In Some Parts Of
France, The Cure Of The Parish, On All Souls' Day, Which Is
Called Le Jour Des Morts, Says A Libera Domine For Two Sols, At
Every Grave In The Burying-Ground, For The Release Of The Soul
Whose Body Is There Interred.
The artisans of Nice are very lazy, very needy, very aukward, and
void of all ingenuity.
The price of their labour is very near as
high as at London or Paris. Rather than work for moderate profit,
arising from constant employment, which would comfortably
maintain them and their families, they choose to starve at home,
to lounge about the ramparts, bask themselves in the sun, or play
at bowls in the streets from morning 'till night.
The lowest class of people consists of fishermen, day labourers,
porters, and peasants: these last are distributed chiefly in the
small cassines in the neighbourhood of the city, and are said to
amount to twelve thousand. They are employed in labouring the
ground, and have all the outward signs of extreme misery. They
are all diminutive, meagre, withered, dirty, and half naked; in
their complexions, not barely swarthy, but as black as Moors; and
I believe many of them are descendants of that people. They are
very hard favoured; and their women in general have the coarsest
features I have ever seen: it must be owned, however, they have
the finest teeth in the world. The nourishment of those poor
creatures consists of the refuse of the garden, very coarse
bread, a kind of meal called polenta, made of Indian corn, which
is very nourishing and agreeable, and a little oil; but even in
these particulars, they seem to be stinted to very scanty meals.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 297 of 535
Words from 79683 to 79969
of 143308
