in Florence, so he sent it to Geneva to be brought out. The good old man, like Byron, awoke one fine day and found himself famous. The free tone of the work delighted the large body of Liberalists throughout reading Europe; and the book was gladly received, as it contained just the information everybody wished to know. But its stern condemnation of the poor Bourbons created a great alarm and enmity. The good-natured Grand Duke found himself forced to banish the author from Florence, even before his work had appeared in the city. But the order of exile, and the fame, and the worldly prosperity arrived nearly too late. When the officer came to deliver the Grand Duke's message, he found the poor old man in bed, dying. "Ask his Highness," said Colletta, "to grant me the delay of a few hours. In that time I shall have departed for an exile where no police will trouble me again." A little while after, the stout-hearted old soldier lay stiff and dead. He never had the gratification of seeing his fine History in print; but the coming sound of its future fame reached his dying ears, and, I hope, it gave him much peace and content. 7# ISI "NOBILE OZIO.". APLES is the very place in which one can best enjoy Machiavelli's nobile ozio, "a noble idleness of delightful society, with classical associations, under a heaven of beauty." The weather is delicious just on the threshold of May, a pleasant season in most countries, but in this paradise particularly lovely. "Soft, silken hours, Open suns, shady bowers; 'Bove all, nothing which lowers." I have already told how we spend our mornings. Late in the afternoon we drive on the Chiaja, and out to Posilippo, or loiter through the long alleys of the Villa Reale, which, "with its ever green groups of holm-oaks and laurels, its fountains and sculptures, its temples sacred to Virgil and Tasso, lies along the shore of the Mediterranean like a string of emeralds."* Sometimes the morning's occupation keeps us out so late that we feel indifferent about the drive to the Posilippean hills; then we meet on the terrace, to enjoy the sunset, and watch the stream of elegant equipages rolling along the smooth lava pavement of the Chiaja and Mergellina, and look at the groups of idlers lying down or *De Reumont. sauntering about, the thriftless, do-nothing Neapolitan masses. Over on the Mergellina bank are crowds of fishermen and boatmen, preparing for a sail or row, either to take a party of pleasure or to follow their fishing trade. This Mergellina beach is their only home; they know no other; here are their children playing in the pebbles and shells, their wives lounging and gossiping, and their gray-headed grandmothers spinning with the old distaff of Clotho, looking as if they were grim Fates, attending the coming destiny of this doomed land, the fulfilment of that fearful old oracle, "Some day, around the Siren's stony tomb, A mighty multitude shall meet their doom." These common people of Naples are a strange race; full of contradictions; lawless, demanding liberty even to license, and yet king-loving; a religious nation, full of faith and devotion, but quite devoid of piety. They can no longer be called Lazzaroni, for they are losing fast all claim to that title. Indeed, on a grand fête-day there is not a lazzaro to be found in all Naples; every man is dressed, and going as swiftly as he can on his road to the tiers état, or Third Estate; that is, so far as decent appearance is concerned. General Colletta, in his History, speaks very bitterly of the origin of the name of these "Sons of Lazarus." "They," he says, meaning the Spaniards, "called them 'lazzari' (for lazzaroni is only an augmentative), a word borrowed from the language of these superb tyrants of ours who insulted a misery of which they were the authors, and made its memory eternal by this name. "A man was not born à lazzaro. The lazzaro who applied himself to a trade lost his name; and the man who lived like a beast, became a lazzaro. These Lazzaroni increased to an innumerable swarm; for how was it possible to take the census of such a semi-savage, vagabond population? At one time, it was believed they amounted to thirty thousand; poor, audacious, eager and greedy in robbery, and ready for every sort of disorder." Under the Spanish vice-regal rule (1502 – 1700), which was the period of time when the Lazzaroni flourished in fullest force and vigor, this wild set had a species of government, an organization as strict as that of the thieves in the Paris Cour de Miracles, during the reign. of Louis XI.* Every year a chief (capo lazzaro) was elected, charged with the duty of defending their interests before the viceroy. One of the most famous of these capo lazzari was the fisherman of Amalfi, Massaniello, the chief of the great revolution in 1647. "By the fruit judge ye the tree," says a French author, alluding to this curious clan of people. "The Lazzaroni were the fruit of the Spanish vice-regal government. Naples has often been reproached with the shame of having produced this race of white negroes. This reproach is unjust. The plant flowered and bore fruit at Naples, it is true, but the seed came from Spain. The Spaniards carried it into Italy as their garrisons and vessels have so often taken the plague there." This Spanish vice-regal government was the saddest and most injurious rule in its effect that could have been inflicted upon a people; it lasted two hundred years (1500 -1700). Spain held Naples all this time by virtue of a right derived from Ferdinand the Catholic, who was the legitimate representative of that Aragonese house which *Notre Dame de Paris, of Victor Hugo. traced its genealogy back to Constance, the daughter of the great Roger of Sicily, daughter-in-law, wife, and mother of the three famous Barbarossas of the "splendid Suabian house of Hohenstaufen" (1194-1250), – she whom history and poesy has contributed to make immortal. "quest' è la luce della gran Gostanza Che del secondo vento di Soave Generò il terzo, e l' ultima possanza." * I will turn back the pages of history rapidly to repeat over the story of the kings of Naples deposed by Ferdinand the Catholic in 1500. Those poor crumbling coffinchests, covered with faded velvet and adorned with tarnished tinsel, which we saw the other day in the Sacristy of San Domenico Maggiore, hold the remains, as I mentioned then, of the illegitimate branch of the family which came in possession of the throne in this way. Joanna II. (1414-1435), great-great-granddaughter of Charles of Anjou, left as one of her heirs Alfonso, king of Sicily, the descendant of that Hohenstaufen family just alluded to, from whom her ancestor, Charles of Anjou, had wrested the kingdom of Naples (1266). This king of Sicily, called in history the Magnanimous, reigned in Naples until 1458. When he died, Sicily reverted to his brother, John II., king of Aragon and Navarre, father of Ferdinand the Catholic; and Naples also should have gone to him, but Alfonso had a natural son, Ferdinand, who had been legitimated by Pope Calixtus III., fourteen years before his father's death, and to him Alfonso left the crown of Naples. * "Great Constance' light is this; who to the blast Dante's Paradiso, III. 118, Wright's trans. |