only answer I could ever get was, "It is the same price." Foreigners, at least of the lower order, have somewhat a propensity to attribute base motives on all occasions. Mine was always supposed to be parsimony. If you refuse to ascend a tower, or to cross a bridge, they assure you there is no danger, and beg you not to be afraid. When at Rome, my companion made a shooting excursion of a few days to Ostia; in the mean time I was obliged to submit to the two courses, four wax lights, and two attendants—one on each side, with a plate ready, rivalling each other in zeal to change mine, often before I had half done, pushing each dish at me in its turn, and supposing, if I did not eat of it, it was from dislike. Thus they made me as great a slave as themselves. In answer to your inquiry, the style of beauty at Prince Borghese's ball was, beautiful foreheads and eyebrows, dark eyes, good teeth, and clear complexions, rather dark. The handsomest women were from Sienna. At Rome the women are good-looking; at Naples not-but give me English beauty ten times over. The party at the Countess of Albany's (the Pretender's widow) was not so dull as I expected. She has no remains of beauty, but has a very long face, with, I think, a cast in her eyes. She does not appear to me to have been ever either beautiful or interesting, and I suspect much of what Alfieri says of her to be fiction. Her party was well managed. She sits in state, and the ladies in two or three rows round the room. The gentlemen walk about, and in the ante-room you may talk at Ices and lemonade were handed round, and there was a handsome tea-service on a table in the middle of the room, at which the company helped themselves very conveniently. She is of the German house of Stolberg, and has a pension from our government of £1,500 or £2,000 a-year, which, I believe, is all, or nearly all she has. The Grand Duke has just passed, as is his daily custom, on his way to the Cascine, with his two carriages and six, all thoroughly appointed. But in this country they never can avoid something shabby; for, after followed a carriage, and pair of untrim your ease. med horses, with one dirty footman out of livery, and here they far excel the Romans and Neapolitans in approach to English propriety. I have seen the King of Naples driving with rope harness. We staid at the Cascine till nine o'clock -a delicious evening. Many people were there, and very respectable all. They put me in mind of England—no soldiers, as at Naples. After dark the moon shone beautifully through the trees, and thousands of fire-flies sparkled under them, with the air as soft as balm. Thence we went to the fashionable café to eat ice: it was full of people inside and out, sitting on benches. But O, how inferior to the Boulevards at Paris! On one of the bridges the people sit till late, without hats, on seats brought out for the occasion. The delights of the climate seem to suffice without any other aids. June 3. I wrote you a long letter yesterday, and now proceed to fill up the chasms in my travels. Between Montargis and Lyons we passed through some very fine country, especially on the Loire and the Allier. Though it was the middle of December, I have seen nothing brighter even in this bright country, at this bright season, than the two days, between Cône and St. Simphorien, which Arthur Young, I found from his works at Naples, calls the finest climate in France, or perhaps in Europe. The road down the Rhone is interesting. The ruins at Nîsmes are very fine, and I think, generally, that the ruins in the south of France are, with some exceptions, better worth seeing than those of Italy. There may be enumerated the beautiful triumphal arch at Orange, the amphitheatre and maison carrée at Nîmes, the mausoleum and triumphal arch at St. Remi, and last and greatest, the Pont du Gard, some miles from Nîmes, which is an aqueduct consisting of three ranges of arches one upon another, over a wide bed of a river and part of a valley. It is nearly perfect, very massive, and comes upon you suddenly, in a wild and desolate country, without a visible habitation, and surrounded by rocks covered with evergreens. It struck us more than any Italian antiquity we saw, the Coliseum not excepted, nor the temples at Pæstum. It is out of the regular road, and I had never heard of it before I saw it. I did not see the ruins at Arles. The walls of Avignon are the most beautiful I have met with, and the ancient palace of the Popes is an imposing pile, now degraded into a barrack and prison. We made a day's expedition to the fountain of Vaucluse, in a vile machine without springs, over a viler road, but were recompensed. The fountain is a basin of considerable extent, of clear blue water, very deep, situated at the base of a very high overhanging rock, with one wild fig-tree shooting out just above the water. On one side stands aloft a ruined château, said to have been Petrarch's; and on the other a rugged mountain, with here and there a tree. The rocks have more of a dreary, weather-worn appearance, than any I have seen. The water flows from the basin down a steepish bed of broken rocks; and conceive, in the middle of the stream, a gingerbread column painted and gilt, erected by the loyal prefect of the department to Louis XVIII.! In parts of Dauphiny the ground is covered entirely with flint, and looks as barren as the barrenest rock; yet you see growing there almonds, peaches, olives, mulberries, figs, and walnuts. Whoever wants to have an idea of the resources of France, should visit the south; it is a fine country. I think they are wrong, who call it uninteresting. It is on so much larger a scale than England, that the interesting parts are less conspicuous, but still they exist; and the climate heightens them considerably. The fishermen at Marseilles came originally from Spain, and they live by themselves. They have the darkest complexions and the most expressive countenances I have seen, not excepting the Neapolitan fishermen, who, in point of beauty of limbs, excel all other men I ever met with. [The article on Diet, which I promised in my last number, I must beg indulgence for till my next.] Published monthly with the Periodicals, stitched in a wrapper. IBOTSON AND FALMER, PRINTERS, SAVOY STREET, STRAND. THE ORIGINAL. BY THOMAS WALKER, M.A. TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, BARRISTER AT LAW, AND ONE OF THE POLICE MAGISTRATES OF THE METROPOLIS. PUBLISHED EVERY WEDNESDAY AT 12 O'CLOCK, BY H. RENSHAW, 356, STRAND, NEARLY OPPOSITE WELLINGTON STREET. No. XII.] WEDNESDAY, AUG. 5, 1835. [PRICE 3d. Contents: Hand-loom Weavers. Art of Attaining High Health. Extravagance and Economy. National Characteristics. HAND-LOOM WEAVERS. I GIVE the following extract from the Report of the Committee of the House of Commons on the state of Hand-loom Weaving, by way of illustration of many of my observations throughout my numbers, and for the purpose of instilling into the minds of my readers what I conceive to be right conclusions on a subject of deep importance—that is, the wellbeing of the labouring classes. "Your Committee cannot help observing, that they found in this evidence the proof of the necessity for actual personal observation and inspection, in order to come at the truth of the condition of the working classes; for that, Mr. Makin, although living in the midst of these people, and himself engaged in the trade, expresses himself as one who had been incredulous as to the state of the hand-loom weavers, until he had looked narrowly into their affairs, and as one who was N startled at what he found to be the fact. Your Committee dwell upon this, because it shows, beyond a question, that the data on which assertions of prosperity are commonly founded, are erroneous, and that actual survey and inspection are necessary in establishing the truth. Further, your Committee found, that as to clothing, the hand-loom weavers of Bolton are at the lowest ebb; in detailing which, Mr. Makin says, 'I cannot recollect any instance but one, where any weaver of mine has bought a new jacket for many years, and I am only sorry I did not bring one or two jackets to let the Committee see the average state in which they are clothed; that as to bedding, they have scarcely any, and of other furniture less; that they are generally without chairs, having nothing but two or three stools to sit on, and that sometimes they have nothing but a stool, or chair, or a tea-chest; that their rents are generally in arrear, and that they are obliged to borrow of their masters to pay them; that to such courses has this destitution driven them, that they are much in the habit of embezzling the materials given out to them to weave, so much so, indeed, that the dealing in embezzled warp and weft has become a trade exceeding all calculation, there being houses for receiving and paying for the goods so embezzled, and that there are manufacturers of considerable means, who deal with these receiving houses, and who manufacture and sell the goods so bought, to an extent which influences the market, causing a reduction, first, in the market price of goods, and next in the weavers' wages.' Your Committee, shocked at hearing this detail of dishonest practices, involving the character of a large part of a large community, were still more shocked at the thought that the characters of others, beyond the temptations of want, were also involved. As a corollary to this, your Committee found that the due and usual attendance at divine worship is generally neglected; that this arose from shame, in the first instance, at appearing at church in rags; that the writings of Carlile and Taylor |