Not merely patriotism, but selfish acquisition demands of Italy the strict conservation of art.  Her monuments are funds at interest for posterity.  Indeed, her livelihood depends in no stinted measure upon her artistic attractions.  And nowhere is there a livelier feeling for artistic beauty, greater respect for the past, and a wider-spread knowledge of art.  In all times will other peoples come within her borders to enjoy and study that which she can still so lavishly bestow.

Tourists soundly rate Italians for their sordid indifference to their art, attributing to the people at large the spirit of the mercenary or ignorant class with whom they are most in contact.  It is true that others may hear, as we have heard, from a noble marquis, in reply to a question about his family-pictures, “Ask my majordomo; had your question been about horses, I could have told you.”  They may meet aristocratic personages not above acting the picture-dealer in a covert manner, and, still worse, receive propositions to buy works of art robbed from public places.  But such instances are uncommon.  The common feeling is an enthusiastic pride in, and profound respect for, the names and the works that have done so much for the good and glory of Italy.  Even the spirited deportment of the Signorina Borgherini, as told by Vasari, towards a dealer, who, during the siege of Florence, attempted to get possession of certain paintings belonging to her husband, to speculate upon by sending them to the king of France, may still find its counterpart in feeling, if not in fact, among some of the living daughters of that city.

“How, then,” she exclaimed, “dost thou, Giovanni Battista, thou vile broker of frippery, miserable huckster of farthings, dost thou presume to come hither with the intent to lay thy fingers on the ornaments which belong to the chambers of gentlemen,—­despoiling, as thou hast long done and art ever doing, our city of the fairest ornaments to embellish strange lands therewith?  I prize these pictures from reverence to the memory of my father-in-law, from whom I had them, and from the love I bear to my husband; I mean to defend them, while I have life, with my own blood.  Away with thee, then, base creature of nothingness!  If again thou shouldest be so bold as to come on a similar errand to this house, thou shalt be taught what is the respect due to the dwelling of a gentleman, and that to thy serious discomfort; make sure of it!”

And so she drove the intriguing bargainer away, with “reproaches of such intolerable bitterness, that the like had never before been hurled at man alive.”  Be it remembered, too, that Vasari was a good judge of the quality of a Florentine dame’s scolding, for he had himself in his younger days passed a painful apprenticeship under the weight of Lucretia Feti’s tongue.