aterial labor? Why do we so
little care for the improvement of men? Machines and inventions are not
a sufficient development: it is the heart and the mind which should be
worked upon, changed, electrified into new activity. Will men never
comprehend that civilization can never begin except at the soul, and
that whatever is purely material must ever be overruled by what is
intellectual?" This was written nearly a century and a half ago.

The series of little pictures which Gozzi has left us of those days,
when upon his return from Dalmatia he realized the abasement into which
the family had finally fallen, are most vivid, and remind us of the
honest realism of the Dutch painters. And the charm of Gozzi's writings
lies precisely in that sense of genuineness which more than anything
else inspires us with trust in a writer. You feel sure that whatever he
relates is the thing he has himself observed or felt, just as it
happened. All the puerile inconsistency of an age not fecundated by any
belief, in which a strong religious sense is replaced by childish
superstition and bold materialism, is admirably rendered in the episode
of the death of the old senator Almore Cesare Tiepolo. He was a man of
great benevolence, and he distinguished himself from his peers by a rare
courtesy of manner toward his servants and the people of that class. It
happened one day that as he was stepping out of his gondola his foot
caught in the folds of his senatorial robe, and he fell down. In trying
to hold him up his gondolier let go the oar, which struck Tiepolo's arm
and broke it. He, however, showed no sign of pain and no irritation
toward his man, but quietly walked home and sent for the surgeon. Forty
days he was kept motionless in bed, and during all that time the same
unalterable regard for the feelings of others made him gentle and
uncomplaining and grateful for the care he received. But the old
Venetian loved a good table; so every morning he had his gondolier come
to his bedside and tell him what fish was in the market, how it looked,
how much it cost; and, giving himself up to his culinary enthusiasm with
the appreciative appetite of a connoisseur, he established the relative
merit of the different fish and discussed their flavor, till one day,
while he was engaged in his favorite morning occupation, the end of
things came for him, and Almore Cesare Tiepolo turned his face toward
the wall, like the prophet of old, and, surrendering himsel