Ampere has spent much of his life in Rome, and is engaged on a work in which its history is to be illustrated by its monuments.

We talked of the Roman people.

‘Nothing,’ said Ampere, ’can be more degraded than the higher classes.  With the exception of Antonelli, who is charming, full of knowledge, intelligence, and grace, and of the Duke of Sermoneta, who is almost equally distinguished, there is scarcely a noble of my acquaintance who has any merits, moral or intellectual.

’They are surrounded by the finest ancient and modern art, and care nothing for it.  The eminent men of every country visit Rome—­the Romans avoid them for they have nothing to talk to them about.

’Politics are of course unsafe, literature they have none.  They never read.  A cardinal told me something which I doubted, and I asked him where he had found it.  “In certi libri,” he answered.

’Another, who has a fine old library, begged me to use it.  “You will do the room good,” he said.  “No one has been there for years.”  Even scandal and gossip must be avoided under an Ecclesiastical Government.

’They never ride, they never shoot, they never visit their estates, they give no parties; if it were not for the theatre and for their lawsuits they would sink into vegetable life.’

‘Sermoneta,’ I said, ’told me that many of his lawsuits were hereditary, and would probably descend to his son.’

‘If Sermoneta,’ said Ampere, ’with his positive intelligence and his comparative vigour, cannot get through them, what is to be expected from others?  They have, however, one merit, one point of contact with the rest of the world—­their hatred of their Government.  They seem to perceive, not clearly, for they perceive nothing clearly, but they dimly see, that the want of liberty is a still greater misfortune to the higher classes than to the lower.

’But the people are a fine race.  Well led they will make excellent soldiers.  They have the cruelty of their ancestors, perhaps I ought to say of their predecessors, but they have also their courage.’

‘They showed,’ said Beaumont, ’courage in the defence of Rome, but courage behind walls is the commonest of all courages.  No training could make the Spaniards stand against us in the open field, but they were heroes in Saragossa.  The caprices of courage and cowardice are innumerable.  The French have no moral courage, they cannot stand ridicule, they cannot encounter disapprobation, they bow before oppression; a French soldier condemned by a court-martial cries for mercy like a child.  The same man in battle appears indifferent to death.  The Spaniard runs away without shame, but submits to death when it is inevitable without terror.  None of the prisoners taken on either side in the Spanish civil war asked for pardon.’