f the blind, unreasoning seventeenth-century
detestation of "Popery and wooden shoes."

Smollett is one of the first to describe a "conversazione," and in
illustration of the decadence of Italian manners, it is natural that he
should have a good deal to tell us about the Cicisbeatura. His account
of the cicisbeo and his duties, whether in Nice, Florence, or Rome, is
certainly one of the most interesting that we have. Before Smollett and
his almost contemporary travel correspondent, Samuel Sharp, it would
probably be hard to find any mention of the cicisbeo in England, though
the word was consecrated by Sheridan a few years later. Most of the
"classic" accounts of the usage such as those by Mme. de Stael,
Stendhal, Parini, Byron and his biographers date from very much later,
when the institution was long past its prime if not actually moribund.
Now Smollett saw it at the very height of its perfection and at a time
when our decorous protestant curiosity on such themes was as lively as
Lady Mary Montagu had found it in the case of fair Circassians and
Turkish harems just thirty years previously. [A cicisbeo was a dangler.
Hence the word came to be applied punningly to the bow depending from a
clouded cane or ornamental crook. In sixteenth-century Spain, home of
the sedan and the caballero galante, the original term was bracciere.
In Venice the form was cavaliere servente. For a good note on the
subject, see Sismondi's Italian Republics, ed. William Boulting, 1907,
p. 793.] Like so much in the shapes and customs of Italy the
cicisbeatura was in its origin partly Gothic and partly Oriental. It
combined the chivalry of northern friendship with the refined passion
of the South for the seclusion of women. As an experiment in protest
against the insipidity which is too often an accompaniment of conjugal
intercourse the institution might well seem to deserve a more tolerant
and impartial investigation than it has yet received at the hands of
our sociologists. A survival so picturesque could hardly be expected to
outlive the bracing air of the nineteenth century. The north wind blew
and by 1840 the cicisbeatura was a thing of the past.

Freed from the necessity of a systematic delineation Smollett rambles
about Nice, its length and breadth, with a stone in his pouch, and
wherever a cockshy is available he takes full advantage of it. He
describes the ghetto (p. 171), the police arrangements of the place
which he finds in the main