streets ready to run on errands, or to perform any labour in their power for a very fmall recompence. As they do not meet with conftant employment, their wages are not fufficient for their maintenance; the foup and bread diftributed at the door of the convents fupply the deficiency. The lazzaroni are generally represented as a lazy, licentious, and turbulent fet of people; what I have obferved gives me a very different idea of their character. Their idlenefs is evidently the effect of neceffity, not of choice; they are always ready to perform any work, however laborious, for a very reasonable gratification. It must proceed from the fault of Government, when fuch a number of ftout active citizens remain unemployed; and so far are they from being licentious and turbulent, that I cannot help thinking they are by much too tame and fubmiffive. Though the inhabitants of the Italian cities were the first who hook off the feudal yoke, and

and though in Naples they have long enjoyed the privilege of municipal jurifdiction, yet the external fplendour of the nobles, and the authority they ftill exercife over the peasants, impofe upon the minds of the lazzaroni; and however bold and refentful they may be of injuries offered by others, they bear the infolence of the nobility as paffively as peafants fixed to the foil. A coxcomb of a volanti tricked out in his fantastical dress, or any of the liveried flaves of the great, make no ceremony of treating these poor fellows with all the infolence and infenfibility natural to their mafters; and for no visible reafon, but because he is dreffed in lace, and the others in rags. Inftead of calling to them to make way, when the noife in the streets prevents the common people from hearing the approach of the carriage, a ftroke across the fhoulders with the cane of the running footman, is the ufual warning they receive. Nothing animates this people to infurrection, but fome

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fome very preffing and very universal cause; fuch as a scarcity of bread: every other grievance they bear as if it were their charter. When we confider thirty thousand human creatures without beds or habitations, wandering almoft naked in search of food through the ftreets of a well built city; when we think of the opportunities they have of being together, of comparing their own deflitute fituation with the affluence of others; one cannot help being aftonished at their patience.

Let the prince be diftinguished by fplendour and magnificence; let the great and the rich have their luxuries; but, in the name of humanity, let the poor, who are willing to labour, have food in abundance to fatisfy the cravings of nature, and raiment to defend them from the inclemencies of the weather!

If their governors, whether from weaknefs or neglect, do not fupply them with

thefe,

thefe, they certainly have a right to help themselves. Every law of equity and common fenfe will juftify them, in revolting against fuch governors, and in fatisfying their own wants from the fuperfluities of lazy luxury.

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LETTER LIX.

Naples.

I HAVE made feveral vifits to the mu

feum at Portici, principally, as you may believe, to view the antiquities dug out of Herculaneum and Pompeia. The work publishing by Government, ornamented with engravings of the chief articles of this curious collection, will, in all probability, be continued for many years, as new articles worthy of the fculptor's art are daily difcovered, and as a vaft mine of curiofities is fuppofed to be concealed in the unopened streets of Pompeia. Among the ancient paintings, thofe which ornamented the theatre of Herculaneum are more elegant than any that have hitherto been found at Pompeia. All thofe paintings were executed upon the ftucco which lined the

walls