*

A retentive memory is of great use to a man, no doubt; but the talent of
oblivion is on the whole more useful.

* * *

Sarta Rosalia is in a lovely pastoral country; the country that seems to
thrill with Theocritus' singing, as it throbs with the little tamborine
of the cicala; a country running over with beautiful greenery, and with
climbing creepers hanging everywhere, from the vine on the maples to the
china-rose hedges, and with the deep-blue shadows, and the sun-flushed
whiteness of the distant mountains lending to it in the golden distance
that solemnity and ethereal charm which, without mountains somewhere
within sight, no country ever has. But since the advent of "freedom" it
is scarred and wounded; great scar-patches stretch here and there where
woods have been felled by the avarice illumined in the souls of
landowners; hundreds and thousands of bare poles stand stark and stiff
against the river light which have been glorious pyramids of leaf
shedding welcome shadows on the river path; and many a bold round hill
like the _ballons_ of the Vosges, once rich of grass as they, now shorn
of wood, and even of undergrowth, lift a bare stony front to the lovely
sunlight, and never more will root of tree, or seed of flower or of
fern, find bed there.

Such is Progress.

* * *

For the first time his _liberi pensieri_ were distasteful to him and
unsatisfactory; for atheism makes a curse a mere rattle of dry peas in a
fool's bladder, as it makes a blessing a mere flutter of a breath.
Messer Nellemane for the first time felt that the old religion has its
advantages over agnosticism; it gave you a hell for your rivals and your
enemies!

* * *

He had never heard of Virgil and of Theocritus--but it hurt him to have
these sylvan pictures spoiled; these pictures which are the same as
those they saw and sang; the threshing barns with the piles of golden
grain, and the flails flying to merry voices; the young horses trampling
the wheat loose from its husk with bounding limbs and tossing manes; the
great arched doorways, with the maidens sitting in a circle breaking the
maize from its withered leaves, and telling old-world stories, and
singing sweet _fiorellini_ all the while; the hanging fields broken up
in hill and vale with the dun-coloured oxen pushing their patient way
through labyrinths of vine boughs, and clouds of silvery olive leaf: the
bright l