The average Italian townsman seems to have lost all sense for
the beauty of rural existence; he is incurious about it; dislodge him
from the pavement--no easy task--and he gasps like a fish out of water.
Squares and cafes--they stimulate his fancy; the doings and opinions of
fellow-creatures--thence alone he derives inspiration. What is the
result? A considerable surface polish, but also another quality which I
should call dewlessness. Often glittering like a diamond, he is every
bit as dewless. His materialistic and supercilious outlook results, I
think, from contempt or nescience of nature; you will notice the trait
still more at Venice, whose inhabitants seldom forsake their congested
mud-flat. Depth of character and ideality and humour--such things
require a rustic landscape for their nurture. These citizens are arid,
for lack of dew; unquestionably more so than their English
representatives.
POSTSCRIPT.--The pavements of Florence, by the way, have an
objectionable quality. Their stone is too soft. They wear down rapidly
and an army of masons is employed in levelling them straight again all
the year round. And yet they sometimes use this very sandstone, instead
of marble, for mural inscriptions. How long are these expected to remain
legible? They employ the same material for their buildings, and I
observe that the older monuments last, on the whole, better than the new
ones, which flake away rapidly--exfoliate or crack, according to the
direction from which the grain of the rock has been attacked by the
chisel.
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