made it very difficult to obtain accommodation at the inns; but it was desirable in point of security, as the road is not in very high esteem, although guarded in the worst part by a band of sixty-five robbers taken into the king’s service. On looking round at the different parties, S. and myself decided that our own companions were the most agreeable of the whole; of the two who were with us in the carriage, one was a gentleman perhaps thirty years old, who had been an officer in the French armies, and served afterwards under Joachim; for the latter circumstance he is now dismissed, although his appointments were at first confirmed to him by the present government. Our English laws have decided that it is no crime to serve the king _de facto_; the restored sovereigns of Italy have not adopted that salutary maxim, but in punishing men for doing their duty, have given their subjects a lesson that it belongs to them to decide who ought to be king; and have rejected their best officers from the service. Our companion made no complaints, but simply mentioned the facts as inquiries occurred in the course of conversation. An Italian is almost always improved by foreign military service. It enlarges his mind and improves his manners, without lowering his standard of morality; he is generally free from the puppyism, and violent _esprit de corps_, of which the French officers are accused. In all parts of the world the middle classes of society are the most moral; in Italy they are also the best informed, as instruction to a certain point is of easy attainment, although beyond this point, the progress of the human mind is checked as much as possible by the religious and political institutions of the country, and if a nobleman can read and write his own name, it seems as much as is expected. This state of things cannot last, but the French, in their revolutionary frenzy, put the lowest class at the top, and the remedy was worse than the disease. Revolutions are essentially bad things; the chances are terribly against a good ending; but a circulation of ranks, in which superior talents and virtues among the people gradually advance themselves and their families, while the higher classes, when unsupported by personal qualifications, as gently sink again into the mass, is essential to the sane condition of the body politic. Add to this a constitution where every one has his due weight; and let me add, that let his portion of political consequence be ever so small, no man ought to be entirely a cypher; and national prosperity must be the result. Our other companion was a brother of this officer, quite as much as the other inclined to render us those little services in which a native can so easily assist a stranger, not very well informed, but with considerable desire of becoming so. In the _serpe_, or cabriolet, were three natives of Livello, a town in Apulia, a little out of the high road. One had been a soldier, the second had also, I believe, been in