We all know that the second of November is All Souls’ Day, and that it is the day dedicated in the Roman calendar to the commemoration of all those who have departed “in the faith.”  And few who have traveled on the continent of Europe are not aware that the day is observed in all Southern countries with a degree of devotion which the greater part of the communities in question are not in the habit of according to any other of the ordinances of the Church.  But to observe the manifestation of this devotion in its most striking forms, to seize all the more picturesque developments and presentations of it, the “Giorno dei Morti” must be passed at Rome.

It is a curious fact—­one of the many of a similar order which illustrate the moral specialties of the Latin populations—­that hundreds of thousands of people of both sexes, who neither believe, nor affect to believe, the doctrines of the orthodox Church, and who are in the habit of utterly disregarding all her prescriptions and teaching, should nevertheless, as often as this sad anniversary comes round, behave as if they were to all intents and purposes good Catholics.  It will be said, perhaps, that the feelings to which the special character of the commemoration appeals are so common to all human hearts that the manifestation of them on any customary occasion is in no degree to be wondered at.  But I do not think that this will suffice to explain the phenomenon—­at least as it may be witnessed here in Italy.  Other church ordinances might be pointed out of which the same thing might be said, but which are not similarly observed.  The real cause of the phenomenon I take to be that this population is—­as it was of old, and as it always has been through all outward changes—­pagan.  I put it crudely for the sake of putting it shortly, for this is not the place to trouble the readers of a few paragraphs of “Gossip” with a dissertation in support of the assertion.  The innate paganism of these people, born of the beauty of the climate and of all external Nature, and of the sensuous proclivity to live and breathe and have their being in the present and the visible which results therefrom, first forcibly shaped their early Christianity into moulds which assimilated it to pagan observances and modes of thought, and still remains ready to resume more and more of its old empire as the authority of Church beliefs waxes feeble.  The very striking and singular scene which was to be witnessed in the great Roman cemetery outside the Porta di San Lorenzo on the second day of November was to all intents and purposes pagan in its spirit and meaning.  And it is curious to observe in this, as in so many other instances, how the use of words supplies illustrations of national peculiarities and specialties of character.  The Church has dedicated the day in question to the commemoration “omnium animarum"—­of all souls.  And we others, people of a Teutonic race, have taken and used the phrase in its proper Christian sense:  we talk of “All Souls’ Day.”  But with the peoples of the Latin stock all thought or question of “souls” is very speedily lost sight of.  With them the day is simply the “Giorno dei Morti”—­the day of the dead.  And their observance of it is to all intents and purposes what it might have been two thousand years ago.