Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/128

138 said a young Neapolitan count of the great thinker, who is, however, so perilous to many.

“This love of philosophical studies appears to have been inherited by the Neapolitans from the Greeks, who emigrated in great numbers from their country to establish themselves in Southern Italy, then Magna Grecia. There is more literary activity in Naples than in Rome, especially as regards translations from the French and German. But a meritorious scientific journal, Vico, which is published there is about to be discontinued from want of support.

“Mind, in Naples is, as it were, within a diving bell, it cannot breathe freely, and it has therefore no free worshipers. Where there is no freedom is stagnation and death. Mind dives in vain into the depths, it cannot bring up thence any true pearls to the day. A late evidence of this is Padre Tosti, a warm-hearted, liberal-minded monk of Monte Casino, whose noble patriotic history of La lega Lombarda, dedicated to Pio Nono, obtained for him, from the King of Naples, several months' imprisonment, and even afterwards when, at the request of the pope, he was released, unceasing surveillance.”

According to Count —— the Serbes were the only branch of the Sclaves inhabiting the provinces of the Danube, who are possessed of a national, independent life, as well as power to combat for its maintenance. The rest, under the dominion of Austria or Turkey, satisfy themselves with a slavish imitation of the manners and fashions of the European nations, especially of the French. Such arc the most wealthy of these