t is worth
dwelling upon. Among these representative men, young and old, of
Catanzaro, the tone of conversation was incomparably better than that
which would rule in a cluster of English provincials met to enjoy their
evening leisure. They did, in fact, converse--a word rarely applicable
to English talk under such conditions; mere personal gossip was the
exception; they exchanged genuine thoughts, reasoned lucidly on the
surface of abstract subjects. I say on the surface; no remark that I
heard could be called original or striking; but the choice of topics
and the mode of viewing them was distinctly intellectual. Phrases often
occurred such as have no equivalent on the lips of everyday people in
our own country. For instance, a young fellow in no way distinguished
from his companions, fell to talking about a leading townsman, and
praised him for his _ingenio simpatico, his bella intelligenza_, with
exclamations of approval from those who listened. No, it is not merely
the difference between homely Anglo-Saxon and a language of classic
origin; there is a radical distinction of thought. These people have an
innate respect for things of the mind, which is wholly lacking to a
typical Englishman. One need not dwell upon the point that their
animation was supported by a tiny cup of coffee or a glass of lemonade;
this is a matter of climate and racial constitution; but I noticed the
entire absence of a certain kind of jocoseness which is so naturally
associated with spirituous liquors; no talk could have been less
offensive. From many a bar-parlour in English country towns I have gone
away heavy with tedium and disgust; the cafe at Catanzaro seemed, in
comparison, a place of assembly for wits and philosophers.

Meanwhile a season of rain had begun; heavy skies warned me that I must
not hope for a renewal of sunny idleness on this mountain top; it would
be well if intervals of cheerful weather lighted my further course by
the Ionian Sea. Reluctantly, I made ready to depart.

CHAPTER XIV

SQUILLACE

In meditating my southern ramble I had lingered on the thought that I
should see Squillace. For Squillace (Virgil's "ship-wrecking
Scylaceum") was the ancestral home of Cassiodorus, and his retreat when
he became a monk; Cassiodorus, the delightful pedant, the liberal
statesman and patriot, who stands upon the far limit of his old Roman
world and bids a sad farewell to its glories. He had niched himself in
my imagination