l. You were having it all your own way, if I had
not put in a word on the other side. You have enough left to make out a
very good case, my friends: console yourselves with that. As for me, I
do not expect to see better times, whatever our excellent Muzio may say
to the contrary; so I do not kill myself with care, and endeavour to
make the best of what we have, laugh and amuse myself, and keep out of
politics.—_Signori miei_, good night.”




CHAPTER XXI.

   Unwillingness of the Italians to speak on serious
     topics—Indifference of the majority to literature—Reasons for
     discouraging the cultivation of female intellect—The Marchesa
     Gentilina relates her convent experiences—Admiration of
     English domestic life.


One day so closely resembles another in the general course of existence
in the provincial towns of Central and Southern Italy, that it would
be difficult, with any regard to truth, to throw much more diversity
into the description of twelve months than of twelve hours; the only
variation of any importance being connected with the seasons when the
Opera is open, for which the majority of the population retain the
absorbing attachment that grave thinkers, like the good and enlightened
Ganganelli, so far back as a century ago, lamented as the bane of the
inhabitants of the Marche. On this, however, as on a variety of other
matters, his successors held different opinions from Clement XIV.;
and by their encouragement to the taste for theatrical performances,
fostered the levity which that pontiff in his correspondence so much
deplores—well content to see the eagerness, the interest, the hopes
which in other countries men are _taught_ it is more fitting to
bestow on questions of science, politics, and religion, centre among
their own subjects on the _trilli_ of a prima donna, or the legs of a
_ballerina_.

That which, perhaps, out of a hundred other traits, most forcibly
attracted my notice, as evincing the most striking contrast to English
manners—for, he it remembered, I never