LIFE IX AX ISLAND. Ill 



could have been more apparent than that between 

 Feliciello's uninstructed peasant-estimate of this ques- 

 tion, and the enlightened opinion of the eldest 

 member of that brotherhood of talent which keeps 

 the Cappucini Hotel at Amalfi. 1 JSTo doubt Melloni, 

 as a more responsible member of the community, paid 

 twice as heavily for his new privileges as an Italian 

 subject as our trusty Felice did. But Melloni be- 

 longed to the middle class, and had an eye beyond 

 the present moment, and could see with unques- 

 tionable distinctness beyond the pictorial chivalrous 

 figure of the Italian hero that altogether prosaic form 

 of the Italian King, which means not only Victor 

 Emmanuel, but many things unintelligible to the 

 peasant intelligence. The Amalfi innkeeper stands 

 at the lowest level of that class, which embraces all 

 the intelligence and enterprise of Italy ; and it is by 

 this vast body, a body at once more picturesque and 

 more real than the corresponding class in England, 

 and not by the usual concomitants of revolution, the 

 peasants and the nobles, that Italy has changed hands. 

 Melloni's sentiments on the subject of taxation, the 

 most difficult of all subjects to a people unaccustomed 

 to personal sacrifices, were such as would have filled 



1 The youngest member of this brotherhood, Francesco, who 

 is the cook of the establishment, is not only in that particular an 

 artiste worthy of unqualified approbation, but is the possessor 

 of a tenor voice such as one seldom hears, with which he does 

 not refuse, on due solicitation, to charm his guests. 



