1829.] X '289 3 



THE MAN OF ILL-OMEN. 



Some years since, as I was lounging over my breakfast in one of 

 the hotels of Rome, my valet rushed into my chamber, with a face 

 writhing with consternation, joy, and a hundred other passions, for 

 which none but an Italian face was made. I apprehended a new inva- 

 sion of the Turks, the failure of Torlonia's house, or the general confla- 

 gration. But when my Roman could speak, his speech was — " The 

 mountain ! the mountain ! Vesuvius is on the point of a new eruption ; 

 there has not been one these twenty years ; all the English are going 

 to see it. If IMilord waits another minute, there will not be a post-horse 

 in the states of his Holiness disengaged." 



The rattle of equipages in the Piazza di Spagna told me that my 

 road-loving countrymen were already on the alert. I ordered the news- 

 paper for further information ; but my valet's look was now as expressive 

 as it had been on the tidings of the mountain. The finger on the lip, 

 and the shrug of the shoulders, additionally told me that I might con- 

 sult its pages in vain. It was even as he said. Not a word on the sub- 

 ject was suffered to enter the Diario. The affair was a matter of state, 

 and the only allusion to it was a paragraph stating, that " a meeting of 

 cardinals had just been suimnoned on an affair of particular importance, 

 connected with the arrival of a courier from Naples." I left the con- 

 clave to settle the question of treason with the mountain, and followed 

 the tide. Curi-icles, post-chaises, britchskas, and berlines, were rolling 

 along the Pontine, without the fear of banditti before tlieir eyes, and 

 loaded with a living freight of English beauty and English bronze, the 

 hysteric population of IMayfair, tossing over roads rough as their original 

 quarries, ploughing through floods of alternate sand and mire, and mus- 

 quito-bitten from instep to eyebrow. But the sex are incomparable in 

 every way ; and Science, daughter of Italian skies, and sharing its 

 honours only with that exquisite Sensibility wliich converts the English 

 prude into the most outrageous of foreign coquettes, and makes her 

 scorn the dull distinctions between the " friend" and the husband ; ahke 

 elevates the soul, and invigorates the sinews. Praise be to the land of 

 fat monks, mustachiod heroes, and soft sentimentality, boundless and 

 glowing as it can be made by a sovereign contempt for the frigid decen- 

 cies of England ! 



I struggled on through the scientific multitude, arrived at Naples, 

 and found that for once a Roman valet had told the truth. The mountain 

 was giving signs of one of those explosions which, from time to time, 

 relieve the rabble-population of this picturesque and very profligate 

 kingdom from being buried in general ruin by an earthquake. Naples 

 was all in a tumult — perfectly resembling the confusion in which I have 

 seen some of the great continental cities on the approach of a French 

 army, with Napoleon at its head. But the tumult here was one of exul- 

 tation. The innkeepers, the gamblers, the nobles, and the lazzaroni, all 

 saw their harvest in the eruption. The mountain, it is true, poured 

 down nothing but smoke and lava ; but, by the magic of the " social 

 system," every puff of smoke and every burst of lava was turned into 

 gold. 



I soon grew sick of the city. Dust, heat, confusion, and extortion, 

 are sufficient reasons for hating any city on earth ; and I took refuge 

 in one of the dilapidated villas that the noblesse of Sorrento let out at 



A[. M. New Scries.— -Yoh. XIU. No. 45. 2 P 



