The Sun.
London, England, 1832-06-12 00:00:00

ITALY AND THE ITALIANS.

(From the Scotsman.)
The following is an extract of a letter we hare
received from a friend who spent the !ant winter at
Naples, and who has since visited Rome and Flo-
rence. It presents some lively tketehes of the cha-
racter of the people :

FLORENCE, MAY 8, 1832.
The Neapolitan people are a curious half civilized,
half savage race, full of life and bustle, making much
ado about nothing, tremendous talkers, and endowed
with voices shrill and sharp enough in some of their
tones to crack a brass pan. Nowhere can you set
eyes upon a heavy logger headed, open-mouthed,
starving clown. Every body seems not only alive,
but with all his senses about him, and the readiness
of apprehension and acuteness of reply of the lower
orders are remaikable; as well as their inexhaustible
power of conversation with each other, an exercise
which their love of the open air and idleness, leads
them to indulge in to excess. At the same time,
when these acute fellows come to the cheating part
of their dealings with you, (it beit''r carefully re-
served for the end,) their dulness of apprehension
and stupidity are not less conspicuous. Appeal to
the sentiment of justice and to the terms of your
agreement, and you may waste the eloquence of
Demosthenes upon their tympanums without find-
ing the slightest admittance of their errors. They
dny nothing which you advance. They are too
cunning for that. They let you waste your breath
to your heart's content, and then, when you thick
you have given them a home thrust and brought
them to a stand-still, they coolly walk past with a
gracious smile and return to their point as deli-
berately as if you had never spoken. Suspicion
of each other is consequently as prevalent as the
desire to cheat. Our friend D—, a gentle-
manly-looking lad, though a Frenchman, went
in to buy something, price five or six franc. After
offering one half, and higgling, as is usual, the par-
ties agreed, but, said the shopman, " show me that
you have the money to pay for it before I give it."
You never offend by distrust; and yet what a state
of society, to be surrounded with lies, and not know
what to believe! This feature, I am told, pervades
the upper, as well as the lower and middle classes.
The head presents a fine developement of the lower
region of the forehead, or knowing organs—a sloping
corona' surface, with good benevolence and firmness,
large veneration, and deficient conscientiousness.
Among the., propensities, secretiveness greatly pre-
dominal:es ; the others being not unduly developed.
Ahnost always the temperament is vivaciou,, and
hence every faculty When called into play comes out
with force and freedom, se far as its organ will ad-
mit. Dark and dismal is the intellectual condition
of the people, as regards education. The absence
of all means of enlightenment, and the dePi ivai ion of
newspapers leave the mass in a deplorable stare of
ignorance. What do you think of Naples, with its
450,000 inhabitants, having a whole newspaper to
itself, nearly as large as two leaves of a quarto book ?
What do you think of its informing its readers that
his Majesty, with becoming piety, went in state on
the preceding day to pay his annual devotions and
thanks to St. Genuaro, fer having arrested an erup-
tion of Vesuvius by a miracle, and saved the
lives of his • faithful people ? In Paris, and
in most French towns, Cabinet Litteraire is an
attractive sign to the curious traveller, as it pro-
mises newspapers and journals for perusal at a very
moderate rate. In Naples, it was the first thing
looked for, and near the hotel, I saw one with plea-
sure. Next day I went in, paid my money, and
was ushered in. I looked around for the news-
room, but no such place was apparent. I saw, in-
deed, a eapy of Galignani and ore of the Naples
papers lying on the table, but regarded them as
only the advanced guard of the main body, and was
astonished to discover that they were the whole
stock This was the chief or only reading-room.
I was told that formerly they had French papers,
but that the postage was now so great, and the pa-
pers were so often seized, that they were forced to
give them up. Every thine" foreign is distrusted,
prohibited, or heavily taxed, and every possible re-
striction placed on trade. The tailor asserted, and
I am told with truth, that he paid four
dollars of duty on the English cloth sufficient to
make my surtout. Cotton is grown and manufac-
turing forced, but the produce is so coarse, that
nobody that can help it will wear their cloth. The
result is, that with a fine port, a splendid bay, a rich
country, a dense population, and an admirable situa-
tion for trade, they have few vessels, and a harbour
enjoying the repose of the dead, unless when the
steam boats from France come in.

Foreigners, and particularly Frenchmen, are most
unwelcome to the government. D--, as a
ur, had great annoyance before they would give
him a pennis de ,sijour, and they gave it at last,
only on Mr. S signing an obligation to be an-
swerable for hits as a peaceable man. If the school-
master be really " abroad," certain it is, that he has
not taken Naples in his route ; but to make up for
the want of him, the lottery man is omnipresent, and
has a crowd of followers at every lodge. Every
twentieth shop is a lottery office, and the more pub-
lic the place, the better it is, fur you will oftener find
from ten tofifteen customers at one time than a smaller
number, at least when the drawing approaches,
which is once a week. Blindness is distressingly
prevalent. Speaking of steam-boats, those here are
immoderately dear. From .Marseilles to Naple.
(.500 miles) you pay 240 francs without food.
From Leghorn to Genoa or Civita Vecchia, 60 or
65 francs—the run being little more than fron.
Aberdeen to Leith. Coals are not very dear, they
are got near Lyons, and come down the Rhone. Tht
boats are generally full of passengers, and unless
heavy port dues diminish their profits, they must pay
admirably. The Francis Ist, and Ferdinandu an
regularly advertised as of " Custruzione Scozzese,"
and are fine boats. But I am allowing Naples to
run away with me, and forgetting that my paper is
tilling, and that you know already most of what I am
writing.
Leaving Naples, we traversed the Pontine Marshes
on our way to Rome. No trace now remains of the
brigands se formidable a few years ago, except thr
little guard-houses within sight of each other, from
which the Pope's valiant heroes watched anti
too-booed the robbers. The Pope proclaimed par-
don arid employment to the repentant, death her(
and damnation hereafter to the rebellious, razed to
the ground the villages in which they lived, and
effected what had defied the troops of Buonaparte.
In Rome, however, he has not extinguished the use
of the stiletto. Three months ago, a Dr. Thomson,
received seven or eight wounds from a set of mis-
creants at a very early hour in the evening, and on,
finding that he was English, they apologized for
their conduct, having mistaken him for another
person His life was in danger, but he ultimately
recovered. Our friend, Mr. C - , of Dublin,
was called to see him. The Roman people are de-
cidedly in advance of their Neapolitan neighbour.
in civilization. They have less vivacity, and fuller
features, approaching occasionally to the lymphatic.
They have a more reflective and moral expression.
The women are much finer (our friend M., you
know, raves about them), and both they and the
men have rich mellow and musical voices, and you
know there is much virtue in a voice, and much
ealthy merriment in its fullest exercise. The Pop.
is a very worthy peaceable Christian, except when
he takes into his head to stop the newspapers,
which he did (lately. But I do think St. Veto

would tnalvel, were he to come back to Rome, and,
in entering by the Flaminian Gate, to cast .up tht
corner of his eye on a very handsome building at his
right hand, an there perceive, in bold well de-
fined chararttifsZY fqfficio della Reverenda
ateteect Apo:violica." Certain feelings of incon-
gruity - between his, time, when men were
called away - frnen " the receipt of custom" to
teach Christianity and the present day, when his
Holiness and all his Cardinals would
leave their pulpit, and themselves sit at the
gate, if they, could thereby get hold of a few
more crowns, would naturally cross his mind: The
people, by the way, are apparently more pious than
they were 10 or 12 years ago; the churches are well
frequented, end 'Sunday (externally) much liker
our own, no shops being open except those of apo-
thecaries and provision-dealers. In Rome, too, the
lottery is the ruling divinity. It is marvellous to
see the crowds besieging the offices on drawing
days, and the defences made against the pressure.
All classes frequent them. It is an abominable and
constantly recurring snare for the poor. As to an-
tiquities and the fine arts I need not write a word,
when you have * * * at your elbow. I have
not yet brought you the length of Tuscany,
which presents a still higher race of human beings
and a finer country, but I have lingered so long that
I must close and leave a breathing space for the
D— to present her own respects, and remain
ever, your sincere friend, C.
P.s.—Do you know what authority our Consuls
and Ministers abroad have for taxing the signing of
passports ? It is a mean abuse for well p tid men.
At Marseilles I paid about eight francs, and at
Rome a dollar, the English Consul being, I was
told, the only one who charges any thing. The
.:ustrian Minister stamps " gratis" alongside of his
signature, to show that he is a gentleman, I sup-
pose. If our people were the ill-paid agents of a
petty principality, such a practice must be allowed
to pass ; but it is really too bad.

REFORM MONUMENT.

--.•.
(From the Scotsman.)

Our talented countryman, Mr. Laurence Mac-
donald, has communicated a suggestion to some
leading gentlemen of the Reform Committee,
which is at once novel and grand. He proposes
that the monument to commemorate the triumph
of Reform should consist of a colossal statue
of the Goddess of Liberty, seventy feet high,
placed upon a pedestal of thirty_ feet, making the
whole height a hundred feet. The statue, suit-
ably draped, to be built of Craigleith stone, and
the four faces of the pedestal to be covered with
bronze figures in basso relievo, partly allegorical
and partly portraits of the distinguished men who
have laboured in the good cause, including his
Majesty. The Goddess to have a lion couched at
her feet, a shield in her left hand and a scroll in her
right containing names and dates connected with
the great event. His calculation is, that the cost
would not exceed ten or twelve thousand pounds.
We hope there will be enterprise enough in one
of the two Scottish capitals, to adopt this bold
idea, and give the first example in modern
Europe of a species of monument grand and
Imposing in no ordinary degree, and of which
antiquity furnishes various models, some of
which still exist. The two Memnonian statues
at Thebes, are sixty feet high, and the six
figures at Ipsambul are each sixty. five feet,
though they are in a sitting posture. These,
we believe, are all monoliths, or made each of a
single stone ; but the skill of our modern masons
in joining their work, and the distance to which
the statue would be removed from the eye by
the pedestal, would enable the artist to give his
composite figure a harmony and perfection of
surface which would completely conceal the
multiplicity of its parts. The celebrated statue
of Minerva, at Athens, was 39 feet high, and
the still more renowned work of Phidias, the
statue of Jupiter at Olympia, was sixty feet in
height, formed of diversified materials, gold,
ivory, &c., and therefore necessarily built, as it
were, of a number of minute parts. The great
defect of our existing monuments is their mono-
tonous character. A column, an obelisk, a
temple round or square—behold our whole range,
when we want something more imposing than a
statue of nine feet high ! The pillar of Lord
Melville—what is it but a capy of the London
monument, which " like a tall bully lifts his head
and lies"—and of twenty others strewed over our
isle ? Glasgow has its obelisk—which is nothing
more than the five-hundreth imitation of the
Obelisk de Monti, or some other antique, all as
like one another as figures cast in the same
mould ! Copies of the Parthenon are already
becoming wearisome. Let us try something
new. Colossal statues may rival colutnns, and
obelisks in height, with this advantage, that by
changing the attitude, drapery and accompani-
ments, we can have a considerable variety of
form. We do hope at any rate, that there are
men in this city who have sufficient taste, spirit,
and independence of mind, to give the project a
fair hearing, and we cannot but esteem it an ad-
vantage, that we have a native artist bold enough
to grasp such an idea, and who has already
proved by his works that he has a genius fitted
to realize the loftiest conceptions connected with
his art.

TITHES! TITHES!--TALLAGHT.--A BUL-
LOCK SOLD FOR Bs. 6d. !—Yesterday, a bullock, the pro-
perty of Mr. CHRISTOPHER MAGREEN, a responsibb
farmer of the parish of Tallaght, after having been im-
pounded for a period of fifteen days, was sold by auction
there, to satisfy a tithe claim of the Rev. WILLIAM ROBlN-
sots', the rector of the said parish, against the owner for
the sum of 30a. In the course of the forenoon, Mr.
SrunneeT, one of the police magistrates of Arran Quay,
accompanied by Mr. J. FARRELL, chief constable of the
division, and reinforced by a strong party both of hors,
and foot police, repaired to the place. At one o'clock the
bullock was guarded forth from the pound to the place of
sale, which was, dose at hand. A man named Cone,
gardener or labourer, in the employment of the Rev.
Rector, acted as auctioneer on the occasion. A number
of the country people were present, but, so silently did
they look upon what was going forward, they could only be
regarded in the light of an assemblage of mutes. Not a
scold—not even a murmur escaped them. The bidders
were strictly confined to the legal number—three !
namely, the Rector's gardener and auctioneer, the Rev.
Pastor himself, and a man named MAURICE REILLY, a
bacon slealer, living at a place called Glenisrnore, in the
neighbouring mountains, and who appeared somewhat a
little more than half drunk at the time. REILLY offered
but 8,. 2d., on which the Rev. incumbent advanced the
bidding a groat, and the beast was " knocked down" to
him. The bargain was, however, in the end turned over
to REILLY, the successful competitor in the sale, under-
going the loss of the fourpence ! After the deduction of
drivers' fees, fees of tile pound-keeper, &c. from the
amount of the sale, the Rector pocketed the sum of-18d. !
—Dublin Morning Rigisler of Saturday.
MODERN CHILDREN.—A real child would
now be a prodigy. There are different sizes of human
beings, from eighteen inches to six feet six ; but there are
no children, They are all horn like Falstaff, with grey
heads and great belies, and are dandies and fine ladies as
soon as they can lisp. We never talk to children as the)
used to be talked to fifty years ago, without coming to
shame. The little things draw up, and show their accom
plishments or knowledge of the world, in lieu of the
bon-bonnerie of fancy with which we thought to treat them.
They smile with pity at our talk of the Fairy Tales ; the)
are but indifferently info, med of Puss in Boots; the)
have seen Tom Thumb at the play ; they have forgotten
Arabian Nights. It we would talk to a child now, we
must look out for a person in a wig somewhere near on:
own years. The last of tie Babies will soon be going tt,
the grave at the age of Old Parr. The only real nurser)
in the country is the House of Lords.— Tait's Edinburgh
Magazine, for June.