If chastity is none of the most shining virtues of the French, it is
still less so of the Italians. Almost all the travellers who have
visited Italy, agree in describing it as the most abandoned of all the
countries of Europe. At Venice, at Naples, and indeed in almost every
part of Italy, women are taught from their infancy, the various arts of
alluring to their arms, the young and unwary, and of obtaining from
them, while heated by love or wine, every thing that flattery and false
smiles can obtain in those unguarded moments: and so little infamous is
the trade of prostitution, and so venal the women, that hardly any rank
or condition set them above being bribed to it, nay, they are frequently
assisted by their male friends and acquaintances to drive a good
bargain; nor does their career of debauchery finish with their unmarried
state; the vows of fidelity which they make at the altar, are like the
vows and oaths made upon too many other occasions, only considered as
nugatory forms, which law has obliged them to take, but custom absolved
them from performing. They even claim and enjoy greater liberties after
marriage than before; every married woman has a cicisbey, or gallant,
who attends her to all public places, hands her in and out of her
carriage, picks up her gloves or fan, and a thousand other little
offices of the same natures; but this is only his public employment, as
a reward for which, he is entitled to have the lady as often as he
pleases at a place of retirement sacred to themselves, where no person
not even the most intrusive husband must enter, to be witness of what
passes between them. This has been considered by people of other
nations, as a custom not altogether consistent with chastity and purity
of manners; the Italians themselves however, endeavor to justify it in
their conversations with strangers, and Baretti has of late years
published a formal vindication of it to the world. In this vindication
he has not only deduced the original of it from pure Platonic love, but
would willingly persuade us that it is still continued upon the same
mental principles; a doctrine which the world will hardly be credulous
enough to swallow, even though he should offer more convincing arguments
to support it than he has already done.