before six o’clock the horses, seven or eight in number, are led forth by their respective grooms—riders they have none—each animal painted over with arabesques, a feather on its head, and sundry contrivances dangling about its body, partly for ornament, partly to accelerate its speed. They are all eager to start, and with difficulty the grooms can bring them to stand facing the cable stretched from side to side of the course.
At this moment some half-dozen dragoons gallop down the Corso at a most furious pace, scattering the crowd before them like chaff; and the course is now considered clear.
A grey horse—which generally wins in this riderless race—is the most unmanageable of the troop. His plunging and rearing set the rest in confusion, and the situation of the men who hold them is not enviable. Some of the animals strive to leap over the rope, and in the melée down go a horse and man together. The grey horse at last is brought to the cable. The moment he feels his chest against it he rears almost upright, and coming down half way over the rope, it falls to the ground. The grooms hold on no longer; and with a rush like a whirlwind, the horses fly down the Corso, their hoofs striking fire from the stones—the grey one ahead. The firing of a gun a minute later proclaims the carpet in the Piazza di Venezia is reached, and the race is over.
After this follows the diversion of the moccoletti—a most lively and exciting amusement—every one engaging in it carrying a lighted candle, which he tries to preserve to the last against the efforts of every one else to extinguish it. Sometimes an unfortunate who has battled bravely through a group all intent on putting out his moccolo, finds it suddenly extinguished by a huge, gaily-painted extinguisher, let down from a balcony overhead. This is the most fatiguing sport of the Carnival, as one has not only to defend one’s own moccolo, but to expend a vast amount of breath in puffing out one’s neighbour’s. Then the streets ring with the words “Senza moccolo!” (without a light) shouted in every diversity of voice and accent—and amid this tumult, struggle, and wild sport the Carnival terminates. To-morrow begin Lenten observances, and fasting and devotions take the place of feasting and revelry.
The last year of the Carnival is always being predicted, but it seems never to come; and, certainly, as a truly popular amusement, bringing all classes together in perfect good humour, and on the same footing, it would be a pity it should cease to be, for we think that seldom is the fun and frolic converted into riot or unlawful excesses. So we say, in parting with it, “Evviva il Carnevale.”
OUR OLD ENEMY.
He has been our great national enemy from time out of mind. He seems to delight in giving evidences of his bitter stinging enmity. When once he commences his hostile attacks, you may be well assured that his malignant influence will be exercised for a very long and painful period of time. The mischief he effects is enormous: and no efforts of philosophical or statistical calculation can be ever made to bear upon the amount of evil, moral or physical, commercial or political, which may be reasonably laid to his baneful effects. He was one of the most active agents in bringing about one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest humiliation, which our national pride ever sustained; when, in June, 1667, the Dutch fleet menaced the Thames, almost unopposed, took Sheerness, sailed up the Medway victoriously, burned the greater part of the vaunted wooden walls of Old England, domineered in British harbours, and struck a deadly blow of terror at the heart of the very capital itself. He did his malicious work well during that event, and played the game of our foes with triumphant malignity. Other influences may certainly have been to blame, on this disastrous occasion, in the production of such a great national humiliation—the niggardly parsimony of the Court in all that concerned the truest interests of the country—the incapacity of its favourites—the general corruption and weakness of the times. But our bitter old enemy had much to do with it, notwithstanding.
Unfortunately, we have no power of withstanding his attacks. No Commissions, no Courts of Inquiry, no opposition exposure of abuses, no fulminating letters in “The Times,” can open our eyes to defects in our systems, the removal of which can render us more powerful against the old enemy, can teach us how to husband our resources so as to meet him with more vigour of resistance, or demonstrate the means of parrying more successfully his deadly onslaughts.
He is resistless. When it is his will to charge down upon us in all his strength, a nation succumbs before him. Nothing is left us but resignation and a hope of better days.
When that great questionable French philosopher, Voltaire, first visited England—young then, but yet already great—he discovered our old enemy at once: he found him at his tricks upon his very arrival on our shores. He tells us this fact in a letter, which is very little known among his voluminous works, but which we are disposed to quote, with all its little national errors, and national exaggerations, as characteristic of the celebrated man; at the same time that it is illustrative of the effect made by the visible influence of our old enemy, upon a foreigner, who gives himself the air of having made an important discovery in detecting his malignant agency. Voltaire professed to love England as the land of supreme liberty (even in those days), when contrasted with the wretched condition of his own aristocracy and Jesuit-beridden country. But his real or affected enthusiasm for England and the English could not prevent the Frenchman from using his powers of wit and satire, whenever a favourable opportunity offered itself, to turn into ridicule those for whom he loudly expressed his admiration, and among whom he found for three years a refuge. With all his vaunted enthusiasm he was still a Frenchman at heart; and a little national rancour was balsam to his wounded spirit. Less characteristic in this respect, perhaps, than many other of his Lettres Anglaises, the above-mentioned letter, however, in which he makes his