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falls on the fame space of ground in England. Whole months of drought are compenfated by the deluge of a day and befides, the fouth winds are frequently fo boil. terous in winter, as to burft open the bolts of both doors and windows. At that rainy time of the year, few are fo wretched and helpless as to lie in the street; but moft of the vagrants refort to the caves under Capodi Monte, where they fleep in crowds like theep in a pinfold. As they are thus provided with a dwelling, for which no rent is exacted, they alfo procure food without the trouble of cooking or keeping houfe: the markets and principal ftreets are lined with fellers of macaroni, fried and boiled fish, puddings, cakes, and vegetables of all forts; where, for a very fmall fum, which he may earn by a little labour, running of errands, or picking of pockets, the lazaro finds a ready meal at all hours: the flaggon hanging out at every corner invites him to quench his thirst with wine; or if he prefers water, as most of them do, there are ftalls in all the thoroughfares, where lemonade and iced water are fold. The paffion for iced water is fo great and fo general at Naples, that none but mere beggars will drink it in its natural fiate; and, I believe, a fcarcity of bread would not be more feverely felt than a failure of fnow. It is brought in boats every morning from the mountains behind Caftelamare, and is farmed out at a great rent. The Jefuits, who poffeffed a large capital, as well as the true fpirit of enterprize, had purchased the exclufive privilege of fupplying the city with it.

Very little fuffices to clothe the lazaro, except on holidays; and then he is indeed tawdrily decked out, with laced jacket and flamecoloured ftockings: his buckles are of enormous magnitude, and feem to be the prototype of thofe with which our present men of mode load their infteps. The women are alfo very fplendid on thofe days of fhew; but their hair is then bound up in tiffue caps and fcarlet nets: a fashion much lefs becoming than their every day fimple method. Citizens and lawyers are plain enough in their apparel, but the female part of their family vies with the firft court ladies in expenfive dress, and all the vanities of modifh fopperies. Luxury has of late advanced with gigantic ftrides in Naples. Forty years ago, the Neapolitan ladies wore nets and ribbons on their heads, as the Spanish women do to this day, and not twenty of them were poffelfed of a cap: but hair plainly dreft is a mode now confined to the lowest order of inhabitants; and all diftinction of dress between the wife of a nobleman and that of a citizen is entirely laid aside. Expence and extravagance are here in the extreme. The great families are oppreft with a load of debt; the working part of the community always ipend the price of their labour before they receive it; and the citizen is reduced to great parfimony, and almoft penury, in his houfe-keeping, in order to answer thefe demands of external fhew: fhort commons at home whet his appetite when invited out to dinner; and it is fcarce credible what quantities of victuals he will devour. The no

bility in general are well-ferved, and live comfortably, but it is not their cuftom to admit strangers to their table; the number of poor dependants who dine with them, and cannot properly be introduced into company, prevents the great families from inviting foreigners: another reafon may be, their fleeping after dinner in fo regular a manner as to undrefs and go to bed. No ladies or gentlemen finish their toilet till the afternoon, on which account they dine at twelve or one o'clock. The great officers of state and minifters, live in a different manner, and keep fumptuous tables, to which strangers and others have frequent invitations.

The establishment of a NeapoLitan grandee's houfehold is upon a very expenfive plan; the number of fervants, carriages, and horfes, would fuffice for a fovereign prince; and the wardrobe of their wives is formed upon the fame magnificent fcale; yet it is a fixed rule, that all ladies, whatever be the circumstance of their hufbands, affluent or circumfcrib cd, have an hundred ducats a month, and no more, allowed them for pin-money. At the birth of every child, the hufband makes his wife a prefent of an hundred ounces, and fome valuable trinkets, according to his fortune. Marriage portions are not very great in general; it does not coft a nobleman more to marry a daughter than it does to make her a nun; for a thousand pounds will not defray the expence of the ceremonies at her reception and profeffion the must have a penfon fettled upon her; and referves, befides, a power over her inheritance, in cafe fhe thall ar

rive at any dignity in the convent, and with to enrich it with buildings, plate, or vestments.

Servants and artificers of the city give from fifty to an hundred ducats with their daughters; pea fauts and country workmen go as far as three hundred. Females at and near Naples are esteemed helpless and indolent, and therefore have always twice or thrice as much fortune as their brothers, who have greater resources in their strength and activity. A girl would fcarce get a husband, if her lover did not expect to be reimburfed by her portion the fum he had paid away with his own fifters. In the plains, it is cuftomary for a peafant, on the birth of a daughter, to plant a row of poplar trees, which are ent down and fold at the end of feventeen years, to make up a fortune for her. The proverbial be nediction of Figlij maschi (male children) which a Neapolitan gives a woman when the freezes, is founded on the great facility with which the common people provide for their fons: as foon as they can run about they are able to earn their bread, while their fifters remain idle at home, or beg till they are old enough to attract the notice of the men.

Anecdotes of Charles the XIIth of
Sweden; from Letters Military and
Political, tranflated from the Italian
of Count Algarotti.

To Signor Don Giuseppe Pecis.

OU apply to me, as a per

fon who has lived much among the northern courts, to

clear

1

clear up certain doubts refpecting Charles the Twelfth. I will endeavour, to the best of my power, to refolve your questions refpecting a prince who was for a length of time the polar star of the military world, and will remain to after-ages its most dazzling meteor. You may at any rate reft affured, that I fhall not give you a fingle anecdote but what I have heard from those who were eyewitneffes to every tranfaction.

To begin with the vifit he paid to his principal enemy King Auguftus at Drefden, you need not entertain the smallest doubt of it, however extraordinary it may appear to you. Charles was not a man of the common ftamp: he might fay, like Father Arduin, What do I rife every morning two hours before day, to think like the rest of mankind? In fact, it was a whim that he determined to indulge. The Swedish army was then on its march towards Ruffia. One morning, as it was filing off not far from Drefden, the king fuddenly departed with two companions on horfeback, directing his courfe to the city. One of his attendants he leaves at the gate as a centinel, and rides immediately to the palace with the other, whom he leaves in the fame manner; giving him his horfe in charge while he afcends the ftairs, and enters the apart ments of King Auguftus, before he had rifen from his bed. Thus was the king obliged to get up without ceremony, and drefs himself in the prefence of the man who had just before driven him from his throne. Charles remained with him about three VOL. XXV.

quarters of an hour; during which time he fcarcely ever took his eyes off him, nor would give him an opportunity of fpeaking to any perfon; not even to a page or valet, much lefs to the minifter, who came as foon as he heard of the King of Sweden's arrival. It happened, as they were walking through the rooms of the palace, that Charles first paffed through one of the doors, when the minifter feized that opportunity of making figns, to know whether it was the king's pleafure that he fhould be detained; to which he made a fignal in the negative. The vifit turned out a mere affair of ceremony; and Charles being conducted by Auguftus to the gate of the palace, he there mounted his horie, and fet off full speed to join his army, which he found in the utmost anxiety about him. As foon as it was known that the king had entered Dresden, not feeing him return immediately, they thought every quarter of an hour an age, and became fo im patient as to think of no less than marching up to the town, and lay. ing fiege to it, in order to recover their prince.

When in quarters in Saxony, his defign was to march into the heart of the empire, and with his victorious arms to give law to Europe, which was then divided about the Spanish fucceffion. Many reafons have been given for the ftep he took afterwards, of leaving the empire, and turu ing his arms against Ruffia. What principally urged him to this was, according to the best-received authors, a note of one hundred thousand pounds fterling given to C Tomebody

fomebody by the Duke of Marlborough.

Momentumque fuit mutatus curio rerum.

The duke finished the bufinefs of exafperating him against the Czar, towards whom he had already a violent animofity; and pointed out to him the glory of crushing his only rival, and of becoming the arbiter of the north, which would in the end make him the arbiter of Europe. There were two ways to march into Ruffia; the one by Livonia, a Swedifh country on the fea-coaft, abounding with grain, which would fubfift his ariny; whence entering into the fertile provinces of Ruffia, he might direct his march to Mofcow, with eafe and convenience, along the banks of navi gable rivers: the other was by Poland and Ucrania, to which he was invited by the Coffack Ma. zeppa, a malcontent, who promifed him every kind of affiftance; and by this route he might fall at once upon Moscow, which would decide the fate of Ruffia. Of thefe two, Charles himself chofe that which was more worthy of his courage than his prudence; as was fully proved by the hardships his troops were obliged to go through, and the extreme mifery to which they were at length reduced.

Charles's last campaign against the Danes, wherein he loft his life, was planned indeed entirely by himself; which was not the cafe with regard to his first enter prifes, that were followed with fo great fuccefs: in thefe, though he was the Achilles, fome other was the Chiron. It was always

his custom to charge the enemy at the head of his cavalry: the dif pofition of the battle was left to Levenhaupt. The famous difembarkation at Copenhagen, with which Charles, while yet a youth, opened his military career, was projected by General Stuart; the attack of the enemy's trenches at Narva, which brought to mind the exploits of the Greeks against the Perfians, by one Gundvil. General Altendorf conceived the idea of the famous paffage of the Duna, where fome rafts being floated down the ftream with wet ftraw on them, which was fet fire to, the Swedish army paffed the river, covered by the fioke from the enemy, who was to leeward: a fratagem first put in practice by Hannibal.

His army was frengthened by the prefence of feveral brave and experienced generals, who had ferved under Charles the Eleventh, his father; who might be of inf nite fervice to him in council, as Philip's officers were to Alexander. It was not fo with the Czar, his enemy, who derived instruction from his defeats alone. He reaped more benefit, however, from thefe defeats, than Charles did even from his victories. The fuc cefs of the engagement at Pultowa he owed entirely to himself; in which he had to do with the most terrible enemy he ever had upon his hands; over whom this battle gave him a complete and decifive advantage: a battle that might be called the modern Pharfalia.

Charles having arrived, after fuffering many difficulties, in Ucrania, found the great promides of Mazeppa, who had engaged

Thus

him the next morning.
judged the Czar, and thus it
really happened. But in the night
the Czar gave orders for feven re-
doubts to be raised in the wood,
juft in front of his infantry. This
was for two different purposes;
one to check the impetuofity and
break the order of the Swedes in
their fift onfet, which by expe-
rience he had fufficient reason to
dread: the other, that he might
not fhut up his troops in a conti-
nued line of entrenchment, but
afford them the means of fallying
out upon the enemy through the
intervals between the redoubts:
a method of fortifying an encamp-
ment highly applauded by Mar-
fhal Saxe, and thenceforward
esteemed the most perfect. The
king went forth in the morning,
full of ardour and flushed with
the hopes of conqueft; but it was
fome time before he took notice
of the Czar's difpofition. The
confequence was, that, though
the Ruffian horfe were beaten, and
three of the redoubts taken by
ftorm, the Swedes had in the end
the worst of the action; which
was equal to a decifive victory on
the part of the Ruffians.

to fubfift his army, reduced to of Sweden; who, he fuppofed, nothing. Being in the greatest would prepare matters to attack diftrefs for want of provifions, partly through the difappointment he met with from Mazeppa, and partly from the defeat of Levenhaupt on his march to the army with 15,000 men, and a confiderable efcort of ammunition and provifions, he came to the refolution of laying fiege to Pultowa. In this place the Czar had collected a quantity of provifions, and had left a strong garrifon to defend it. By the capture of it, Charles might reflore plenty to his army, and fecure a good poft for his headquarters, whence he might direct the future operations of the war. Various were the opinions in the Ruffian army, during the fiege, of the steps that fhould be taken by them: fome were for inclofing the Swedes by an entrenchment, and reducing them through hunger to a capitulation others were for laying waste the country for an hundred leagues around, and leaving them to perish without the risk of a battle. But fearing that the town, which was vigorously attacked, would be obliged to furrender, and that Charles would be enabled to refresh his army, the Ruffians at laft determined on not delaying any longer to give him battle. The Czar gave the more readily into this measure, as he knew that Charles's impetuous difpotition would induce him to feize eagerly the occafion of a general action with the Ruffian army, however it might be to his own difadvantage. He marched then early in the morning, fo as to arrive in time to encamp in the entrance of a wood, near the King

The King of Sweden excelled more in the field than in council, was more capable of executing than planning any great defign: he might be compared to a fhell, which does fometimes prodigious execution; but it must be when under the direction of an able bombardier.

When he had occafion to confult with others, which was but feldom, he never did it in a direct manner; but propofed a general

C 2

question

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