CAPRI IN THE HANDS OF MURAT.
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coadjutatiou with human sport, I afterwards took thetrouble to rear six hawks of the kind called “ spar hawks,’’(from the Italian sparvieri) which I succeeded in breakingin to the sport. I cannot trouble my readers with anaccount of the plan I pursued; I took it from a French book on falconry and found it to succeed, I could nowwrite a treatise on that subject.
Numerous beneficial measures were now adopted byMurat, Calabria was decreed free from military law, andtranquillity was the speedy result. The numerous politicaloffenders, exiled and imprisoned in distant places, wereinvited to return, and did so. Numerous institutions wereformed conducive to the security of property, the preventionof fraud in mortgages, and too many others for me even togive the list of. The prefecture of police, which hadhitherto been an object of terror, and' an instrument ofoppression, became a useful civic organ of social securityand protection. All the theories and imperfectly executedplans of Joseph were put into practical operation byJoachim.
A corps of fifteen thousand Neapolitans was sent to Spain and maintained complete ; officers were occasionally draftedfrom that body (in constant activity) to improve andaugment the number of regiments at home. Joachimbecame identified with the nation he governed, and so fardid he carry his desire to please, that he even endeavouredto address every person in Italian , although no more thanany other Frenchman , could he ever get rid of the accent(which may almost be called ridiculous) that Frenchmen give to it. Instead of aqua (water), fuoco (fire), forinstance—a Frenchman says aqua, fuoco, &c. But theQueen undertook to give her husband lessons in her nativetongue, which she spoke with particular elegance, so muchso as to possess that criterion of excellence in Italian speech