Every Italian city has some peculiarities of custom or language which are amusing to a stranger, though sometimes, it must be confessed, they are rather annoying. Here about daybreak, or a little before, I am awaked by a number of confused sounds, but I go to sleep again in spite of them. My breakfast is usually taken at a coffee-house, and in my way there, I discover in what these voices consisted, at least in some degree; for as the language here is any thing but pure Tuscan, I cannot pretend to understand the whole of it. Perhaps in all countries the criers of goods form something of a dialect of their own, as in London, where a stranger might well be puzzled to find out their meaning. And then there are elisions, which are only explained by the action, or by the goods exposed for sale. One is bawling “_quattro grani, quattro grani_,” meaning that he has figs to sell, at four grains the rotolo. A Neapolitan rotolo consists of thirty-three ounces, and amounts very nearly to two pounds avoirdupois. The grain is a tenth part of a carline, and that again the twelfth of a piastre, which wants a few grains of a Spanish dollar. A grain is therefore something less than one halfpenny. The coins which represent it may afford some new lessons in arithmetic. Theoretically, two tornesi are equal to one grain. But we have pieces of ten tornesi worth four grains, of eight tornesi equal also to four grains, eight tornesi equal two grains and a half, five tornesi equal two grains: when the coins are very numerous, even these erroneous marks are better than none at all, as they enable us to identify the piece with certainty. What is pleasant enough is, that the copper coins of 1816 have the head of Ferdinand the Fourth, while those of 1817 have, in the legend, Ferdinand the First, his majesty having been graciously pleased in the interval to annihilate three of his ancestors. To return to the figs, they are small, but very good, and neatly piled up in small round baskets, with leaves between them, and flowers stuck among them by way of ornament. Close by, another fellow is calling “_tre grani, quattro grani_,” as the price of the different sorts of grapes, which are disposed in the same manner, and with the same attention to decoration. This indeed is quite the character of the Neapolitan. “_O che bella cosa_,” cries his neighbour, and he has cut up a melon into pieces, which he sells for half a grain each. “_Quanto è bello_,” thunders forth the butcher, who admires with rapture the meat he wishes you to buy.