90 PEOSB HALIBUTICS. 



as he swept the coast from Ostia to Naples, and scared 

 with threatened impeachment and fine whomsoever he 

 found poaching scari in the emperor's preserves.* 



The Neapolitans continue to be just as fishily inclined 

 as ever, and, oddly enough, stiU in obedience to the same 

 great despot— Eome; the authority of whose culinary 

 code under the emperors has been succeeded by a yet 

 more domineering assumption of power on the part of 

 her church : 



Veuve d'un peuple roi, mais reine encore du monde, 



she has forgotten her widowhood, but not her queenly 

 prerogatives. At a touch of her ecclesiastical wand, 

 things change both their names and nature; a curule 

 stool becomes an apostle's chair ! the heads of bronze 

 divinities assume the lineaments and bear the titles of 

 calendared saiuts ! heathen columns are metamorphosed 

 into pillars of orthodoxy, and pagan temples expand into 

 Christian edifices ! The same infallible autocrat, ca- 



* It was tlie doctrine of some of tlie old jtirisconsvdts at Home 

 that all fisli, whetlier from pond or sea, was resfisci, and belonged 

 to the reigning Cseaar : 



All that is fine in fish, where'er it swim, 

 Is fiscal, and belongs of right to him, 



as we read in Juvenal : and the same legal fiction strengthened 

 by such precedent has come down to the Ferdinands, their suc- 

 cessors. That part of the Bay enclosed between the shore where 

 stands the king's fishing-box, and the Oastel dell' Uovo opposite, 

 is rigidly preserved for his Neapolitan Majesty's table. To this 

 spot, innumerable pensioners on the royal bounty are attracted 

 by an abundant provision of food, and having once entered the 

 royal precincts, they are perfectly safe : while nets, spears, and 

 harpoons are destroying thousands to the right hand and to the 

 left, this is a complete sanctuary ; no one dares hang a hook or 

 try to inveigle' a king's fish under penalty of three months' ac- 

 quaintance with the inside of prison-bars. 



