a stronger proof of the late Pope’s good sense and good humour, than of that negligence to which his enemies imputed it.

A Scotch presbyterian having heated his brain, by reading the Book of Martyrs, the cruelties of the Spanish Inquisition, and the Histories of all the persecutions that ever were raised by the Roman Catholics against the Protestants, was seized with a dread, that the same horrors were just about to be renewed. This terrible idea disturbed his imagination day and night; he thought of nothing but racks and scaffolds; and, on one occasion, he dreamt that there was a continued train of bonfires, with a tar-barrel and a Protestant in each, all the way from Smithfield to St. Andrews.

He communicated the anxiety and distress of his mind to a worthy sensible clergyman who lived in the neighbourhood. This gentleman took great pains to quiet his fears, proving to him, by strong and obvious arguments, that there was little or no danger of such an event as he dreaded. These reasonings had a powerful effect while they were delivering, but the impression did not last, and was always effaced by a few pages of the Book of Martyrs. As soon as the clergyman remarked this, he advised the relations to remove that, and every book which treated of persecution or martyrdom, entirely out of the poor man’s reach. This was done accordingly, and books of a less gloomy complexion were substituted in their place; but as all of them formed a strong contrast with the colour of his mind, he could not bear their perusal, but betook himself to the study of the Bible, which was the only book of his ancient library which had been left; and so strong a hold had his former studies taken of his imagination, that he could relish no part of the Bible, except the Revelation of St. John, a great part of which, he thought, referred to the whore of Babylon, or in other words, the Pope of Rome. This part of the scripture he perused continually with unabating ardor and delight. His friend the clergyman, having observed this, took occasion to say, that every part of the Holy Bible was, without doubt, most sublime, and wonderfully instructive; yet he was surprised to see that he limited his studies entirely to the last book, and neglected all the rest. To which the other replied, That he who was a divine, and a man of learning, might, with propriety, read all the sacred volume from beginning to end; but, for his own part, he thought proper to confine himself to what he could understand; and therefore, though he had a due respect for all the scripture, he acknowledged he gave a preference to the Revelation of St. John. This answer entirely satisfied the clergyman; he did not think it expedient to question him any farther; he took his leave, after having requested the people of the family with whom this person lived, to have a watchful eye on their relation. In the mean time, this poor man’s terrors, with regard to the revival of popery and persecution, daily augmented; and nature, in all probability, would have sunk under the weight of such accumulated anxiety, had not a thought occurred which relieved his mind in an instant, by suggesting an infallible method of preventing all the evils which his imagination had been brooding over for so long a time. The happy idea which afforded him so much comfort, was no other, than that he should immediately go to Rome, and convert the Pope from the Roman Catholic to the Presbyterian religion. The moment he hit on this fortunate expedient, he felt at once the strongest impulse to undertake the task, and the fullest conviction that his undertaking would be crowned with success; it is no wonder, therefore, that his countenance threw off its former gloom, and that all his features brightened with the heart-felt thrillings of happiness and self-applause. While his relations congratulated each other on this agreeable change, the exulting visionary, without communicating his design to any mortal, set out for London, took his passage to Leghorn, and, in a short time after, arrived in perfect health of body, and in exalted spirits, at Rome.

He directly applied to an ecclesiastic of his own country, of whose obliging temper he had previously heard, and whom he considered as a proper person to procure him an interview necessary for the accomplishment of his project. He informed that gentleman, that he earnestly wished to have a conference with the Pope, on a business of infinite importance, and which admitted of no delay. It was not difficult to perceive the state of this poor man’s mind; the good-natured ecclesiastic endeavoured to sooth and amuse him, putting off the conference till a distant day; in hopes that means might be fallen on, during the interval, to prevail on him to return to his own country. A few days after this, however, he happened to go to St. Peter’s church, at the very time when his Holiness was performing some religious ceremony. At this sight our impatient missionary felt all his passions inflamed with irresistible ardour; he could no longer wait for the expected conference, but bursting out with zealous indignation, he exclaimed, “O thou beast of nature, with seven heads and ten horns! thou mother of harlots, arrayed in purple and scarlet, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls! throw away the golden cup of abominations, and the filthiness of thy fornication!”

You may easily imagine the astonishment and hubbub that such an apostrophe, from such a person, in such a place, would occasion; he was immediately carried to prison by the Swiss halberdiers.

When it was known that he was a British subject, some who understood English were ordered to attend his examination. The first question asked of him was, “What had brought him to Rome?” He answered, “To anoint the eyes of the scarlet whore with eye-salve, that she might see her wickedness.” They asked, “Who he meant by the scarlet whore?” He answered, “Who else could he mean, but her who sitteth upon seven mountains, who hath seduced the kings of the earth to commit fornication, and who hath gotten drunk with the blood of the saints, and the blood of the martyrs?” Many other questions were asked, and such provoking answers returned, that some suspected the man affected madness, that he might give vent to his rancour and petulance with impunity; and they were for condemning him to the gallies, that he might be taught more sense, and better manners. But when they communicated their sentiments to Clement the Fourteenth, he said, with great good humour, “That he never had heard of any body whose understanding, or politeness, had been much improved at that school; that although the poor man’s first address had been a little rough and abrupt, yet he could not help considering himself as obliged to him for his good intentions, and for his undertaking such a long journey with a view to do good.” He afterwards gave orders to treat the man with gentleness while he remained in confinement, and to put him on board the first ship bound from Civita Vecchia to England, defraying the expence of his passage. However humane and reasonable this conduct may be thought by many, there were people who condemned it as an injudicious piece of lenity, which might have a tendency to sink the dignity of the sacred office, and expose it to future insults. If such behaviour as this did not pass without blame, it may be easily supposed, that few of the late Pope’s actions escaped uncensured; and many who loved the easy amiable dispositions of the man, were of opinion, that the spirit of the times required a different character on the Papal throne. This idea prevailed among the Cardinals at the late election, and the Conclave is supposed to have fixed on Cardinal Braschi to be Pope, from the same motive that the Roman senate sometimes chose a Dictator to restore and enforce the ancient discipline.

LETTER XLVIII.

Rome.

Pius the Sixth performs all the religious functions of his office in the most solemn manner; not only on public and extraordinary occasions, but also in the most common acts of devotion. I happened lately to be at St. Peter’s church, when there was scarcely any other body there; while I lounged from chapel to chapel, looking at the sculpture and paintings, the Pope entered with a very few attendants; when he came to the statue of St. Peter, he was not satisfied with bowing, which is the usual mark of respect shewn to that image; or with kneeling, which is performed by more zealous persons; or with kissing the foot, which I formerly imagined concluded the climax of devotion; he bowed, he knelt, he kissed the foot, and then he rubbed his brow and his whole head with every mark of humility, fervour, and adoration, upon the sacred stump.—It is no more, one half of the foot having been long since worn away by the lips of the pious; and if the example of his Holiness is universally imitated, nothing but a miracle can prevent the leg, thigh, and other parts from meeting with the same fate. This uncommon appearance of zeal in the Pope, is not imputed to hypocrisy or to policy, but is supposed to proceed entirely from a conviction of the efficacy of those holy frictions; an opinion which has given people a much higher idea of the strength of his faith, than of his understanding. This being jubilee year, he may possibly think a greater appearance of devotion necessary now, than at any other time. The first jubilee was instituted by Boniface the Eighth, in the year 1300. Many ceremonies and institutions of the Roman Catholic church are founded on those of the old Heathens. This is evidently an imitation of the Roman secular games, which were exhibited every hundredth year in honour of the gods[1]; they lasted three days and three nights; they were attended with great pomp, and drew vast numbers of people to Rome, from all parts of Italy, and the most distant provinces. Boniface, recollecting this, determined to institute something analogous, which would immortalize his own name, and promote the interest of the Roman Catholic religion in general, and that of the city of Rome in particular. He embraced the favourable opportunity which the beginning of a century presented; he invented a few extraordinary ceremonies, and declared the year 1300 the first jubilee year, during which he assured mankind, that heaven would be in a particular manner propitious, in granting indulgences, and remission of sins, to all who should come to Rome, and attend the functions there to be performed, at this fortunate period, which was not to occur again for a hundred years. This drew a great concourse of wealthy sinners to Rome; and the extraordinary circulation of money it occasioned, was strongly felt all over the Pope’s dominions. Clement the Sixth, regretting that these advantages should occur so seldom, abridged the period, and declared there would be a jubilee every fifty years; the second was accordingly celebrated in the year 1350. Sixtus the Fifth, imagining that the interval was still too long, once more retrenched the half; and ever since there has been a jubilee every twenty-fifth year[2]. It is not likely that any future Pope will think of shortening this period; if any alteration were again to take place, it most probably would be, to restore the ancient period of fifty or a hundred years; for, instead of the wealthy pilgrims who flocked to Rome from every quarter of Christendom, ninety-nine in a hundred of those who come now, are supported by alms during their journey, or are barely able to defray their own expences by the strictest œconomy; and his Holiness is supposed at present to derive no other advantage from the uncommon fatigue he is obliged to go through on the jubilee year, except the satisfaction he feels, in reflecting on the benefit his labours confer on the souls of the beggars, and other travellers, who resort from all corners of Italy to Rome, on this blessed occasion. The States which border on the Pope’s dominions, suffer many temporal inconveniencies from the zeal of the peasants and manufacturers, the greater part of whom still make a point of visiting St. Peter’s on the jubilee year; the loss sustained by the countries which such emigrants abandon, is not balanced by any advantage transferred to that to which they resort; the good arising on the whole, being entirely of a spiritual nature. By far the greater number of pilgrims come from the kingdom of Naples, whose inhabitants are said to be of a very devout and very amorous disposition. The first prompts them to go to Rome in search of that absolution which the second renders necessary; and on the year of jubilee, when indulgences are to be had at an easier rate than at any other time, those who can afford it generally carry away such a stock, as not only is sufficient to clear old scores, but will also serve as an indemnifying fund for future transgressions.

There is one door into the church of St. Peter’s, which is called the Holy Door. This is always walled up, except on this distinguished year; and even then no person is permitted to enter by it, but in the humblest posture. The pilgrims, and many others, prefer crawling into the church upon their knees, by this door; to walking in, the usual way, by any other. I was present at the shutting up of this Holy Door. The Pope being seated on a raised seat, or kind of throne, surrounded by Cardinals and other ecclesiastics, an anthem was sung, accompanied by all sorts of musical instruments. During the performance, his Holiness descended from the throne, with a golden trowel in his hand, placed the first brick, and applied some mortar; he then returned to his seat, and the door was instantly built up by more expert, though less hallowed, workmen; and will remain as it is now, till the beginning of the nineteenth century, when it will be again opened, by the Pope then in being, with the same solemnity that it has been now shut. Though his Holiness places but a single brick, yet it is very remarkable that this never fails to communicate its influence, in such a rapid and powerful manner, that, within about an hour, or at most an hour and a half, all the other bricks, which form the wall of the Holy Door, acquire an equal degree of sanctity with that placed by the Pope’s own hands. The common people and pilgrims are well acquainted with this wonderful effect. At the beginning of this Jubilee-year, when the late wall was thrown down, men, women, and children scrambled and fought for the fragments of the bricks and mortar, with the same eagerness which less enlightened mobs display, on days of public rejoicing, when handfuls of money are thrown among them. I have been often assured that those pieces of brick, besides their sanctity, have also the virtue of curing many of the most obstinate diseases: and, if newspapers were permitted at Rome, there is not the least reason to doubt, that those cures would be attested publicly by the patients, in a manner as satisfactory and convincing as are the cures performed daily by the pills, powders, drops, and balsams advertised in the London newspapers. After the shutting of the Holy Door, mass was celebrated at midnight; and the ceremony was attended by vast multitudes of people. For my own part, I suspended my curiosity till next day, which was Christmas-day, when I returned again to St. Peter’s church, and saw the Pope perform mass on that solemn occasion. His Holiness went through all the evolutions of the ceremony with an address and flexibility of body, which are rarely to be found in those who wear the tiara; who are, generally speaking, men bowing under the load of years and infirmities. His present Holiness has hitherto suffered from neither. His features are regular, and he has a fine countenance; his person is straight, and his movements graceful. His leg and foot are remarkably well made, and always ornamented with silk stockings, and red slippers, of the most delicate construction. Notwithstanding that the papal uniforms are by no means calculated to set off the person to the greatest advantage, yet the peculiar neatness with which they are put on, and the nice adjustment of their most minute parts, sufficiently prove that his present Holiness is not insensible of the charms of his person, or unsolicitous about his external ornaments. Though verging towards the winter of life, his cheeks still glow with autumnal roses, which, at a little distance, appear as blooming as those of the spring. If he himself were less clear-sighted than he seems to be, to the beauties of his face and person, he could not also be deaf to the voices of the women, who break out into exclamations, in praise of both, as often as he appears in public. On a public occasion, lately, as he was carried through a particular street, a young woman at a window exclaimed, “Quanto e bello! O quanto e bello!” and was immediately answered by a zealous old lady at the window opposite, who, folding her hands in each other, and raising her eyes to heaven, cried out, with a mixture of love for his person, and veneration for his sacred office, “Tanto e bello, quanto e santo!” When we know that such a quantity of incense is daily burnt under his sacred nostrils, we ought not to be astonished, though we should find his brain, on some occasions, a little intoxicated.

Vanity is a very comfortable failing; and has such an universal power over mankind, that not only the gay blossoms of youth, but even the shrivelled bosom of age, and the contracted heart of bigotry, open, expand, and display strong marks of sensibility under its influence.

After mass, the Pope gave the benediction to the people assembled in the Grand Court, before the church of St. Peter’s. It was a remarkably fine day; an immense multitude filled that spacious and magnificent area; the horse and foot guards were drawn up in their most showy uniform. The Pope, seated in an open, portable chair, in all the splendour which his wardrobe could give, with the tiara on his head, was carried out of a large window, which opens on a balcony in the front of St. Peter’s. The silk hangings and gold trappings with which the chair was embellished, concealed the men who carried it; so that to those who viewed him from the area below, his Holiness seemed to sail forward, from the window self-balanced in the air, like a celestial being. The instant he appeared, the music struck up, the bells rung from every church, and the cannon thundered from the castle of St. Angelo in repeated peals. During the intervals, the church of St. Peter’s, the palace of the Vatican, and the banks of the Tiber, re-echoed the acclamations of the populace. At length his Holiness arose from his seat, and an immediate and awful silence ensued. The multitude fell upon their knees, with their hands and eyes raised towards his Holiness, as to a benign Deity. After a solemn pause, he pronounced the benediction, with great fervour; elevating his outstretched arms as high as he could; then closing them together, and bringing them back to his breast with a slow motion, as if he had got hold of the blessing, and was drawing it gently from heaven. Finally, he threw his arms open, waving them for some time, as if his intention had been to scatter the benediction with impartiality among the people.

No ceremony can be better calculated for striking the senses, and imposing on the understanding, than this of the Supreme Pontiff giving the blessing from the balcony of St. Peter’s. For my own part, if I had not, in my early youth, received impressions highly unfavourable to the chief actor in this magnificent interlude, I should have been in danger of paying him a degree of respect, very inconsistent with the religion in which I was educated.

[1] The Carmen Seculare of Horace was composed on occasion of those celebrated by Augustus in the year of Rome 736.

[2] To this last abridgement I am indebted for having seen the ceremonies and processions on the termination of this sacred year.

LETTER XLIX.

Rome.

In my last, I informed you of my having been seduced almost into idolatry, by the influence of example, and the pomp which surrounded the idol. I must now confess that I have actually bowed the knee to Baal, from mere wantonness. We are told that, to draw near to that Being, who ought to be the only object of worship, with our lips, while our hearts are far from him, is a mockery. Such daring and absurd hypocrisy I shall always avoid: but to have drawn near to him, who ought not to be an object of worship, with the lips only, while the heart continued at a distance, I hope will be considered as no more than a venial transgression. In short, I trust, that it will not be looked on as a mortal sin in Protestants to have kissed the Pope’s toe. If it should, some of your friends are in a deplorable way, as you shall hear.—It is usual for strangers to be presented to his Holiness, before they leave Rome. The D—— of H——, Mr. K——, and myself, have all been at the Vatican together, upon that important business. Your young acquaintance Jack, who, having now got a commission in the army, considers himself no longer as a boy, desired to accompany us. We went under the auspices of a certain ecclesiastic, who usually attends the English on such occasions.

He very naturally concluded, that it would be most agreeable to us to have the circumstance of kissing the slipper dispensed with. Having had some conversation, therefore, with his Holiness, in his own apartment, while we remained in another room, previous to our introduction; he afterwards returned, and informed us, that the Pontiff, indulgent to the prejudices of the British nation, did not insist on that part of the ceremonial; and therefore a very low bow, on our being presented, was all that would be required of us.

A bow! cried the D—— of H——; I should not have given myself any trouble about the matter, had I suspected that all was to end in a bow. I look on kissing the toe as the only amusing circumstance of the whole; if that is to be omitted, I will not be introduced at all. For if the most ludicrous part is left out, who would wait for the rest of a farce?

This was a thunderstroke to our negociator, who expected thanks, at least, for the honourable terms he had obtained; but who, on the contrary, found himself in the same disagreeable predicament with other negociators, who have met with abuse and reproach from their countrymen, on account of treaties for which they expected universal applause.

The D—— of H—— knew nothing of the treaty which our introducer had just concluded; otherwise he would certainly have prevented the negociation. As I perceived, however, that our ambassador was mortified with the thoughts that all his labour should prove abortive, I said, that, although he had prevailed with his Holiness to wave that part of the ceremonial, which his Grace thought so entertaining, yet it would unquestionably be still more agreeable to him that the whole should be performed to its utmost extent: this new arrangement, therefore, needed not be an obstruction to our being presented.

The countenance of our Conductor brightened up at this proposal. He immediately ushered us into the presence of the Supreme Pontiff. We all bowed to the ground; the supplest of the company had the happiness to touch the sacred slipper with their lips, and the least agile were within a few inches of that honour. As this was more than had been bargained for, his Holiness seemed agreeably surprised; raised the D—— with a smiling countenance, and conversed with him in an obliging manner, asking the common questions, How long he had been in Italy? Whether he found Rome agreeable? When he intended to set out for Naples?—He said something of the same kind to each of the company; and, after about a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes, we took our leave.

Next day, his Holiness sent his compliments to the D——, with a present of two medals, one of gold, and the other of silver; on both of which the head of the Pontiff is very accurately engraved.

The manner in which the generality of sovereign princes pass their time, is as far from being amusing or agreeable, as one can possibly imagine. Slaves to the tiresome routine of etiquette; martyrs to the oppressive fatigue of pomp; constrained to walk every levee-day around the same dull circle, to gratify the vanity of fifty or a hundred people, by whispering a something or a nothing into the ears of each; obliged to wear a smiling countenance, even when the heart is oppressed with sadness; besieged by the craving faces of those, who are more displeased at what is withheld, than grateful for the favours they have received; surrounded, as he constantly is, by adepts in the art of simulation, all professing the highest possible regard; how shall the puzzled monarch distinguish real from assumed attachment? and what a risk does he run, of placing his confidence where he ought to have directed his indignation! And, to all these inconveniencies, when we add this, that he is precluded from those delightful sensations which spring from disinterested friendship, sweet equality, and the gay, careless enjoyments of social life, we must acknowledge, that all that is brilliant in the condition of a sovereign, is not sufficient to compensate for such restraints, such dangers, and such deprivations.

So far indeed are we from considering that envied condition as enviable, that great part of mankind are more apt to think it insupportable; and are surprised to find, that those unhappy men, whom fate has condemned to suffer the pains of royalty for life, are able to wait with patience for the natural period of their days. For, strange as it may appear, history does not furnish us with an instance, not even in Great Britain itself, of a king, who hanged, or drowned, or put himself to death in any other violent manner, from mere tædium, as other mortals, disgusted with life, are apt to do. I was at a loss to account for such an extraordinary fact, till I recollected that, however void of resources and activity the minds of monarchs may be, they are seldom allowed to rest in repose. The storms to which people in their lofty situation are exposed, occasion such agitations as prevent the stagnating slime of tædium from gathering on their minds. That kings do not commit suicide, therefore, affords only a very slender presumption of the happiness of their condition: although it is a strong proof, that all the hurricanes of life are not so insupportable to the human mind, as that insipid, fearless, hopeless calm, which envelopes men who are devoid of mental enjoyments, and whose senses are palled with satiety. If there is any truth in the above representation of the regal condition, would not you imagine that of all others it would be the most shunned? Would not you imagine that every human being would shrink from it, as from certain misery; and that at least every wise man would say, with the Poet,

I envy none their pageantry and show,

I envy none the gilding of their woe?

Not only every wise man, but every foolish man, will adopt the sentiment, and act accordingly; provided his rank in life removes him from the possibility of ever attaining the objects in question. For what is situated beyond the sphere of our hopes, very seldom excites our desires; but bring the powerful magnets a little nearer, and they attract the human passions with a force which reason and philosophy cannot controul. Placed within their reach, the wise and the foolish grasp with equal eagerness at crowns and sceptres, in spite of all the thorns with which they are surrounded. Their alluring magic seems to have the power of changing the very characters and natures of men. In pursuit of them, the indolent have been excited to the most active exertions, the voluptuous have renounced their darling pleasures; and even those who have long walked in the direct road of integrity, have deviated into all the crooked paths of villany and fraud.

There are passions, whose indulgence is so exceedingly flattering to the natural vanity of men, that they will gratify them, though persuaded that the gratification will be attended by disappointment and misery. The love of power and sovereignty is of this class. It has been a general belief, ever since the kingly office was established among men, that cares and anxiety were the constant attendants of royalty. Yet this general conviction never made a single person decline an opportunity of embarking on this sea of troubles. Every new adventurer flatters himself that he shall be guided by some happy star undiscovered by former navigators; and those who, after trial, have relinquished the voyage—Charles, Christina, Amadeus, and others—when they had quitted the helm, and were safely arrived in port, are said to have languished, all the rest of their lives, for that situation which their own experience taught them was fraught with misery.

Henry the Fourth of England did not arrive at the throne by the natural and direct road. Shakespear puts the following Address to Sleep, into the mouth of this monarch:

——O Sleep! O gentle Sleep!

Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,

That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down,

And steep my senses in forgetfulness?

Why rather, Sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,

Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,

And hush’d with busy night-flies to thy slumber;

Than in the perfum’d chambers of the Great,

Under the canopies of costly state

And lull’d with sounds of sweetest melody?

O thou dull God! why ly’st thou with the vile

In loathsome beds; and leav’st the kingly couch?

A watch-case, or a common ’larum bell?

Wilt thou, upon the high and giddy mast,

Seal up the ship-boy’s eyes, and rock his brains

In cradle of the rude imperious surge;

And in the visitation of the winds,——

Who take the ruffian billows by the top,

Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them

With deaf’ning clamours in the slipp’ry shrouds,——

Canst thou, O partial Sleep! give thy repose

To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude;

And, in the calmest and most stillest night,

With all appliances and means to boot,

Deny it to a King?——

However eager and impatient this Prince may have formerly been to obtain the crown, you would conclude that he was quite cloyed by possession at the time he made this speech; and therefore, at first sight, you would not expect that he should afterwards display any excessive attachment to what gives him so much uneasiness. But Shakespear, who knew the secret wishes, perverse desires, and strange inconsistencies of the human heart, better than man ever knew them, makes this very Henry so tenaciously fond of that which he himself considered as the cause of all his inquietude, that he cannot bear to have the crown one moment out of his sight, but orders it to be placed on his pillow when he lies on his death-bed.

Of all diadems, the Tiara, in my opinion, has the fewest charms; and nothing can afford a stronger proof of the strength and perseverance of man’s passion for sovereign power, than our knowledge, that even this ecclesiastical crown is sought after with as much eagerness, perhaps with more, than any other crown in the world, although the candidates are generally in the decline of life, and all of a profession which avows the most perfect contempt of worldly grandeur. This appears the more wonderful when we reflect, that, over and above those sources of weariness and vexation, which the Pope has in common with other sovereigns, he has some which are peculiar to himself.—The tiresome religious functions which he must perform, the ungenial solitude of his meals, the exclusion of the company and conversation of women, restriction from the tenderest and most delightful connexions in life, from the endearments of a parent, and the open acknowledgment of his own children; his mind oppressed with the gloomy reflection, that the man for whom he has the least regard, perhaps his greatest enemy, may be his immediate successor; to which is added, the pain of seeing his influence, both spiritual and temporal, declining every day; and the mortification of knowing, that all his ancient lofty pretensions are laughed at by one half of the Roman Catholics, all the Protestants, and totally disregarded by the rest of mankind. I know of nothing which can be put in the other scale to balance all those peculiar disadvantages which his Holiness labours under, unless it is the singular felicity which he lawfully may, and no doubt does enjoy, in the contemplation of his own infallibility.

LETTER L.

Rome.

In their external deportment, the Italians have a grave solemnity of manner, which is sometimes thought to arise from a natural gloominess of disposition. The French, above all other nations, are apt to impute to melancholy, the sedate serious air which accompanies reflection.

Though in the pulpit, on the theatre, and even in common conversation, the Italians make use of a great deal of action; yet Italian vivacity is different from French; the former proceeds from sensibility, the latter from animal spirits.

The inhabitants of this country have not the brisk look, and elastic trip, which is universal in France; they move rather with a flow composed pace: their spines never having been forced into a straight line, retain the natural bend; and the people of the most finished fashion, as well as the neglected vulgar, seem to prefer the unconstrained attitude of the Antinous, and other antique statues, to the artificial graces of a French dancing-master, or the erect strut of a German soldier. I imagine I perceive a great resemblance between many of the living countenances I see daily, and the features of the ancient busts and statues; which leads me to believe, that there are a greater number of the genuine descendants of the old Romans in Italy, than is generally imagined.

I am often struck with the fine character of countenance to be seen in the streets of Rome. I never saw features more expressive of reflection, sense, and genius; in the very lowest ranks there are countenances which announce minds fit for the highest and most important situations; and we cannot help regretting, that those to whom they belong, have not received an education adequate to the natural abilities we are convinced they possess, and placed where these abilities could be brought into action.

Of all the countries in Europe, Switzerland is that in which the beauties of nature appear in the greatest variety of forms, and on the most magnificent scale; in that country, therefore, the young landscape painter has the best chance of seizing the most sublime ideas: but Italy is the best school for the history painter, not only on account of its being enriched with the works of the greatest masters, and the noblest models of antique sculpture; but also on account of the fine expressive style of the Italian countenance. Here you have few or none of those fair, fat, glistening, unmeaning faces, so common in the more northern parts of Europe. I happened once to sit by a foreigner of my acquaintance at the Opera in the Hay-market, when a certain Nobleman, who at that time was a good deal talked of, entered. I whispered him—“That is Lord ——.” “Not surely the famous Lord ——,” said he. “Yes,” said I, “the very same.” “It must be acknowledged then,” continued he, “that the noble Earl does infinite honour to those who have had the care of his education.” “How so?” rejoined I. “Because,” replied the foreigner, “a countenance so completely vacant, strongly indicates a deficiency of natural abilities; the respectable figure he makes in the senate, I therefore presume must be entirely owing to instruction.”

Strangers, on their arrival at Rome, form no high idea of the beauty of the Roman women, from the specimens they see in the fashionable circles to which they are first introduced. There are some exceptions; but in general it must be acknowledged, that the present race of women of high rank, are more distinguished by their other ornaments, than by their beauty. Among the citizens, however, and in the lower classes, you frequently meet with the most beautiful countenances. For a brilliant red and white, and all the charms of complexion, no women are equal to the English. If a hundred, or any greater number, of English women were taken at random, and compared with the same number of the wives and daughters of the citizens of Rome, I am convinced, that ninety of the English would be found handsomer than ninety of the Romans; but the probability is, that two or three in the hundred Italians, would have finer countenances than any of the English. English beauty is more remarkable in the country, than in towns; the peasantry of no country in Europe can stand a comparison, in point of looks, with those of England. That race of people have the conveniencies of life in no other country in such perfection; they are no where so well fed, so well defended from the injuries of the seasons; and no where else do they keep themselves so perfectly clean, and free from all the vilifying effects of dirt. The English country girls, taken collectively, are, unquestionably, the handsomest in the world. The female peasants of most other countries, indeed, are so hard worked, so ill fed, so much tanned by the sun, and so dirty, that it is difficult to know whether they have any beauty or not. Yet I have been informed, by some Amateurs, since I came here, that, in spite of all these disadvantages, they sometimes find, among the Italian peasantry, countenances highly interesting, and which they prefer to all the cherry cheeks of Lancashire.

Beauty, doubtless, is infinitely varied; and happily for mankind, their tastes and opinions, on the subject, are equally various. Notwithstanding this variety, however, a style of face, in some measure peculiar to its own inhabitants, has been found to prevail in each different nation of Europe. This peculiar countenance is again greatly varied, and marked with every degree of discrimination between the extremes of beauty and ugliness. I will give you a sketch of the general style of the most beautiful female heads in this country, from which you may judge whether they are to your taste or not.

A great profusion of dark hair, which seems to encroach upon the forehead, rendering it short and narrow; the nose generally either aquiline, or continued in a straight line from the lower part of the brow; a full and short upper lip; by the way, nothing has a worse effect on a countenance, than a large interval between the nose and mouth; the eyes are large, and of a sparkling black. The black eye certainly labours under one disadvantage, which is, that, from the iris and pupil being of the same colour, the contraction and dilatation of the latter is not seen, by which the eye is abridged of half its powers. Yet the Italian eye is wonderfully expressive; some people think it says too much. The complexion, for the most part, is of a clear brown, sometimes fair, but very seldom florid, or of that bright fairness which is common in England and Saxony. It must be owned, that those features which have a fine expression of sentiment and meaning in youth, are more apt, than less expressive faces, to become soon strong and masculine. In England and Germany, the women, a little advanced in life, retain the appearance of youth longer than in Italy.

With countenances so favourable for the pencil, you will naturally imagine, that portrait painting is in the highest perfection here. The reverse, however, of this is true; that branch of the art is in the lowest estimation all over Italy. In palaces, the best furnished with pictures, you seldom see a portrait of the proprietor, or any of his family. A quarter length of the reigning Pope is sometimes the only portrait, of a living person, to be seen in the whole palace. Several of the Roman Princes affect to have a room of state, or audience chamber, in which is a raised seat like a throne, with a canopy over it. In those rooms the effigies of the Pontiffs are hung; they are the work of very inferior artists, and seldom cost above three or four sequins. As soon as his Holiness departs this life, the portrait disappears, and the face of his successor is in due time hung up in its stead. This, you will say, is treating their old sovereign a little unkindly, and paying no very expensive compliment to the new; it is not so œconomical, however, as what was practised by a certain person. I shall not inform you whether he was a Frenchman or an Englishman, but he certainly was a courtier, and professed the highest possible regard for all living monarchs; but considered them as no better than any other piece of clay when dead. He had a full length picture of his own Sovereign in the principal room of his house; on his majesty’s death, to save himself the expence of a fresh body, and a new suit of ermine, he employed a painter to brush out the face and periwig, and clap the new King’s head on his grandfather’s shoulders; which, he declared, were in the most perfect preservation, and fully able to wear out three or four such heads as painters usually give in these degenerate days.

The Italians, in general, very seldom take the trouble of sitting for their pictures. They consider a portrait as a piece of painting, which engages the admiration of nobody but the person it represents, or the painter who drew it. Those who are in circumstances to pay the best artists, generally employ them in some subject more universally interesting, than the representation of human countenances staring out of a piece of canvas.

Pompeio Battoni is the best Italian painter now at Rome. His taste and genius led him to history painting, and his reputation was originally acquired in that line; but by far the greater part of his fortune, whatever that may be, has flowed through a different channel. His chief employment, for many years past, has been painting the portraits of the young English, and other strangers of fortune, who visit Rome. There are artists in England, superior in this, and every other branch of painting, to Battoni. They, like him, are seduced from the free walks of genius, and chained, by interest, to the servile drudgery of copying faces. Beauty is worthy of the most delicate pencil; but, gracious heaven! why should every periwig-pated fellow, without countenance or character, insist on seeing his chubby cheeks on canvas?

“Could you not give a little expression to that countenance?” said a gentleman to an eminent English painter, who showed him a portrait which he had just finished. “I made that attempt already,” replied the painter; “but what the picture gained in expression, it lost in likeness; and by the time there was a little common sense in the countenance, nobody knew for whom it was intended. I was obliged, therefore, to make an entire new picture, with the face perfectly like, and perfectly meaningless, as you see it.”

Let the colours for ever remain, which record the last fainting efforts of Chatham; the expiring triumph of Wolf; or the indecision of Garrick, equally allured by the two contending Muses! But let them perish and fly from the canvas, which blind self-love spreads for insipidity and ugliness! Why should posterity know, that the first genius of the age, and those whose pencils were formed to speak to the heart, and delineate beauteous Nature, were chiefly employed in copying faces? and many of them, faces that imitate humanity so abominably, that, to use Hamlet’s expression, they seem not the genuine work of Nature, but of Nature’s journeymen.

To this ridiculous self-love, equally prevalent among the great vulgar and small, some of the best painters in France, Germany, and Great Britain, are obliged for their subsistence. This creates a suspicion, that a taste for the real beauties of painting, is not quite so universal, as a sensibility to their own personal beauties, among the individuals of these countries. And nothing can be a stronger proof of the important light in which men appear in their own eyes, and their small importance in those of others, than the different treatment which the generality of portraits receive, during the life, and after the death, of their constituents. During the first of these periods, they inhabit the finest apartments of the houses to which they belong; they are flattered by the guests, and always viewed with an eye of complacency by the landlord. But, after the commencement of the second, they begin to be neglected; in a short time are ignominiously thrust up to the garret; and, to fill up the measure of their affliction, they finally are thrown out of doors, in the most barbarous manner, without distinction of rank, age, or sex. Those of former times are scattered, like Jews, with their long beards and brown complexions, all over the face of the earth; and, even of the present century, Barons of the most ancient families, armed cap-a-pee, are to be purchased for two or three ducats, in most of the towns of Germany. French Marquises, in full suits of embroidered velvet, may be had at Paris still cheaper; and many worshipful citizens of London are to be seen dangling on the walls of an auction-room, when they are scarce cold in their graves.

LETTER LI.

Rome.

There are no theatrical entertainments permitted in this city, except during the Carnival; but they are then attended with a degree of ardour unknown in capitals whose inhabitants are under no such restraint. Every kind of amusement, indeed, in this gay season, is followed with the greatest eagerness. The natural gravity of the Roman citizens is changed into a mirthful vivacity; and the serious, sombre city of Rome exceeds Paris itself in sprightliness and gaiety. This spirit seems gradually to augment, from its commencement; and is at its height in the last week of the six which comprehend the Carnival. The citizens then appear in the streets, masked, in the characters of Harlequins, Pantaloons, Punchinellos, and all the fantastic variety of a masquerade. This humour spreads to men, women, and children; descends to the lowest ranks, and becomes universal. Even those who put on no mask, and have no desire to remain unknown, reject their usual clothes, and assume some whimsical dress. The coachmen, who are placed in a more conspicuous point of view than others of the same rank in life, and who are perfectly known by the carriages they drive, generally affect some ridiculous disguise: Many of them chuse a woman’s dress, and have their faces painted, and adorned with patches. However dull these fellows may be, when in breeches, they are, in petticoats, considered as the pleasantest men in the world; and excite much laughter in every street in which they appear. I observed to an Italian of my acquaintance, that, considering the staleness of the joke, I was surprised at the mirth it seemed to raise. “When a whole city,” answered he, “are resolved to be merry for a week together, it is exceedingly convenient to have a few established jokes ready made; the young laugh at the novelty, and the old from prescription. This metamorphosis of the coachmen is certainly not the most refined kind of wit; however, it is more harmless than the burning of heretics, which formerly was a great source of amusement to our populace.”

The street, called the Corso, is the great scene of these masquerades. It is crowded every night with people of all conditions: Those of rank come in coaches, or in open carriages, made on purpose. A kind of civil war is carried on by the company, as they pass each other. The greatest mark of attention you can shew your friends and acquaintance, is, to throw a handful of little white balls, resembling sugar-plums, full in their faces; and, if they are not deficient in politeness, they will instantly return you the compliment. All who wish to make a figure in the Corso, come well supplied in this kind of ammunition.

Sometimes two or three open carriages, on a side, with five or six persons of both sexes in each, draw up opposite to each other, and fight a pitched battle. On these occasions, the combatants are provided with whole bags full of the small shot above mentioned, which they throw at each other, with much apparent fury, till their ammunition is exhausted, and the field of battle is as white as snow.

The peculiar dresses of every nation of the globe, and of every profession, besides all the fantastic characters usual at masquerades, are to be seen on the Corso. Those of Harlequin and Pantaloon are in great vogue among the men. The citizens wives and daughters generally affect the pomp of women of quality; while their brothers, or other relations, appear as train-bearers and attendants. In general, they seem to delight in characters the most remote from their own. Young people assume the long beard, tottering step, and other concomitants of old age; the aged chuse the bib and rattle of childhood; and the women of quality, and women of the town, appear in the characters of country maidens, nuns, and vestal virgins. All endeavour to support the assumed characters, to the best of their ability; but none, in my opinion, succeed so well as those who represent children.

Towards the dusk of the evening, the horse-race takes place. As soon as this is announced, the coaches, cabriolets, triumphal cars, and carriages of every kind, are drawn up, and line the street; leaving a space in the middle for the racers to pass. These are five or six horses, trained on purpose for this diversion; they are drawn up a-breast in the Piazza del Popolo, exactly where the Corso begins. Certain balls, with little sharp spikes, are hung along their sides, which serve to spur them on. As soon as they begin to run, those animals, by their impatience to be gone, shew that they understand what is required of them, and that they take as much pleasure as the spectators in the sport. A broad piece of canvas, spread across the entrance of the street, prevents them from starting too soon: the dropping that canvas is the signal for the race to begin. The horses fly off together, and, without riders, exert themselves to the utmost; impelled by emulation, the shouts of the populace, and the spurs above mentioned. They run the whole length of the Corso; and the proprietor of the victor is rewarded by a certain quantity of fine scarlet or purple cloth, which is always furnished by the Jews.

This diversion, such as it is, seems highly entertaining to the Roman populace; though it appears a mighty foolish business in the eyes of Englishmen. An acquaintance of mine, who had entirely ruined a fine fortune at Newmarket, told me, that Italian horse-races were the most absurd things in the world; that there were not a hundred guineas lost or won during a whole Carnival; and nothing could be a greater proof of the folly of the people, than their spending their time in such a silly manner.

Masking and horse-races are confined to the last eight days; but there are theatrical entertainments, of various kinds, during the whole six weeks of the Carnival. The Serious Opera is most frequented by people of fashion, who generally take boxes for the whole season. The opera, with which this theatre opened, was received with the highest applause, though the music only was new. The Italians do not think it always necessary to compose new words for what is called a new opera; they often satisfy themselves with new music to the affecting dramas of Metastasio. The audience here seem to lend a more profound and continued attention to the music, than at Venice. This is probably owing to the entertainment being a greater rarity in the one city than in the other; for I could perceive that the people of fashion, who came every night, began, after the opera had been repeated several nights, to abate in their attention, to receive visitors in their boxes, and to listen only when some favourite airs were singing: whereas the audience in the pit uniformly preserve the most perfect silence, which is only interrupted by gentle murmurs of pleasure from a few individuals, or an universal burst of applause from the whole assembly. I never saw such genuine marks of satisfaction displayed by any assembly, on any occasion whatever. The sensibility of some of the audience gave me an idea of the power of sounds, which the dulness of my own auditory nerves could never have conveyed to my mind. At certain airs, silent enjoyment was expressed in every countenance; at others, the hands were clasped together, the eyes half shut, and the breath drawn in, with a prolonged sigh, as if the soul was expiring in a torrent of delight. One young woman, in the pit, called out, “O Dio, dove sono! che piacer via caccia l’alma?”

On the first night of the opera, after one of these favourite airs, an universal shout of applause took place, intermingled with demands that the composer of the music should appear. Il Maestro! il Maestro! resounded from every corner of the house. He was present, and led the band of music; he was obliged to stand upon the bench, where he continued, bowing to the spectators, till they were tired of applauding him. One person, in the middle of the pit, whom I had remarked displaying great signs of satisfaction from the beginning of the performance, cried out, “He deserves to be made chief musician to the Virgin, and to lead a choir of angels!” This expression would be thought strong, in any country; but it has peculiar energy here, where it is a popular opinion, that the Virgin Mary is very fond, and an excellent judge, of music. I received this information on Christmas morning, when I was looking at two poor Calabrian pipers doing their utmost to please her, and the Infant in her arms. They played for a full hour to one of her images which stands at the corner of a street. All the other statues of the Virgin, which are placed in the streets, are serenaded in the same manner every Christmas morning. On my enquiring into the meaning of that ceremony, I was told the above-mentioned circumstance of her character, which, though you may have always thought highly probable, perhaps you never before knew for certain. My informer was a pilgrim, who stood listening with great devotion to the pipers. He told me, at the same time, that the Virgin’s taste was too refined to have much satisfaction in the performance of those poor Calabrians, which was chiefly intended for the Infant; and he desired me to remark, that the tunes were plain, simple, and such as might naturally be supposed agreeable to the ear of a child of his time of life.

Though the serious opera is in highest estimation, and more regularly attended by people of the first fashion; yet the opera buffas, or burlettas, are not entirely neglected, even by them, and are crowded, every night, by the middle and lower classes. Some admired singers have performed there during the Carnival, and the musical composers have rendered them highly pleasing to the general taste.

The serious and burlesque operas prevail infinitely over the other theatrical entertainments at Rome, in spite of the united efforts of Harlequin, Pantaloon, and Punchinello.

The prohibition of female performers renders the amusement of the Roman theatre very insipid, in the opinion of some unrefined Englishmen of your acquaintance who are here. In my own poor opinion, the natural sweetness of the female voice is ill supplied by the artificial trills of wretched castratos; and the aukward agility of robust sinewy fellows dressed in women’s clothes, is a most deplorable substitution for the graceful movements of elegant female dancers. Is not the horrid practice which is encouraged by this manner of supplying the place of female singers, a greater outrage on religion and morality, than can be produced by the evils which their prohibition is intended to prevent? Is it possible to believe, that purity of sentiment will be preserved by producing eunuchs on the stage? I should fear it would have a different effect. At the funeral of Junia, the wife of Cassius, and sister of Brutus, the statues of all the great persons connected with her family by blood or alliance, were carried in procession, except those of her brother and husband. This deficiency struck the people more than any part of the procession, and brought the two illustrious Romans into their minds with more force than if their statues had been carried with the others.—Præfulgebant Cassius atque Brutus, says Tacitus, eo ipso, quod effigies eorum non visebantur.

LETTER LII.

Naples.

I take the first opportunity of informing you of our arrival in this city. Some of the principal objects which occurred on the road, with the sentiments they suggested to my mind, shall form the subject of this letter.

It is almost impossible to go out of the walls of Rome, without being impressed with melancholic ideas. Having left that city by St. John de Lateran’s gate, we soon entered a spacious plain, and drove for several miles in sight of sepulchral monuments and the ruins of ancient aqueducts. Sixtus the Fifth repaired one of them, to bring water into that part of Rome where Dioclesian’s baths formerly stood: this water is now called aqua felice, from Felix, the name of that pontiff, while he was only a Cordelier. Having changed horses at the Torre de Mezzo Via, so called from an old tower near the post-house, we proceeded through a silent, deserted, unwholesome country. We scarce met a passenger between Rome and Marino, a little town about twelve miles from the former, which has its name from Caius Marius, who had a villa there; it now belongs to the Colonna family. While fresh horses were harnessing, we visited two churches, to see two pictures which we had heard commended; the subject of one is as disagreeable, as that of the other is difficult to execute. The connoisseur who directed us to these pieces, told me, that the first, the slaying of St. Bartholomew, by Guercino, is in a great style, finely coloured, and the muscles convulsed with pain in the sweetest manner imaginable; he could have gazed at it for ever. “As for the other,” added he “which represents the Trinity, it is natural, well grouped, and easily understood; and that is all that can be said for it.”

From Marino, the road runs for several miles over craggy mountains. In ascending Mons Albanus, we were charmed with a fine view of the country towards the sea; Ostia, Antium, the lake Albano, and the fields adjacent. The form and component parts of this mountain plainly shew, that it has formerly been a volcano. The lake of Nemi, which we left to the right, seems, like that of Albano, to have been formed in the cavity of a crater.

We came next to Veletri, an inconsiderable town, situated on a hill. There is one palace here, with spacious gardens, which, when kept in repair, may have been magnificent. The staircase, they assured us, is still worthy of admiration. The inhabitants of Veletri assert, that Augustus was born there. Suetonius says, he was born at Rome. It is certainly of no importance where he was born. Perhaps it would have been better for Rome, and for the world in general, that he never had been born at all. The Veletrians are so fond of emperors, that they claim a connexion even with Tiberius and Caligula, who had villas in their neighbourhood. The ruins of Otho’s palace are still to be seen about a mile from this city, at a place called Colle Ottone. Of those four emperors, the last-mentioned was by much the best worth the claiming as a countryman. As for Caligula, he was a mischievous madman. Tiberius seems to have been born with wicked dispositions, which he improved by art. Augustus was naturally wicked, and artificially virtuous; and Otho seems to have been exactly the reverse. Though educated in the most vicious of courts, and the favourite and companion of Nero, he still preserved, in some degree, the original excellence of his character; and, at his death, displayed a magnanimity of sentiment, and nobleness of conduct, of which the highly flattered Augustus was never capable. “Alii diutius imperium tenuerint,” says Tacitus; “nemo tam fortiter reliquerit.” Convinced that, if he continued the contest with Vitellius, all the horrors of a civil war would be prolonged, he determined to sacrifice his life to the quiet of his country, and to the safety of his friends[3]. “To involve you in fresh calamities,” said this generous prince to the officers who offered still to support his cause, “is purchasing life at a price beyond what, in my opinion, is its value. Shall Roman armies be led against each other, and the Roman youth be excited to mutual slaughter, on my account? No! for your safety, and to prevent such evils, I die contented. Let me be no impediment to your treating with the enemy; nor do you any longer oppose my fixed resolution. I complain not of my fate, nor do I accuse any body. To arraign the conduct of gods or men, is natural to those only who wish to live.”

Though they are not to be compared in other respects, yet the death of Otho may vie with that of Cato; and is one of the strongest instances to be found in history, that a life of effeminacy and voluptuousness does not always eradicate the seeds of virtue and benevolence.

In the middle of the square of Veletri, is a bronze statue of Urban the Eighth. I think they told us it is the workmanship of Bernini.

Descending from that town by a rough road, bordered by vineyards and fruit-trees, we traversed an unsalubrious plain to Sermonetta; between which, and the post-house, called Casa Nuova, a little to the left of the highway, are some vaults and ruins, not greatly worthy of the notice of the mere antiquarian. Yet passengers of a singular cast of mind, who feel themselves as much interested in the transactions recorded in the New Testament, as men of taste are in paintings or heathen antiquities, stop a little here to contemplate the Tres Tabernæ, which are said to be the three Taverns mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, where the Christian brethren from Rome came to meet St. Paul, when he was on his journey to that city. I have seen, however, some Christian travellers, who, without being connoisseurs, were of opinion, that old ruined houses derived little value from the circumstance above mentioned, and who preferred a good modern inn to all the antiquities, sacred or profane, that they met with on their grand tours. Without presuming to blame any set of men for their particular taste, I may venture to say, that a traveller, who loves always to see a well-peopled and well-cultivated country, who insists on good eating every day, and a neat comfortable bed every night, would judge very wisely in never travelling out of England.—I am certain he ought not to travel between Rome and Naples; for on this road, especially the part which runs through the Ecclesiastical State, the traveller’s chief entertainment must arise from a less substantial foundation; from the ideas formed in the mind, at sight of places celebrated by favourite authors; from a recollection of the important scenes which have been acted there; and even from the thought of treading the same ground, and viewing the same objects, with certain persons who lived there fifteen hundred or two thousand years ago. Strangers, therefore, who come under the first description, whose senses are far more powerful than their fancy, when they are so ill advised as to come so far from home, generally make this journey in very ill humour, fretting at Italian beds, fuming against Italian cooks, and execrating every poor little Italian flea that they meet with on the road. But he who can put up with indifferent fare cheerfully, whose serenity of temper remains unshaken by the assaults of a flea, and who can draw amusement from the stores of memory and imagination, will find the powers of both wonderfully excited during this journey. Sacred history unites with profane, truth conspires with fable, to afford him entertainment, and render every object interesting.

Proxima Circeæ raduntur littora terræ.

Driving along this road, you have a fine view of Monte Circello, and

——the Ææan bay,

Where Circe dwelt, the daughter of the Day;

Goddess and queen, to whom the powers belong

Of dreadful magic and commanding song.

This abode of the enchantress Circe has been generally described as an island; whereas it is, in reality, a promontory, united to the continent by a neck of land. The adventures of Ulysses and his companions at this place, with all the extraordinary things which Homer has recorded of Circe, must serve to amuse you between Casa Nuova and Piperno; the road affords no other.

At Piperno, anciently Privernum, you quit Circe, for Virgil’s Camilla, a lady of a very different character, whose native city this is[4].

Near to Piperno, an abbey, called Fossa Nuova, is situated on the ruins of the little town of Forum Appii, the same of which mention is made in the Acts of the Apostles, and by Horace, in his account of his journey to Brundusium.

——Inde Forum Appi

Differtum nautis, cauponibus atque malignis.

The abbey of Fossa Nuova is said to have made a very valuable acquisition of late, no less than the head of St. Thomas Aquinas. We are told, in the memoirs of that Saint, that he was taken ill as he passed this way, and was carried to this convent, where he died. His body was afterward required by the king of France, and ordered to be carried to Thoulouse; but before the remains of this holy person were removed from the convent, one of the monks, unwilling to allow the whole of such a precious deposite to be carried away, determined to retain the most valuable part, and actually cut off the saint’s head, substituting another in its stead, which was carried to Thoulouse, very nicely stitched to the body of the saint. The monk, who was guilty of this pious fraud, hid the true head in the wall of the convent, and died without revealing the secret to any mortal. From that time the supposititious head remained unsuspected at Thoulouse; but as impostures are generally detected sooner or later, the venerable brethren of Fossa Nuova (this happened much about the time that the Cock-lane ghost made such a noise in London) were disturbed with strange knockings and scratchings at a particular part of the wall.—On this noise being frequently repeated, without any visible agent, and the people of the neighbourhood having been often assembled to hear it, the monks at length agreed to pull down part of the wall at the place where the scratching and knocking were always heard. This was no sooner done, than the true head of St. Thomas Aquinas was found as fresh as the day it was cut off;—on the vessel in which it was contained was the following inscription:

Caput divi Thomæ Aquinatis.

And near it a paper, containing a faithful narrative of the whole transaction, signed by the monk who did the deed.

Some people, not making a proper allowance for the difference between a saint’s head and their own, say, this cannot possibly be the head of Thomas Aquinas, which must have putrified some centuries ago; they say, the paper is written in a character by much too modern; they say, the monks contrived the whole affair, to give an importance to their convent; they say—but what signifies what they say? In this age of incredulity, some people will say any thing. We next came to Terracina, and here I must finish my letter; in my next I shall carry you to Naples.

[3] Hunc animum, hanc virtutem vestram, ultra periculis objicere, nimis grande vitæ meæ pretium puto. An ego tantum Romanæ pubis, tot egregios exercitus, sterni rursus et republicâ eripi patiar? Este superstites, nec diu moremur; ego incolumitatem vestram, vos constantiam meam. De nemine queror, nam incusare deos vel homines, ejus est, qui vivere velit. Tacit. Hist. lib. ii.

[4]

Hos super advenit Volscâ de gente Camilla,

Agmen agens equitum et florentes ære catervas,

Bellatrix: Non illa colo calathisve Minervæ

Fœmineas assueta manus; sed prœlia virgo

Dura pati, cursuque pedum prævertere ventos.

Æneid. lib. vii.

LETTER LIII.

Naples.

Terracina, formerly called Anxur, was the capital of the warlike Volsci[5]. The principal church was originally a temple of Jupiter, who was supposed to have a partiality for this town, and the country around it. Virgil calls him Jupiter Anxurus. Enumerating the troops who came to support the cause of Turnus, he mentions those who plough the Rutulian hills:

Circeumque jugum; queis Jupiter Anxurus arvis

Præsidet, et viridi gaudens Feronia luco:

Qua saturæ jacet atra palus, &c.

Near this place we fell in again with the Appian Way, and beheld, with astonishment, the depth of rock that has here been cut, to render it more convenient for passengers. This famous road is a paved causeway, begun in the year of Rome 441, by Appius Claudius Cæcus the Censor, and carried all the way from Rome to Capua. It would be superfluous to insist on the substantial manner in which it has been originally made, since it still remains in many places. Though travellers are now obliged to make a circuit by Casa Nuova and Piperno, the Via Appia was originally made in a straight line through the Palude Pontine, or Palus Pomptina, as that vast marsh was anciently called: it is the Ater Palus above mentioned, in the lines quoted from Virgil. That part of the Appian road is now quite impassable, from the augmentation of this noxious marsh, whose exhalations are disagreeable to passengers, and near which it is dangerous to sleep a single night.

Keysler and some others say, that Appius made this road at his own expence. I do not know on what authority they make this assertion; but, whatever their authority may be, the thing is incredible. Could a Roman citizen, at a period when the inhabitants of Rome were not rich, bear an expence which we are surprised that even the State itself could support? Though this famous road has received its name from Appius, I can hardly imagine it was completed by him. The distance from Rome to Capua is above one hundred and thirty miles; a prodigious length for such a road as this to have been made, during the short course of one Censorship; for a man could be Censor only once in his life. This was an office of very great dignity; no person could enjoy it till he had previously been Consul. It was originally held for five years; but, a hundred years before the time of Appius, the term was abridged to eighteen months. He, however, who, as Livy tells us, possessed all the pride and obstinacy of his family, refused to quit the Censorship at the end of that period; and, in spite of all the efforts of the Tribunes, continued three years and a half beyond the term to which the office had been restricted by the Æmilian Law. But even five years is a very short time for so great a work; yet this was not the only work he carried on during his Censorship. “Viam munivit,” says the Historian, “et aquam in urbem duxit.” The Appian road was carried on, afterwards, from Capua to Brundusium, and was probably completed so far, in the time of Horace; as appears by this verse, in one of his Epistles addressed to Lollius:

Brundusium Numici melius via ducat, an Appi.

Terracina is the last town of the Ecclesiastical, and Fundi the first of the Neapolitan, dominions. This last town stands on a plain, sheltered by hills, which is seldom the case with Italian towns: it probably derives its name from its situation. There is nothing very attractive in this place, now, more than in Horace’s time; so we left it as willingly as he did:

Fundos Aufidio Lusco Prætore libenter Linquimus.

Continuing our route, partly on the Appian way, we came to Mola di Gaeta, a town built on the ruins of the ancient Formiæ. Horace compliments Ælius Lamia, on his being descended from the first founder of this city:

Auctore ab illo ducis originem,

Qui Formiarum mœnia dicitur,

Princeps.

The same Poet puts the wine, made from the grapes of the Formian hills, on a footing with the Falernian:

——mea nec Falernæ

Temperant vites, neque Formiani

Pocula colles.

Cicero had a villa near this place; and it was on this coast where that great orator was murdered in his litter, as he was endeavouring to make his escape to Greece. The fortress of Gaeta is built on a promontory, about three miles from Mola; but travellers, who have the curiosity to go to the former, generally cross the gulph between the two; and immediately, as the most remarkable thing in the place, they are shewn a great cleft in a rock, and informed that it was miraculously split in this manner at the death of our Saviour. To put this beyond doubt, they shew, at the same time, something like the impression of a man’s hand on the rock, of which the following account is given.—A certain person having been told on what occasion the rent took place, struck the palm of his hand on the marble, declaring he could no more believe their story, than that his hand would leave its stamp on the rock; on which, to the terror and confusion of this infidel, the stone yielded like wax, and the impression remains till this day.

Nothing is so injurious to the cause of truth, as attempts to support it by fiction. Many evidences of the justness of this observation occur in the course of a tour through Italy. That mountains were rent at the death of our Saviour, we know from the New Testament; but, as none of them are there particularized, it is presumptuous in others to imagine they can point out what the Evangelists have thought proper to conceal.

This rock, however, is much resorted to by pilgrims; and the Tartanes, and other vessels, often touch there, that the seamen may be provided with little pieces of marble, which they earnestly request may be taken as near the fissure as possible. These they wear constantly in their pockets, in case of shipwreck, from a persuasion, that they are a more certain preservative from drowning, than a cork jacket. Some of these poor people have the misfortune to be drowned, notwithstanding; but the sacred marble loses none of its reputation on that account. Such accidents are always imputed to the weight of the unfortunate person’s sins, which have sunk him to the bottom, in spite of all the efforts of the marble to keep him above water; and it is allowed on all hands, that a man so oppressed with iniquity, as to be drowned with a piece of this marble in his pocket, would have sunk much sooner, if, instead of that, he had had nothing to keep him up but a cork jacket.

Strangers are next led to the Castle, and are shewn, with some other curiosities, the skeleton of the famous Bourbon, Constable of France, who was killed in the service of the emperor Charles the Fifth, as he scaled the walls of Rome.

It is remarkable that France, a nation which values itself so much on an affectionate attachment to its princes, and places loyalty at the head of the virtues, should have produced, in the course of the two last centuries, so many illustrious rebels: Bourbon, Coligni, Guise, Turenne, and the Condés; all of them were, at some period of their lives, in arms against their sovereign.

That it is the duty of subjects to preserve their allegiance, however unjustly and tyrannically their prince may conduct himself, is one of the most debasing and absurd doctrines that ever was obtruded on the understanding of mankind. When Francis forgot the services which the gallant Bourbon had rendered him at Mirignan; when, by repeated acts of oppression, he forgot the duty of a king; Bourbon spurned at his allegiance, as a subject. The Spanish nobleman, who declared that he would pull down his house, if Bourbon should be allowed to lodge in it, either never had heard of the injurious treatment which that gallant soldier had received, or he betrayed the sentiments of a slave, and meant to insinuate his own implicit loyalty to the Emperor. Mankind in general have a partiality for princes. The senses are imposed on by the splendour which surrounds them; and the respect due to the office of a king, is naturally converted into an affection for his person: there must therefore be something highly unpopular in the character of the monarch, and highly oppressive in the measures of government, before people can be excited to rebellion. Subjects seldom rise through a desire of attacking, but rather from an impatience of suffering. Where men are under the yoke of feudal lords, who can force them to fight in any cause, it may be otherwise; but when general discontent pervades a free people, and when, in consequence of this, they take arms against their prince, they must have justice on their side. The highest compliment which subjects can pay, and the best service they can render, to a good prince, is, to behave in such a manner, as to convince him that they would rebel against a bad one.

From Mola we were conducted by the Appian way, over the fertile fields washed by the silent Liris:

——Rura quæ Liris quieta

Mordet aqua, taciturnus amnis.

This river bounded Latium. On its banks are still seen some ruins of the ancient Minturnæ. After Manlius Torquatus, in what some will call a phrenzy of virtue, had offered up his son as a sacrifice to military discipline; and his colleague Decius, immediately after, devoted himself in a battle against the Latins; the broken army of that people assembled at Minturnæ, and were a second time defeated by Manlius, and their lands divided by the senate among the citizens of Rome. The first battle was fought near Mount Vesuvius, and the second between Sinuessa and Minturnæ. In the morasses of Minturnæ, Caius Marius, in the seventieth year of his age, was taken, and brought a prisoner to that city, whose magistrates ordered an assassin to put him to death, whom the fierce veteran disarmed with a look. What mortal, says Juvenal, would have been thought more fortunate than Marius, had he breathed out his aspiring soul, surrounded by the captives he had made, his victorious troops, and all the pomp of war, as he descended from his Teutonic chariot, after his triumph over the Cimbri.

——Quid ilio cive tulisset

Natura in terris, quid Roma beatius unquam?

Si circumducto captivorum agmine, et omni

Bellorum pompâ, animam exhalâsset opimam,

Cum de Teutonico vellet descendere curru.

Several writers, in their remarks on Italy, observe, that it was on the banks of the Liris that Pyrrhus gained his dear-bought victory over the Romans. They have fallen into this mistake, by confounding the Liris with the Siris, a river in Magna Græcia, near Heraclea; in the neighbourhood of which Pyrrhus defeated the Romans by the means of his elephants.

Leaving Garilagno, which is the modern name of the Liris, we pass the rising ground where the ancient Sinuessa was situated; the city where Horace met his friends Plotius, Varius, and Virgil. The friendly glow with which this admirable painter has adorned their characters, conveys an amiable idea of his own.

——Animæ, quales neque candidiores

Terra tulit; neque queis me sit devinctior alter.

O, qui complexus et gaudia quanta fuerunt!

Nil ego contulerim jucundo sanus amico.

Do you not share in the happiness of such a company? And are you not rejoiced that they happened to meet near the Ager Falernus, where they could have the best Massic and Falernian wines?

New Capua, through which the road from Rome to Naples lies, is a small town of no importance. The ancient city of that name was situated two miles distant from the new. The ruins of the amphitheatre, which are still to be seen, give some idea of the ancient grandeur of that city. Before the amphitheatre of Vespasian was built, there was none in Rome of equal size with this. Old Capua is said, at one period, to have vied in magnificence with Rome and Carthage:

Altera dicta olim Carthago, atque altera Roma,

Nunc prostrata jacet, proprioque sepulta sepulchro.

The army of Hannibal is said to have been conquered by the luxuries of this place; but the judicious Montesquieu observes, that the Carthaginian army, enriched by so many victories, would have found a Capua wherever they had gone. Whether Capua brought on the ruin of Hannibal or not, there can be no doubt that Hannibal occasioned the ruin of Capua.

Having broken their connection with Rome, and formed an alliance with her enemy, the Capuans were, in the course of the war, besieged by the Consuls Fulvius and Appius. Hannibal exerted all his vast abilities for the relief of his new friends; but was not able to bring the Roman army to a battle, or to raise the siege. When every other expedient had failed, he marched directly to Rome, in the hopes of drawing the Roman army after him to defend the capital. A number of alarming events conspired, at this time, to depress the spirit of the Roman Senate. The Proconsul Sempronius Gracchus, who commanded an army in Lucania, had fallen into an ambuscade, and was massacred. The two gallant brothers, the Scipios, who were their generals in Spain, had been defeated and killed; and Hannibal was at their gates. How did the Senate behave at this crisis? Did they spend their time in idle harangues and mutual accusations? Did they throw out reflections against those senators who were against entering into a treaty with the Carthaginians till their army should be withdrawn from Italy? Did they recall their army from Capua? Did they shew any mark of despondence? In this slate of affairs, the Roman Senate sent orders to Appius to continue the siege of Capua; they ordered a reinforcement to their army in Spain; the troops for that service marching out at one gate of Rome, while Hannibal threatened to enter by storm at another. How could such a people fail to become the masters of the world!

The country between Capua and Naples displays a varied scene of lavish fertility, and with great propriety might be named Campania Felix, if the richest and most generous soil, with the mildest and most agreeable climate, were sufficient to render the inhabitants of a country happy.

[5] Anxur fuit quæ nunc Terracinæ sunt; urbs prona in paludes. Tit. Liv. lib. iv.

LETTER LIV.

Naples.

The day after our arrival at this place, we waited on Sir W—— H——, his Majesty’s minister at this court. He had gone early that morning on a hunting party with the King; but the Portuguese ambassador, at L——y H——’s desire, undertook to accompany the D—— on the usual round of visits; Sir W—— was not expected to return for several days, and the laws of etiquette do not allow that important tour to be delayed so long. As we have been continually driving about ever since our arrival, I am already pretty well acquainted with this town, and the environs.

Naples was founded by the Greeks. The charming situation they have chosen, is one proof among thousands, of the fine taste of that ingenious people.

The bay is about thirty miles in circumference, and twelve in diameter; it has been named Crater, from its supposed resemblance to a bowl. This bowl is ornamented with the most beautiful foliage, with vines; with olive, mulberry, and orange trees; with hills, dales, towns, villas, and villages.

At the bottom of the bay of Naples, the town is built in the form of a vast amphitheatre, sloping from the hills towards the sea.

If, from the town, you turn your eyes to the east, you see the rich plains leading to mount Vesuvius, and Portici. If you look to the west, you have the Grotto of Pausilippo, the mountain on which Virgil’s tomb is placed, and the fields leading to Puzzoli and the coast of Baia. On the north, are the fertile hills, gradually rising from the shore to the Campagna Felice. On the South, is the bay, confined by the two promontories of Misenum and Minerva, the view being terminated by the islands Procida, Ischia, and Caprea; and as you ascend to the castle of St. Elmo, you have all these objects under your eye at once, with the addition of a great part of the Campagna.

Independent of its happy situation, Naples is a very beautiful city. The style of architecture, it must be confessed, is inferior to what prevails at Rome; but though Naples cannot vie with that city in the number of palaces, or in the grandeur and magnificence of the churches, the private houses in general are better built, and are more uniformly convenient; the streets are broader and better paved. No street in Rome equals in beauty the Strada di Toledo at Naples; and still less can any of them be compared with those beautiful streets which are open to the bay. This is the native country of the Zephyrs; here the excessive heat of the Sun is often tempered with sea breezes, and with gales, wafting the perfumes of the Campagna Felice.

The houses, in general, are five or six stories in height, and flat at the top; on which are placed, numbers of flower vases or fruit trees, in boxes of earth, producing a very gay and agreeable effect.

The fortress of St. Elmo is built on a mountain of the same name. The garrison stationed here, have the entire command of the town, and could lay it in ashes at pleasure. A little lower, on the same mountain, is a convent of Carthusians. The situation of this convent is as advantageous and beautiful as can be imagined; and much expence has been lavished to render the building, the apartments, and the gardens, equal to the situation.

To bestow great sums of money in adorning the retreat of men who have abandoned the world for the express purpose of passing the remainder of their lives in self-denial and mortification, seems to be very ill judged; and might, on some occasions, counteract the design of their retreat. I expressed this sentiment to a Neapolitan lady at Sir W—— H——’s assembly, the evening after I had visited this convent. She said, “that the elegant apartments, the gardens, and all the expensive ornaments I had particularised, could not much impede a system of self-denial; for they soon became insipid to those who had them constantly before their eyes, and proved no compensation for the want of other comforts.” “In that case,” said I, “the whole expence might have been saved, or bestowed in procuring comforts to others who have made no vows of mortification.” “Tolga iddio!” cried the lady, forgetting her former argument, “for none have so good a title to every comfortable and pleasant thing in this world, as those who have renounced it, and placed their affections entirely on the next; instead of depriving these sanctified Carthusians of what they already possess, it would be more meritorious to give them what they have not.”

“Give them then, said I, what will afford some satisfaction, instead of the luxuries of sculpture, and paintings and architecture, which, as you say, become so soon insipid; let them have enjoyments of a different kind. Why should their diet be confined to fish and vegetables? Let them enjoy the pleasures of the table without any limitation. And since they are so very meritorious, why is your sex deprived of the happiness of their conversation, and why are they denied the pleasure which the society of women might afford them?”

“Cristo benedetto!” cried the lady, “You do not understand this matter.—Though none deserve the pleasures of this world, but those who think only on the next; yet none can obtain the joys of the next, who indulge in the pleasures of this.”

“That is unlucky,” said I.

“Unlucky! to be sure it is the most unlucky thing that could have happened, ecco dove mi doleva,” added the lady.

Though Naples is admirably situated for commerce, and no kingdom produces the necessaries and luxuries of life in greater profusion, yet trade is but in a languishing condition; the best silks come from Lyons, and the best woollen goods from England.

The chief articles manufactured here, at present, are, silk stockings, soap, snuff boxes of tortoise shells, and of the lava of Mount Vesuvius, tables, and ornamental furniture, of marble.

They are thought to embroider here better than even in France; and their macaroni is preferred to that made in any other part of Italy. The Neapolitans excel also in liqueurs and confections; particularly in one kind of confection, which is sold at a very high price, called Diabolonis. This drug, as you will guess from its name, is of a very hot and stimulating nature, and what I should think by no means requisite to Neapolitan constitutions.

The inhabitants of this town are computed at three hundred and fifty thousand. I make no doubt of their amounting to that number; for though Naples is not one third of the size of London, yet many of the streets here are more crowded than the Strand. In London and Paris, the people who fill the streets are mere passengers, hurrying from place to place on business; and when they choose to converge, or to amuse themselves, they resort to the public walks or gardens: at Naples, the citizens have fewer avocations of business to excite their activity; no public walks, or gardens to which they can resort; and are, therefore, more frequently seen sauntering and conversing in the streets, where a great proportion of the poorest sort, for want of habitations, are obliged to spend the night as well as the day. While you sit in your chamber at London, or at Paris, the usual noise you hear from the streets, is that of carriages; but at Naples, where they talk with uncommon vivacity, and where whole streets full of talkers are in continual employment the noise of carriages is completely drowned in the aggregated clack of human voices. In the midst of all this idleness, fewer riots or outrages of any kind happen, than might be expected in a town where the police is far from being strict, and where such multitudes of poor unemployed people meet together every day. This partly proceeds from the national character of the Italians; which, in my opinion, is quiet, submissive, and averse to riot or sedition; and partly to the common people being universally sober, and never inflamed with strong and spirituous liquors, as they are in the northern countries. Iced water and lemonade are among the luxuries of the lowest vulgar; they are carried about in little barrels, and sold in half-penny’s worth. The half naked lazzarone is often tempted to spend the small pittance destined for the maintenance of his family, on this bewitching beverage, as the most dissolute of the low people in London spend their wages on gin and brandy; so that the same extravagance which cools the mob of the one city, tends to inflame that of the other to acts of excess and brutality.

There is not, perhaps, a city in the world, with the same number of inhabitants, in which so few contribute to the wealth of the community by useful, or by productive labour, as Naples; but the numbers of priests, monks, fiddlers, lawyers, nobility, footmen, and lazzaronis, surpass all reasonable proportion; the last alone are computed at thirty or forty thousand. If these poor fellows are idle, it is not their own fault; they are continually running about the streets, as we are told of the artificers of China; offering their service, and begging for employment; and are considered, by many, as of more real utility than any of the classes above mentioned.

LETTER LV.

Naples.

There is an assembly once a week at the house of the British minister; no assembly in Naples is more numerous, or more brilliant, than this. Exclusive of that gentleman’s good qualities, and those accomplishments which procure esteem in any situation, he would meet with every mark of regard from the Neapolitan nobles, on account of the high favour in which he stands with their Sovereign. Sir W——’s house is open to strangers of every country who come to Naples properly recommended, as well as to the English; he has a private concert almost every evening. L——y H—— understands music perfectly, and performs in such a manner, as to command the admiration even of the Neapolitans. Sir W——, who is the happiest tempered man in the world, and the easiest amused, performs also, and succeeds perfectly in amusing himself, which is a more valuable attainment than the other.

The Neapolitan nobility are excessively fond of splendour and show. This appears in the brilliancy of their equipages, the number of their attendants, the richness of their dress, and the grandeur of their titles.

I am assured, that the King of Naples counts a hundred persons with the title of Prince, and still a greater number with that of Duke, among his subjects. Six or seven of these have estates, which produce from ten to twelve or thirteen thousand pounds a year; a considerable number have fortunes of about half that value; and the annual revenue of many is not above one or two thousand pounds. With respect to the inferior orders of nobility, they are much poorer; many Counts and Marquisses have not above three or four hundred pounds a year of paternal estate, many still less, and not a few enjoy the title without any estate whatever.

When we consider the magnificence of their entertainments, the splendour of their equipages, and the number of their servants, we are surprised that the richest of them can support such expensive establishments. I dined, soon after our arrival, at the Prince of Franca Villa’s; there were about forty people at table; it was meagre day; the dinner consisted entirely of fish and vegetables, and was the most magnificent entertainment I ever saw, comprehending an infinite variety of dishes, a vast profusion of fruit, and the wines of every country in Europe. I dined since at the Prince Iacci’s. I shall mention two circumstances, from which you may form an idea of the grandeur of an Italian palace, and the number of domestics which some of the nobility retain. We passed through twelve or thirteen large rooms before we arrived at the dining room; there were thirty-six persons at table, none served but the Prince’s domestics, and each guest had a footman behind his chair; other domestics belonging to the Prince remained in the adjacent rooms, and in the hall. We afterwards passed through a considerable number of other rooms in our way to one from which there is a very commanding view.

No estate in England could support such a number of servants, paid and fed as English servants are; but here the wages are very moderate indeed, and the greater number of men servants, belonging to the first families, give their attendance through the day only, and find beds and provisions for themselves. It must be remembered, also, that few of the nobles give entertainments, and those who do not, are said to live very sparingly; so that the whole of their revenue, whatever that may be, is exhausted on articles of show.

As there is no Opera at present, the people of fashion generally pass part of the evening at the Corso, on the sea-shore. This is the great scene of Neapolitan splendour and parade; and, on grand occasions, the magnificence displayed here will strike a stranger very much. The finest carriages are painted, gilt, varnished, and lined, in a richer and more beautiful manner, than has as yet become fashionable either in England or France; they are often drawn by six, and sometimes by eight horses. As the last is the number allotted to his Britannic Majesty when he goes to parliament, some of our countrymen are offended that any individuals whatsoever should presume to drive with the same number.

It is the mode here, to have two running footmen, very gaily dressed, before the carriage, and three or four servants in rich liveries behind; these attendants are generally the handsomest young men that can be procured. The ladies or gentlemen within the coaches, glitter in all the brilliancy of lace, embroidery, and jewels. The Neapolitan carriages, for gala days, are made on purpose, with very large windows, that the spectators may enjoy a full view of the parties within. Nothing can be more showy than the harness of the horses; their heads and manes are ornamented with the rarest plumage, and their tails set off with riband and artificial flowers, in such a graceful manner that you are apt to think they have been adorned by the same hands that dressed the heads of the ladies, and not by common grooms.

After all, you will perhaps imagine the amusement cannot be very great. The carriages follow each other in two lines, moving in opposite directions. The company within smile, and bow, and wave the hand, as they pass and repass their acquaintance; and doubtless imagine, that they are the most important figures in the procession. The horses, however, seem to be quite of a different way of thinking, and to consider themselves as the chief objects of admiration, looking on the livery servants, the volantis, the lords, and the ladies, as their natural suit on all such solemn occasions.

LETTER LVI.

Naples.

The greatest part of kings, whatever may be thought of them after their death, have the good fortune to be represented, at some period of their lives, generally at the beginning of their reigns, as the greatest and most virtuous of mankind. They are never compared to characters of less dignity than Solomon, Alexander, Cæsar, or Titus; and the comparison usually concludes to the advantage of the living monarch. They differ in this, as in many other particulars, from those of the most distinguished genius and exalted merit among their subjects, That the fame of the latter, if any awaits them, seldom arrives at its meridian till many years after their death; whereas the glory of the former is at its fullest splendour during their lives; and most of them have the satisfaction of hearing all their praises with their own ears. Each particular monarch, taken separately, is, or has been, considered as a star of great lustre; yet any number of them, taken without selection, and placed in the historical galaxy, add little to its brightness, and are often contemplated with disgust. When we have occasion to mention kings in general, the expression certainly does not awaken a recollection of the most amiable or most deserving part of the human species; and tyranny in no country is pushed so far, as to constrain men to speak of them, when we speak in general terms, as if they were. It would revolt the feelings, and rouse the indignation, even of slaves. Full freedom is allowed therefore on this topic; and, under the most arbitrary government, if you chuse to declaim on the imbecility, profligacy, or corruption of human nature, you may draw your illustrations from the kings of any country, provided you take them in groupes, and hint nothing to the detriment of the reigning monarch. But, when we talk of any one living sovereign, we should never allow it to escape from our memory, that he is wise, valiant, generous, and good; and we ought always to have Solomon, Alexander, Cæsar, and Titus, at our elbow, to introduce them apropos when occasion offers. We may have what opinion we please of the whole race of Bourbon; but it would be highly indecent to deny, that the reigning kings of Spain and Naples are very great princes. As I never had the happiness of seeing the father, I can only speak of the son. His Neapolitan Majesty seems to be about the age of six or seven-and-twenty. He is a prince of great activity of body, and a good constitution; he indulges in frequent relaxations from the cares of government and the fatigue of thinking, by hunting and other exercises; and (which ought to give a high idea of his natural talents) he never fails to acquire a very considerable degree of perfection in those things to which he applies. He is very fond, like the King of Prussia, of reviewing his troops, and is perfectly master of the whole mystery of the manual exercise. I have had the honour, oftener than once, of seeing him exercise the different regiments which form the garrison here: he always gave the word of command with his own royal mouth, and with a precision which seemed to astonish the whole Court. This monarch is also a very excellent shot; his uncommon success at this diversion is thought to have roused the jealousy of his Most Catholic Majesty, who also values himself on his skill as a marksman. The correspondence between those two great personages often relates to their favourite amusement.—A gentleman, who came lately from Madrid, told me, that the King, on some occasion, had read a letter which he had just received from his son at Naples, wherein he complained of his bad success on a shooting party, having killed no more than eighty birds in a day: and the Spanish monarch, turning to his courtiers, said, in a plaintive tone of voice, “Mio filio piange di non aver’ fatto piu di ottante beccacie in uno giorno, quando mi crederei l’uomo il piu felice del mondo se potesse fare quaranta.” All who take a becoming share in the afflictions of a royal bosom, will no doubt join with me, in wishing better success to this good monarch, for the future. Fortunate would it be for mankind, if the happiness of their princes could be purchased at so easy a rate! and thrice fortunate for the generous people of Spain, if the family connexions of their monarch, often at variance with the real interest of that country, should never seduce him into a more ruinous war, than that which he now wages against the beasts of the field and the birds of the air. His Neapolitan Majesty, as I am informed, possesses many other accomplishments; I particularise those only to which I have myself been a witness. No king in Europe is supposed to understand the game of billiards better. I had the pleasure of seeing him strike the most brilliant stroke that perhaps ever was struck by a crowned head. The ball of his antagonist was near one of the middle pockets, and his own in such a situation, that it was absolutely necessary to make it rebound from two different parts of the cushion, before it could pocket the other. A person of less enterprise would have been contented with placing himself in a safe situation, at a small loss, and never have risqued any offensive attempt against the enemy; but the difficulty and danger, instead of intimidating, seemed rather to animate the ambition of this Prince. He summoned all his address; he estimated, with a mathematical eye, the angles at which the ball must fly off; and he struck it with an undaunted mind and a steady hand. It rebounded obliquely, from the opposite side-cushion, to that at the end; from which it moved in a direct line towards the middle pocket, which seemed to stand in gaping expectation to receive it. The hearts of the spectators beat thick as it rolled along; and they shewed, by the contortions of their faces and persons, how much they feared that it should move one hair-breadth in a wrong direction.—I must here interrupt this important narrative, to observe, that, when I talk of contortions, if you form your idea from any thing of that kind which you may have seen around an English billiard-table or bowling-green, you can have no just notion of those which were exhibited on this occasion: your imagination must triple the force and energy of every English grimace, before it can do justice to the nervous twist of an Italian countenance.—At length the royal ball reached that of the enemy, and with a single blow drove it off the plain. An universal shout of joy, triumph, and applause burst from the beholders; but,

O thoughtless mortals, ever blind to fate,

Too soon dejected, and too soon elate!

the victorious ball, pursuing the enemy too far, shared the same fate, and was buried in the same grave, with the vanquished. This fatal and unforeseen event seemed to make a deep impression on the minds of all who were witnesses to it; and will no doubt be recorded in the annals of the present reign, and quoted by future poets and historians, as a striking instance of the instability of sublunary felicity.

It is imagined that the cabinet of this Court is entirely guided by that of Spain; which, on its part, is thought to be greatly under the influence of French counsels. The manners, as well as the politics, of France, are said to prevail at present at the Court of Madrid. I do not presume to say of what nature the politics of his Neapolitan Majesty are, or whether he is fond of French counsels or not; but no true-born Englishman existing can shew a more perfect contempt of their manners than he does. In domestic life, this Prince is generally allowed to be an easy master, a good-natured husband, a dutiful son, and an indulgent father.

The Queen of Naples is a beautiful woman, and seems to possess the affability, good-humour, and benevolence, which distinguish, in such an amiable manner, the Austrian family.

LETTER LVII.

Naples.

The hereditary jurisdiction of the nobles over their vassals subsists, both in the kingdom of Naples and Sicily, in the full rigour of the feudal government. The peasants therefore are poor; and it depends entirely on the personal character of the masters, whether their poverty is not the least of their grievances. If the land was leased out to free farmers, whose property was perfectly secure, and the leases of a sufficient length to allow the tenant to reap the fruits of his own improvements, there is no manner of doubt that the estates of the nobility would produce much more. The landlord might have a higher rent paid in money, instead of being collected in kind, which subjects him to the salaries and impositions of a numerous train of stewards; and the tenants, on their parts, would be enabled to live much more comfortably, and to lay up, every year, a small pittance for their families. But the love of domineering is so predominant in the breasts of men who have been accustomed to it from their infancy, that, if the alternative were in their choice, many of them would rather submit to be themselves slaves to the caprices of an absolute prince, than become perfectly independent, on the condition of giving independence to their vassals. There is reason to believe that this ungenerous spirit prevails pretty universally among the nobility all over Europe. The German Barons are more shocked at the idea of their peasants becoming perfectly free, like the farmers of Great Britain, than they are solicitous to limit the power of their princes: And, from the sentiments I have heard expressed by the French, I very much doubt, whether their high nobility would accept of the privileges of English peers, at the expence of that insolent superiority, and those licentious freedoms, with which they may, though no English peer can, treat with impunity the citizens and people of inferior rank. We need be the less surprised at this, when we consider that, in some parts of the British empire, where the equable and generous laws of England prevail, those who set the highest value on freedom, who submit to every hardship, and encounter every danger, to secure it to themselves, never have shewn a disposition of extending its blessings, or even alleviating the bondage of that part of the human species, which a sordid and unjustifiable barter has brought into their power.

The Court of Naples has not yet ventured, by one open act of authority, to abolish the immoderate power of the lords over their tenants. But it is believed that the Minister secretly wishes for its destruction; and in cases of flagrant oppression, when complaints are brought before the legal courts, or directly to the King himself, by the peasants against their lord, it is generally remarked that the Minister favours the complainant. Notwithstanding this, the masters have so many opportunities of oppressing, and such various methods of teasing, their vassals, that they generally chuse to bear their wrongs in silence; and perceiving that those who hold their lands immediately from the Crown, are in a much easier situation than themselves; without raising their hopes to perfect freedom, the height of their wishes is to be sheltered, from the vexations of little tyrants, under the unlimited power of one common master. The objects of royal attention, they fondly imagine, are too sublime, and the minds of kings too generous, to stoop to, or even to countenance, in their servants, the minute and unreasonable exertions, which are wrung at present from the hard hands of the exhausted labourer.

Though the Neapolitan nobility still retain the ancient feudal authority over the peasants, yet their personal importance depends, in a great measure, on the favour of the King; who, under pretext of any offence, can confine them to their own estates, or imprison them at pleasure; and who, without any alleged offence, and without going to such extremes, can inflict a punishment, highly sensible to them, by not inviting them to the amusements of the Court, or not receiving them with smiles when they attend on any ordinary occasion. Unless this Prince were so very impolitic as to disgust all the nobility at once, and so unite the whole body against him, he has little to fear from their resentment. Even in case of such an union, as the nobles have lost the affection and attachment of their peasants, what could they do in opposition to a standing army of thirty thousand men, entirely devoted to the Crown? The establishment of standing armies has universally given stability to the power of the prince, and ruined that of the great lords. No nobility in Europe can now be said to inherit political importance, or to act independent of, or in opposition to, the influence of the crown; except the temporal peers of that part of Great Britain called England.

As men of high birth are seldom, in this country, called to the management of public affairs, or placed in those situations where great political knowledge is required; and as his Majesty relies on his own talents and experience in war for the direction of the army; neither the civil nor military establishments open any very tempting field for the ambition of the nobles, whose education is usually adapted to the parts in life which they have a probability of acting. Their fortunes and titles descend to them, independent of any effort of their own. All the literary distinctions are beneath their regard; it is therefore not thought expedient to cloud the playful innocence of their childhood, or the amiable gaiety of their youth, with severe study. In some other countries, where a very small portion of literary education is thought becoming for young men of rank, and where even this small portion has been neglected, they sometimes catch a little knowledge of history and mythology, and some useful moral sentiments, from the excellent dramatic pieces that are represented on their theatres. They also sometimes pick up some notion of the different governments in Europe, and a few political ideas, in the course of their travels. But the nobility of this country very seldom travel; and the only dramatic pieces, represented here, are operas; in which music, not sentiment, is the principal thing attended to. In the other theatrical entertainments, Punchinello is the shining character. To this disregard of literature among the nobles, it is owing, that in their body are to be found few tiresome, scholastic pedants, and none of those perturbed spirits, who ruffle the serenity of nations by political alarms, who clog the wheels of government by opposition, who pry into the conduct of ministers, or in any way disturb that total indifference with regard to the public, which prevails all over this kingdom. We are told by a great modern Historian[6], that “force of mind, a sense of personal dignity, gallantry in enterprise, invincible perseverance in execution, contempt of danger and of death, are the characteristic virtues of uncivilised nations.” But as the nobles of this country have long been sufficiently civilised, these qualities may in them be supposed to have given place to the arts which embellish a polished age; to gaming, gallantry, music, the parade of equipage, the refinements of dress, and other nameless refinements.

[6] Vide Dr. Robertson’s History of the Emperor Charles V. Sect. I.

LETTER LVIII.

Naples.

The citizens of Naples form a society of their own, perfectly distinct from the nobility; and although they are not the most industrious people in the world, yet, having some degree of occupation, and their time being divided between business and pleasure, they probably have more enjoyment than those, who, without internal resources, or opportunities of active exertion, pass their lives in sensual gratifications, and in waiting the returns of appetite around a gaming table. In the most respectable class of citizens, are comprehended the lawyers, of whom there are an incredible number in this town. The most eminent of this profession hold, indeed, a kind of intermediate rank between the nobility and citizens; the rest are on a level with the physicians, the principal merchants, and the artists; none of whom can make great fortunes, however industrious they may be; but a moderate income enables them to support their rank in society, and to enjoy all the conveniences, and many of the luxuries, of life.

England is perhaps the only nation in Europe where some individuals, of every profession, even of the lowest, find it possible to accumulate great fortunes; the effect of this very frequently is, that the son despises the profession of the father, commences gentleman, and dissipates, in a few years, what cost a life to gather. In the principal cities of Germany and Italy, we find, that the ancestors of many of those citizens who are the most eminent in their particular businesses, have transmitted the art to them through several generations. It is natural to imagine, that this will tend to the improvement of the art, or science, or profession, as well as the family fortune; and that the third generation will acquire knowledge from the experience, as well as wealth from the industry, of the former two; whereas, in the cases alluded to above, the wheel of fortune moves differently. A man, by assiduity in a particular business, and by genius, acquires a great fortune and a high reputation; the son throws away the fortune, and ruins his own character by extravagance; and the grandson is obliged to recommence the business, unaided by the wealth or experience of his ancestors. This, however, is pointing out an evil which I should be sorry to see remedied; because it certainly originates in the riches and prosperity of the country in which it exists.

The number of priests, monks, and ecclesiastics of all the various orders that swarm in this city, is prodigious; and the provision appropriated for their use, is as ample, I am assured, that the clergy are in possession of considerably above one-third of the revenue of the whole kingdom, over and above what some particular orders among them acquire by begging for the use of their convents, and what is gotten in legacies by the address and assiduity of the whole. The unproductive wealth, which is lodged in the churches and convents of this city, amounts also to an amazing value. Not to be compared in point of architecture to the churches and convents of Rome, those of Naples surpass them in riches, in the value of their jewels, and in the quantity of silver and golden crucifixes, vessels, and implements of various kinds. I have often heard these estimated at a sum so enormous as to surpass all credibility; and which, as I have no opportunity of ascertaining with any degree of precision, I shall not mention. This wealth, whatever it amounts to, is of as little use to the kingdom, as if it still remained in the mines of Peru; and the greater part of it, surely, affords as little comfort to the clergy and monks as to any other part of the community; for though it belongs to their church, or their convent, yet it can no more be converted to the use of the priests and monks of such churches and convents, than to the tradesmen who inhabit the adjacent streets. For this reason I am a good deal surprised, that no pretext, or subterfuge, has been found, no expedient fallen on, no treaty or convention made, for appropriating part of this at least, to the use of some set of people or other. If the clergy were to lay their hands on it, this might be found fault with by the King; if his Majesty dreamt of taking any part of it for the exigencies of the state, the clergy would undoubtedly raise a clamour; and if both united, the Pope would think he had a right to pronounce his veto; but if all these three powers could come to an understanding, and settle their proportions, I am apt to think a partition might be made as quietly as that of Poland.

Whatever scruples the Neapolitan clergy may have to such a project, they certainly have none to the full enjoyment of their revenues. No class of men can be less disposed to offend Providence by a peevish neglect of the good things which the bounty of heaven has bestowed. Self-denial is a virtue, which I will not say they possess in a smaller degree, but which, I am sure, they affect less than any other ecclesiastics I know; they live very much in society, both with the nobles and citizens. All of them, the monks not excepted, attend the theatre, and seem to join most cordially in other diversions and amusements; the common people are no ways offended at this, or imagine that they ought to live in a more recluse manner. Some of the orders have had the address to make a concern for their temporal interest, and a desire of seeing them live full, and in something of a jolly manner, be regarded by the common people as a proof of zeal for religion. I am informed, that a very considerable diminution in the number of monks has taken place in the kingdom of Naples since the suppression of the Jesuits, and since a liberty of quitting the cowl was granted by the late Pope; but still there is no reason to complain of a deficiency in this order of men. The richest and most commodious convents in Europe, both for male and female votaries, are in this city; the most fertile and beautiful hills of the environs are covered with them; a small part of their revenue is spent in feeding the poor, the monks distributing bread and soup to a certain number every day before the doors of the convents. Some of the friars study physic and surgery, and practise these arts with great applause. Each convent has an apothecary’s shop belonging to it, where medicines are delivered gratis to the poor, and sold to those who can afford to pay. On all these accounts the monks in general are greater favourites with the common people than even the secular clergy; all the charity of the friars, however, would not be able to cover their sins, if the stories circulated by their enemies were true,—by which they are represented as the greatest profligates and debauchees in the world. Without giving credit to all that is reported on this subject, as the Neapolitan monks are very well fed, as this climate is not the most favourable to continency (a virtue which in this place is by no means estimated in proportion to its rarity), it is most likely that the inhabitants of the convents, like the inhabitants in general, indulge in certain pleasures with less scruple or restraint than is usual in some other places. Be that as it may, it is certain that they are the most superstitious of mankind; a turn of mind which they communicate with equal zeal and success to a people remarkably ignorant, and remarkably amorous. The seeds of superstition thus zealously sown on such a warm and fertile, though uncultivated, soil, sometimes produce the most extraordinary crops of sensuality and devotion that ever were seen in any country.

The lazzaroni, or black-guards, as has been already observed, form a considerable part of the inhabitants of Naples; and have, on some well-known occasions, had the government for a short time in their own hands. They are computed at above thirty thousand; the greater part of them have no dwelling-houses, but sleep every night under porticos, piazzas, or any kind of shelter they can find. Those of them who have wives and children, live in the suburbs of Naples near Pausilippo, in huts, or in caverns or chambers dug out of that mountain. Some gain a livelihood by fishing, others by carrying burdens to and from the shipping; many walk about the streets ready to run on errands, or to perform any labour in their power for a very small recompence. As they do not meet with constant employment, their wages are not sufficient for their maintenance; the soup and bread distributed at the door of the convents supply the deficiency. The lazzaroni are generally represented as a lazy, licentious, and turbulent set of people; what I have observed gives me a very different idea of their character. Their idleness is evidently the effect of necessity, not of choice; they are always ready to perform any work, however laborious, for a very reasonable gratification. It must proceed from the fault of Government, when such a number of stout active citizens remain unemployed; and so far are they from being licentious and turbulent, that I cannot help thinking they are by much too tame and submissive. Though the inhabitants of the Italian cities were the first who shook off the feudal yoke, and though in Naples they have long enjoyed the privilege of municipal jurisdiction, yet the external splendour of the nobles, and the authority they still exercise over the peasants, impose upon the minds of the lazzaroni; and however bold and resentful they may be of injuries offered by others, they bear the insolence of the nobility as passively as peasants fixed to the soil. A coxcomb of a volanti tricked out in his fantastical dress, or any of the liveried slaves of the great, make no ceremony of treating these poor fellows with all the insolence and insensibility natural to their matters; and for no visible reason, but because he is dressed in lace, and the others in rags. Instead of calling to them to make way, when the noise in the streets prevents the common people from hearing the approach of the carriage, a stroke across the shoulders with the cane of the running footman, is the usual warning they receive. Nothing animates this people to insurrection, but some very pressing and very universal cause; such as a scarcity of bread: every other grievance they bear as if it were their charter. When we consider thirty thousand human creatures without beds or habitations, wandering almost naked in search of food through the streets of a well built city; when we think of the opportunities they have of being together, of comparing their own destitute situation with the affluence of others, one cannot help being astonished at their patience.

Let the prince be distinguished by splendour and magnificence; let the great and the rich have their luxuries; but, in the name of humanity, let the poor, who are willing to labour, have food in abundance to satisfy the cravings of nature, and raiment to defend them from the inclemencies of the weather!

If their governors, whether from weakness or neglect, do not supply them with these, they certainly have a right to help themselves.—Every law of equity and common sense will justify them, in revolting against such governors, and in satisfying their own wants from the superfluities of lazy luxury.

LETTER LIX.

Naples.