it was to be driven.

I have Italian friends whom I greatly value, and who tell me they think I
flirt just a trifle too much with "_il partito nero_," when I am in
Italy, for they know that in the main I think as they do. "These
people," they say, "make themselves very agreeable to you, and show you
their smooth side; we, who see more of them, know their rough one.
Knuckle under to them, and they will perhaps condescend to patronise you;
have any individuality of your own, and they know neither scruple nor
remorse in their attempts to get you out of their way. '_Il prete_' they
say, with a significant look, '_e sempre prete_.' For the future let us
have professors and men of science instead of priests."

I smile to myself at this last, and reply, that I am a foreigner come
among them for recreation, and anxious to keep clear of their internal
discords. I do not wish to cut myself off from one side of their
national character--a side which, in some respects, is no less
interesting than the one with which I suppose I am on the whole more
sympathetic. If I were an Italian, I should feel bound to take a side;
as it is, I wish to leave all quarrelling behind me, having as much of
that in England as suffices to keep me in good health and temper.

In old times people gave their spiritual and intellectual sop to Nemesis.
Even when most positive, they admitted a percentage of doubt. Mr.
Tennyson has said well, "There lives more doubt"--I quote from memory--"in
honest faith, believe me, than in half the" systems of philosophy, or
words to that effect. The victor had a slave at his ear during his
triumph; the slaves during the Roman Saturnalia, dressed in their
masters' clothes, sat at meat with them, told them of their faults, and
blacked their faces for them. They made their masters wait upon them. In
the ages of faith, an ass dressed in sacerdotal robes was gravely
conducted to the cathedral choir at a certain season, and mass was said
before him, and hymns chanted discordantly. The elder D'Israeli, from
whom I am quoting, writes: "On other occasions, they put burnt old shoes
to fume in the censors: ran about the church leaping, singing, dancing,
and playing at dice upon the altar, while a _boy bishop_ or _pope of
fools_ burlesqued the divine service;" and later on he says: "So late as
1645, a pupil of Gassendi, writing to his master what he himself
witnessed at Aix on the Feast of Innocents, says--'I have seen in so