the corruptions of the national religion, the facility of absolution, and the easy purchase of indulgencies? Their religion teaches the pure morality of the gospel: they know full well that absolution is an empty form, unless preceded by thorough heart-felt, well tried repentance; as for indulgencies as they are called, they extend not to guilt, but to canonical punishments only, or in other words, they are a change of fasts and corporal punishments imposed by ecclesiastical authority, into alms, deeds, prayers, pious lectures, and charitable works. Perhaps the real cause of this lamentable depravity may be found in the defects of the government, which, by confining the whole management of public business to the councils of the sovereign, deprives the nobility, of their natural and only honorable employment. Hence, without inducement to application, without motive for exertion, they allow the nobler faculties of the soul, which have no object to engage them, to slumber in lethargic indolence, while the sensual appetites, whose indulgence is always within reach, are in full activity and engross all their time and attention. Hence their days are spent in visits, gaming and intrigue, and their minds are confined to the incident of the hour, the petty cabal of the court, and the vicissitudes of their own circle. They are never called to the country by the management of their estates, which they leave entirely in the hands of stewards; they live in the capital, and forgetting themselves and their duties in an uninterrupted vortex of dissipation, have neither opportunity nor perhaps inclination to harbor serious reflection.

Literature may, and certainly does engage the attention of some men of genius and talents; but the charms of information

are too feeble to influence the multitude, unless information leads to either emolument or renown, and little of either is to be expected from it at Naples. Idleness therefore is the curse and misfortune of the Neapolitan, and indeed of all foreign, nobility; it is the bane which in despotic governments enfeebles the powers and blasts all the virtues of the human mind. To it we may boldly attribute the spirit of intrigue (if lawless intercourse carried on without shame or concealment can be called intrigue) which at Naples so often defiles the purity of the marriage bed, and dries up the very sources of domestic happiness. The remedy is in the hands of go

vernment.

Otia si tollas, periere Cupidinis artes.

Ovid de Rem.

Let the higher classes have that influence and share in public administration, which they may claim as their birth-right, and let the nobler passions have that exercise and scope which become them; then as their importance increases, their morals will improve; with more manly pursuits they will assume more manly feelings, and from the fatigue of public business they will learn the value of domestic enjoyments*.

But having admitted that a spirit of libertinism pervades

teneræ nimis

Mentes asperioribus

Formandæ studiis.

Hor. Carm. III. Od. 24.

the higher classes, and infects too many females of rank, I would not be understood to sanction the exaggeration of many travellers, and represent the sex at Naples as totally lost to all sense of duty and delicacy. There are in this capital, and in the very class which are most liable to just censure, many persons of virtue and reputation, who might be considered as patterns of conjugal affection and domestic virtue in any country. But unfortunately, ladies of the former description are of much easier access; they may be seen in every large party and at every public amusement, and are seldom deficient in affability and condescension, particularly to foreigners; while the latter appear in select societies to which few strangers are admitted, and receive the visits of such only as are introduced by their intimate and habitual friends. Superficial observers therefore, who are well acquainted with the former, and scarcely know the existence of the latter, to whom they have no access, naturally form their notions of the morality of a city from those instances that fall under their observation. It must be recollected that in every great capital, and particularly in Vienna and Paris, there are certain houses occupied by persons of an intermediate rank, and occasionally of dubious character, where the best and the worst company are sometimes and not unfrequently seen intermingled; where at the same time there is much splendor and magnificence, much ease and affability, and where every thing is combined that can give an idea of fashion, and raise consideration. To such houses introduction is not difficult, and strangers, particularly when young and inexperienced, are generally so far deceived by appearances, and by the rank of the persons whom they often meet at such rendezvous, as to

imagine themselves in the very best company, and content themselves with it as a fair specimen of the first society of the place. To give particular instances would be both odious and ungrateful; for in many such houses, travellers receive very flattering attentions, totally free from interested views or sinister motives; for such kindness grateful acknowledgments are due, and to expose them because their society is made up of heterogeneous particles, would be ungenerous. But from these mixed companies, writers have not unfrequently formed their ideas of foreign manners, and give the public descriptions in carica ture as just and accurate representations. Of this mode of drawing national characters, foreigners frequently and justly complain, and every man of candor will join with them in con demning such partial and injurious sketches*.

The style of society in a country is not that which takes place merely between two and three, or even ten persons of rank and fashion at an accidental interview; there are in every capital occasional parties where conversations may take place, and liberties be allowed, which not one of the same party would take or encourage in his own family. The style therefore of good company is the general behaviour and manner of persons of fashion in their own societies, whether domestic or more extensive. Now in such society no indecorum either in word or manner is allowed in Naples, nor I believe in any capital in Europe; and all pretended conversations or secret

* I do not mean to reproach our countrymen as peculiarly guilty in this respect, I merely wish to caution them; if attacks can justify retaliation we need only open some French and German accounts of England.

anecdotes that represent such company in any other light, are mere fictions, intended to shew either the importance or the wit of the writer, and impose on the simplicity of the credulous untravelled reader.

As for the remaining charge of assassination, it has been treated of in the account given of the Italian character at large; however, a few additional remarks may not be misplaced, especially as applicable to Naples in particular. In this city the streets are not regularly lighted; the lamps before the madonnas and chapels give indeed some light, but not sufficient for the security of the passengers. The police is by no means either vigilant or active; its agents keep too much in a body, and are not sufficiently spread through the different streets; the passions of the inhabitants are easily inflamed, and the number of poor and vagrants considerable; yet with all these temptations and opportunities, the number of murders at Naples is inconsiderable. Even jealousy itself, which is reported to have been in former times the most mischievous passion of the place, seldom or never produces bloodshed at present, and robbery, and above all, that most odious and diabolical species of assassination, murder planned and executed in cold blood for purposes of profit, are crimes rarely known at Naples. Mr. Swinburne and Mons". De la Lande, made this observation so favorable to Neapolitan morality many years ago, and at a time when it was generally believed, beyond the Alps, that it was impossible to walk the streets of Naples without feeling or witnessing the effects of a stiletto. The police, as indeed almost every branch of public administration, has been considerably improved since the period alluded to by those travellers; so that what was then rare, is now almost unknown.