Pagoda all blazing with light, and splendour
and beauty,—upon the orders of the men,
and the jewels of the women. They have
seen Sardanapalus, Tiberius, Heliogabalus,
Augustus—which you will—disporting himself
at Capri. They know of the humours of the
wild prince and Poyns. They have heard
Captain Morris sing. They have known
George Hanger. Are any such extant? you
ask. I seem to think so when I meet these
ancient dandified men—these crippled
invalides from the campaign of vanity, where the
only powder was hair-powder, and the only
bullets fancy balls.

But Capri is no longer royal. The old
dandies, the metamorphosed Pagoda, and
the marine-store statue are the only relics
left to point out that Capri was once the
sojourn of royalty. Stay; there is a chapel
royal, with the lion and the unicorn on
red velvet within, but it is elbowed by a
printing-office, and stared out of countenance
by a boot-shop. I for one (and I
am one, I hope, of many thousands) do not
regret the withdrawal of the patronage. I
have an intense dislike to towns royal or
semi-royal. Don't you know how people in
Dublin bore you about "the Kaystle." In
Windsor, however loyal a man may be, he is
apt to be driven mad by the interminable
recurrence of portraits, not only of the royal
family—Heaven bless them!—but of their
dependents, hangers-on, and Teutonic
relatives. The cobbler who vamps your boots, the
chandlery shopkeeper who sells you a
ha'porth of twine is sure to be "purveyor
to her Majesty and the Duchess of Kent,"
and you can scarcely take a chop in a coffee-
room without a suspicion that the man in
the next box, with the aristocratic whiskers
and heavy gold-chain, may be one of the royal
footmen in disguise. Versailles is one of the
dreariest, dullest, dearest, most stuck-up
places I know; though it has but the very
shadow of a shade of royalty to dwell upon;
Hampton Court is poor, purse-proud, and
conceited; Potsdam, I believe, is slow and
solemn; and Pimlico, I have heard, is proud.
The disfranchisement of Capri, as a royal
borough, was the making of the place. Dire
thoughts of ruin, bankruptcy, grass growing
in the streets, or emigration to Dieppe filled
the inhabitants at first. But they were soon
undeceived. The aristocracy continued
their presence and patronage. They liked
Capri, now royalty was gone, as a breathing-
place. Perhaps, too, they liked a little being
royalty themselves. The easy middle-classes
came down, brought their wives and families
with them, and took houses. By and bye a
trunk-railway with numerous branches was
started, and that wonderful personage Mr.
Vox Populi came down, bag and baggage,—
Briareus, Argus, Hydra, welded into one. He
brought his wife and children with him.
Finally, schools multiplied, and doctors
disseminated themselves and differed.

Schools! Capri swarms with them. The
moral tenets, inculcated there in the bygone,
were not precisely of a nature to render their
introduction into copybooks, as texts, advisable;
but time has purified the naughty
place, and the town is now all over targets,
at which the young idea is taught to shoot
from the quiver of geography, and the use of
the globes,—dancing, deportment, and moral
culture. There are ladies' schools of the
grimmest and most adult status; schools
where the elder pupils are considerably bigger
than the schoolmistress; which locate in
tremendous stucco mansions in the vast
squares at the east-end of the town, and
which are attended by music-masters with the
fiercest of moustaches, and language-masters
with long red beards and revolutionary-
hats, and dancing-masters who come in
broughams, and masters of gymnastics,
deportment, and calisthenics, who have been
colonels, even generals, in the armies of
foreign potentates. To see these schools
parade upon the cliff is a grand sight, driving
solemn London dandies and dashing Lancer
officers to desperation, and moving your
humble servant to the commission of perhaps
the only folly of which he has not as yet been
guilty: the composition of amatory verses
in the terza rima. They are too pretty, they
are too old to be at school; they ought to be
Mrs. Somebodies, and living in a villa at
Brompton. Strict discipline is observed in
these grown-up schools; and I have heard
that though Signor Papadaggi, the singing-
master, and Mr. Hargays, the lecturer on
astronomy, must know, necessarily, every
pupil in the school they attend, by sight, the
young ladies are instructed whenever they
meet their male instructors in public, by
no means to acknowledge their salutations,
but to turn their heads—seaward—
immediately. This they do simultaneously, as
soldiers turn their eyes right, to the great
comfort and moral delectation of the school-
mistress, whose axiom it is, that men-folk are
of all living things the most to be avoided:
—which is sometimes also my opinion,
Eugenius.

There are long-tailed ladies' schools, whose
pupils average from sixteen to six, blocking
up every pathway. You cannot pass down a
by-street without hearing pianos industriously
thrummed, to the detriment of Messrs.
Meyerbeer, Thalberg, and Chopin, but to the
ultimate benefit of the music-sellers and the
piano-forte manufacturers. Brass plates
abound; and that terrible epidemic, the
collegiate system of female education, has
declared itself virulently. Saline Parade
College for Ladies, Prince Regency Square
Ladies' Collegiate Institute, Hemp Town
Academical Gymnasium for Young Ladies,
conducted on Collegiate Principles,—what
sham next? I marvel what they are like—
these ladies' colleges? Have they any affinity
to the old young ladies' school?—the Misses