The dinner-hour occasionally, but not always, assembles the family to a meal that in no respect resembles that in more civilised communities. The periodical return of a certain set of forms--those _convenances_ which inspire, at the same time, regard for others and self-respect--the admixture of courtesy with cordial enjoyment--have no representatives around a board where the party assemble, some dusty and heated, others wrapped up in dressing-gowns--all negligent, inattentive to each other, and weary of themselves--tired of the long, unbroken morning, which no occupation lightens, no care beguiles, no duty elevates. The Siesta follows, evening draws near, and at last the life of Italy dawns--dawns when the sun is setting! It is the hour of the theatre--the Theatre, the sole great passion of the nation, the one rallying point for every grade and class. Thither, now, all repair; and for a brief interval the silent streets of the city bustle with the life and movement of the inhabitants, as, on foot or in carriages, they hasten past.
The "business of the _scène_" is the very least among the attractions of a theatre in Italy. The opera-box is the drawing-room, the only one of an Italian lady; it is the club-room of the men. Whist and faro, ombre and piquet, dispute the interest with the _prima donna_ or the _danseuse_ in one box; while in another the fair occupant turns from the ardent devotion of stage-passion to listen to the not less impassioned, but as unreal, protestation of her admirer beside her.
That the drama, as such, is not the attraction, it is sufficient to say that the same piece is often played forty, fifty, sometimes seventy nights in succession, and yet the boxes lose few, if any, of their occupants. Night after night the same faces reappear, as regularly as the actors; the same groupings are formed, the selfsame smiles go round; and were it not that no trait of _ennui_ is discernible, you would say that levity had met its own punishment in the dreariness of monotony. These boxes seldom pass out of the same family; from generation to generation they descend with the family mansion, and are as much a part of the domestic property of a house as the rooms of the residence. Furnished and lighted up according to the taste and at the discretion of the owner, they present to eyes only habituated to our theatres the strangest variety, and even discordance, of aspect: some, brilliant in wax-light and gorgeous in decoration, glitter with the jewelled dresses of the gay company; others, mysteriously sombre, shew the shadowy outlines of an almost shrouded group, dimly visible in the distance.