A
fellow of this size ought to be less positive.
These refined youths are fastidious about their clothes. They would not
dream of buying a ready-made suit, however well-fitting. They are
content to take their opinions second-hand. Unlike ours, they are seldom
alone; they lack those stretches of solitude during which they might
wrestle with themselves and do a little thinking on their own account.
When not with their family, they are always among companions, being far
more sociable and fond of herding together than their English
representatives. They talk more; they think less; they seem to do each
other's thinking, which takes away all hesitation and gives them a
precocious air of maturity. If this decorative lad engages in some
profession like medicine or engineering there is hope for him, even as
others of his age rectify their perspective by contact with crude
facts - groceries and calicoes and carburettors and so forth. Otherwise,
his doom is sealed. He remains a doctrinaire. This country is full of
them.
And then - the sterilizing influence of pavements. Even when summer comes
round, they all flock in a mass to some rowdy place like this Viareggio
or Ancona where, however pleasant the bathing, spiritual life is yet
shallower than at home. What says Craufurd Tait Ramage, LL.D.? "Their
country life consists merely in breathing a different air, though in
nothing else does it differ from the life they live in town."
He notices things, does Ramage; and might, indeed, have elaborated this
argument. The average Italian townsman seems to have lost all sense for
the beauty of rural existence; he is incurious about it; dislodge him
from the pavement - no easy task - and he gasps like a fish out of water.
Squares and cafes - they stimulate his fancy; the doings and opinions of
fellow-creatures - thence alone he derives inspiration. What is the
result? A considerable surface polish, but also another quality which I
should call dewlessness. Often glittering like a diamond, he is every
bit as dewless. His materialistic and supercilious outlook results, I
think, from contempt or nescience of nature; you will notice the trait
still more at Venice, whose inhabitants seldom forsake their congested
mud-flat. Depth of character and ideality and humour - such things
require a rustic landscape for their nurture. These citizens are arid,
for lack of dew; unquestionably more so than their English
representatives.
POSTSCRIPT. - The pavements of Florence, by the way, have an
objectionable quality. Their stone is too soft. They wear down rapidly
and an army of masons is employed in levelling them straight again all
the year round. And yet they sometimes use this very sandstone, instead
of marble, for mural inscriptions. How long are these expected to remain
legible? They employ the same material for their buildings, and I
observe that the older monuments last, on the whole, better than the new
ones, which flake away rapidly - exfoliate or crack, according to the
direction from which the grain of the rock has been attacked by the
chisel.
