things abroad too for poor men; the rich may live any where. An
enormous salad, crisp, cold, white, and of delicious flavour, for a
halfpenny; olive oil, for fourpence a pound, to dress it with; and
wine for fourpence a gallon to make it disagree with you;[15] fuel
for almost nothing, and bread for little, are not small advantages to
frugal housekeepers; but, when dispensed by a despotic government,
where one must read those revolting words _motu proprio_ at the head
of every edict, let us go back to our carrots and potatoes, our Peels
and our income-tax, our fogs and our frost. The country mouse came to
a right conclusion, and did not like the fragments of the feast with
the cat in the cupboard--

Give me again my hollow tree,
My crust of bread, and liberty."

[Footnote 15:

----_Lactuca_ innatat acri
Post vinum stomacho.--HOR.]

Fish, though plentiful and various, is not fine in any part of the
_Mediterranean_; and as to _thunny_, one surfeit would put it out of
the bill of fare for life. On the whole, though at Palermo and Naples
the pauper starves not in the streets, the gourmand would be sadly at
a loss in his requisition of delicacies and variety. Inferior bread,
at a penny a pound, is here considered palatable by the sprinkling
over of the crust with a small rich seed (_jugulena_) which has a
flavour like the almond; it is also strewn, like our caraway seeds in
biscuits, _into_ the paste, and is largely cultivated for that single
use. The _capsici_, somewhat similar in flavour to the pea, are