that would have totally changed the mode of govern

ment.

The people of Naples are the only persons in Italy who have opposed themselves with constancy and effectually to the establishment of the inquisition. They have always had the art to rally themselves under chiefs, if not in a whole body, at least with the most vigorous of its inhabitants, called the Lazzaroni. This name comes from Lazarus, who is represented as a beggar covered with rags. If the Lazzaroni are not all in this condition, their drefs is not very brilliant. These men have always a leader, to whom the court and the ministers pay great respect. It is this chief who has charge to make the people respected, and prevent any wrongs from being done to them. What is the most astonishing, is, that there never has been an example of any one of these chiefs suffering himself to be corrupted.

These Lazzaroni have particular laws for themselves; they afsemble together whenever there is a necefsity for it, and the government cannot prevent them from so doing. They are so numerous a body, that it would be ill judged in any one who should attempt to reduce them to a servile obedience. They even afsist the police in quelling partial tumults, which sometimes happen, and not through any fault of the government.

The Lazzaroni are much attached to their condi tion, and bear no envy toward the upper clafses. They commit no disorder, nor thieve, nor rob. They are never implicated in the crimes which are committed

honest people, and contented with their poverty, which must not, however, be confounded with wretchedness. After this remark, the Lazzaroni must not be ranked in the lowest clafs of the people, which is the scum of the nation, full of scoundrels, and a crowd of pickpockets who are more industrious at Naples than at London or Paris.

We have said, that they have a chief. This chief has. afsefsors. He is a real tribune of the people, but without the magisterial robe, and without guards, though he makes himself be attended by as many of his brethren as he may choose. He has the right to offer remonstrances to the king and to the ministers; and there are ceremonies at the court, where this chief has his place. When the queen is brought to bed, the Lazzaroni send their chief, well attended, to be afsured that the child is of the wished-for sex. The child is put into the hands of this chief, who kisses it, and shews it to the people, whom he harangues in his jargon with real eloquence. It is to be remarked, that these Lazzaroni in general speak very well, with order, and sometimes with dignity, but always in their own jargon.

The Capo Lazzaro, or chief of the Lazzaroni, afsists at the drawing of the lottery; at some ceremonies of the church; and at all the grand ones of the court, without wearing any marks of distinction on. his drefs; but is always respected, because he has under his command from forty to forty-five thousand, men, to whom may be added the watermen, the fishermen of the Chiaia, and all the lower clafses of the people.

The Lazzaroni, however, are not always in their rags. On feast days, they are gaily drefsed, but always according to their costume, with handkerchiefs of silk, and silver buckles to their shoes and knees. In tu-. mults, their chief becomes a personage of importance, round whom every one rallies. The court has then, no other resource than to pay some preacher beloved by the Lazzaroni, and in odour of sanctity among them; and these preachers always succeed in calming the fury of the populace.

Extracts from the correspondence with Dr. Anderson, Madras.

[Continued from Vol. II. page 308.]

To James Anderson, Esq. P. G.

DEAR SIR,

Bombay, September 8, 1798. To enable me to give you, agreeably to my promise, a detailed account of the accident which happened to me at Pondicherry, I have been making every search, ever since my arrival here, for the paper on which I had written the particular circumstances attending it, hitherto to no purpose, I fear, therefore, that it is irrecoverably lost: and I hope you will be satisfied with the following relation from my memory.

On the evening of the 7th of August 1797, about seven o'clock, after leaving the house of a sick officer,

little to the northward of the main guard at Pondicherry, in stooping to buckle my shoe, before I got

snake. The pain was instantaneous, and much more excruciating than what I had felt from the sting of a scorpion some years ago in the West Indies. I immediately returned to the sick officers house, and was not a little surprised, when I neither saw blood on my wrist, nor apparently a wound: but, as I had frequently seen the hooded snake in the garden (where they resorted in numbers towards the evening in search of food, from under a great pile of wood lying for sale on the outside), and continued in great agony, I began to be very much alarmed, stepped into my palanqueen, and went homewards. Before I had proceeded half way to my own house, although the distance did not exceed a five minutes run for my boys, I became excefsively sick at my stomach, and continued retching violently all the way home. As soon as I got home I rubbed my wrist smartly with spirits of hartshorn; and no sooner was it applied than I could both feel and see that I had received two small wounds at the distance of half or three quarters of an inch from one another; the vomiting had now ceased, and I, anxious to have recourse to the internal use of spirits of hartshorn as the only medicine on which I relied for my preservation, dashed some into a glass of water, and drank it; this staid on my stomach. In about a quarter of an hour I took a second draught; and in about the same space of time a third: this remained but a short time on my stomach, when a severe retching came on, which brought up much bile; this vomiting I attribute, in some degree, to having put too much spirits of hartshorn in the water I had drank: and after this I measured the quantity I mixed, a preVOL. III. Q

caution which my eagerness to use the harsthorn made me neglect at first. From this time I had no more vomiting, although I took several tumblers of weak. hartshorn and water, but sweated so profusely, as to oblige me to change my linen thirty times in the course of the night. I continued rubbing my wrist with the hartshorn until I made it quite raw: and kept at it compresses wetted with the same spirits so long as I continued awake. From my being very much inclined to sleep after I began to perspire, and the pain in the wrist abating considerably about midnight, I think that I would have slept well, were I not obliged to shift so often; but from this circumstance I had no sound rest. Next morning I felt very languid and fatigued, like a man after performing a long journey, without the least power in the arm wounded; the lassitude and general soreness wore off in a few days, and the wounds healed up in lefs than a fortnight, without any thing extraordinary in their appearance, but my arm still continues extremely weak, although I have the perfect use of every joint. From this circumstance, and my turning sick at stomach so soon after the bite, I conclude that the snake must have been poisonous, but from the size of the wounds, young; and therefore, perhaps, not sufficiently powerful to occasion more violent symptoms. This, however, is mere conjecture, and probably, if I had not used the hartshorn so liberally, I might have found the poison perfectly powerful.

C. ANDERSON.