If you would see them in all the ardour of their simplicity, you must visit the town on the day of a grand festival.  Everybody, men, women, and children are rushing to the church.  A carpet of flowers is spread along the road.  Every countenance is glowing with excitement.  What is the meaning of it all?  Don’t you know?—­It is the festival of Sant’ Antonio.  A musical Mass is being performed in honour of Sant’ Antonio.  A grand procession is being formed in honour of that Saint, probably the patron of the place.  There are little boys dressed up as angels, and men arrayed in the sack-like garment of their brotherhoods:  here we have peasants of The Heart of Jesus; here, those of The Name of Mary; and here come The Souls of Purgatory.  The procession is formed with some little confusion.  The people embrace one another, upset one another, and fight with one another—­all in the name of Sant’ Antonio.  But see!  The statue of the worthy Saint is coming out of the church:  a wooden doll, with flaming red cheeks. Victoria!  Off go the petards!  The women weep with joy—­the children cry out at the top of their shrill voices, “Viva Sant’ Antonio!” At night there are fireworks:  a balloon shaped in the semblance of the Saint ascends amid the shouts of the people, and bursts in grand style right over the church.  Verily, unless Sant’ Antonio be very difficult to please, such homage must go straight to his heart.  And I should think the plebeians of the country very exacting, if, after such an intoxicating festival, they were to complain of wanting bread.

Let us seek a little repose on the other side of the Apennines.  Although the population may not be sufficiently sheltered by a chain, of mountains, you will find in the towns and villages the stuff for a noble nation.  The ignorance is still very great; the blood ever boiling, and the hand ever quick; but already we find men who reason.  If the workman of the towns be not successful, he guesses the reason; he seeks a remedy, he looks forward, he economizes.  If the tenant be not rich, he studies with his landlord the means of becoming so.  Everywhere agriculture is making progress, and it will ere long have no further progress to make.  Man becomes better and greater by dint of struggling with Nature.  He learns his own value, he sees whither he is tending; in cultivating his field, he cultivates himself.

I am compelled in strict truth to admit that religion loses ground a little in these fine provinces.  I vainly sought in the towns of the Adriatic for those mural inscriptions of Viva Gesu!  Viva Maria! and so on, which had so edified me on the other side of the Apennines.  At Bologna I read sonnets at the corners of all the streets,—­sonnet to Doctor Massarenti, who cured Madame Tagliani; sonnet to young Guadagni, on the occasion of his becoming Bachelor of Arts, etc., etc.  At Faenza, these mural inscriptions evinced a certain degree of fanaticism, but the fanaticism of the dramatic art:  Viva la Ristori!  Viva la diva Rossi! At Rimini, and at Forli, I read Viva Verdi! (which words had not then the political significance they have recently attained,) Viva la Lotti! together with a long list of dramatic and musical celebrities.