NICE, October 22, 1764.
SIR,--As I have nothing else to do, but to satisfy my own curiosity,
and that of my friends, I obey your injunctions with pleasure; though
not without some apprehension that my inquiries will afford you very
little entertainment. The place where I am is of very little importance
or consequence as a state or community; neither is there any thing
curious or interesting in the character or oeconomy of its inhabitants.
There are some few merchants in Nice, said to be in good circumstances.
I know one of them, who deals to a considerable extent, and goes twice
a year to London to attend the sales of the East-India company. He buys
up a very large quantity of muslins, and other Indian goods, and
freights a ship in the river to transport them to Villa Franca. Some of
these are sent to Swisserland; but, I believe, the greater part is
smuggled into France, by virtue of counterfeit stamps, which are here
used without any ceremony. Indeed, the chief commerce of this place is
a contraband traffick carried on to the disadvantage of France; and I
am told, that the farmers of the Levant company in that kingdom find
their account in conniving at it. Certain it is, a great quantity of
merchandize is brought hither every week by mules from Turin and other
parts in Piedmont, and afterwards conveyed to the other side of the
Var, either by land or water. The mules of Piedmont are exceeding
strong and hardy. One of them will carry a burthen of near six hundred
weight. They are easily nourished, and require no other respite from
their labour, but the night's repose. They are the only carriage that
can be used in crossing the mountains, being very sure-footed: and it
is observed that in choosing their steps, they always march upon the
brink of the precipice. You must let them take their own way, otherwise
you will be in danger of losing your life; for they are obstinate, even
to desperation. It is very dangerous for a person on horseback to meet
those animals: they have such an aversion to horses, that they will
attack them with incredible fury, so as even to tear them and their
riders in pieces; and the best method for avoiding this fate, is to
clap spurs to your beast, and seek your safety in flight. I have been
more than once obliged to fly before them. They always give you
warning, by raising a hideous braying as soon as they perceive the
horse at a distance. The mules of Provence are not so mischievous,
because they are more used to the sight and society of horses: but
those of Piedmont are by far the largest and the strongest I have seen.
Some very feasible schemes for improving the commerce of Nice have been
presented to the ministry of Turin; but hitherto without success. The
English import annually between two and three thousand bales of raw
silk, the growth of Piedmont; and this declaration would be held legal
evidence. 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. I have known a peasant feed his family with the skins of boiled
beans. Their hogs are much better fed than their children. 'Tis pity
they have no cows, which would yield milk, butter, and cheese, for the
sustenance of their families. With all this wretchedness, one of these
peasants will not work in your garden for less than eighteen sols,
about eleven pence sterling, per diem; and then he does not half the
work of an English labourer. If there is fruit in it, or any thing he
can convey, he will infallibly steal it, if you do not keep a very
watchful eye over him. All the common people are thieves and beggars;
and I believe this is always the case with people who are extremely
indigent and miserable. In other respects, they are seldom guilty of
excesses. They are remarkably respectful and submissive to their
superiors. The populace of Nice are very quiet and orderly. They are
little addicted to drunkenness. I have never heard of one riot since I
lived among them; and murder and robbery are altogether unknown. A man
may walk alone over the county of Nice, at midnight, without danger of
insult. The police is very well regulated. No man is permitted to wear
a pistol or dagger' on pain of being sent to the gallies. I am
informed, that both murder and robbery are very frequent in some parts
of Piedmont. Even here, when the peasants quarrel in their cups, (which
very seldom happens) they draw their knives, and the one infallibly
stabs the other. To such extremities, however, they never proceed,
except when there is a woman in the case; and mutual jealousy
co-operates with the liquor they have drank, to inflame their passions.
In Nice, the common people retire to their lodgings at eight o'clock in
winter, and nine in summer. Every person found in the streets after
these hours, is apprehended by the patrole; and, if he cannot give a
good account of himself, sent to prison. At nine in winter, and ten in
summer, there is a curfew-bell rung, warning the people to put out
their lights, and go to bed. This is a very necessary precaution in
towns subject to conflagrations; but of small use in Nice, where there
is very little combustible in the houses.
The punishments inflicted upon malefactors and delinquents at Nice are
hanging for capital crimes; slavery on board the gallies for a limited
term, or for life, according to the nature of the transgression;
flagellation, and the strappado. This last is performed, by hoisting up
the criminal by his hands tied behind his back, on a pulley about two
stories high; from whence, the rope being suddenly slackened, he falls
to within a yard or two of the ground, where he is stopped with a
violent shock arising from the weight of his body, and the velocity of
his descent, which generally dislocates his shoulders, with incredible
pain. This dreadful execution is sometimes repeated in a few minutes on
the same delinquent; so that the very ligaments are tore from his
joints, and his arms are rendered useless for life.
The poverty of the people in this country, as well as in the South of
France, may be conjectured from the appearance of their domestic
animals. The draughthorses, mules, and asses, of the peasants, are so
meagre, as to excite compassion. There is not a dog to be seen in
tolerable case; and the cats are so many emblems of famine, frightfully
thin, and dangerously rapacious. I wonder the dogs and they do not
devour young children. Another proof of that indigence which reigns
among the common people, is this: you may pass through the whole South
of France, as well as the county of Nice, where there is no want of
groves, woods, and plantations, without hearing the song of blackbird,
thrush, linnet, gold-finch, or any other bird whatsoever. All is silent
and solitary. The poor birds are destroyed, or driven for refuge, into
other countries, by the savage persecution of the people, who spare no
pains to kill, and catch them for their own subsistence. Scarce a
sparrow, red-breast, tomtit, or wren, can 'scape the guns and snares of
those indefatigable fowlers. Even the noblesse make parties to go a la
chasse, a-hunting; that is, to kill those little birds, which they eat
as gibier, or game.
The great poverty of the people here, is owing to their religion. Half
of their time is lost in observing the great number of festivals; and
half of their substance is given to mendicant friars and parish
priests. But if the church occasions their indigence, it likewise, in
some measure, alleviates the horrors of it, by amusing them with shows,
processions, and even those very feasts, which afford a recess from
labour, in a country where the climate disposes them to idleness. If
the peasants in the neighbourhood of any chapel dedicated to a saint,
whose day is to be celebrated, have a mind to make a festin, in other
words, a fair, they apply to the commandant of Nice for a license,
which costs them about a French crown. This being obtained, they
assemble after service, men and women, in their best apparel, and dance
to the musick of fiddles, and pipe and tabor, or rather pipe and drum.
There are hucksters' stands, with pedlary ware and knick-knacks for
presents; cakes and bread, liqueurs and wine; and thither generally
resort all the company of Nice. I have seen our whole noblesse at one
of these festins, kept on the highway in summer, mingled with an
immense crowd of peasants, mules, and asses, covered with dust, and
sweating at every pore with the excessive heat of the weather. I should
be much puzzled to tell whence their enjoyment arises on such
occasions; or to explain their motives for going thither, unless they
are prescribed it for pennance, as a fore-taste of purgatory.
Now I am speaking of religious institutions, I cannot help observing,
that the antient Romans were still more superstitious than the modern
Italians; and that the number of their religious feasts, sacrifices,
fasts, and holidays, was even greater than those of the Christian
church of Rome. They had their festi and profesti, their feriae
stativae, and conceptivae, their fixed and moveable feasts; their
esuriales, or fasting days, and their precidaneae, or vigils. The
agonales were celebrated in January; the carmentales, in January and
February; the lupercales and matronales, in March; the megalesia in
April; the floralia, in May; and the matralia in June. They had their
saturnalia, robigalia, venalia, vertumnalia, fornacalia, palilia, and
laralia, their latinae, their paganales, their sementinae, their
compitales, and their imperativae; such as the novemdalia, instituted
by the senate, on account of a supposed shower of stones. Besides,
every private family had a number of feriae, kept either by way of
rejoicing for some benefit, or mourning for some calamity. Every time
it thundered, the day was kept holy. Every ninth day was a holiday,
thence called nundinae quasi novendinae. There was the dies
denominalis, which was the fourth of the kalends; nones and ides of
every month, over and above the anniversary of every great defeat which
the republic had sustained, particularly the dies alliensis, or
fifteenth of the kalends of December, on which the Romans were totally
defeated by the Gauls and Veientes; as Lucan says--et damnata diu
Romanis allia fastis, and Allia in Rome's Calendar condemn'd. The vast
variety of their deities, said to amount to thirty thousand, with their
respective rites of adoration, could not fail to introduce such a
number of ceremonies, shews, sacrifices, lustrations, and public
processions, as must have employed the people almost constantly from
one end of the year to the other. This continual dissipation must have
been a great enemy to industry; and the people must have been idle and
effeminate. I think it would be no difficult matter to prove, that
there is very little difference, in point of character, between the
antient and modern inhabitants of Rome; and that the great figure which
this empire made of old, was not so much owing to the intrinsic virtue
of its citizens, as to the barbarism, ignorance, and imbecility of the
nations they subdued. Instances of public and private virtue I find as
frequent and as striking in the history of other nations, as in the
annals of antient Rome; and now that the kingdoms and states of Europe
are pretty equally enlightened, and ballanced in the scale of political
power, I am of opinion, that if the most fortunate generals of the
Roman commonwealth were again placed at the head of the very armies
they once commanded, instead of extending their conquests over all
Europe and Asia, they would hardly be able to subdue, and retain under
their dominion, all the petty republics that subsist in Italy.
But I am tired with writing; and I believe you will be tired with
reading this long letter notwithstanding all your prepossession in
favour of--Your very humble servant.