67

CHAP. V.

MISCELLANEOUS EXERCISES.

(Syllables and Words in Italics require particular attention.)

TYROL.

IT is a common observation that the character of a people is in a great measure influenced by their local situation, and the nature of the scenery in which they are placed; and it is impossible to visit the Tyrol, without being convinced of the truth of the remark. The entrance of the mountain region is marked by as great a diversity in the aspect and manners of the population, as in the external objects with which they are surrounded; nor is the transition from the level plain of Lombardy to the rugged precipices of the Alps, greater than from the squalid crouching appearance of the Italian peasant to the martial air of the free-born mountaineer.

This transition is so remarkable, that it attracts the attention of the most superficial observer. In travelling over the States of the north of Italy, he meets every where with the symptoms of poverty, meanness, and abject depression. The beautiful slopes which descend from the Alps, clothed with all that is beautiful and luxuriant in nature, are inhabited for the most part by

an indigent and squalid population, among whom you seek in vain for any share of that bounty with which Providence has blessed their country. The rich plains of Lombardy are cultivated by a peasantry whose condition is hardly superior to that of the Irish cottager; and while the effeminate proprietors of the soil waste their days in inglorious indolence at Milan and Verona, their unfortunate tenantry are exposed to the merciless rapacity of bailiffs and stewards, intent only on augmenting the fortunes of their absent superiors. In towns the symptoms of general distress are, if possible, still more apparent. While the opera and the corso are crowded with splendid equipages, the lower classes of the people are involved in hopeless indigence; the churches and public streets are crowded with beggars, whose wretched appearance marks but too truly the reality of the distress of which they complain, while their abject and crouching manner indicates the entire political degradation to which they have been so long subjected. At Venice in particular, the total stagnation of employment and the misery of the people strike a stranger the more forcibly from the contrast which they afford to the unrivalled splendour of her edifices, and the glorious recollections with which her history is filled. As he admires the gorgeous magnificence of the Piazza St. Marco, or winds through the noble palaces that still rise with undecaying beauty from the waters of the Adriatic, he no longer wonders at the astonishment with which the stern crusaders of the north gazed at her marble piles: and feels the rapture of the Roman emperor when he approached "where Venice sat in state, throned on her hundred isles." But in the mean

and pusillanimous race by which they are now inhabited, he looks in vain for the descendants of those great men who leapt from their galleys on the towers of Constantinople, and stood forth as the bulwarks of Christendom against Ottoman power; and still less, when he surveys the miserable population by which he is surrounded, can he go back in imagination to those days of liberty and valour, when

"Venice once was dear,

The pleasant place of all festivity,

The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy."

From such scenes of national distress, and from the melancholy spectacle of despotic power ruling in the abode of ancient freedom, it is with delight that the traveller enters the fastnesses of the Alps, where liberty has imprinted itself in indelible characters on the habits and manners of the people. In every part of the Tyrol, the bold and martial air of the peasantry, their athletic form and fearless eye bespeak the freedom and independence which they have enjoyed. In most instances, the people go armed; and during the summer and autumn they wear a musket over their shoulders, or some other offensive weapon. Universally they possess offensive weapons, and are trained early to the use of them, both by their expeditions in search of game, of which they are passionately fond; and by the annual duty of serving in the trained bands, to which every man capable of bearing arms is, without exception, subjected. It was in consequence of this circumstance, in a great measure, that they were able to make so vigorous a resistance with so little preparation, to the French invasion; and it is to the same cause that is

chiefly to be ascribed that intrepid and martial air by which they are distinguished from every other peasantry of Europe.

Their dress is singularly calculated to add to this impression. That of the men consists for the most part of a broad brimmed hat, ornamented by a feather; a jacket tight to the shape, with a broad girdle, richly ornamented, fastened in front by a large buckle of costly workmanship; black leather breeches and gaiters, supported over the shoulders by two broad bands, generally of scarlet or blue, which are joined in front by a crossbelt of the same colour. They frequently wear pistols in their girdle, and have either a rifle or a cloak slung over their shoulders. The colours of the dresses vary in the different parts of the country, as they do in the cantons of Switzerland; but they are always of brilliant colours, and ornamented, particularly round the breast, with a degree of richness which appears extraordinary in the labouring classes of the community. Their girdles and clasps, with many other costly parts of their clothing, are handed down from generation to generation, and worn on Sundays and festivals, with scrupulous care, by the great grandsons of those by whom they were originally purchased. The dress of the women is grotesque and singular in the extreme. Generally speaking the waists are worn long, and the petticoats exceedingly short: and the colours of their clothes are as bright and various as those of the men. To persons habituated, however, to the easy and flowing attire of our own country women, the form and style of this dress appears particularly unbecoming; nor can we altogether divest ourselves of those ideas of ridicule

which we are accustomed to attach to such antiquated forms, both on the stage and in the pictures of the last generation. Among the peasant girls you often meet with much beauty; but for the most part the women of the Tyrol are not nearly so striking as the men; an observation which seems applicable to most mountainous countries, and none more so than to the west Highlands of Scotland.

It is of more importance to observe that the Tyrolese peasantry are every where courteous and pleasing in their demeanour, both towards strangers and their own countrymen. In this respect their manners have sometimes been misrepresented. If a traveller addresses them in a style of insolence or reproach, which is too often used towards the lower orders in France or Italy, he will in all probability meet with a repulse; and if the insult is carried further, he may perhaps have cause permanently to repent the indiscretion of his language. For the Tyrolese are a free people; and, though subject to a despotic government, their own State preserves its liberty as entire as if it acknowledged no superior to its own authority. The peasantry are of a keen and enthusiastic temper; grateful to the last degree for kindness, or condescension, but feelingly alive on the other hand to anything like contempt or derision in the manner of their superiors. Dwelling too in a country where all are equal, and where few noble families or great proprietors are to be found, they are little accustomed to brook insults of any kind, or to submit to language from strangers, which they would not tolerate from their own countrymen. A similar temper of mind may be observed among the Scotch Highlanders; it has been