in Italy,—­men who dig out of archives and libraries some topic of special and momentary interest and print it, unstudied and unphilosophized.  Their books are material, not literature, and it is marvelous how many of them are published.  A writer on any given subject can heap together from them a mass of fact and anecdote invaluable in its way; but it is a mass without life or light, and must be vivified by him who uses it before it can serve the world, which does not care for its dead local value.  It remains to be seen whether the free speech and free press of Italy can reawaken the intellectual activity of the cities which once gave the land so many literary capitals.

What numbers of people used to write verses in Ferrara!  By operation of the principle which causes things concerning whatever subject you happen to be interested in to turn up in every direction, I found a volume of these dead-and-gone immortals at a book-stall, one day, in Venice.  It is a curiously yellow and uncomfortable volume of the year 1703, printed all in italics.  I suppose there are two hundred odd rhymers selected from in that book,—­and how droll the most of them are, with their unmistakable traces of descent from Ariosto, Tasso, and Guarini!  What acres of enameled meadow there are in those pages!  Brooks enough to turn all the mills in the world go purling through them.  I should say some thousands of nymphs are constantly engaged in weaving garlands there, and the swains keep such a piping on those familiar notes,—­Amore, dolore, crudele, and miele.  Poor little poets! they knew no other tunes.  Do not now weak voices twitter from a hundred books, in unconscious imitation of the hour’s great singers?

I think some of the pleasantest people in Italy are the army gentlemen.  There is the race’s gentleness in their ways, in spite of their ferocious trade, and an American freedom of style.  They brag in a manner that makes one feel at home immediately; and met in travel, they are ready to render any little kindness.

The other year at Reggio (which is not far from Modena) we stopped to dine at a restaurant where the whole garrison had its coat off and was playing billiards, with the exception of one or two officers, who were dining.  These rose and bowed as we entered their room, and when the waiter pretended that such and such dishes were out (in Italy the waiter, for some mysterious reason, always pretends that the best dishes are out), they bullied him for the honor of Italy, and made him bring them to us.  Indeed, I am afraid his life was sadly harassed by those brave men.  We were in deep despair at finding no French bread, and the waiter swore with the utmost pathos that there was none; but as soon as his back was turned, a tightly laced little captain rose and began to forage for the bread.  He opened every drawer and cupboard in the room, and finding none, invaded another room, captured several loaves from the plates laid there, and brought them back in triumph, presenting them to us amid the applause of his comrades.  The dismay of the waiter, on his return, was ineffable.