Let us here pause to consider the kind of life which the women in Italy led.

Lonely, and deprived by cruel custom of social intercourse, that fairest of all enjoyments, they dragged on a miserable existence.

Cheerfulness and an inclination to sensual pleasures passed into compulsory idleness, and, in many, into black despondency.

Their imaginations became disordered--a pallid countenance and oppressed respiration bore testimony to their profound sufferings.

How could they do otherwise, sunk as they were in such extreme misery, than seize the occasion to burst forth from their prisons and alleviate their miseries by taking part in the delights of music?
Nor should we here pass unnoticed a circumstance which illustrates, in a remarkable degree, the psychological nature of hysterical sufferings, namely, that many chlorotic females, by joining the dancers at the Carnevaletto, were freed from their spasms and oppression of breathing for the whole year, although the corporeal cause of their malady was not removed.