"Gas has only been recently introduced. I understand that a year or two ago the streets were lighted by miserable contrivances, consisting of a mean oil lamp swung from the middle of a rope stretched across the street.
"The shops are not worth mentioning. There are no magnificent _Dry-goods Stores_, such as I have seen by the hundred in Boston; no _Hardware Stores_; no palatial _Patent Medicine Edifices_; no signs of enterprise, in fact, at all.
"The houses are very uncomfortable. They are large, and built in the form of a square. People live on separate flats. If it is cold they have to grin and bear it. There are no stoves. I have suffered more from the cold on some evenings since I have been here than ever I did in-doors at home. I have asked for a fire, but all they could give me was a poisonous fire of charcoal in an earthen thing like a basket.
"Some of their public buildings are good, but that can't make the population comfortable. In fact, the people generally are ill-cared for. Here are the wretched Jews, who live in a filthy quarter of the city crowded together like pigs.
"The people pass the most of their time in coffee-houses. They are an idle set--have nothing in the world to do. It is still a mystery to me how they live.
"The fact is, there are too many soldiers and priests. Now it is evident that these gentry, being non-producers, must be supported directly or indirectly by the producers. This is the cause, I suppose, of the poverty of a great part of the population.
"Begging is reduced to a science. In this I confess the Italian beats the American all to pieces. The American eye has not seen, nor ear heard, the devices of an Italian beggar to get along.
"I have seen them in great crowds waiting outside of a monastery for their dinner, which consists of huge bowls of porridge given by the monks. Can any thing be more ruinous to a people?
"The only trade that I could discover after a long and patient search was the trade in brooches and toys which are bought as curiosities by travellers.
"There are nothing but churches and palaces wherever you go. Some of these palaces are queer-looking concerns. There isn't one in the whole lot equal to some of the Fifth Avenue houses in New York in point of real genuine style.