le would never have set him
down to spin; but being what he was, I could swear he went through his
tomfoolery gracefully.

And with all this, is it not strange that these are the people who
furnish the most reckless political enthusiasts of the world, and who,
year after year, go to the scaffold for "an idea"? There is something
hysterical in this Italian nature, which prompts to paroxysms like
these--some of that impulsive fury which, in the hill-tribes of India,
sends down hordes of fanatics to impale themselves on British bayonets.
The men like Orsini abound--calm of look, mild of speech, and gentle in
manner, and yet ready to commit the greatest of crimes and confront the
most terrible of deaths for a mere speculative notion--the possibility
of certain changes producing certain contingencies, and of which other
changes are to ensue, and Italy become something that she never was
before, nor would the rest of Europe suffer her to remain, if ever she
attained to it.

Wine-tasters tell us it is vain to look for a bottle of unadulterated
port: I should in the same way declare that there are few rarer things
to be found than a purely Italian society. The charm of their glorious
climate; the beauty of their country, the splendour of their cities,
rich in centuries of associations, have attracted strangers from every
corner of the Old World and the New; and the salons of Italy are but
caravanserais, where all nations meet and all tongues are spoken.

The Italians like this; it flatters national pride, and it suits
national indolence. The outer barbarians from the Neva or the Thames
have fine houses and give costly entertainments. Their sterner looks and
more robust habits are meet subject for the faint little jests that are
bandied in some _patois_; and each thinks himself the superior of his
neighbour. But as for the home life of these people, who has seen
it? What is known of it? Into that long, lofty, arched-ceilinged
drawing-room, lighted by its one lamp, where sits the Signora with
her daughter and the grimy-looking, ill-shaven priest, there is not,
perhaps, much temptation to enter, nor is the conversation of a kind
one would care to join in; and there is but this, and the noisy, almost
riotous, reception after the opera, where a dozen people are contending
at "Lansquenet," while one or perhaps two thump the piano, and some
three or four shout rather than sing the last popular melody of the
season, din being accept