ITALIAN SOCIETY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.*
THESE extracts from Mrs. Piozzi's Journey furnish a some- what striking contrast to the greater part of English literature devoted to Italy. The architectural glories of the classic peninsula make most travellers forget what Rome almost made Mrs. Piozzi forget, the people who live amid the time- honoured ruins. Yes, even Mrs. Piozzi was tempted to forget the kaleidoscope of Italian life in Rome. But she did not succumb, and thus it is that one might learn more of Italian manners from a journal written a hundred years ago, than from all the extravagances written down to the present day. And not only does Mrs. Piozzi observe such peculiarly Italian institutions as the cavaliers servente, the broad distinction between the nobility and the common people, and the devotional habit of the people, points which any observant woman would have noted, but she often insists on the striking differences of dialect and features among the little Monarchies and Republics, remarks on the comparative happiness of the community under different governments, and records facts that masculine writers would and have ignored. She com- plains but little of the accommodation, and bears with great fortitude the exceeding dirtiness of the Italians, then, as now, a constant and continuous quantity, and above all she possessed this virtue, that she had none of the conventional absurdity that makes English people admire what they do not -mderstand for the sake of being seen to do so, a miserable affectation that ruins the pleasure of the cultivated traveller.
Turin was the first city our journalist visited, and she much admired its starlike arrangement ; she is naturally tempted to remark on the crowding together of the population and the smells. Turin she liked, however, and adds, with some
• Glimpses of Itali-n Society in the Eaghteenth Century : from the "Journey" of afro. P on,. With an Introduction by the Countess Evelyn Martinengo eesaresco. London: Seeby and Co. of the acidulated satire distributed here and there in her Journey, that these " nuisances must be the choice of the inhabitants, who would perhaps be too happy had they a natural taste for that neatness which might here be enjoyed in its purity." She made the acquaintance at Turin of Allioni,
an old naturalist, and records some touching words the old man spoke to her, having at the moment of her entering, finished his work on botany. We hear that his relations desired him to sell his trelaures, and divide his property before death. This gives Mrs. Piozzi the opportunity of comparing the material social obligations of the members of the family in feudal States with the independence exhibited by the English, for instance. From Turin Mrs. Piozzi went to Genoa la
Superba, the Genoa that vies with Rome in ecclesiastical magnificence, the city of palaces, and, we might add, the metropolis of beggars. " Never," exclaims Mrs. Piozzi, " did I see before such pathetic misery, such disgusting distress, as I have been witness to in this gaudy city." Genoa, perhaps more than any other city, accentuates the contrast between splendour and squalor, with its great palaces separated by narrow lanes swarming with beggars, of hardly human appearance, as Mrs. Piozzi says. To make any progress, a chair was necessary. "Sure," adds the Englishwoman, " charity is not the virtue they pray for when they beg for a blessing at the church-door." She makes the amende honorable directly afterwards for this satire. by recording the friendly attitude of the Genoese during the siege of Gibraltar. Mrs. Piozzi, who had mixed a great deal with that composite society that is, perhaps, peculiar to English culture, was struck by the absolute importance of long lineage in Milan society. Birth means, as she says, a thousand privileges, and if in these days Italy, in company with other countries, has undergone a change, in those days it ever commanded instant respect, and poverty rather enhanced this feeling. Of course the order was unapproach- able, hence the jealousy of it did not take the odious form known as snobbishness. An ecclesiastic told Mrs. Piozzi in
the most natural manner, that he bad not been invited, nor had she, because they were neither of them noble. As the writer of the introduction hints, Mrs. Piozzi probably caused her friends infinite annoyance by reminding them that her position was considered somewhat doubtful, of course, by the Italian aris- tocracy, who remembered that she had once been a brewer's wife. The music-master was without reproach. quite as much as regards his rank, as a Colonel in the British Army were he to black boots for a livelihood. Nobility so fenced in as the Italian, and which does nothing to preserve ancient virtues, but literally stands on its rights, must necessarily be of a poverty-stricken kind. The sight of the liveried menials going to their homes at evening struck Mrs. Piozzi as very comical; " one might die in the nigbt for want of help," as she puts it. The Milanese nobility, however, dispensed hospitality of a kind, on what we may call a feudal scale,—that is, for Italy, not, indeed, after the fashion of the " Last of the Barons." Italians can live on sixpence a day. The lower orders appeared to our journalist well fed, well dressed, and contented, and per- mitted themselves a freedom of manner that was naturally a consequence of the knowledge that they could never better their position.
Venice sends our journalist into subdued raptures, and the picture has an interest, a melancholy interest, being the picture of Venice before the wave of alien occupation passed over her. She struck Mrs. Piozzi as being an intensely pleasure-loving city ; though the flame of patriotism burnt strongly, as of yore, and the Venetian ladies, she was sure, were capable of any sacrifice for their city. The Senators, if engaged in pleasure all the night, were at their posts to the minute the next day. This is certainly not the " decadent senility," the writer of the introduction says, many believe the " Queen of the Adriatic" to have attained before her fall. Still, it was the luxury that precedes a fall. The living was fast ; nothing, indeed, conveyed a stronger impression of dissoluteness than to find the servants and gondoliers dead asleep on the stairs. and in the street or in the gondolas. The Venetians turned night into day ; the earliest casino had not a candle lighted in it till midnight. A kind of canvas promenade was erected in St. Mark's Place, in which society could while away the time from after the opera till a hot sun drove them in- doors. Venetian manners were always charming ; even the ever-successful beggars had their rebuffs sweetened by cour-
teous gentleness superior even to Italian wont. Yet another distinction had Venice over other cities, one which they doubt- less envied more than all else. A priest was a comparative rarity. The Jesuits had long been ousted, and the garb of the priest did not protect him if his actions in any way endangered the State. The presence of a body like the Society founded by Loyola, it may be well imagined, would sooner or later have become incompatible with the existence of the " incomparable Republic." The peculiar method in vogue for enforcing obedience at Venice, its political police, its remorseless punishment for traitors, made up a combina- tion highly antagonistic, because it was as like to like. Mrs. Piozzi declares that the cry of " Fuori i preti" was heard in the council-chamber before any Act of Legislature was passed. Yet the reason is obviously seen to have a patriotic signifi- cance, and not to be a secular antipathy, if we consider the remarkable decorum and absence of levity displayed in the conduct of services. And Venice, as Mrs. Piozzi remarks, had surely done her duty to the Sovereign Pontiff in times of Papal trouble. She relates an incident expressive of the simple religious conviction of a Venetian lady, whom she found one day praying for the salvation of the English lady's maid, with an evident sincerity that touched her hearer. The fish-supply of Venice appears to have been excellent, though it seems Naples and other cities had a supply sufficient to arouse the Englishwoman's enthusiasm. Mrs. Piozzi describes the liveliness of the market, and the mountebanks of the Piazza San Marco, with relish. It must have been a striking spectacle, Venice in her last days of independence. We should not forget, by-the-way, the dove mentioned by Mrs. Piozzi, which seems to have had a wonderful ear for music, evincing all the impatience of a sensitive musician to a false note, by its distressed behaviour. This bird had developed its taste from the companionship of Bertoni, to whom it belonged. Mrs. Piozzi's farewell to Venice we will quote, as everybody is sure to agree with it :—" On Saturday next I am to forsake—but I hope not for ever—this gay, this gallant city, so often de- scribed, so certainly admired—seen with rapture, quitted with regret. Seat of enchantment ! head-quarters of pleasure, farewell !"
Italy is full of contrasts, but certainly one would think Mrs. Piozzi had arranged to visit Ferrara next to Venice- " Ferrara la Civile," as it was called, " Ferrara la Solenne," as the traveller thought it ought to be called—with its wide streets and stately houses. Ferrara, however, was deserted ; the grass grew in the streets, and it took half-an-hour to find a beggar,—a bad account of poor Ferrara. " My pen," says the traveller, " was just upon the point of praising its clean- liness, too, till I reflected there was nobody to dirty it." Bologna, again, was a speaking contrast to Venice :—" This fat Bologna has a tristful look from the numberless priests, friars, and women, all dressed in black, who fill the streets, and stop on a sudden to pray when I see nothing done to call forth immediate addresses to Heaven." And Mrs. Piozzi could not but admire Richardson's judgment in making Clementina a native of bigoted Bologna, " where," as she goes on to say, " I hear nothing but the sound of people saying their rosaries, and see nothing in the street but people telling their beads."
The flowers at Florence must have been refreshing to the traveller, who speaks ecstatically of wallflowers, pinks, and the jessamine, " broad-leaved and beautiful as an orange- flower," and the highly gratifying aromatic flavour diffused from such unexpected places as the tops of houses. Florence, to be sure, was clean ; moreover, there was plenty of enter- tainment, horse-races instead of religions pageants, dinner at a nobleman's country-seat, near Prato, the scenery of which —"the Arno rolling before his house, the Apennines rising behind it ! "—is some of the most beautiful in Italy. The wealth and jewellery of the peasantry struck Mrs. Piozzi. La Contadinella Toscana, indeed, if not so beautiful as her Lom- bard rival, was attired in a wonderful dress, and with jewels, pearls, and garnets that would have meant £40 in England, that set off her beauty most advantageously. Nor were these picked examples, like the innkeeper's wife, for instance, whom our traveller and a compatriot agreed could not be so adorned in England for less than a thousand pounds. But if Florence was delightful, Mrs. Piozzi thought she had found a veritable
Utopia in the little Republic of Lucca, where no one had been „ murdered within the memory of man, and but one robbery had Pope Humphrey. London : T. Fisher ITnwin.
taken place in sixteen years. Lucca itself was like a beehive, and the only fault to be found with these model people was that they were idle and merry. At Leghorn she astonished her attendant by walking on the rocks by the sea, and subsequently refusing to enter the carriage till a certain hornet had departed. We quote the fellow's speech to the coachman, translated freely by Mrs. Piozzi :—" Now, my friend, do but observe what a thing is woman ! She is not afraid even of the roaring ocean, and yet goes into fits almost at the sight of a fly." This speech delighted Mrs. Piozzi, so let us quote for the reader's pleasure the wearied traveller herself, who was resting in a cottage for a time :—
" It was perhaps particularly delightful to me to obtain once more a cottage in the country, after running so from one great city to another, and for the first week I did nothing but rejoice in a solitude so new, so salutiferous, so total. I therefore begged my husband not to hurry us to Rome, but take the house we lived in for a longer term, as I would now play the English housewife in Italy, I said ; and accordingly began calling the chickens and ducks under my window, tasted the new wine as it ran purple from the cask, caressed the meek oxen that drew it to our door, and felt sensations so unaffectedly pastoral that nothing in romance ever exceeded my felicity."
The period of pastoral affectation was seemingly still alive. Writing at Rome, the Englishwoman makes a sarcastic attack on the mingled avarice and meanness and dirtiness of its nobility, who lent out equipages by the day, whose servants dressed dinners for hire, and whose dirty linen hung from the windows of their palaces. The general appearance of the city was mean and disgusting, and the odours,—well, if she did upset a room full of people by the ntarell,ale powder in her hair, the Roman nobles were not disgusted with all sorts of scents. Naples charmed our traveller more than any other city of the peninsula, and she says Italians from all parts, when asked, declared they liked dear delightful Naples next to home. And if Naples is the most enjoyable of places, for the perfect art of living recommend us to the Lazzaroni. Florentine nobleman, Count Manucci, asked one to carry his portmanteau, and offered him a carline. "Are you hungry, master ? " cried the fellow. " No," replied the Count ; " but what of that P" " Why, then, no more am I, and it is too hot weather to carry burdens,"—and the man turned over on his side. With this anecdote we will conclude notice of an in- structive, interesting, and well-edited edition of Mrs. Piozzi's Journey.
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