Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 -- Travel -- Italy; Italy -- Description and travel; Novelists, English -- 19th century -- Biography
If Pisa be the seventh wonder of the world in right of its Tower, it may
claim to be, at least, the second or third in right of its beggars. They
waylay the unhappy visitor at every turn, escort him to every door he
enters at, and lie in wait for him, with strong reinforcements, at every
door by which they know he must come out. The grating of the portal on
its hinges is the signal for a general shout, and the moment he appears,
he is hemmed in, and fallen on, by heaps of rags and personal
distortions. The beggars seem to embody all the trade and enterprise of
Pisa. Nothing else is stirring, but warm air. Going through the
streets, the fronts of the sleepy houses look like backs. They are all
so still and quiet, and unlike houses with people in them, that the
greater part of the city has the appearance of a city at daybreak, or
during a general siesta of the population. Or it is yet more like those
backgrounds of houses in common prints, or old engravings, where windows
and doors are squarely indicated, and one figure (a beggar of course) is
seen walking off by itself into illimitable perspective.
Not so Leghorn (made illustrious by SMOLLETT’S grave), which is a
thriving, business-like, matter-of-fact place, where idleness is
shouldered out of the way by commerce. The regulations observed there,
in reference to trade and merchants, are very liberal and free; and the
town, of course, benefits by them. Leghorn had a bad name in connection
with stabbers, and with some justice it must be allowed; for, not many
years ago, there was an assassination club there, the members of which
bore no ill-will to anybody in particular, but stabbed people (quite
strangers to them) in the streets at night, for the pleasure and
excitement of the recreation. I think the president of this amiable
society was a shoemaker. He was taken, however, and the club was broken
up. It would, probably, have disappeared in the natural course of
events, before the railroad between Leghorn and Pisa, which is a good
one, and has already begun to astonish Italy with a precedent of
punctuality, order, plain dealing, and improvement—the most dangerous and
heretical astonisher of all. There must have been a slight sensation, as
of earthquake, surely, in the Vatican, when the first Italian railroad
was thrown open.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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