There is also Florence the Beautiful and the Picturesque; Florence the City of Fashion and Splendor; and, saddest of all, Florence garrisoned by the stranger, and held in subjection by the Austrian!
I entertain no bigoted animosity to the German, Tom; on the contrary, I like him; I like his manly simplicity of character, his thorough good faith, his unswerving loyalty; but I own to you, his figure is out of keeping with the picture here,—the very tones of his harsh gutturals grate painfully on the ears attuned to softer sounds. It is pretty nearly a hopeless quarrel when a Sovereign has recourse to a foreign intervention between himself and his subjects; as in private life, there is no reconciliation when you have once called Doctors' Commons to your councils. You may get damages; you 'll never have tranquillity. You 'll say, perhaps, the thing was inevitable, and could n't be helped. Nothing of the kind. Coercing the Tuscans by Austrian bayonets was like herding a flock of sheep with bull-dogs. I never saw a people who so little require the use of strong measures; the difficulty of ruling them lies not in their spirit of resistance, but in its very opposite,—a plastic facility of temper that gives way to every pressure. Just like a horse with an over-fine mouth, you never can have him in hand, and never know that he has stumbled till he is down.
It was the duty of our Government to have prevented this occupation, or at least to have set some limits to its amount and duration. We did neither, and our influence has grievously suffered iu consequence. Probably at no recent period of history was the name of England so little respected in the entire peninsula as at present. And now, if I don't take care, I 'll really involve myself in a grumbling revery, so here goes to leave the subject at once.
These Italians, Tom, are very like the Irish. There is the same blending of mirth and melancholy in the national temperament, the same imaginative cast of thought, the same hopefulness, and the same indolence. In justice to our own people, I must say that they are the better of the two. Paddy has strong attachments, and is unquestionably courageous; neither of these qualities are conspicuous here. It would be ungenerous and unjust to pronounce upon the naturel of a people who for centuries have been subjected to every species of misrule, whose moral training has been also either neglected or corrupted, and whose only lessons have been those of craft and deception. It would be worse than rash to assume that a people so treated were unfitted for a freedom they never enjoyed, or un suited to a liberty they never even heard of. Still, I may be permitted to doubt that Constitutional Government will ever find its home in the hearts of a Southern nation. The family, Tom,—the fireside, the domestic habits of a Northern people, are the normal schools for self-government. It is in the reciprocities of a household men learn to apportion their share of the burdens of life, and to work for the common weal. The fellow who with a handful of chestnuts can provision himself for a whole day, and who can pass the night under the shade of a fig-tree, acknowledges no such responsibilities. All-sufficing to himself, he recognizes no claims upon him for exertion in behalf of others; and as to the duties of citizenship, he would repudiate them as an intolerable burden. Take ray word for it, Parliamentary Institutions will only flourish where you have coal-fires and carpets, and Elective Governments have a close affinity to easy-chairs and hearth-rugs!
You are curious to learn "how far familiarity with works of high art may have contributed to influence the national character of Italy." I don't like to dogmatize on such a subject, but so far as my own narrow experience goes, I am far from attributing any high degree of culture to this source. I even doubt whether objects of beauty suggest a high degree of enjoyment, except to intellects already cultivated. I suspect that your men of Glasgow or Manchester, who never saw anything more artistic than a power-loom and a spinning-jenny, would stand favorable comparison with him who daily passes beside the "Dying Gladiator" or the Farnese Hercules.
Of course I do not extend this opinion to the educated classes, amongst whom there is a very high range of acquirement and cultivation. They bring, moreover, to the knowledge of any subject a peculiar subtlety of perception, a certain Machiavellian ingenuity, such as I have never noticed elsewhere. A great deal of the national distrustful-ness and suspicion has its root in this very habit, and makes me often resigned to Northern dulness for the sake of Northern reliance and good faith.
They are most agreeable in all the intercourse of society. Less full of small attentions than the French, less ceremonious than the Germans, they are easier in manner than either. They are natural to the very verge of indifference; but above all their qualities stands pre-eminent their good nature. An ungenerous remark, a harsh allusion, an unkind anecdote, are utterly unknown amongst them, and all that witty smartness which makes the success of a French salon would find no responsive echo in an Italian drawing-room. In a word, Tom, they are eminently a people to live amongst They do not contribute much, but they exact as little; and if never broken-hearted when you separate, they are delighted when you meet; falling in naturally with your humor, tolerant of anything and everything, except what gives trouble.
There now, my dear Tom, are all my Italian experiences in a few words. I feel that by a discreet use of my material I might have made a tureen with what I have only filled a teaspoon; but as I am not writing for the public, but only for Tom Purcell, I 'll not grumble at my wastefulness.
Of the society, what can I say that would not as well apply to any city of the same size as much resorted to by strangers? The world of fashion is pretty much the same thing everywhere; and though we may "change the venue," we are always pleading the same cause. They tell me that social liberty here is understood in a very liberal sense, and the right of private judgment on questions of morality exercised with a more than Protestant independence. I hear of things being done that could not be done elsewhere, and so on; but were I only to employ my own unassisted faculties, I should say that everything follows its ordinary routine, and that profligacy does not put on in Florence a single "travesty" that I have not seen at Brussels and Baden, and twenty similar places! True, people know each other very well, and discuss each other in all the privileged candor close friendship permits. This sincerity, abused as any good thing is liable to be, now and then grows scandalous; but still, Tom, though they may bespatter you with mud, nobody ever thinks you too dirty for society. In point of fact, there is a great deal of evil speaking, and very little malevolence; abundance of slander, but scarcely any ill-will. Mark you, these are what they tell me; for up to this moment I have not seen or heard anything but what has pleased me,—met much courtesy and some actual cordiality. And surely, if a man can chance upon a city where the climate is good, the markets well supplied, the women pretty, and the bankers tractable, he must needs be an ill-conditioned fellow not to rest satisfied with his good fortune. I don't mean to Bay I 'd like to pass my life here, no more than I would like to wear a domino, and spend the rest of my days in a masquerade, for the whole thing is just as unreal, just as unnatural; but it is wonderfully amusing for a while, and I enjoy it greatly.
From what I have seen of the world of pleasure, I begin to suspect that we English people are never likely to have any great success in our attempts at it; and for this simple reason, that we bring to our social hours exhausted bodies and fatigued minds; we labor hard all day in law courts or counting-houses or committee-rooms, and when evening comes are overcome by our exertions, and very little disposed for those efforts which make conversation brilliant, or intercourse amusing. Your foreigner, however, is a chartered libertine. He feels that nature never meant him for anything but idleness; he takes to frivolity naturally and easily; and, what is of no small importance too, without any loss of self-esteem! Ah, Tom! that is the great secret of it all. We never do our fooling gracefully. There is everlastingly rising up within us a certain bitter conviction that we are not doing fairly by ourselves, and that our faculties might be put to better and more noble uses than we have engaged them in. We walk the stage of life like an actor ashamed of his costume, and "our motley" never sets easily on us to the last. I think I had better stop dogmatizing, Tom. Heaven knows where it may lead me, if I don't. Old Woodcock says that "he might have been a vagabond, if Providence had n't made him a justice of the peace;" so I feel that it is not impossible I might have been a moral philosopher, if fate had n't made me the husband of Mrs. Dodd.