This Dreadful Execution Is Sometimes Repeated In A Few Minutes On
The Same Delinquent; So That The Very Ligaments Are Tore From His
Joints, And His Arms Are Rendered Useless For Life.
The poverty of the people in this country, as well as in the
South of France, may be conjectured from the appearance of their
domestic animals.
The draughthorses, mules, and asses, of the
peasants, are so meagre, as to excite compassion. There is not a
dog to be seen in tolerable case; and the cats are so many
emblems of famine, frightfully thin, and dangerously rapacious. I
wonder the dogs and they do not devour young children. Another
proof of that indigence which reigns among the common people, is
this: you may pass through the whole South of France, as well as
the county of Nice, where there is no want of groves, woods, and
plantations, without hearing the song of blackbird, thrush,
linnet, gold-finch, or any other bird whatsoever. All is silent
and solitary. The poor birds are destroyed, or driven for refuge,
into other countries, by the savage persecution of the people,
who spare no pains to kill, and catch them for their own
subsistence. Scarce a sparrow, red-breast, tomtit, or wren, can
'scape the guns and snares of those indefatigable fowlers. Even
the noblesse make parties to go a la chasse, a-hunting; that is,
to kill those little birds, which they eat as gibier, or game.
The great poverty of the people here, is owing to their religion.
Half of their time is lost in observing the great number of
festivals; and half of their substance is given to mendicant
friars and parish priests. But if the church occasions their
indigence, it likewise, in some measure, alleviates the horrors
of it, by amusing them with shows, processions, and even those
very feasts, which afford a recess from labour, in a country
where the climate disposes them to idleness. If the peasants in
the neighbourhood of any chapel dedicated to a saint, whose day
is to be celebrated, have a mind to make a festin, in other
words, a fair, they apply to the commandant of Nice for a
license, which costs them about a French crown. This being
obtained, they assemble after service, men and women, in their
best apparel, and dance to the musick of fiddles, and pipe and
tabor, or rather pipe and drum. There are hucksters' stands, with
pedlary ware and knick-knacks for presents; cakes and bread,
liqueurs and wine; and thither generally resort all the company
of Nice. I have seen our whole noblesse at one of these festins,
kept on the highway in summer, mingled with an immense crowd of
peasants, mules, and asses, covered with dust, and sweating at
every pore with the excessive heat of the weather. I should be
much puzzled to tell whence their enjoyment arises on such
occasions; or to explain their motives for going thither, unless
they are prescribed it for pennance, as a fore-taste of
purgatory.
Now I am speaking of religious institutions, I cannot help
observing, that the antient Romans were still more superstitious
than the modern Italians; and that the number of their religious
feasts, sacrifices, fasts, and holidays, was even greater than
those of the Christian church of Rome. They had their festi and
profesti, their feriae stativae, and conceptivae, their fixed and
moveable feasts; their esuriales, or fasting days, and their
precidaneae, or vigils. The agonales were celebrated in January;
the carmentales, in January and February; the lupercales and
matronales, in March; the megalesia in April; the floralia, in
May; and the matralia in June. They had their saturnalia,
robigalia, venalia, vertumnalia, fornacalia, palilia, and
laralia, their latinae, their paganales, their sementinae, their
compitales, and their imperativae; such as the novemdalia,
instituted by the senate, on account of a supposed shower of
stones. Besides, every private family had a number of feriae,
kept either by way of rejoicing for some benefit, or mourning for
some calamity. Every time it thundered, the day was kept holy.
Every ninth day was a holiday, thence called nundinae quasi
novendinae. There was the dies denominalis, which was the fourth
of the kalends; nones and ides of every month, over and above the
anniversary of every great defeat which the republic had
sustained, particularly the dies alliensis, or fifteenth of the
kalends of December, on which the Romans were totally defeated by
the Gauls and Veientes; as Lucan says - et damnata diu Romanis
allia fastis, and Allia in Rome's Calendar condemn'd. The vast
variety of their deities, said to amount to thirty thousand, with
their respective rites of adoration, could not fail to introduce
such a number of ceremonies, shews, sacrifices, lustrations, and
public processions, as must have employed the people almost
constantly from one end of the year to the other. This continual
dissipation must have been a great enemy to industry; and the
people must have been idle and effeminate. I think it would be no
difficult matter to prove, that there is very little difference,
in point of character, between the antient and modern inhabitants
of Rome; and that the great figure which this empire made of old,
was not so much owing to the intrinsic virtue of its citizens, as
to the barbarism, ignorance, and imbecility of the nations they
subdued. Instances of public and private virtue I find as
frequent and as striking in the history of other nations, as in
the annals of antient Rome; and now that the kingdoms and states
of Europe are pretty equally enlightened, and ballanced in the
scale of political power, I am of opinion, that if the most
fortunate generals of the Roman commonwealth were again placed at
the head of the very armies they once commanded, instead of
extending their conquests over all Europe and Asia, they would
hardly be able to subdue, and retain under their dominion, all
the petty republics that subsist in Italy.
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