ers seem to be of that race
of grubs singularly abundant 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 reas