“ecco, signor!”
And there indeed it was written, in good set terms, and in two or three languages, for the benefit of all non-literary or unbelieving pilgrims.
I have often thought since how many people there are, like my friend the custode, to whom the magic “it is written” is sufficient ground for their faith, without further consideration as to when and how.
Some time ago a friend of mine encountered a portly Western American tourist at Kenilworth. He came in a hurry, and asked to be shown the part “wrote up” by Scott. He gazed for a few minutes, and then departed as quickly as he came. To him Kenilworth was merely a place “wrote up” by Scott, and no doubt he had Warwick and Stratford-on-Avon to see that same afternoon, before going on to Liverpool.
There are pilgrims who certainly carry a feeling of duty into all things. Wherever they go they mean work!
This quality pre-eminently distinguishes the English-speaking world, and it always fills our Continental, or Oriental, neighbours with lazy wonder. “Oh, these Englishwomen! they have legs and stomachs of bronze!” I once heard an Italian say.
We are inclined to overdo it. I think an occasional rest-day is as necessary to the tired brain as the photographer’s dark room is to the development of the negative impression—without it the brain would, indeed, record a “negative impression.”
But I am straying from Juliet’s tomb, and the subject of unlimited faith. Only make a thing possible, and, if there is an undercurrent of desire to believe it, the large majority will swallow almost anything with what theologians call “simple faith.” The “if” is an important one—the key to the situation. We believe readily when it is agreeable to do so, and all pilgrims have ever sought to heighten the attractions of the objects of their interest. It adds to their own enjoyment of them, and, after all, is it not a reflex compliment to ourselves? If “there is but one such pig in the world,” have not I seen it?
