re 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