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reception was not courteous. absurdity of the whole proceedings might scarcely be credited, but I will tell them fairly. I, as spokesman, began to give an account of our robbery; he stopped me ere I had advanced many words, and himself began to question-I was only to answer. "What are your names?" I told them-stopped again.

"No-first your Christian names?" Given.

"The Christian name of your father?" Well, that is done.

"The Christian name of your mother?"

The we knew to the contrary, might be in a dying state. But what did this Head of the Police? He bellowed out to him most brutally, and asked him how he dared sit in a chair; then went up to him, and, I think, kicked him. The poor fellow had been very ill-treated by some of the banditti, and in his own house. Our friend arrived, and, of course, could give no other account of my mother's Christian name than I had; but, after much demur, it was allowed to pass; and long indeed was the deposition in taking, after every few sentences that he had dictated to his clerk, making him read out the whole that was written, cursing him pretty handsomely for his diction, and directing amendments. At length the business is finished, but not without our excellent friend the Frenchman finding it to his interest to fee the Head of the Police. I saw him give him money. All this while the poor country fellow was obliged to stand, lean, or lie bleeding as he could. To finish the tale of the bandits, it may be as well here to add, that the day following they blockaded the little town of Eboli, where was a Government telegraph. Why, I did not hear, but I learned that a band of soldiers was sent after them, that an action took place, the captain of the banditti killed, and their plunder retaken. Some time afterwards we made application to the British consul at Naples, as I was anxious to recover my watch and seals. But he plainly told us we had not the slightest chance of ever seeing them again, that they were in the hands of the Police, and had only changed hands of robbers. He took an account of the matter, for the use of our own Government, and it is, I dare say, in one of the public offices. The British consul remarked, that in England to see a countryman at work in a field is a protection; but if you see one in that country at work, keep your eye on him, for 'tis ten to one but he takes up a gun, and, if he hits you, knows what to do if he misses, goes on with his work. In fact, we found that no man could go half-a-mile from the town of Salerno to visit his garden or his vineyard, without being well armed, and even then it would be imprudent without taking others with him. Our object had been to see Pæstum, and in this we did not like to be baffled. We

Here was a grand hitch, for I gave it, and he declared there was no such name; I persisted, and told him it was in Goldoni's Comedies. This made him angry-he looked at me as if I wished to pass off myself and all my family under aliases. He then pretended he did not understand me, and must have an interpreter. He understood me very well, and the name too, but what the Christain name of a man's mother has to do with throwing light on the fact of his having been robbed an hour or two before, who can tell? I can, Eusebius. The scoundrel knew we had acquaintance with Mr B. the Frenchman, and was determined to have him there; firstly, out of tyranny, to insult and get something from him; secondly, it would make a great delay, and thus, before he should make his report to other authorities, the banditti would be safe from pursuit; and I have no doubt whatever that the fellow received their pay, and helped them on all occasions. Now, you may charge me with slander, ascribing false motives to what might have been mere stupidity and official form. Stay a moment, and you will not say so. Read on. Frenchman was sent for, the distance there and back, perhaps, from two to three miles, but I do not recollect exactly; however it took some considerable time before he came, and whilst waiting for his arrival (for nothing was done with us in the interim, nor were we asked to sit down), in staggered a countryman, deadly pale, all bloody, and the blood was streaming down from his head. He threw himself for support against the wall, and then slid down upon a chair, for some time unable to speak. The man had been dreadfully beaten, and, for aught

The

spent a most agreeable day with our friends the Italian nobleman and the French family, and arranged our plan of going by water, and received letters to a gentleman who resided not far from Pæstum, and there we were to go first. We procured a boat, and some pains were taken to secure us honest boatmen. We crossed the bay, but missed the house to which we had been directed. We saw but one house, and made direct for that, and a curious scene it was-a most lonely region of barren and not very high mountains, nor was there any sign of a habitation to be seen but this one rather large and uncouth. looking house. On entering the court we found the walk up to the door on each side well protected by men all lying down, completely armed, not less than from twenty to thirty-more bandittilooking fellows could not well be seen. Now it happened strangely enough, that the person to whom our letters were directed bore the same name as the owner of this cut-throat-looking mansion; we were, therefore, told to walk forward on showing the letter. We perceived a room full of persons all armed, and the owner was pointed out to us. We delivered our letter he opened it-it was not for him, he said surlily-and then turned to his own concerns, leaving us to ours. This was not very promising, so we made the best of our way off, and proceeded direct to Pæstum, and did not arrive there till sunset, and had but a very scant view of the beautiful temples. They looked, in the dim light, very grand and solitary, for not a habitation nor sign of one did we see, though an old man wanted us to sleep at his house where it was, unless under ground, we could not conceive. We had heard that these were honest people. But it was too lonely and unpromising, and we determined to return to Salerno in the boat. It was then calm, but we had not proceeded far when the sky lowered, and soon the sea rose, and roared, and there was a perfect storm. It was very frightful-the night dark, and the thunder and lightning terrific.

I

know not how our little boat contrived to live in it; perhaps there was no real danger, yet it was a most awful night. We did, however, arrive safe, and were glad to get the shelter of even an Italian inn, and thus ended our adventure to see Pæstum,

once famed for roses, but now a most desolate place. Not far from it we were much struck with the little town Agropoli, perched upon the rock, still bearing its Grecian name, and indicating the people who had built those vast temples. I am not going, Eusebius, to moralize on the vanity of grandeur, and instability of human affairs, or I might bore you with a long quotation of Sulpicius' letter to Cicero, who, after all, might have replied, "what are all these places to me? I have lost my child." So will I say, "what is it to me what Pæstum was or is?—I have lost my watch, and my purse, my coat, and waistcoat, and pantaloons." Nor wonder at this cold and unromantic view; remember we have been drenched with rain, in a terrific thunder-storm, in peril of being drowned, and not very much the wiser for our sight-seeing. Now, if you tell my adventures by the fire-side, and any one snug in his own conceit and happiness should chance to be merry at my expense, and treat with contempt our imagined pusillanimity in suffering ourselves to be stript, let him know, Eusebius, that I should not think it a very unbecoming position to be hatching turkeys (an employment that has been celebrated), thereby to save life.

After all, it is but submission, and that to necessity; and, to suffer is not to do a mean action. "Omnis Aristippum debuit color;" and though I mean not to have my portrait taken in statu quo, I know not why we should be ashamed of our complexions. Besides, Mr Placidity, with ten stout fellows pulling at your arms and legs, I should like you to tell me how long your buttons would hold, to say nothing of the risk of having your arms pulled out of their sockets. However, like it or not, so the fact was, and I love to tell the naked truth, and there is one virtue against the one vice, if it be one. They say no man is a hero to his valet-de-chambre, and we had the honour of many who very handsomely helped us off with our clothes; and that's all that need be said about it. But the villanous Italians are habitually pusillanimous, and so, instead of extirpating the evil, try to laugh it off, when only their neighbours suffer. I saw on the stage a month or two afterwards an exact representation of such a robbery, exact to the very dress, and when the

unfortunates were ordered" faccia a terra," the whole house was in laughter. It is now so long since, that I cannot tell the names of places, perhaps at the time scarcely known. But I remember, long before this last robbery, travelling by veturino, I walked on half a mile before the carriage. It was a mountainous region; on a sudden I perceived on a rocky ground a little above the road, and not fifty yards from me, two men lying, well armed, and to all appearance a part of banditti. On seeing me they looked along the road I had come, and saw the carriage. One of them rose and went over the brow of the rising ground, and returned with three or four more, all similarly armed. They were in consultation. I did not much like their position, but assuming a carelessness, I whistled, and very leisurely walked back to the carriage, rather expecting a messenger, in a shot,

after me.

When I reached the carriage, I mounted and took my seat by the veturino, who looked very much frightened when I told him what I had seen. Straight forward we went, and I could not help being amused, in spite of the danger, when we came opposite the armed mountaineers, to see the veturino duck down his head, and put himself into as small compass as he could, (with his wide mouth open, and a look expressive of terror,) that I should cover him and receive the first shot. We were then near a turn of the road, so that the position of these bandits, if they were such, commanded two directions; we saw them perplexed, and soon divined the cause; for with great rapidity at that moment a travelling carriage and four turned the corner of the road and passed us, by which we were allowed to pass on and escaped. On another occasion, myself and friend very narrowly missed falling into the hands of a band that went out purposely to lie in wait for us. We had arrived at Palestrina, the ancient Præneste, where Horace read Homer. was no inn in the place, we had walked across the mountains with a guide from Vico-varo, but we found a house that would receive us ;-they appeared rather a poor family. It being understood that we should want a guide to proceed across the country next morning, one appeared and offered his services. While we were talking

There

with him, an old woman of the family gave me such significant looks that I could not mistake her meaning; accordingly I broke off the conference, and under some pretence, dismissed the man. When he had left the room, the old woman told me it was very fortunate we had not agreed with him, for he was one of the bad people; and as we liked her looks, and she promised to procure us an honest guide, we trusted her, and were not disappointed. Our new guide told us there was danger, but bade us take no notice, and give out that we should leave at one hour and for one direction, but set off an hour earlier, and a different way. We did so; and, taking a lower road, we observed, as our guide pointed them out to us, a band of them that had left the town by a higher road, and were gone to lie in wait for us. If you think that escape not worth relating, it has not occupied you long. And now, for change of scene, I will take you to a convent. We had gone to see the site of Horace's farm, the Mons Lucretilis, and the "gelidus Digentia rivus," both celebrated by the poet, the one from the wolf flying from him

"Namque me sylva lupus in Sabinâ;" the other as his bathing river—

"Me quoties reficit gelidus Digentia rivus ;'

And

and cold the waters are, for I bathed in them, though an old countryman forewarned me, "fa morire.” now shall I make a digression upon bathing, only to remark, that the modern are unlike the old inhabitants in this also, they never bathe, they have a dread of water; and some that I questioned confessed that they never washed hands or face. All this region among the hills is very picturesque ; but the "sweetly smiling and sweetly speaking" Lalages are no more. Liking the scenery, we took up our abode at a large convent, not far from a miserable, old, but picturesque, small town, Vico-varo, the convent of St Corimo, overhanging a ravine with a mountain torrent at its base, and in the rocky descent are many excavated cells. Ere the progress of the French Revolution had dispersed monkery, it is said to have held an hundred or more. At the time we entered its gates there were but ten monks, and a murderer who had taken refuge there,

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while, they said, the relatives of the man slain had been waiting a year at Vico-varo, to catch him outside the convent, and take their revenge. Here we were joined by another English gentleman and his servant. One day, taking the course of the river upwards, we were much struck with the appearance of a small town among the hills, and I wished to sketch it from the opposite bank. I determined, therefore, to go there the following day; they told me at the convent it was not safe, and besides, that the path through the underwood was infested by small snakes, whose bite was dangerous. But I wanted to bag the town, and ventured. As they told me, the path was infested with a great number of copper-coloured snakes, but they hurt me not, and I arrived opposite the place I wanted to sketch. There was a large convent there, which on paper occupied as much space as the town; and if the citadel and garrison, thought I, make a warlike town, as there is here an Episcopal palace and a large convent, which seems to command the town, the inhabitants ought to be peaceful; so, in spite of evil report, when I had finished my sketch, and it was now evening, I crossed a bridge and entered the town-and what a place!! I saw no inhabitant till I entered a small square, and here, to my astonishment, the beds laid at the doors, and the people all in bed, in the open air. They would have served for a plague scene in the hands of a Nicolo Poussin; and their bedding looked infested. I made the best of my way out (my friend was not with me on this excursion), and a few steps led me into a street, and here I encountered a finely-dressed livery servant, who appeared but ill to accord with the place. He started when he saw me, looked about him, and hastily made a motion with his hand, looking very earnestly and significantly that I should go straight forward and with speed, and make my way out of the place. I did so, passed a gate very soon, and found a path that led me down to the river, and thence made the best of my way back, a distance of some miles. On my return, the gentleman's servant, an Englishman, met me, and said he wanted to speak to me; that he knew I was up late, and kept my door open; that he had

some reason to think the murderer, who, as I told you, had taken refuge there, was most nights in my room, and he desired me to lock my door. My room lay at the end of a long gallery-the whole was in the form of a cross. I sat up late, and very distinctly hearing groans, I took my lamp to trace from whence they came; I found them, near the end of another long gallery, to proceed from a poor devil who was flogging himself, and praying and groaning between. Returning, at the end of this gallery I had to pass a tomb-like recess, very dark and hollow, in which lay a recumbent statue of a dead Christ. It looked very sombre, and as I held up my lamp to look at it, I saw something move behind the figure. I went closer and held my lamp higher, and then saw something glisten-it was an eye. I then discovered two boys, who had accompanied us as attendants to carry our things about. They had chosen this position, I suppose, to sleep in, or for other purposes. Whether they or the murderer entered my room that night or not, I do not know, but it was entered, my portmanteau opened, and my purse taken. These monks were very ignorant ; if they could read, it was very badly, as one of them brought me a paper to make out for him.

I forgot to tell you, when speaking of the French gentlemen with whom we travelled from Capua to Naples, and who treated us with so much real civility, that on our return to Naples, from our disastrous excursion to Pæstum, we met one of them. He appeared much depressed; upon our asking the cause, he told us that he had been most wofully plundered. It appears he had a well-furnished house at Mola di Gaeta-robbers had broken a way through the walls, brought cars, and had taken away all the house contained. So you see, my dear Eusebius, not only strangers and travellers on the high-way are robbed, but residents, and that by wholesale. I believe in many parts of this over-praised country it is thought quite a thing to boast of if a few days pass without a robbery. A landlord of an inn between Naples and Rome told me with great glee there had been none for a long time; I asked him how long, he said not these ten days. I was then travelling by

veturino, and as we were setting off, told the man that it was a dangerous country, and he had better make speed. Instead of urging on his horses, he turned round to me and offered me a paper to look at, saying, " pensa niente, pensa niente." I found it to be a printed paper, with a receipt of a money payment to a convent at Naples, as a charm against every ill. There were pictures of all sorts of dangers, and rescues from them, and a statement that, though the payer might be under the knife of the assassin, the souls he had by his payments for masses released from purgatory would intercede for him, and he would be perfectly safe. But alas, Eusebius, I was not insured, and I had no faith; and he might be considered by the saints, as in carrying heretics, to have contraband goods; so I had nothing to do but to pay him instanter the whole amount for my journey, that I might have the less to lose. This made my fellow travellers laugh; but whether at my faithless folly or my wisdom, I do not know. I have no doubt the veturino had faith-some of these fellows believe the saints can do any thing. I recollect one of them, not being able to manage his horses to his satisfaction, flew into a violent rage; but how did he show it? not with a volley of vulgar oaths, as an Englishman might perhaps have done, nor with a tremendous whack, and "up, my darlings!" as I have known an Irish driver do; but he deliberately left his seat and got before his horses, and knelt down in the middle of the road, and held up his hands, and lifted up his eyes, and prayed fervently and eloquently to all the saints," Tutti Santi,”—that they would instantly kill his master's horses. The miracle did not come, which, I dare say, he attributed to his own particular sins, and determined to do penance. Perhaps the beasts had often been on their knees before a "Tutti Santi," and of the three beasts they determined to disappoint the human. Now, as setting the Italians to put an end to these disgraceful robberies, would be very much like setting a thief to catch a thief," the thing is not, or was not attempted; but Austrian soldiers had done and were doing something that way. And many of the soft and beautiful landscapes of Italy are adorned by a fore.

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ground of a pole with a brown mahogany-looking leg or arm of some robber on the very spot of his villainy, so that the "Knight of the Post," post mortem, still "shoulders his arms and shows how fields were won." To sketch, with a friend standing by you with a cocked pistol, as once I was obliged to do, must greatly enhance the soft enchantment of the scenery, especially with these lopt members of the Inhumane Society festering in front. I am sure, Eusebius, you have had enough of bandits, and the more dignified and romantic robberies; shall we descend to the minor cheateries and cheats, the "pickers up of unconsidered trifles ?" Alas! there would be no loss-three thick octavo volumes at least could I give you-but leave me this for the labours of the Statistic Societies, who poke their noses every where (unhappy be their noses, indeed, when they do so in Italy!) And I will here just hint, or rather state the fact with. out entering into detail—and to one of your fine sense that way it will be quite enough-that in every quarter of Italy you can always smell a town a mile or two off at least; and it must have been in this country that the saying or direction was first made, to" follow your nose." The filth and indecencies of the country are really far beyond an untravelled Englishman's conception. Verbum sat. I do not wonder that foreigners take snuff and smoke tobacco-there is much to disguise; and thus have I thrown light upon this question of the why, obiter, not of design, so have I been lucky "ex fumo dare lucem." I told you I would not enter into the detail of these matters. But as I know, Eusebius, this paper will not reach you at a time to spoil your appetite, I will just mention what may be met with by telling you the following dietary anecdote. I lodged at a large hotel in Rome, kept by a German. We sat down, about forty persons every day, to dinner,-hussar officers, gentlemen travellers, natives, &c. &c. I have seen the latter sit at table without their coats-shirt sleeves looked very cool-I have seen waiters wait in their night-caps, and thought it not advisable to request them to take them off. But to the matter. One day in earnest conversation with my right-hand neighbour,

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