University of Virginia Library

I'm still at work you see, but never mind!
I was about to lay my palette down
Just as I heard you knock. I thought at first
It might be your brave English friend again,
Who stared so when he saw me in my blouse,
As if to say, “By Jove! these foreigners
Are all the same! beggars and noblemen!
Why can't they do as we do?” Now confess
You in a friendly way had over-praised
My merits to him, and he thought to meet
Some Sydney, Bayard, and he found poor me.
His disappointment was so evident
I scarce could hide a smile.... There, fling yourself
Upon the sofa there; 'tis rather hard,
But here in our villeggiatura days
We do not live for show,—no! on my soul,
Nor yet for comfort, as you English think;
And you 're half right too, that's the worst of it—
Nothing is sharp as an unpleasant truth;
A lie 's a lie, and there 's the end of it,
But a hard truth, what stomach can digest!
Our comfort here is in our laziness,
Not in our furniture, and house, and all
Those nice appliances you know so well.
Our easy tempers and indifference
Make up to us for your material aids;
We are contented with our easy selves,
You are contented with your easy chair.
You, if your tea 's not right, will fume and scold,
We shrug our shoulders, drink it down, and say,
“Eh! Pazienza!” Yes, I know we 're fools
To be content with anything we have,
For discontent's a sort of bastard child
Of high ambition, that would prick us on
To admirable ends—while weak content
Flies to the cloister, and drones out its life,
And childless dies.

That is a little view
I sketched at Ostia one day last May,
With Sandro—what a charming place it is!
With its blue sea, and ruined, rusted walls,
And grassy slopes with marbles scattered o'er—
Of course you've been there, and picked up, no doubt,
Some of those Breccie which you English like.
I'm glad my little picture pleases you;
I think it has a look of air and light—
A sentiment, at least—that 's what we get,
We amateurs, that artists sometimes lose.
How hard it is to get both things at once,
Body and soul,—half of our pictures now
Are mere thin ghosts, and half are corpses quite,—
I said how hard, I should have said how rare,
For nothing 's hard to him who does it well.
In Art we work to learn our alphabet;
The language learnt, 'tis easy enough to speak,
If we have only anything to say;
But for the most part in our modern art
I find so many a pretty phrase and word,
Such eloquent expressions of no thought!
And yet how much, how much there is to say!

We here in Italy are artist-born;
Beauty enchants us—we 've more love in us,
As oft you 've said, (it seems so true to me,)
Than in the North is seen. You are more cold,
And for the most part easily mistake
Our warmer natures. You have judgment, sense,
Notions of duty, rules of life and thought,
While we have impulse, passion, feelings quick
For love or hate—mere children as you say—
With the same charms and faults that childhood has.
And mark! between us both this difference,
You never dare express the half you feel,
We say the whole, nay, often over-say—
That 's but our nature which you call excess.
And so, you see, we both misapprehend
Each other's virtues, and can only see
Each other's faults. I ask you now, my friend,
What is the notion that most English have
Of us Italians? ignorant and false,
Full of ungoverned passion, quick to spill
Blood at a word; whose best and worst of types
Are bandit, beggar, priest, or some dark boy
Bearing his plaster figures on his head.
But is this all? Is there no gentleman?
Are we then different from all the world?
Now you'll agree how very false this is;
You 've lived with us, and know that kindlier hearts,
More full of sweetness, tenderness—more prompt
To generous acts of pure unselfishness,
More quick to help and sympathize in grief,
Are nowhere found. Just look at Tita here,
Or our Giovanni, or that higher type,
Luigi, the physician of the town;
Is there a larger, nobler heart on earth?
Is there a head more wise, a hand more skilled
In his profession—one more free from all
That's poor and petty in his make than he?
Think how for weeks he tended at your bed
Regardless of himself—night after night
For you, a stranger he had never seen,
Solicitous as you had been his child!
And all for what? not money as we know,
But only from the breadth of his great heart.
No ostentation in him, no false pride,
No coward fear of what you thought of him,
But a true gentleman as ever lived.
Ask him to go to Rome—strike with the spur
For his ambition—he will smile and say,
“I am content—the people love me here—
I love the people.” Urge his talents lost
In this small village—tell him he may gain
A world-wide fame, and with it fortune too—
Still he will smile and say, “I am content.”
I own, one will not always meet with such,
He's not a universal rule—I know
That other one, the veriest of quacks,
Who stood with white gloves round a dying bed,
And hurried off from all that agony
To dine, and chat, and laugh with some milord—
But he, the thing, is the exception here,
And he's a half-breed, bred in your own land.

So too, you know our best society;
Is it so stupid, ignorant, and dull
As they who never entered it declare?
I know your England; 'tis a noble soil,
Rich in strong minds and educated power,
And stronger in its character than all—
Yet cold and doubting when a stranger comes,
(Unless he be a lion to be shown.)
Each man's his castle—not his house alone,
His wife, his child, his dog, are castles too.
A stranger is the enemy, opposed
By threatening outworks of reserve and pride,
Through which with caution he must work his way.
Once entered, all is honest, simple, frank.
You are not quick to feel where you give pain,
And oft indifference hurts us most of all,
As a blunt knife will make the worst of wounds.
But for the brain as well as for the heart,
I will not own a better can be found
In all wide Europe than in Italy.
Priest-ride your people, crush them 'neath the heel
Of despots till no spark of freedom 's left,
Put down your press and schools, and see at last,
If you are better than the worst of us.
I know your answer—'tis a grand one too,
“We carved our freedom with our own right hands;
Do you carve yours.” Ah! many a time we have
Carved that great figure to be overthrown
And haled by Europe down into the dust;
Beside, position worked for you, and chance;
You are an island guarded by wild waves,
Round which the storm flames with its fiery sword,
With a rude coast that battlements you round—
And these are armies to ward off attack.
Then, too, your climate 's chill, and wants the charms
That breed desire and lure the foreign foe.
We, all exposed, with thousand easy ports,
A lovely landscape and a gentle sky,
Have been the fighting-ground for centuries,
Where foreign foes have stirred domestic feuds—
For who could help to covet what they saw?
But I admit your grand advantages;
None honors more your struggles for yourselves,
None envies more your Freedom—stretch to us
Your hand and help us when we fight for ours.
And when you scout at us as ignorant,
Ready in crime, and apt for cruel rule,
Look at your factories and mines at home,
Look at the purlieus of your London world,
And tell me have we any thing so bad?

One thing among us never is crushed out,
One thing that we above all nations have—
The love of beauty and the frank, sweet smile,
And that best courtesy born of the heart.
No! not the rudest peasant, who all day
Dreams on his staff and tends his nibbling sheep
Among the ruins, is without them all.
The very beggar, with his tattered cloak
Thrown o'er his shoulder, shows his proud descent;
You feel the gens togata lives in him.
And for the highest ranks (excuse the boast)
You will not find more dignity and grace,
At once more simpleness and elegance,
Than in our best society in Rome.
At least, I have not seen it—What say you?
The Englishman is conscious, awkward, cold;
The Frenchman fidgetty, and wants repose;
The German clumsy, always without tact.
I speak of manner, not of matter now,
I say this just to show how easily
We might retort on what they say of us.
But then again, I cannot help but own
We 've not the sparkling esprit of the French,
Nor yet the heartless sneer that spoils it so.
We 've not the German's metaphysic depth,
And not his dulness and his uncouth ways.
We 've not your quietness of character,
Your cold, still energies—we also want
Your servile admiration for a lord.

I know as well as any we have faults,
Great faults—the greatest of them, jealousy.
We never can cohere. We may be packed
Like sand-grains by the stress of some great force,
But dry and crumble easily apart;
Yet better than all others we have writ
The laws of politics and government,
And we alone in Europe represent
By all our history, all our struggles fierce
For Freedom, all our great plebeian names,
The truly democratic element.

We need development; and so would you,
Crushed 'neath a despotism stern as ours,
Yet one would think, to hear your countrymen,
That all our breed of noble minds was dead,
That learning, genius, power had all died out.
Yet not unknown to science are the names
That Brocchi, Volta, and Galvani bore;
Nor Romagnosi's, in the highest walk
Of Jurisprudence. As Historians, too,
Micali, Rossi, Botta, and Cantù
May surely hold an honorable place.
And in Philology, who stand above
Our Mezzofanti or our learned Mai.
But in Romance, and Poetry, and Art,
What scores of names—I will not call them o'er,
All scholars know them.—Even while I write,
Ruffini adds to you and us a name.

I do not count it a surprise to find
We do so little, but we do so much
With France and Austria treading on our neck.
Take off that pressure,—see our Piedmont
Start like a giant up. Five years ago
She was a child, already she 's a power.
You said, how short a time ago, to her
Just what you say to us. Give us a chance,
The seed is good—in free soil it would grow.

But of all people, in our earnest hope
For freedom, least of sympathy we get
From Anglo-Saxon blood, whether it be
On your cold island, or beyond the sea,
America—and from the last the least.
“Only too good for them the government,
They 're only fit to trample on,” 'tis said;
“What! Liberty for them—why that 's a boon
No nation 's fit to have—excepting ours.”

Who taught to them their sea-laws? From whose code
Did commerce draw its rules? What merchants vied
With those of Florence, Genoa, Venice? Where
Got they their phrase of “Merchant Princes?” Say!
I will not speak of art,—that's wanting yet,
And always will be in their history,—
But will they blow us some fine Venice glass?
Or build us roads like the Cornice road?
Or weave us velvets like the Genoese,
Or Tuscan silks? ... I see you smile at me,
I was too warm, and so would you be too;
For of all people they should surely have
A generous sympathy, at least, for us;
We found their world, and wrote their history first.

Not that I know these people—no! not I!
I only take your own account of them,
One never meets them in society;
I never knew but one—I must confess
We took a fancy, all of us, to him,
And he liked us almost too well, I fear.
As for the rest, some pretty, fragile girl,
Who on the Pincio's terrace now and then
Is pointed out—is all I know of them.
In fact, our notions somewhat are confused
'Twixt you and them—nay, do not take it ill—
They speak your language, and we know them not;
They may be all you say, for what we know,
And yet I hope you are not just to them.

I love my Italy—and when I see
Conceited upstarts, from whatever land,
(Yours, my dear friend, as well as all the rest,)
Whose friends are couriers, and that rabble vile
That haunts the traveller as the jackal haunts
The lion's steps; or rather, like those wolves
That ring about the wounded buffalo
With their white, snarling halo,—when, I say,
Such fellows, puffed with purse-proud ignorance,
Who speak no language but their own, nor know
Our history or hopes, go hurrying through,
And sneer, “These fellows have what they deserve,
Freedom for them is just too good a joke,”
It stirs my blood,—I see, too, it stirs yours.

But why complain? you make the same mistake
Among all people—what 's the Frenchman's type?
The dancing master with grimacing airs—
The German 's but a smoking, bearded boor—
And yours, you ought at least to know yourself,
A dull John Bull, with an enormous paunch.

Mark, now, how inconsistently you speak?
First, we are far too fierce and unrestrained
In all our passions to bear Liberty;
Then we 're so weak, and tame, and cowardly,
We suffer wrongs which we might purge with blood.

What do we want? what have we ever asked
That raises thus the pity and contempt
Of your free nations? All we ask is this—
Not a republic yet, no wild vague schemes,
But some free privilege of government,
Some chamber where the people shall have voice
To urge their rights and tell their grievances;
Free schools, a free press, and the right to speak.

We ask for something more than simply priests
To govern and direct,—we ask for Law,
For Justice, and for open unbribed courts.
We ask a chance for Commerce and for Trade—
Railroads to chain our glorious land together,
And the white sails of ships that once were ours.

I do not dare to trust myself to speak
Of what has happened down in Naples there,—
All words are weak to utter what I would;
Crimes such as those are punished not by words,
But acts,—and as there lives a God in heaven,
A day will come for retribution soon.

We are not ready then for Liberty!
But with such yoke as now weighs on our neck
How can we grow more ready? How attain
The stature of the man that in us is?
Give us a high room, where no longer cramped
By the low ceiling of our prison cell,
We may at least strive to stand up erect,
As best we may with these bent frames of ours.
But tell us not to stand up in our cell!
Give us a chance! the heart and mind of man
Need freedom as the very flowers need light.
You do not say the plant all pale and blanched
In the dark cellar, is not fit for day
Because it changes not to green at once,
Without the daylight;—so, you do not say
First learn to swim before you wet your feet.
Men grow to Freedom, and not all at once,
Full and complete in all her panoply,
Spring like Minerva from the head of Jove.
Bear with us; if we make mistakes at first,
Our sad experience is our surest help!
But now betwixt the bayonets and cowls,
Small chance for heart and mind to grow at all.

Pardon, my friend, for this long talk of mine,
And for my foolish boasting and my warmth!
But why ask pardon? You love Italy,
And you are almost one of us,—how else
Had I dared say the words that I have said?
Pray do not go! I wish you to admire
This charming little group of Vieux Saxe
I bought in Rome last week,—I paid too much,
But 't is so delicately, nicely done!
'T is sad the art is so entirely lost;—
This has the very spirit of Watteau;
But those the moderns make in Dresden now,
Are rude and clumsy like a journeyman's.

Do you walk now? If so I'll go with you—
I've painted here so long I must refresh
My eye with nature. If you please, we'll go
Along the galleria by the Lake.
To-day 's a festa—we'll be sure to meet,
Up by the Reformati's convent church
The contadine in their best costumes.

And don't forget to-morrow! by the way—
Our friends are coming from the Villas round
Beyond Frascati to our rustic ball,
And all the pretty contadine too,
With their gallants, dressed in their choicest trim;
The village band will play for us to dance,
And you will see our true democracy,
The peasants and the princes, hand in hand,
Not with that dreadful condescending way
Perhaps you fancy—but as friend with friend.

Pardon! I'll open you that lock of ours,
You do not know the trick,—you pull this string:
The lock is broken,—not the only thing
That 's out of order in our Italy;
And there 's a trick to open every door.
Ah, Frà Antonio, you'll excuse me now—
Some other time—you see I'm now engaged.