y. In the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, Italy had almost altogether lost sight of these;
art was execrable, fashion was hideous, morality meant hypocrisy; the
surest way to power lay in the most despicable sort of intrigue, and
inward and spiritual faith was as rare as outward and visible devoutness
was general.

That was the society which frequented the Villa Medici on fine
afternoons, and it is hard to see wherein its charm lay, if, indeed, it
had any. Instead of originality, its conversation teemed with artificial
conventionalisms; instead of nature, it exhibited itself in the disguise
of fashions more inconvenient, uncomfortable and ridiculous than those
of any previous or later times; it delighted in the impossibly
nonsensical 'pastoral' verses which we find too silly to read; and in
place of wit, it clothed gross and cruel sayings in a thin remnant of
worn-out classicism. It had not the frankly wicked recklessness of the
French aristocracy between Lewis the Fourteenth and the Revolution, nor
the changing contrasts of brutality, genius, affectation and Puritanical
austerity which marked England's ascent, from the death of Edward the
Sixth to the victories of Nelson and Wellington; still less had it any
of those real motives for existence which carried Germany through her
long struggle for life. It had little which we are accustomed to respect
in men and women, and yet it had something which we lack today, and
which we unconsciously envy--it had a colour of its own. Wandering under
the ancient ilexes of those sad and beautiful gardens, meeting here and
there a few silent and soberly clad strangers, one cannot but long for
the brilliancy of two centuries ago, when the walks were gay with
brilliant dresses, and gilded chairs, and servants in liveries of
scarlet and green and gold, and noble ladies, tottering a few steps on
their ridiculous high heels, and men bewigged and becurled, their
useless little hats under their arms, and their embroidered coat tails
flapping against their padded, silk-stockinged calves; and red-legged,
unpriestly Cardinals who were not priests even in name, but only the lay
life-peers of the Church; and grave Bishops with their secretaries; and
laughing abbes, whose clerical dress was the accustomed uniform of
government office, which they still wore when they were married, and
were fathers of families. There is little besides colour to recommend
the picture, but at least there is that