Note 1 — PREFACE.

Assassination is of frequent occurrence in Italy: these are perpetrated chiefly from jealousy. There are crimes frequent with us and the French of which they are never guilty. Brutal murders committed for “filthy lucre” do not occur among them. We never hear of hospitality violated, or love used as a cloak that the murderers may possess themselves of some trifle more or less of property. Their acts of violence are, indeed, assassinations, committed in the heat of the moment—never cold-blooded. Even the history of their banditti was full of redeeming traits, as long as they only acted for themselves and were not employed by government. There is plenty of cheating in Italy—not more, perhaps, than elsewhere, only the system is more artfully arranged; but there is no domestic robbery. I lived four years in Tuscany. I was told that the servant who managed my expenditure cheated me dreadfully, and had reason to know that during that time she saved nearly a hundred crowns: but I never at any time, when stationary or travelling, was robbed of the smallest coin or the most trifling article of property. On the contrary, instances of scrupulous honesty are familiar to all travellers in Italy, as practised among the poorest peasantry.