t races in the same manner. Our peasants have a blunt
saying: Cut off the dog's tail and he is still a dog; and so I suspect
the most enlightened rule would hardly bring this prompt and choleric
people, living on a volcanic soil amid a teeming vegetation, into any
resemblance with the clear-headed Tuscan or the gentle and dignified
Roman."

As he spoke they emerged upon the Chiaia, where at that hour the quality
took the air in their carriages, while the lower classes thronged the
footway. A more vivacious scene no city of Europe could present. The
gilt coaches drawn by six or eight of the lively Neapolitan horses,
decked with plumes and artificial flowers and preceded by running
footmen who beat the foot-passengers aside with long staves; the
richly-dressed ladies seated in this never-ending file of carriages,
bejewelled like miraculous images and languidly bowing to their friends;
the throngs of citizens and their wives in holiday dress; the sellers of
sherbet, ices and pastry bearing their trays and barrels through the
crowd with strange cries and the jingling of bells; the friars of every
order in their various habits, the street-musicians, the half-naked
lazzaroni, cripples and beggars, who fringed the throng like the line of
scum edging a fair lake;--this medley of sound and colour, which in fact
resembled some sudden growth of the fiery soil, was an expressive
comment on the abate's words.

"Look," he continued, as he and Odo drew aside to escape the mud from an
emblazoned chariot, "at the gold-leaf on the panels of that coach and
the gold-lace on the liveries of those lacqueys. Is there any other city
in the world where gold is so prodigally used? Where the monks gild
their relics, the nobility their servants, the apothecaries their pills,
the very butchers their mutton? One might fancy their bright sun had set
them the example! And how cold and grey all soberer tints must seem to
these children of Apollo! Well--so it is with their religion and their
daily life. I wager half those naked wretches yonder would rather attend
a fine religious service, with abundance of gilt candles, music from
gilt organ-pipes, and incense from gilt censers, than eat a good meal or
sleep in a decent bed; as they would rather starve under a handsome
merry King that has the name of being the best billiard-player in Europe
than go full under one of your solemn reforming Austrian Archdukes!"

The words recalled to Odo Crescenti's theo