in a state of excitement, till, at length, I find
them utterly crushed and spoiled by being
laid between a pair of rusty-nailed Alpine
shoes by the ingenious individual who packed
our luggage. However, it may be taken as a
general axiom that wherever there is a waiter
there is a white cravat; I shall have no
difficulty on this score.

The carnival at Naples is not half so gay as
it used to be, and great entertainments are
going out of fashion. There are twenty little
coteries who do all sorts of nice, pleasant
things amongst themselves every evening, but
they do not muster readily together except at
the balls of the Academy. In bye-gone days
it is said the King and the late Queen used
to amuse themselves right royally in carnival
time. They dressed themselves as a Chinese
prince and princess; and, mounting on a car,
drawn by gaily caparisoned horses, scattered
bon-bons among the people. The fashion is
gone out now; the carnival is as dull as in a
Protestant Electoral town in Germany. The
present Queen dislikes society and keeps as
much away from Naples as possible. The
King is no longer so young as he was. The
society of the place has become unscrewed, and
wants tightening together again. It is a body
without a head to guide it, and the legs go
one way, the arms another. Last week there
were only twelve persons at the masked ball at
the opera. I raise my eyebrows at this, and
am told that eighteen hundred and forty-eight
(the year ought to have a broad back, for I
have heard more sins laid upon it than would
fill a library to chronicle,) put an end to everything
like gaiety. But I don't believe it.

Perhaps, however, eighteen hundred and
forty-eight may really have alarmed one or
two people here and there, even in easy-going
Naples. When a man, in possession of a
snug property, finds the rightful heir turn up
unexpectedly, he may as well put by for
rainy days, although he has only to fear an
action in the Court of Chancery. The conviction
of the immutability of human affairs also is
not much stronger either among the thinkers of
Naples than among those of Paris and Vienna.

Even the theatre seems to have fallen off,
and the San Carlo no longer stands
comparison with Covent Garden as it used to do.
It is a fine, gay, handsome, well-lighted,
well-attended place, but not a star deigns to
shine in it. All the recognised singing
celebrities of Europe are elsewhere; some with
Mr. Gye, at Covent Garden, some in Paris,
more at St. Petersburgh, and a few in Vienna.
If you carry the remembrance of the singing,
scenery, and decorations, the general mise en
scène of Covent Garden, with you to Naples,
you will find a woeful falling off.

A masked ball at Naples in high carnival
is worth a visit, in spite of all I hear.
Paying about three shillings to a grave
money-taker, and a little surprised at the
silence which reigns, I take my way up
the fine staircases and see, with pain and
repugnance, that they are bristling with
soldiers. The theatre is magnificent;
hundreds and hundreds of lights glittering
everywhere as in a fairy palace, and two
military bands. It looks like a very Temple
of Revelry. But it is quite empty! I count
one hundred and ten soldiers and policemen
about the building, besides cavalry
outside. There they are, moustachioed up to
the eyes, and armed with swords and guns,
and bayonets and cocked hats; filling every
vista and guarding every door-way. Of
guests there are just seven. Seven in the
whole of that immense building! Three
persons, dressed something like the clowns at
Astleys' Amphitheatre, Stangate, Southwark,
are walking about, two arm-in-arm. One is
alone; there is another man in a black
domino, not unlike a funeral cloak
(probably a traveller); and two young Englishmen
talking about Vesuvius and standing in
the doorway; which, with me, make up the
seven. The bands pipe away feebly one after
the other; and, every now and then, an excitable
person belonging to the police establishment
comes in to see if any of us have got on
a great-coat which he could take away and
imprison. The check-taker, also, having
nothing to do, comes in with his wide-awake
and comforter on, and we begin to talk to him.

"Is the ball over?"

"No; it has not begun."

"When will it begin? "

The check-taker smiles, and with an almost
imperceptible movement indicates a placard
wafered up over his head and dated
"Prefecture of Police," which lets us into the
secret at once. From it I at once perceive
that the Neapolitans have altered their
national savory pie into plain boiled veal,
and now nobody will eat it. They have
taken the salt from their banquet and people
sup elsewhere. The placard forbade every
possible thing which could give zest or
animation to an amusement, of which the
Italians were the originators and to which
they are proverbially addicted almost to
phrenzy. There was a long list of characters
it was unlawful to assume, a longer one of
things it was unlawful to say. No wonder
the scene is so dead; not a jest, not a laugh,
from any one of those seven dreary
individuals the whole hour I stay. I remain
an hour because I wish to see it out, and it
is not till the two clowns disappear and the
Englishmen redeem their great-coats, that I
turn to leave the two solitary remaining
guests to their own reflections. I am, of
course, stopped at the staircase by a bayonet.
It is not the way out—I must take the right
staircase, not the left—I must go round; and
I do so, listening to the solitary echo of my
own boots across the deserted boards.

Now I can understand a Government being
so bad as not to like its deeds being talked
about, even by a band of mummers in carnival
time. I can understand a people so excitable