ast far more closely and
critically than I should otherwise have done. And this again inspired in
me (who always had a mania for bric-a-brac and antiquity, which is
certainly hereditary) a great interest in the characteristic _decoration_
of different ages, which thing is the soul and life of all aesthetic
archaeology and the minor arts; which latter again I truly claim to have
brought, I may say, into scientific form and made a branch of education
in after years.

I think that we were a month in Naples. I kept a journal then, and
indeed everywhere for three years after. The reader may be thankful that
I have it not, for I foresee that I shall easily recall enough to fill
ten folios of a thousand pages solid brevier each, at this rate of
reminiscences. As my predilection for everything German and Gothic came
out more strongly every day, Mr. Mosely called me familiarly Germanicus,
a name which was indeed not ill-bestowed at that period.

From Naples we went to Rome by _vettura_, or in carriages. We were two
days and two nights on the route. I remember that when we entered Rome,
I saw the _douanier_ who examined my trunk remove from it, as he thought
unperceived, a hair-brush, book, &c., and slyly hide them behind another
trunk. I calmly walked round, retook and replaced them in my trunk, to
the discomfiture, but not in the least to the shame, of the thief, who
only grinned.

And here I may say, once for all, that one can hardly fail to have a mean
opinion of human common-sense in government, when we see this system of
examining luggage still maintained. For all that any country could
_possibly_ lose by smuggling in trunks, &c., would be a hundred-fold
recompensed by the increased amount of travel and money imported, should
it be done away with, as has been perfectly and fully proved in France;
the announcement a year ago that examination would be null or formal
having had at once the effect of greatly increasing travel. And as there
is not a custom-house in all Europe where a man who knows the trick
cannot pull through his luggage by bribery--the exceptions being
miraculously rare--the absurdity and folly of the system is apparent.

We went to the Hotel d'Allemagne, where I fell ill, either because I had
a touch of Neapolitan malaria in me (in those days the stench of the city
was perceptible three miles out at sea, and might have risen unto heaven
above and been smelt by the angels, had they and their home b