The domestic life of England has no parallel in any part of Europe, save, perhaps, in some of the French provinces, where the old “_vie du château_” presents something similar; but, even there, it rather lingers like the spirit of a departed time, the relic of bygone associations, than in the full reign of a strong national taste. In Germany, notwithstanding the general impression to the contrary, there is still less of it: the passion for household duties by the woman, the irresistible charms of beer and tobacco to the men, suggest different paths; and while she indulges her native fondness for cookery and counting napkins at home, he, in some wine-garden, dreams away life in smoke-inspired visions of German regeneration and German unity. In Italy, however, the points of contact between the members of a family are still fewer again: the meal-times, that summon around the board the various individuals of a house, are here unknown; each rises when he pleases, and takes his cup of coffee or chocolate in solitary independence--unseen, unknown, and, worse still, unwashed! The drawing-room, that paradise of English home-existence, has no place in the life of Italy. The lady of the house is never seen of a morning; not that the cares of family, the duties of a household, engross her--not that she is busied with advancing the education of her children, or improving her own. No: she is simply _en deshabille_. That is, to be sure, a courteous expression for a toilet that has cost scarce five minutes to accomplish, and would require more than the indulgence one concedes to the enervation of climate to forgive. The master of the family repairs to the café: his whole existence revolves around certain little tables, with lemonade, sorbets, and dominoes; his physical wants are, indeed, few, but his intellectual ones even fewer; he cares little for politics--less for literature; his thoughts have but one theme--intrigue; and his whole conversation is a sort of _chronique scandaleuse_ on the city he lives in. There is a tone of seeming good-nature--an easy, mock charity, in the way he treats his neighbours’ backslidings--that have often suggested to strangers favourable impressions as to the kindliness of the people; but this is as great an error as can be: the real explanation of the fact is the levity of national feeling, and the little impression that breaches of morality make upon a society dead to all the higher and better dictates of virtue--such offences being not capital crimes, but mere misdemeanours.