There are a great many beggars, I am sorry to say, in fair Italy, who are called _Lazzaroni_, and they live on whatever they can get, sleeping under porticos, piazzas, or any place they can find, and are, as you may guess, excessively idle, like all other beggars.
There are also hordes of thieves, who are called _Banditti_, and who rob people in the most daring manner, for there are very few police. But there are also numerous persons who are quite well-behaved, and do all they can to earn their bread honestly. Among these is a set of men called _Improvisatori_, who tell stories, or repeat verses in the streets, and get a good deal of money from those who stop to listen to them. It must be very pleasant, on a cool summer evening, to sit under some magnificent old portico, listening to some interesting poem, or hearing a pretty story related.
Throughout Italy, one of the remarkable customs, is keeping of a grand festival, which begins some weeks before Lent, and is called the "Carnival;" on this occasion, every place is brilliantly adorned, and the people go about singing, dancing, joking, and masquerading. The most splendid Carnival is kept at Venice, a remarkable city of Italy, built upon a several islands, the sea, which runs every where among them, serving the inhabitants for streets.
The Italians are very handsome, and have jet black hair, dark roguish eyes, and fine figures. The dress of the lower orders is even prettier than the pretty Spanish costume. The men wear high-crowned hats, such as you may sometimes have seen on the organ-grinders in the streets of London, velveteen jackets, gaiters, and open shirt-collars, loosely fastened by a silk ribbon; while the women have short scarlet petticoats, and jackets of a darker colour, with exceedingly short sleeves, tied with bright ribbon, and their long black hair decorated with coloured bows of ribbon, and confined by a silk lace net, which falls partly over their shoulders. Instead of sending thieves to prison in Italy, they are sent on board the galleys, a large kind of rowing vessels, where they are chained to the decks, and obliged to endure every species of hardship.
What a number of things the Germans have contributed! Bracelets, articles of straw, beautiful household furniture, toys, wire, and many other manufactures. Here is a splendid tray of polished amber, with a little carriage, made according to a proper model, and a large chandelier of amber, capable of holding several thousand lights. There is a beautiful cabinet made of a collection of pieces of unpolished amber, intended to show the different kinds of that mineral, its various forms, its peculiarities, and its varieties. Here is a bedstead, worth it is said ten thousand pounds; and the most elegant furniture ever seen. And here is a piece of white silk embroidered with portraits of our Queen and the Prince of Wales, done in a thin kind of thread, called "hair thread."