How they contrived, with these limited means, to keep up the appearance they did is perfectly inexplicable. They even seemed able to gratify little harmless flights of fancy, such as coming out unexpectedly in singular suits of Brobdignagian checks or startling green cut-aways, which, with a pair of luxuriant whiskers, a hasty, determined walk, and a peculiar flourish of the stick, were supposed to constitute the faithful portraiture of an Englishman, than to resemble whom there could be no greater privilege, so great was the Anglomania that prevailed.
And now, I fancy, I hear the remark, “All this time you have been describing the manners of the Italian nobility. What are their gentry like—their middle classes?” Which inquiries shall be answered, as fully as circumstances admit, in my next chapter.
The middle classes—Superior education of the men—Low standard of female intellect and manners—Total separation from the nobility—Cultivated physician—A peep into his household—Family economy—_Conversazione_ at the chemist's—Passion for gambling—The _caffè_.
It is very difficult to convey any correct idea as to the state of the middle ranks of society in Italy, particularly if we do not divest ourselves of everything like comparison between them and what apparently are the corresponding classes in England.
In the first place, it must be borne in mind that no gentry exist among the Italians. If a man springs from the nobility, he has no resource in the Pope's States but the Church: any other profession is deemed incompatible with the dignity of his birth, as there is neither army nor navy, nor any other public service. If he belongs to the _mezzo cetto_, as it is termed, he must either be a physician, a merchant, a lawyer, a shopkeeper, or hold some meagre appointment, as an underling, in one of the government offices, the posts of distinction and emolument in these departments being almost invariably conferred upon ecclesiastics. It is rare to find this middle class, the best educated beyond a doubt, contributing to swell the ranks of the priesthood, which are principally recruited from the families of the decayed nobility, or from the peasantry and lower orders.
In years gone by, the mezzo cetto bowed unquestioningly to the supremacy of the nobles, who patronized them affably in return, invited the family lawyer and physician to dinner on the saint's-day of the head of the house, or for the christening of the junior branches. They stood pretty much in the light of client and patron, as in the days of their Roman ancestors; but of late everything has changed, and between the two orders there is now little good-will or assimilation. It used formerly to be a constant object of ambition to rise to the privileged rank; and when any one succeeded in amassing a fortune, part of it was often laid out in the purchase of some estate that conferred a title of nobility on its possessor; then gradually, through intermarriages with old but impoverished houses, the ci-devant _roturier_ fairly established himself in his new position, and after one or two generations, the origin of the family was forgotten. Now, on the contrary, a disposition to ridicule what formerly was so much coveted seems to prevail, and men have discovered that there are other roads to distinction than through a patent of nobility; but, mingled with this spirit of independence, there may still be discerned a jealous feeling at the superior ease and polish of the nobles—a sort of innate refinement, which all their ignorance and prejudices cannot efface.