of the royal visitors. Some of the presepii are constructed on terraces in the open air, others in apartments, and these are shown by candle-light. Free admission is given, according to the liberal custom of the Italian gentry.

The University, or Scuole Pubbliche, of Naples, was formerly a college belonging to the Jesuits. In Italy these disciples of Loyola had long the public education of youth in their hands, and they seemed to be well qualified for it. Their professors were generally men of great abilities; the regulations of their colleges were wise and more liberal than is commonly imagined; and I think that, in this country at least, public education did not gain much by the suppression of the order. Whatever the faults of that institution and the ambitious views of its chiefs might be, the individual members of the society were in general highly respectable and useful; and they cannot, consistent with justice, be accused of idleness, nor of a fanatical and persecuting spirit. The sovereigns of Europe might think it politically wise to abolish the Jesuits, but the court of Rome certainly showed little wisdom or policy in conniving at their fall, and in treating with such severity its best defenders, Even to this

-the champions of Catholicism.

day the opinions of Italians are much divided about the expediency of that measure; and I have

often, during the political storms which have agitated this country, heard the remark made, that "these things would not have happened had not the Jesuits been suppressed." The reception which Frederick II., and Catherine of Russia gave to the fugitive fathers, and the bitter invectives which this conduct drew against those two sovereigns from Voltaire and his party, are arguments in favour of the Jesuits. The present remains of the order however give but a faint idea of its former greatness and glory; and the re-establishment of the Jesuits by several of the Catholic governments of Europe, which has lately taken place, will probably prove inadequate to the expectations which have been founded upon it, and will only serve to increase the clamour of the discontented party, without furnishing any additional arms to oppose it. The veterans of the order are all dead, and the generality of the existing members, brought up in times of humiliation and distress, have not had the means of acquiring the qualifications of their predecessors. Stat magni nominis umbra.

I have of late attended the lectures at the University. Some of the professors are really men of abilities; others are remarkable for the burlesque and trivial language with which their instructions are seasoned. I heard some of the most extraordinary illustrations of this sort that were

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ever delivered from a professor's chair, and often too in genuine Neapolitan dialect. Perhaps they have for so doing, the same reason as the preachers of this country, viz., to accommodate themselves to the taste of their audience. The lectures are accessible to any decent and orderly person. At the gate of the college a military guard is stationed, which would appear rather a strange sight to an English student; but such is the continental system of the day.

The people of this country are much addicted to the belief of witchcraft, and of other supernatural agencies. I have often been surprised to hear persons, very sensible in other respects, talk seriously about these matters, and relate the most extravagant stories. I was gravely told the other day by a Neapolitan acquaintance, that a witch had been found half dead, lying on the pavement in some obscure lane in the skirts of the city; the poor hag, it seems, while soaring through the air on her way to La Noce di Benevento, a favourite place of resort with these mysterious beings, had ventured too near a church, the sacred atmósphere of which destroyed her spells, and she fell helpless to the ground. This country is also haunted by a peculiar kind of hobgoblin called by the natives il monacello, whom they describe as a short thick figure of a man dressed in the long dark

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garments of a monk, with a very broad brimmed hat; he is, however, a good tempered being, who takes pleasure in trying the spirit of people by appearing to them in the dead of night, and beckoning to them to follow him, which, if they have sufficient courage to do, he leads them to some secret recess where treasures are concealed: several persons are reported to have acquired a sudden fortune through his assistance. Credulity with regard to these matters, absurd as it may appear to foreigners, is not, however, confined here to the lower classes only.

A science upon which I have heard frequent dissertations, is la magia bianca, a kind of legitimate intercourse with invisible spirits, by which adepts obtain a knowledge of the most secret things: they have also cabalistical calculations through which they pretend to find out the prize numbers that will be drawn at the next lottery. The adepts are chiefly monks and priests, who live very retired, are difficult of access, and speak by enigmas. I have frequently heard wonderful accounts of people winning great prizes through their means, the circumstances of which, and the authority I had them from, would almost shake my incre dulity. Some of the most celebrated among these seers have been at different times exiled by the police as obnoxious persons. A belief in the secret

sciences is very generally spread among all classes of Neapolitans and Sicilians, however incredulous in other respects. A German professor of music travelling lately through Sicily, arrived at Catania, where he had some respectable introductions and was received very kindly. Nature, however, had bestowed upon him a forbidding countenance; there was something mysterious in his deportment; he appeared fond of study and retirement; all these circumstances persuaded some of his new Sicilian acquaintances, that he was a fit person to apply to for numbers of the lottery: they therefore enticed him one day into some sequestered mansion, and after they had him seated, they brought pen, ink, and paper before him, telling him resolutely, at the same time, that they would not allow him to go away until he gave them a good terno, i. e. three prize numbers for the next lottery. The astonished German stared, smiled, argued, and remonstrated, but to no purpose; fearing the worst, he was obliged to act unwillingly the part of an impostor; with much gravity he wrote down three numbers at random, and hastened immediately after to leave the place secretly, before the result of the lottery could be known.

The Italian system of lottery is very simple. Every day of drawing, ninety tickets, or numbers, beginning from number one, are put in an urn,