ITALY AND ITALIAN SOCIETY.

"I MUST go to Italy," said Lady Georgiana. "My cough is troublesome-I have an aversion to fogs-sunshine and smiles are essential to my existence. My doctor prescribes purer air than can be found on the banks of the Thames; and my health and happiness both require a total change of scenery and associations."

Now as Lady Georgiana was one of those fragile beings who are accustomed to acquiescence on the part of all who surround them, lest contradiction should injure their nerves and derange their systems, Lord Harry consented without a murmur to her "must;" and this with the less reluctance, as he knew only enough of Italy to entertain all sorts of erroneous opinions, the most capital of which was, that every Italian woman was full of sentiment or passion: and that the sky was uniformly blue, and the eyes of Italian beauties as uniformly bright. The idea of a series of intrigues with the belles femmes of Italy, all waiting for his money and his love on the roadside, filled his heart with anticipated happiness, and his imagination with a thousand adventures; and so, from pure selfishness, he replied to Lady Georgiana,

"Well, my dear Georgiana, to Italy we will go;" and a few days afterwards they were on their road-and at Paris.

At Paris, he saw" some men" who had lately returned. Their story was somewhat different: they vowed that Italy was the most difficult country in the world in which to make "a conquest," and that it had become the classic land of virtue and of coldness. So the Italian ladies fell at least fifty per cent. in Lord Harry's estimation, who now in his turn began to persuade himself that they were either catholic saints or thorough tigresses. His heart failed him-gladly would he have remained at Paris. He exerted his eloquence to persuade Lady Georgiana that a winter in that capital was delicious, that fogs were unknown on the banks of the Seine-that November was as mild in Paris as May in London-and he sometimes hoped that he had succeeded in his purpose. But a sudden set in of cold weather towards the close of September, frustrated all his combinations-her ladyship re-uttered the fatal word "must"-and it was finally determined that the winter was to be spent in Italy.

There he fell in with some
True, their ma-

At Geneva he was better satisfied. young Oxonians who had been more successful. dona's had been of the lower orders; but "love," they told him, was the still cherished idol of the Italians-that in that country the young god was quite at his ease-that he was blessed with seven-league boots like Tom Thumb, and yet with fifty heads and a hundred hands like the giant Briareus who waged war against heaven.

Lord Harry listened with rapture to their marvellous exploits, and dreamed at night of " tender moonlight meetings," of mysterious "rendezvous," of anonymous "billets-doux," of "dark staircases," "masks," "veils," cloaks," and "poniards." During the daytime he once more

pictured to himself the "lovely Italians," like roses on bushes without thorns, only waiting to be gathered: and formed the inconceivable opinion that innocence was unknown beneath an Italian sky-that husbands were deceived, and willing to be so-and that, in one word he could complete his education, having married too young, and without having first sown all his wild oats.

Dear Lady Georgiana only thought of her health. She had none of the tastes or opinions of her lord. She had read many novels to great profit, and understood marriage à la mode. Her husband was a handsome-looking fellow, his fortune was abundant, he dressed well, danced well, and talked not badly; and what did she care for more, except to get rid of her cough, and look interesting?

One thing they had both forgotten, and as it is a common error with many of our English gentry, we may as well mention it-they had forgotten that in Italy they speak Italian. Lord Harry did not remember that the Italian beauties did not understand English, and that nothing could be less poetical than to say "How d'ye do," to a beautiful nymph either at a church, a ball, a fête, or in a forest. The Oxonians first opened his eyes to this defect. They confessed, with tears in their eyes, that one of their number who conversed with fluency in Italian, had succeeded better with his tongue, though the poorest of the party, than they had done with their eyes or their sovereigns: and at the end of a conversation on this subject, his lordship rushed up the staircase of the hotel, ran into Lady Georgiana's room, and to her infinite horror and surprise, exclaimed,

"We must learn Italian!"

"Why should we learn Italian?" asked her ladyship with emotion. "Because we are going to Italy," was the answer.

"That is no reason at all," replied Lady Georgiana. "We are going to Italy, but not to the Italians. Besides, have we not Raspigny our courier ?"

But as Lord Harry had no notion of making love by proxy, he continued to insist on the necessity of speaking Italian, "were it only to be able to control the operations and arrangements of his courier,"and so straightway he rang the bell, and ordered the waiter to send for the best Italian professor to be found in Geneva.

The professor was soon discovered-arrangements were as rapidly made. Lord Harry stammered Italian from morning to night, and Lady Georgiana yielded to the entreaties of Signor Bonacossi, and construed the verb essere in the twinkling of an eye. In one word, Italian was learnt in a month, not to write, but to speak, and the professor consented to accompany, for twenty Swiss francs per diem, Lord Harry and his lady, on condition of being well-lodged and fed into the bargain-so the party are in ITALY.

Signor Bonacossi found Lord Harry sadly misinformed as to Italy and Italian society. He had not been told that his character of foreigner would afford insurmountable difficulties to all his anticipations of love-making; that this same character would, on the one hand, close the hearts of all Italian women, whilst it would, on the other, be the means of ensuring him admission into their salons. He did not know that the Italians, naturally gloomy and double-minded, would never

allow, or scarcely ever, the Forestier, as they call all foreigners, to penetrate into the interior of their families. He was ignorant of the fact that Italian women, brought up in the same sentiments of distrust if not of hatred towards all foreigners, have the greatest difficulty in overcoming their repugnance to strangers, and hardly ever make them their confidants, and, still more seldom, their lovers. Lord Harry was not aware that to obtain ses entrées into a real Italian circle he would be obliged to become as it were a naturalized Italian, renouncing his own character and those manners and customs of the fashionable world which he had hitherto possessed, and apppear rude, awkward, and vulgar, giving up both soul and body, sans gêne, to all that most offered itself to his education and his tastes. He had not been told that, to complete this long and laborious initiation, which is required by Italians in order to assure themselves that they are not trusting some malevolent spy, or some scandalizing and secret satirist, he must renounce all hope of changing a single idea or taste of the society in which he seeks to mingle, and that the least innovation would be looked on as the most unpardonable offence. The Italian mind is affected by an instinctive indolence, and those who seek to disturb it are abhorred. Thus out of ten thousand travellers in that country, nine thousand nine hundred and ninety may succeed in knowing Italy, but not ten will succeed in knowing the Italians.

"The unfortunate tourist," said Signor Bonacossi to Lord Harry, as they entered Nice, "who only walks through Italian society, without being able to obtain the confidence he expected, and which is never granted a new comer, retreats to France, or to England, to America, or to Germany, wholly disappointed, and he writes in his journal (if he keeps one),

Les

"Il n'y a pas de société en Italie! il n'y a pas d'esprit de conversation, pas de distractions du cœur, pas d'occupations des sens. femmes ne savent point aimer, et les hommes ne se soucient pas qu'on les aime.'

"Instead of an original, characteristic, peculiar society in Italy, this disappointed tourist will have seen but an insipid imitation, badly got up, of the usages of France and England; and instead of familiar, piquant, animated conversations, such as he is accustomed to in Paris and London, he has only had to listen to observations of a timid, unconnected, languishing character, wholly without charm, and without éclat, and instead of a language expressive and melodious, voluble and picturesque, pronounced with sweet voices and accompanied by the softest and most amorous glances, which belong to the eyes of the south, he has only heard a sort of disagreeable counterfeit of his own, French, German, or English language, barbarously murdered by beings who look on him much colder than would Mont Blanc on a New-year's day. The disappointed tourist leaves Italy without regret, and, as he ascends the Simplon, or enters Geneva, he writes in his diary, "L'Italie ne se souvient plus même de la langue de Pétrarque et du Dante; elle apprend à écorcher l'Anglais et le Français Italie, où

es-tu ?" "

All this was sad hearing for Lord Harry; and Lady Georgiana already resolved to return suspicion for suspicion-cold looks

for cold looks-haughty or distant airs by reciprocal conductand bad Italian for bad or worse English. Amiable resolution! Patriotic determination! "ENGLAND FOR EVER!" cried Lord Harry, in a towering passion; and, had it not been for shame, he would have directed his courier to have turned his horses' heads towards Paris and London.

"In Italian society-real good society," added Signor Bonacossi, "you must distinguish, my lord, between the persons who seek for foreign company and those who endeavour to avoid it, or to keep strangers at an immense distance. It is with the former that foreigners become externally acquainted as soon as they have been presented to the members of the diplomatic corps accredited in the different cities; and these Italians seek to lose their nationality, speak other languages than their own, copy the exotic manners and fashions of other nations, and thus draw foreigners about them; not that those strangers may enjoy Italian society, but that they, the Italians, may enjoy movement, animation, and life which they need. These Italians call every year a bad one, when thousands of rich and titled travellers do not arrive from every part of the globe, to leave behind them their bank-notes and a remembrance of their extravagances or follies. Thus the old type of Italian society is becoming irreparably modified or destroyed, and the middling and lower classes rejoice at the destruction, because they become wealthier with the louis d'or and sovereigns of their ultra-Alpine visiters."

There was something, however, cheering in this latter statement to Lord Harry for what cared he, whether the Italian society into which he was to be introduced, was real, bond fide society, the representative of former times, or whether it was to be the sort of bastard association which the signor had just described. To him it was by no means a subject of regret, that a little English was spoken by "these Italians;" and as to those who avoided foreign society, who looked upon them as "forestiers," and called them so, he vowed they should receive "hate for hate," just as though they would ever take the trouble of thinking of him or his fair Georgiana. True, indeed, it did occur to him once, that he was excluded by being a foreigner from knowing the Italians in question; but he assured himself "that it was only because they were a parcel of low people, who felt that they were awkward and brutish in good society."

Lady Georgiana entered more fully into the philosophy of the question, and she inquired into the causes of this division of Italian good society into two classes, those who seek foreign society, and those who avoid it. The signor informed him " that it was partly to be ascribed to the want of union which exists between the different governments of Italy. When united, still Italian society wanted force and consistency; but feeble and divided as it is now, it has become accessible to the influences which tend to its entire destruction. Amongst these influences, the Austrian occupation of Lombardy, though as mild and gentle as any foreign occupation can be, has had a very notable and important part. In spite of the permanent antipathy which the people of this province have towards the Austrians, in spite of the cold and disdainful July.-VOL. LIX. NO. CCXXXV.

X

air and absence of the Italian nobility towards them, particularly at Milan, closing the gates of their palaces, and the doors of their boxes at the theatres, it is certain that sooner or later a foreign occupation, of what nature soever it may be, will influence the moral condition of a people, and insensibly bring about, in spite of all resistances, an actual and final fusion. If the French had occupied Lombardy instead of the Austrians, this fusion must have already taken place; for the French would have found more sympathy, from their being less reserved, phlegmatic, and distrustful. But the effects of the Austrian occupation, though slow and occult, are not less inevitable; and the fusion which begins in some localities in the neighbourhood of Venice, will gain ground, and make the tour of all the classes of society."

Lord Harry cared but little for these discussions. No matter the cause which had led to the separation-the fact was enough for him; but like a benighted traveller, he resolved on making the best of the few advantages which remained, and on employing all his resources to his own advantage, or at least to his amusement and recreation.

"There are but a small number of salons open in Italy," said Signor Bonacossi, "and the greatest part belong to persons of diplomatic corps, or to rich foreigners, who, for a certain time, settle themselves in the city they most prefer. These salons all resemble each other. There is nothing peculiar to each. They are frequented, almost exclusively, by the foreigners of distinction who pass through the places in which they are found. They resemble the salons of Paris, but with much less of splendour, less of movement, and less of conversation; the salons of Vienna or Berlin with less of etiquette and of uniformity; the drawing-rooms of London, but with less of taste, dignity, and enlightened hospitality."

Lord Harry at once understood that in such assemblies he would seek in vain for "tendres entretiens," "mystérieux rendezvous," "billets-doux anonymes," and for all he had been taught from infancy to think peculiar to Italian society. He felt that he must not seek in such extraordinary and anti-national scenes, to discover the real character of Italian life, since this was not the intimacy of private but of public life, and that is not the way to know a people, except, indeed, there be no private life at all, as is the case at Paris. The Italians of distinction rarely give parties. The Grands Seigneurs are half savage in their mode of existence, and surround themselves with persons of an inferior class, who flatter their wealth and avail themselves of their advantages without drawing too largely on their purses. These subalterns, who have neither any special employment nor fixed profession, and who neither belong exclusively to the inferior nor to the higher classes, belong to the latter by their birth, and to the former by their relations in life. These parasites, living on rich and powerful families without belonging to them, are perhaps not to be met with in any other country than Italy. They are a repetition of the ancient Cliens, and these new Cliens form the court of the liables, and even of the parvenus. Amongst them may be seen sometimes priests, who possess ecclesiastical benefices dependent on the family itself; some abbés who have been, or are still charged, to direct the education of