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would have to the front of his palace, of seeing the setting sun.

One would wonder how the Spaniards, who have but very few forces in the kingdom of Naples, should be able to keep a people from revolting, that has been famous for its mutinies and seditions in former ages. But they have so well contrived it, that though the subjects are miserably harassed and oppressed, the greatest of their oppressors are those of their own body. I shall not mention any thing of the clergy, who are sufficiently reproached in most itineraries for the universal poverty that one meets with in this noble and plentiful kingdom. A great part of the people is in a state of vassalage to the barons, who are the harshest tyrants in the world to those that are under them. The vassals, indeed, are allowed, and invited to bring in their complaints and appeals to the viceroy, who to foment divisions, and gain the hearts of the populace, does not stick at imprisoning and chastising their masters very severely on occasion. The subjects of the crown are notwithstanding much more rich and happy than the vassals of the barons. Insomuch, that when the king has been upon the point of selling a town to one of his barons, the inhabitants have raised the sum upon themselves, and presented it to the king, that they might keep out of so insupportable a slavery. Another way the Spaniards have taken to grind the Neapolitans, and yet to take off the odium from themselves, has been by erecting several courts of justice, with a very small pension for such as sit at the head of them, so that they are tempted to take bribes, keep causes undecided, encourage law-suits, and do all they can to fleece the people, that they may have wherewithal to support their own dignity. It is incredible how great a multitude of retainers to the law there are at Naples. It is

commonly said, that when Innocent the Eleventh had desired the Marquis of Carpio to furnish him with thirty thousand head of swine, the marquis answered him, that for his swine he could not spare them, but if his holiness had occasion for thirty thousand lawyers, he had

them at his service. These gentlemen find a continual employ for the fiery temper of the Neapolitans, and hinder them from uniting in such common friendships and alliances as might endanger the safety of the government. There are very few persons of consideration who have not a cause depending; for when a Neapolitan cavalier has nothing else to do, he gravely shuts himself up in his closet, and falls a tumbling over his papers to see if he can start a law-suit, and plague any of his neighbours. So much is the genius of this people changed since Statius's time.

Nulla foro rabies, aut strictæ jurgia legis
Morum jura viris solum et sine fascibus æquum.

By love of right and native justice led,
In the straight paths of equity they tread;
Nor know the bar, nor fear the judge's frown,
Unpractis'd in the wranglings of the gown.

SIL. lib. 3.

There is another circumstance which makes the Ne apolitans, in a very particular manner, the oppressors of each other. The gabels of Naples are very high on oil, wine, tobacco, and indeed on almost every thing that can be eaten, drank, or worn. There would have been one on fruit, had not Massianello's rebellion abolished it, as it has probably put a stop to many others. What makes these imposts more intolerable to the poorer sort, they are laid on all butchers' meat, while at the same time the fowl and gibbier are tax-free. Besides, all meat being taxed equally by the pound, it happens that the duty lies heaviest on the coarser sorts, which are most likely to fall to the share of the common people, so that beef perhaps pays a third, and veal a tenth of its price to the government, a pound of either sort having the same tax fixed on it. These gabels are most of them at present in the hands of private men; for as the king of Spain has had occasion for money, he has borrowed it of the rich Neapolitans, on condition that they should receive the interest out of such or such gabels till he could repay them the principal.

This he has repeated so often, that at present there is

VOL. II.

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scarce a single gabel unmortgaged; so that there is no place in Europe which pays greater taxes, and at the same time, no prince who draws less advantage from them. In other countries the people have the satisfac-. tion of seeing the money they give spent in the necessities, defence, or ornament of their state, or at least in the vanity or pleasures of their prince: but here most of it goes to the enriching of their fellow-subjects. If there was not so great a plenty of every thing in Naples the people could not bear it. The Spaniard, however, reaps this advantage from the present posture of affairs, that the murmurs of the people are turned upon their own countrymen, and what is more considerable, that almost all the persons, of the greatest wealth and power in Naples, are engaged by their own interests to pay these impositions cheerfully, and to support the government which has laid them on. For this reason, though the poorer sort are for the emperor, few of the persons of consequence can endure to think of a change in their present establishment; though there is no question but the king of Spain will reform most of these abuses, by breaking or retrenching the power of the barons, by cancelling several unnecessary employs, or by ransoming or taking the gabels into his own hands. I have been told too, there is a law of Charles the Fifth something like our statute of Mortmain, which has lain dormant ever since his time, and will probably have new life put into it under the reign of an active prince. The inhabitants of Naples have been always very notorious for leading a life of laziness and pleasure, which I take to arise partly out of the wonderful plenty of their country, that does not make labour so necessary to them, and partly out of the temper of their climate, that relaxes the fibres of their bodies, and disposes the people to such an idle indolent humour. Whatever it proceeds from, we find they were formerly as famous for it as they are at present.

This was perhaps the reason that the ancients tell us one of the Sirens was buried in this city, which thence received the name of Parthenope.

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Parthenope, for idle hours design'd,
To luxury and ease unbends the mind.
Parthenope non dives opum, non spreta vigoris,
Nam molles urbi ritus atque hospita Musis
Otia, et exemtum curis gravioribus ævum:
Sirenum dedit una suum et memorabile nomen
Parthenope muris Acheloïas, æquore cujus
Regnavere diu cantus, cum dulce per undas
Exitium miseris caneret non prospera nautis.

Here wanton Naples crowns the happy shore,
Nor vainly rich, nor despicably poor,
The town in soft solemnities delights,
And gentle poets to her arms invites ;
The people, free from cares, serene and gay,
Pass all their mild untroubled hours away.
Parthenope the rising city nam'd,

A Siren, for her songs and beauty fam'd,

SIL. IT. lib. 12.

That oft had drown'd among the neighb'ring seas
The list'ning wretch, and made destruction please.

Has ego te sedes (nam nec mihi barbara Thrace
Nec Libye natale solum) transferre laboro:
Quas te mollis hyems et frigida temperat æstas,
Quas imbelle fretum, torpentibus alluit undis :
Pax secura locis, et desidis otia vitæ,
Et nunquam turbata quies, somnique peracti:
Nulla foro rabies, &c.

STAT. SIL. lib. 3.

These are the gentle seats that I propose;
For not cold Scythia's undissolving snows,
Nor the parch'd Libyan sands thy husband bore,
But mild Parthenope's delightful shore,
Where hush'd in calms the bord'ring ocean laves
Her silent coast, and rolls in languid waves;
Refreshing winds the summer's heats assuage,
And kindly warmth disarms the winter's rage;
Remov'd from noise and the tumultuous war,
Soft sleep and downy ease inhabit there,
And dreams unbroken with intruding care,

THE ANTIQUITIES AND NATURAL CURIOSITIES THAT LIE NEAR THE CITY OF NAPLES.

At about eight miles distance from Naples lies a very noble scene of antiquities. What they call Virgil's tomb is the first that one meets with on the way thither. It is certain this poet was buried at Naples, but I think it is almost as certain that his tomb stood on the other side of the town which looks towards Vesuvio. By this tomb is the entry into the grotto of Pausilypo. The common people of Naples believe it to have been wrought by magic, and that Virgil was the magician; who is in greater repute among the Neapolitans for having made the grotto, than the Æneid.

If a man would form to himself a just idea of this place, he must fancy a vast rock undermined from one end to the other, and a highway running through it, near as long and as broad as the Mall in St. James's Park. This subterraneous passage is much mended since Seneca gave so bad a character of it. The entry at both ends is higher than the middle parts of it, and sinks by degrees, to fling in more light upon the rest. Towards the middle are two large funnels, bored through the roof of the grotto, to let in light and fresh air.

There are no where about the mountain any vast heaps of stones, though it is certain the great quantities of them that are dug out of the rock could not easily conceal themselves, had they not probably been consumed in the moles and buildings of Naples, This confirmed me in a conjecture which I made at the first sight of this subterraneous passage, that it was not at first designed so much for a highway as for a quarry of stone, but that the inhabitants, finding a double advantage by it, hewed it into the form we now see. haps the same design gave the original to the Sibyl's grotto, considering the prodigious multitude of palaces that stood in its neighbourhood.

Per

I remember when I was at Chateaudun in France, I met with a very curious person, a member of one of

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