Music Is The Never Failing Resource For
Those With Whom The Spirit Of Conversation Fails.
The society at Rome is
perfectly free from etiquette or gene.
When once presented to a family
you may enter their house every evening without invitation, make your bow
to the master and mistress of the house, enter into conversation or not as
you please. You may absent yourself for weeks together from these
conversazioni, and nobody will on your re-appearance enquire where you
have been or what you have been doing. In short, in the intercourse with
Roman society, you meet with great affability, sometimes a little ennui,
but no commerage. The avvocati may be said to form almost exclusively
the middling class in Rome, and they educate their families very
respectably. This class was much caressed by the French Government during
the time that Rome was annexed to the French Empire, and most of the
employes of the Government at that time were taken from this class. I have
met with several sensible well-informed people, who have been accurate
observers of the times, and had derived profit in point of instruction from
the scenes they had witnessed.
The Papal Government began, as most of the restored governments did, by
displacing many of these gentlemen, for no other fault than because they
had served under the Ex-government, and replaced them by ecclesiastics, as
in the olden time. But the Papal Government very soon discovered that the
whole political machine would be very soon at a stand, by such an
epuration; and the most of them have been since reinstated.
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