the moment we had entered the village. They were dear little girls and
boys, and mountain babies, all with sunburnt faces and the gentle and
the winning ways native to this race, which Nature loves better than
us of the North. The blonde pilgrim seemed to please them, and they
evidently took us for _Tedeschi_. You learn to submit to this fate
in Northern Italy, however ungracefully, for it is the one that
constantly befalls you outside of the greatest cities. The people know
about two varieties of foreigners--the Englishman and the German. If,
therefore, you have not _rosbif_ expressed in every lineament of your
countenance; if the soles of your boots are less than an inch thick,
and your clothes are not reduced in color to the invariable and
maddening tone of the English tweed,--you must resign yourself to be
a German. All this is grievous to the soul which loves to spread its
eagle in every land and to be known as American, with star-spangled
conspicuousness all over the world: but it cannot be helped. I vainly
tried to explain the geographical, political, and natural difference
between Tedeschi and Americani to the custodian of Petrarch's house.
She listened with amiability, shrugged her shoulders hopelessly, and
said, in her rude Venetian, "_Mi no so miga_" (I don't know at all).

Before she came, I had a mind to prove the celebrity of a poet on the
spot where he lived and died,--on his very hearthstone, as it were.
So I asked the lout, who stood gnawing a stick and shifting his weight
from one foot to the other,--

"When did Petrarch live here?"

"Ah! I don't remember him."

"Who was he?"

"A poet, signor."

Certainly the first response was not encouraging, but the last
revealed that even to the heavy and clouded soul of this lout the
divine fame of the poet had penetrated--and he a lout in the village
where Petrarch lived and ought to be first forgotten. He did not
know when Petrarch had lived there,--a year ago, perhaps, or many
centuries,--but he knew that Petrarch was a poet. A weight of
doubt was lifted from my spirit, and I responded cheerfully to
some observations on the weather offered by a rustic matron who was
pitching manure on the little hill-slope near the house. When, at
last, the custodian came and opened the gate to us, we entered a
little grassy yard from which a flight of steps led to Petrarch's
door. A few flowers grew wild among the grass, and a fig-tree leaned
its boughs against the wal