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Calling on Lord Byron one evening after the opera, we happened to talk of Cavalieri Serventi, and Italian women; and he contended that much was to be said in excuse for them, and in defence of the system.

"We will put out of the question," said he, “a Cavalier "Serventecism; that is only another term for prostitution, "where the women get all the money they can, and have (as is the case in all such contracts) no love to give in exchange. I speak of another, and of a different service.”

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"Do you know how a girl is brought up here?" continued he. "Almost from infancy she is deprived of the en"dearments of home, and shut up in a convent till she has "attained a marriageable or marketable age. The father now looks out for a suitable son-in-law. As a certain portion of his fortune is fixed by law for the dower of "his children, his object is to find some needy man of

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equal rank, or a very rich one, the older the better, who "will consent to take his daughter off his hands, under the "market price. This, if she happen to be handsome, is "not difficult of accomplishment. Objections are seldom "made on the part of the young lady to the age, and per"sonal or other defects of the intended, who perhaps visits

"her once in the parlour as a matter of form or curiosity. "She is too happy to get her liberty on any terms, and he "her money or her person. There is no love on either "side. What happiness is to be expected, or constancy, "from such a liaison? Is it not natural, that in her intercourse with a world, of which she knows and has seen no

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thing, and unrestrained mistress of her own time and ac"tions, she should find somebody to like better, and who "likes her better, than her husband? The Count Guiccioli, "for instance, who is the richest man in Romagna, was sixty "when he married Teresa; she sixteen. From the first they "had separate apartments, and she always used to call him "Sir. What could be expected from such a preposterous " connexion? For some time she was an Angiolina, and he "a Marino Faliero, a good old man; but young women, "and your Italian ones too, are not satisfied with your good old men. Love is not the same dull, cold, calculating feeling here as in the North. It is the business, the "serious occupation of their lives; it is a want, a necessity. Somebody properly defines a woman, a creature "that loves.' They die of love; particularly the Romans: they begin to love earlier, and feel the passion later than "the Northern people. When I was at Venice, two dowa

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gers of sixty made love to me. But to return to the Guiccioli. The old Count did not object to her availing "herself of the privileges of her country; an Italian would "have reconciled him to the thing: indeed for some time “he winked at our intimacy, but at length made an excep“tion against me, as a foreigner, a heretic, an Englishman, and, what was worse than all, a liberal.

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"He insisted the Guiccioli was as obstinate; her family "took her part. Catholics cannot get divorces. But, to "the scandal of all Romagna, the matter was at length "referred to the

Pope, who ordered her a separate main"tenance, on condition that she should reside under her "father's roof. All this was not agreeable, and at length I "was forced to smuggle her out of Ravenna, having dis

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closed a plot laid with the sanction of the Legate for "shutting her up in a convent for life, which she narrowly

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escaped.-Except Greece, I was never so attached to any

place in my life as to Ravenna, and but for the failure of "the Constitutionalists and this fracas, should probably never have left it. The peasantry are the best people "in the world, and the beauty of their women is extraor

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dinary. Those at Tivoli and Frescati, who are so much

"vaunted, are mere Sabines, coarse creatures, compared to "the Romagnese. You may talk of your English women, " and it is true that out of one hundred Italians and Eng"lish you will find thirty of the latter handsome; but then "there will be one Italian on the other side of the scale, "who will more than balance the deficit in numbers-one

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who, like the Florence Venus, has no rival, and can have none in the North. I have learnt more from the peasantry of the countries I have travelled in than from any other source, especially from the women*: they are more intelligent, as well as communicative, than the 66 men. I found also at Ravenna much education and

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liberality of thinking among the higher classes. The "climate is delightful. I was unbroken in upon by

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society. It lies out of the way of travellers.

I was

never tired of my rides in the pine-forest: it breathes

" of the Decameron; it is poetical ground. Francesca

"Female hearts are such a genial soil

For kinder feeling, whatsoe'er their nation,

They generally pour the wine and oil,

Samaritans in every situation."

Don Juan, Canto V. Stanza 122.

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lived, and Dante was exiled and died at Ravenna. "There is something inspiring in such an air.*

"The people liked me, as much as they hated the "Government. It is not a little to say, I was popular "with all the leaders of the Constitutional party. They "knew that I came from a land of liberty, and wished well 66 to their cause. I would have espoused it too, and as

*The following lines will shew the attachment Lord Byron had to the tranquil life he led at Ravenna:

"Sweet hour of twilight, in the solitude

"Of the pine forest and the silent shore

Which bounds Ravenna's immemorial wood,
"Rooted where once the Adrian wave flow'd o'er

"To where the last Cæsarean fortress stood,

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Evergreen forest! which Boccacio's lore

"And Dryden's lay made haunted ground to me,

"How have I loved the twilight hour and thee!

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The shrill cicalas, people of the pine,

Making their summer lives one ceaseless song, "Were the sole echoes save my steed's and mine, And vesper bell's that rose the boughs among.'

Don Juan, Canto III. Stanza 105.

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