I inquired if the men confined their addresses wholly to their own rank? She said, beauty often broke the barrier, and when a pretty woman of the second rank got a cavalier servente of the first, much happiness and much distinction was the consequence: but alas! he will not even try to push her up among the people of fashion, and when he meets any is sure to look ashamed of his mistress; so that her felicity can consist only in triumphing over equals, for to rival a superior is here an impossibility.
Our Duke and Dutchess of Cumberland have made all Naples adore them though, by going richly dressed, and behaving with infinite courtesy and good-humour, at an assembly or ball given in the lower rooms, as the English comically call them. A young Palermitan prince applauded them for it exceedingly; so I took the liberty to express my wonder. “Oh,” replied he, “we are not ignorant how much English manners differ from our own: I have already, though but just eighteen years old, as sovereign of my own state, under the King of both Sicilies, condemned a man to death because he was a rascal, but the law and the people govern in England I know.” My desire of hearing about Sicily, which we could not contrive to visit, made me happy to cultivate Prince Ventimiglia’s acquaintance; he was very studious, very learned of his age, and uncommonly clever: told me of the antiquities his island had to boast, with great intelligence, and a surprising knowledge of ancient history.
We wished to have made a party to go in the same company to Pæstum, but my cowardice kept me at home, so bad was the account of the roads and accommodation; though Abate Bianconi of Milan, for whom I have so much esteem, bid me remember to look at the buildings there attentively; adding, that they were better worth our observation than all the boasted antiquities at Rome; “as they had seen (said he) the original foundation of her empire, and outlived its decay: that they had seen her second birth too, and power under some of her pontiffs over all Europe about six or seven centuries ago; and that they would now probably remain till all that was likewise abolished, with only slight traces left behind to shew that fuimus, &c.”
How mortifying it is to go home and never see this Pæstum! Prince Ventimiglia went there with Mr. Cox; he professes his intention soon to visit England, concerning the manners and customs of which he is very inquisitive, and not ill-versed in the language; but books drop oddly into people’s hands: This gentleman commended Ambrose Philips’s Pastorals, and I remember the Florentines seemed strangely impressed with the merit of the other Philips as a poet. Bonducci has translated his Cyder, and calls him emulous of Milton, in good time! but it is difficult to distinguish jest from earnest in a foreign language.
I will not, if I can help it, lose sight of our Sicilian however, till I have made him tell me something about Dionysius’s Ear, about the eruptions of Ætna, and the Castagno a cento cavalli, which, he protests, is not magnified by Brydone.
It is wonderfully mortifying to think how little information after all can be obtained of any thing new or any thing strange, though so far from one’s own country. What I picked up most curious and diverting from our conversation, was his expression of surprise, when at our house one day he read a letter from his mother, telling him that such a lady, naming her, remained still unmarried, and even unbetrothed, though now past ten years old. “She will,” said I, “perhaps break through old customs, and chuse for herself, as she is an orphan, and has no one whom she need consult.”—“Impossible, Madam!” was the reply.—“But tell me, Prince, for information’s sake, if such a lady, this girl for example, should venture to assert the rights of humanity, and make a choice somewhat unusual, what would come of it?”—“Why nothing in the world would come of it,” answered he; “the lass would be immediately at liberty again, for no man so circumstanced could be permitted to leave the country alive you know, nor would her folly benefit his family at all, as her estate would be immediately adjudged to the next heir. No person of inferior rank in our country would therefore, unless absolutely mad, set his life to hazard for the sake of a frolic, the event of which is so well known beforehand;—less still, because, if love be in the case, all personal attachment may be fully gratified, only let her but be once legally married to a man every way her equal.” Could one help recollecting Fielding’s song in the Virgin unmasked? who says,
For now I’ve found out that as Michaelmas day
Is still the forerunner of Lammas;
So wedding another is just the right way