A View of Society and Manners in Italy, Volume 2 (of 2): With Anecdotes Relating to some Eminent CharactersMoore, John
History
A View of Society and Manners in Italy, Volume 2 (of 2): With Anecdotes Relating to some Eminent Characters
Moore, John
Italy -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800; Italy -- Social life and customs -- Early works to 1800
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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