mechanism invented by clever rogues for an elaborate system of
petty larceny. And what a ferocious vein of cynicism underlies
his strictures upon the perverted gallantry of the Mariolaters at
Florence, or those on the two old Catholics rubbing their ancient
gums against St. Peter's toe for toothache at Rome. The recurring
emblems of crosses and gibbets simply shock him as mementoes of
the Bagne.

At Rome he compares a presentment of St. Laurence to "a barbecued
pig." "What a pity it is," he complains, "that the labours of
painting should have been employed on such shocking objects of
the martyrology," floggings, nailings, and unnailings...
"Peter writhing on the cross, Stephen battered with stones,
Sebastian stuck full of arrows, Bartholomew flayed alive," and so
on. His remarks upon the famous Pieta of Michael Angelo are frank
to the point of brutality. The right of sanctuary and its
"infamous prerogative," unheard of in England since the days of
Henry VII., were still capable of affording a lesson to the Scot
abroad. "I saw a fellow who had three days before murdered his
wife in the last month of pregnancy, taking the air with great
composure and serenity, on the steps of a church in Florence."
Smollett, it is clear, for all his philosophy, was no degenerate
representative of the blind, unreasoning seventeenth-century
detestation of "Popery and wooden shoes."

Smollett is one of the first to describe a "conversazione," and
in illustration of the decadence of Italian manners, it is
natural that he should have a good deal to tell us about the
Cicisbeatura. His account of the cicisbeo and his duties, whether
in Nice, Florence, or Rome, is certainly one of the most