Leopold. Your observation is just. The persons | themselves, but crouching, screaming, and subwe employ have more interest in deceiving us mitting to be torn piecemeal by the smallest than others have. I can trust one; Gianni. I creatures of another race. In the consulate of send none abroad; so that I am rather less liable to deception than my brethren are. As the gentlemen of Tuscany seldom travel further than to Siena or to Pisa, the expense of a coffee-house-second no Roman was slain. keeper, under the title of plenipotentiary, is saved me everywhere. President. Your highness is as desirous of abolishing idle offices as others are of creating them. Leopold. I am not afraid of losing my place from a want of party friends, and have no very poor relations to support. Since I send no envoys, there are certain states which seem resolved to punish me by sending worse than none. It often happens, that those who are very wealthy, are far from forward in displaying what they possess; thus happens it that, in countries which abound in talents and genius, the governors are careless how little of them is exhibited in their appointments to foreign courts. I should be happy to see as ministers at mine, M. President, men like you, with whom I could converse familiarly and frankly on matters of high importance and no greater compliment could be paid me by the princes my friends and allies. To delegate as their representatives young persons of no knowledge, no conduct, no respectability, proves to me a neglect of their duty and an indifference to their honour, and no less evidently shows the opinion they entertain of me to be unworthy and injurious. Trifling men in such situations may suit indeed small courts, but not where the sovran has any credit for the rectitude of his views and the arduousness of his undertakings. This reflection leads me back again to an inquiry into the last of your positions, that my code provides but faintly and ineffectually for the protection of character. The states of Italy are the parts of shame in the body politic of Europe. I would not hold out an ægis to protect a snail: the gardener does not shelter his plants while they are under-ground. I declare to you, M. Duf Paty, that whenever and wherever I find a character to protect, I will protect it. President. I am averse to the perpetual maintenance of great armies: but without somewhat of a military spirit there can be little spirit for anything, as we see in China and India. That the Florentines should have conquered the Pisans, quite astonishes me when I look upon them; at present they could not conquer a hen-coop guarded by a cur. Boccaccio, in his eclogue intitled Lipis, calls the Florentine by the name of Batracus (frog), as being the most loquacious and timid of animals. Such at least is the explanation given by his countryman and commentator, Baldelli. Leopold. The Italians, when they were bravest, were like tame rabbits; very pugnacious among Marcus Valerius (brother of Publicola) and Postumius, the Sabines were conquered: thirteen thousand prisoners were taken in two battles: in the I want no armies: if ever I should want them, I can procure a much better commodity at the same price: the rations of a Bohemian and of a Tuscan are the same: I would not change a good farmer for a bad soldier. I want honest men, and no other glory than that of making them. President. If you abolish the convents of monks, you act consistently in abolishing your armies: for the natives of Florence are the smallest and weakest men in Europe; and, whenever we meet one stronger than the generality, we may be sure he derives his origin from the convent. The monks are generally stout, and their offspring is healthy; but this continues for only one generation. The children of your soldiers are mostly weak, like those of your citizens, and from the same cause, indiscriminate venery. The monks have their choice, from the facilities afforded to them by the sacredness of their order, and by the beneficence of confession, advantages in which the soldiery does not participate. In protestant countries the people is always both cleanlier and healthier than in catholic; but I have observed that the religious in the former are mostly the weakest men in the community, in the latter universally the strongest. Leopold. As my soldiers are useless to me in the field, I shall call them out more frequently in the churches, when I have reduced the number of ecclesiastics. On great festivals we have decently smart files of them in the nave. I shall indulge the people with a larger number, and oftener. President. In Tuscany there are persons of integrity; few indeed, and therefore the more estimable. Wherever there is a substitute for morality, where ceremonies stand in the place of duties, where the confession of a fault before a priest is more meritorious than never to have committed it, where virtues and duties are vicarious, where crimes can be expiated after death for money, where by breaking a wafer you open the gates of heaven, probity and honour, if they exist at all, exist in the temperament of the individual. Hence a general indifference to virtue in others; hence the best men in Italy do not avoid the worst; hence the diverging rays of opinion can be brought to no focus; nothing can be consumed by it, nothing warmed. The language proves the character of the people. Of all pursuits and occupations, for I am unwilling to call it knowledge, the most trifling is denominated virtù. An alteration in a picture is pentimento. The Romans, detained from war and activity by a calm, termed it malacia : the Italians, whom it keeps out of danger, call it bonaccia. I am ashamed to confess that we Frenchmen have borrowed this expression, without a suspicion of its import. We are, it is true, the most courageous people in the world, but we have always been the most subject to panics by land, and to despair by sea. Leopold. On malacia and bonaccia let me remark, that, although the latter supplanted the former, as Beneventum did Maleventum, yet malacia descends not in a direct line from malus (a thing evidently unknown to those who substituted in its place bonaccia), but from μaλakós. Malus itself has the same origin. Effeminacy and wickedness were correlative terms both in Greek and Latin, as were courage and virtue. Among the English, I hear, softness and folly, virtue and purity, are synonymous. Let others determine on which side lies the indication of the more quiet, delicate, and reflecting, people. President. If a footman sends a scullion to a tailor, it is an ambasciata. Sbirri are eminently la famiglia, quite at home: but what is admirable is pellegrino. So corrupt are they, that softness with them must partake of disease and impurity: it is morbidezza. Three or four acres of land with a labourer's cottage are called a podere. Beggarly magnificence of expression! Every house with a barndoor, instead of a narrower, is palazzo. I saw open in a bookseller's window a boy's dictionary, "Dictionarium Ciceronianum," in the page where heros was, and found its interpretation barone, signore. Such is their idea of contemplation, and of the subjects on which it should be fixed, that if a dinner is given to a person of rank, the gazettes announce that it was presented alla Contemplazione della sua Eccellenza. President. Meschino, formerly poor,* is now mischievous, or bad. Leopold. I am no etymologist, and more than an etymologist is wanted here; but let me remark to you that the word meschino is still in use among us in the same double acceptation, as the word wretch is among the English; and you Frenchmen, too, employ the word méchant, which comes from it, in the same manner. The words signify to us that wretchedness and wickedness go together. President. I see it. Things strike us in another language which we pass over in our own: and words often lose their original meaning. What is general may become particular, and what is particular may become general. Amazzare is to kill. The meaning was originally to kill with a club. We now say il gatto ha amazzato un topo, although we have the best grounds for believing that cats never killed rats with clubs even in the heroic ages. An Italian thinks he pays me a compliment by calling me furbo, holding it as the summit of felicity and glory to over-reach. But on the other hand, if roguery is praiseworthy, misfortune is criminal: the captive is a wicked man, cattivo. A person is not rendered vile by any misconduct: but if he has the toothache, he is avvilito. With all the admiration and aptitude of the Italians for poetry, any grimace or trick of the countenance is called a verso. Fa tanti versi. We call valiant the man who defends his own or his country's honour by his courage: the Italians call valiant a famous fiddler or well-winded fifer, valente suonotare. In Italy the fabulous is the common speech: favella and lingua are synonymous. Opera was among the Romans labour, as opera pretium, &c. It now signifies the most contemptible of performances, the vilest office of the feet A lamb's fry is cosa stupenda: a paper kite is and tongue, whenever it stands alone by excellence. aquilone. Their idea of fighting is exemplified in the word tirare, which properly means to drag. Strength which frightens, and finery which attracts them, are honesty: hence valentuomo and galantuomo. Anima, the soul, is also the mould of a button: animella (the endearing form), a sweetbread. Ostia, a sacrifice (hostia), now serves equally to designate the Almighty, and the wafer that seals a billet-doux. This, too, we have in common. Poisoning was formerly so ordinary an operation A well-dressed man is a man of honour, uomo here, that what other nations call a violent death, di garbo. was called an assisted one. "Nacqui l'opinione, Spogliare is to undress; the spoils of a modern dispersa allora, ch' egli mancava di morte aiutata Italian being his shirt and stockings. piutosto che naturale," says Bentivoglio on Don John of Austria. Pride is offended at selling anything: the shop-keeper tells you that he gives you his yard of shoe-ribbon: dà, not vende. A trinket is a joy, gioia: and a present is a regala, though it be a bodkin. One would imagine that giustiziato means requited it means hanged: as if justice did nothing else, or had nothing else to do. Leopold. I can furnish you with another example in my own profession. Governare means to govern and to wash the dishes. This indeed is not so absurd at bottom; for there is generally as much dirty work in the one as in the other. i Leopold. Beware, M. President, that no learned man in his idleness take you farther to task on the same subject. I would wish to retaliate on you as gently as possible, but I find in one of your expressions that characteristic sportiveness which attends your cruelties, when you commit any. Amende honorable, as your jurists call it, is thus defined by them. "Le condamné est à genoux en chemise, la corde au cou, une torche à la main, et sore, e benignamente e con amorevolezza haveva ascoltato "Teseo era stato anch' egli un certo protettore e difenpreghi degli uomini meschini." Vite di Plutarco da M. Ludovico Domenichi, MDLX. conduit par le bourreau." This honourable way in | to add one more example. If injustice is done which an offender is persuaded to correct his error, is, according to time and person, accompanied by flagellations, and other ceremonials of honour and devotion, in which the humble minister of justice, the hangman, has the goodness to lend him all the assistance in his power, and indeed to take upon himself this most painful part of the duty; the person who makes the expiation to honour and the laws, only lending the superficies (or a little more) of his body, while the precursory section of his amendment is going through. I have found in twenty of your authors, at the least, the expression, faire retentir sa voix au milieu: entonner is also in common use: a proof of a noisy people: and perhaps some might be found of a vain one. I must fight for my Tuscans: they have other phrases which prove their good nature, not the least of merits in any man or any people, and among the first to be commended by a prince. Their oaths and exclamations, instead of peste and other horrors, are, by the kindest and most lovely of the gods, per Bacco! per Bacco d' India! Fè di Bacco! Corpo di Bacco! Per Dingi Bacco! President. What can that mean? and redress claimed, it is requisite to perform an execrable act, if the words mean anything, umiliare una supplica. Baser language was never heard in the palace of Domitian, who commanded that he should be called Lord and God. I could select many such expressions. In this perversion of moral feeling, it is not to be expected that the laws can always stand upright. It is dangerous for a foreigner not to visit a commissary of police; but to omit in an address to him the title of Illustrissimo, is fatal. I conversed the other day with an English gentleman, who had conducted his wife and family to Pistoja, for the benefit of the air. He rented a villa at the recommendation of the proprietor, who assured him that the walls were dry, although built recently. Within a few days it rained, and the bedchambers were covered with drops. His wife and child suffered in their health: he expostulated: he offered to pay a month's rent and to quit the premises, insisting on the nullity of an agreement founded on fraud. The proposal was rejected: a court of judicature declared the contract void. The gentleman, to prove that there was nothing light or ungenerous in his motive, gave to his banker, M. Cassigoli, the amount of the six months' rent, to be distributed among respectable families in distress. The proprietor of the house, enraged at losing not only what he had demanded, but also what was offered, circulated a report in the coffeeLeopold. Corbezzoli are the berries of the arbu- houses, and wherever he went, that the gentleman tus: your French corbeil comes from the twigs, might well throw away his money, having acquired which are used in making baskets and panniers; immense sums by piracy. He appealed to the and another word, which you like less, corvée; local tribunals, with a result far different from the loads of stone, earth, manure, carried on the backs former. The commissary, to whom the business of men and women in crates of this material. Let was referred by them, called the offender to him us now leave the fields again for cities and manners. in private, without informing the plaintiff of his We may discern, I think, the characters of intention. Hence no proof was adduced, no witnations in their different modes of salutation. ness was present, and the gentleman knew nothing We Italians reply Sto bene: the ancient Romans of the result for several weeks after. It was an valeo: the Englishman, I am well: the Frenchman, admonition to be more cautious in future, given I carry myself well. Here the Italian, the best to a man who had in succession been servant to formed of Europeans, stands with gracefulness two masters, both of whom were found dead withand firmness; in short, stands well. The Roman, out illness; a man who, without any will in his proudly confident in his strength, says, I am stout favour, any success in the lottery, any dowry with and hearty. The Englishman feels throughout his wife, any trade or profession, any employment mind and body this "standing well," this calm or occupation, possessed 12,000 crowns. confident vigour, and says, I am well. The French-justice is refused, neglected, or perverted, the man carries himself so. Presidente del buon Governo is the magistrate who receives the appeal. The foreigner stated his case fully to the president, from whom he obtained no redress, no answer, no notice.* Leopold. Dingi is an abbreviation of Dionigi (Dionysius). Then, per Diana! or by the most beautiful of our indigenous plants, as Cappari! Corbezzoli ! President. I do not understand the latter. President. It is dangerous to retort on princes. President. By this condescension I am encouraged to remark, that a stranger is much amused by the designation of your Italian tribunals, the ruota criminale, &c., as if Justice had her wheel, like Fortune, or rather used the same. Where *Dr. Lotti of Lizzano, on the confines of the Modenese, the reputed son of the emperor P. Leopold, to whom (if I may judge from the coins) he bore a perfect resemblance, was the most learned and courteous man I have Leopold. Such is the idea the thing itself pre-ever conversed with in Tuscany. He was rather fond of sents to us: the word is deduced from the rolling and unrolling of papers, and is analogous to the volumen of the Romans, and the roll of the English, which likewise gives an appellation to a court of judicature. wine; but with decorum. I spent one of the happiest days of my life in his society, and was about to repeat my visit the following summer, when I heard that my quiet, inoffensive, beneficent friend had been stoned to death by a parishioner. No inquiry was instituted by government: he had nothing but erudition and virtue to recommend President. Your Highness will permit me him, and the tears and blessings of the poor. I asked how Leopold. As I covered my ears at the commencement, I must at the conclusion. Scandalously as my servants acted, the rank and character of the injured gentleman were imperfectly known to the commissary and the president, who also are ignorant that many of the best families in England are untitled. Here counts and marquises are more plentiful than sheep and swine; and there are orders of knighthood where there is not credit for a pound of polenta. President. Your predecessors have softened what was already too soft and your highness must give some consistency to your mud, by exposing and working it, if you desire to leave upon it any durable or just impression. I am afraid it will close upon your footstep the moment you go away. Leopold. I hope not. Tuscany is a beautiful landscape with bad figures: I must introduce better. President. To speak without reserve or dissimulation, I have remarked this difference between the gentlemen of Florence and those of other nations. While others reject disdainfully and indignantly from among them any member who has acted publicly or privately with dishonour, these interest themselves warmly in his favour, although they never had visited or known them. It must be from a powerful sympathy, and in the hope, more or less remote and obscure, that they may benefit in the same manner in the same circumstances. Leopold. I begin with what forms the moral character, however my conduct may be viewed by the catholic princes. Few among them are better than whipped children, or wiser than unwhipped ones. They are puppets in the hands of priests: they nod their heads, open their mouths, shut their eyes, and their blood is liquefied or congealed at the touch of these impostors. I will lessen their influence by lessening their number. To the intent of keeping up a numerous establishment of satellites in the church militant, a priest is punished more severely for performing twice in so unmerited a calamity could have befallen so warmhearted a creature, and in the decline of life: the reply was, Chi sa? forse uno sbaglio. Who knows? perhaps it was done by mistake. What a virtuous and happy people must that be, to which such a loss is imperceptible! I saw him but three times, and lament it more than I think it right to express, at the distance of nearly two years. Rest thee with God, kind, gentle, generous Lotti! A courier who had been in the service of Prince Borghese, went openly by day into the Postmaster's office, stabbed him in the body, fired a pistol through his hand, was confined at Volterra, and released at the intercession of Prince Borghese in six weeks. Whoever shall publish a periodical work, containing a correct and detailed account of irregularities and iniquities in the various courts of law throughout Europe, will accomplish the greatest of literary undertakings, and will obtain the merit of the stanchest, the truest, and the best of reformers. No subject is so humble that it may not be recommended by a fit simplicity of style; no story so flat that it may not solicit attention if edged by pointed remarks. The writer will perform one of those operations which are often admired in Nature, by eliciting a steady, broad, and beautiful light, from rottenness and corruption. the day the most holy of his ceremonies, than for almost any violation of morality. But the popes perhaps have in secret a typical sense of the mass, permitting the priest to celebrate it only once, in remembrance that Christ was sold once only. When we arrive at mystery, a single step farther and we tumble into the fosse of fraud. The Romish Church is the general hospital of old and incurable superstitions from the Ganges to the Po. It is useful to princes as a pigsty is to farmers: but it shall not infect my palace, and shall do as little mischief as possible to my people. President. Your Highness, by diminishing the number of priests, will increase the rate of masses. A few days ago I went into San Lorenzo, and saw a clergyman strip off his gown before the altar with violence and indignation. Inquiring the reason, I was informed that four pauls had been offered to him for a mass, which he accepted, and that on his coming into the church, the negotia tor said he could afford to pay only three. There are offices in the city where masses are bargained for publicly. Purgatory is the Peru of Catholicism: the body of Christ in some of our shops is at the price of a stockfish, in others a fat goose will hardly reach it, and in Via de' Calzaioli it is worth a sucking-pig. Leopold. The Roman states are worse in proportion. President. There are more religious in that territory than slave-masters in our American islands, and their gangs are under stronger and severer discipline. The refuse of manhood exercises the tyranny of Xerxes in the cloak and under the statutes of Pythagoras. Leopold. It is curious and interesting to observe the fabrication of those insects, which from the bottom of the Sea of Galilee have been adding, year after year, particle on particle, and have ultimately filled up almost the whole expanse with their tortuous and branching corallines. When violence and usurpation were distracting the Roman empire, can we wonder if the possessors of knowledge and the lovers of quiet clung together, and contrived the best and readiest means possible of preserving the little they retained? The sanctuaries of religion, abandoned by the old gods and old worshippers, served the purpose well. Persecution rendered the new guests only the more united: pity at their sufferings, admiration at their virtues, drew many toward them: miracles were invented, encouraged, propagated. There is something of truth in everything. Like gold, it is generally found in small quantities; and, as is said of gold, it is universal: even falsehood rests upon it. Contrivances, which at first were requisite and necessary, for the security of a weak and unprotected religion, now began to multiply for its extension and aggrandisement. The credulous, the rich, the slothful, stood prepared for the mark that was to be impressed on them, by the coarse indiscriminating letters of the age. The literary now chose their emperor, as the military chose theirs, only giving him another title, inaugurated by religion. A quieter craft, observing the instability of power, devised and executed at leisure the institutions best adapted to its maintenance; and by degrees such barriers were erected about the church, as neither in extent nor in strength had ever surrounded the pretorium. The pious, who came from a distance to venerate the simple edifice, the house of a god born in a manger, could not pass nor even look over the ramparts, and were driven away or punished as criminals if they inquired for it. Somewhat earlier, when the name of pope had not yet been invented, instead of surprise at any worldly advantages the pastors derived from the tractability of their flocks, it might rather be excited at their moderation. This, however, soon was over; and such rapacity succeeded, as no other religion, no other government, no tyranny, no conquest, hath exemplified. In our days, the commander of the faithful in the west is contented if we pay and clothe his military, permitting them to be taken off our lands for him, and allowing him to discipline them, even in our streets and houses. The more virtuous our subjects are, the less contented is he. Every execution-day is a rent-day to him: no fellow is hanged but the halter is his purse-string. The most notorious robber that ever infested Tuscany, was no sooner upon the gibbet, than forty or fifty idler thieves, in white surplices half-way down the hams, ran about our streets, soliciting the eleëmosynary paolo from citizen and peasant, to liberate the sinful soul earlier out of purgatory. Can we imagine that crimes will be rigorously reprehended by those who derive a revenue from the multiplicity and magnitude of them? President. What purgatory may be to any of the dead, I can not tell; but I see it is a paradise to a great portion of the living. How many dormitories and refectories are warmed with it! how many gardens, lined with orange and citron, are brought into blossom by its well-directed fires! Not Styx, nor Acheron, nor Phlegethon, but Pactolus is now the river that runs through the infernal regions, leaving its golden sands on the papal shore, the patrimony of Saint Peter. Leopold. What do you imagine was the reason, M. Du Paty, why celibacy was imposed on the priesthood, not when it was chaste and virtuous, but at a time when neither the heads of the church nor her other members were any longer pure? President. There can not be conceived a better reason for so extraordinary and unnatural an ordinance, than that the concubines and wives of such dissolute men were, as you may suppose, eternally at variance; and ecclesiastical polity was well aware that they would arouse by degrees, and excite to inquiry, a supine and dormant world. The pope therefore put down, and suppressed under the piscatory signet, the more clamorous of the parties. Among the first Christians all things were in common but their wives; among those of the papal reformation, the wives seem the only things that were so. Leopold. I am apprehensive, M. Du Paty, you will be thought here in Italy to entertain but little reverence even for those higher authorities (if any are higher than the pope) on which the foundations of our faith repose; it being known that men of letters in France, including the dignitaries of the church, are inclined to philosophy. President. Sir, I wish they were: for then they would teach and practise christianity, which is peace and good-will toward men. The partisans of popery have evinced by their conduct, that either the book whereon they found their religion in itself is false, or that those dogmas are which they pretend to draw from it; otherwise they would not forbid nor discountenance its circulation and publicity. In copying the worst features of every religion, they should at least have omitted this. The Egyptian, the Hindoo, and other priesthoods, kept their sacred books secluded from the people, and said perhaps that they were thus commanded, whether by dog or by calf, or some such deity: but if the pope believed in the gospel, or ever read it, he must know that his predecessors, as he calls the apostles, were commanded to disseminate it among all the nations of the universe. Leopold. Catholicism does not appear to be quite so polytheistical among you Frenchmen as among us. President. An Italian, a Spaniard, or a Portuguese, has no thought whatever of praying to God. The expression, common in our language, is unknown in theirs. Desirous as I always was of finding out the opinions of men on this subject, I accosted one who had been praying, at the entrance of a village, to an image of earthenware in a niche against a cottage. I am "You pray then, my good young man ! happy to observe that you think of your Creator in the days of your youth!" He looked at me with wonder. "Were not you praying to the Father of mercies?" "O now I understand. I was praying, sir, to his mother and Saint Zenobio." a 66 'Excellently done! but do you never offer up prayer to God himself?" His reply I must give in his own language. "Mi canzona! Ad Iddio medesimo! solo solo! ma davvero non sono si poco garbato." Accustomed, as the people of these countries have been for centuries, to ask favours by means of valets, who speak to the lady's maids, and they to their mistresses, whence the petition goes up to the husband or cavaliere serviente, they pursue the same steps in their prayers to heaven: first a prayer to Saint Zenobio; then, with his permission, to the Virgin; who again is requested to seize a suitable opportunity of mentioning the matter to her son; or, at her option, to do it herself, and let him know nothing about the business. Such are the thoughts of those who think the most deeply. Leopold. What can be the reason why the pious F |