Lazzaroni, an indolent class of waifs under a chief who used to lounge about Naples, and proved formidable in periods of revolution; they subsisted partly by service as messengers, porters, &c., and partly as beggars.
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Layard, Sir Austen Henry * League and Covenant, Solemn