which he has inherited with his name, and
which is as much a part of his identity as
the snail's shell is a part of its body.

The contadini of the North of Italy
make, as a rule, very good farmers. They
are more industrious than the peasants of
Naples, and better educated than the men
who work in the fields and vineyards of
Tuscany; but they are not so refined as
the latter, and they speak Italian as
people speak a language they have
acquired by study. To them the lingua
Toscana—the national speech of Italy—is
a foreign tongue. They learn it—they
do not inherit it; they are Italy's foster-
children. Thus it comes to pass that they
are obliged to become scholars, or at least
the pupils of a schoolmaster, before they
can put themselves into communication
with the authorities. Their local speech is
not recognised by the law. Sermons are
preached, proclamations are issued,
lawsuits are carried on, in a language which is
as strange to them as the English language
used to be to the inhabitants of the interior
of Wales. Nor is this the case solely with
the peasantry; the middle and even the
upper classes are sadly at a loss sometimes
to express themselves in proper language,
so that they are often compelled to speak a
foreign tongue (say French or German), in
order to make themselves understood in
polite society. French is becoming quite
the rage in Lombardy and Venetia, where
ladies and gentlemen of good position do
not scruple to speak bad French in preference
to good Italian; perhaps because they
fear the provincial accent will slip out! I
have said that the peasants of the North
of Italy speak patois; but when they
read and write (as they often do) they
read and write Italian, and not Piedmontese,
or lingua Lombarda. This is the sense in
which the northern peasantry are better
educated than those of the midland
provinces, though, according to all accounts,
they are less nobly gifted by Nature, and
spring from "barbarians," and not from
the ancient Romans: some say from the
Goths and Vandals. The peasants of
Tuscany pride themselves on having a gentler
pedigree. Their patois is the language of
scholars. Dante wrote in it, Galileo
thought in it, Italy is being governed by
it at the present day. The shepherd-boy
who tends his flocks on the mountains of
the Val d'Arno, and knows nothing of
books except that they have been forbidden
by the priest, talks more correctly and
pronounces his words better than the average
Lombard gentleman. He can improvise
poetry, or, I should say, poetical phrases,
better than a lawyer can defend his client,
or a doctor talk to his sick man, in many of
the northern towns. Nay, it is scarcely an
exaggeration to say that the lower classes
of Tuscany are born in the purple of
literature, just as the birds of the forest are
born songsters. They talk correctly as
the fish swims properly; as fire burns
with a due regard to the rules of
chemistry without knowing them; as leaves
fall to the ground in obedience to the law
of gravitation. You may find peasants
and charcoal-burners in the midland
provinces of Italy whose knowledge of the
Divine Comedy and the Two Orlandi
(Orlando Furioso and Orlando Innammorato)
is as profound as that of an Italian litterato;
nay, it may be, profounder, for while
the latter has often a large library to fall
back upon, the peasant is confined to his
ancient epics: the books he has learnt by
tradition, as a child learns fairy tales, by
word of mouth and memory, and not by
book or pen, though now and then his
natural powers are eked out by a little
learning. The majority of the peasants
are, of course, ignorant of these chefs-
d'oeuvre, and those who can read by the
card do not always read poetry: the Realidi
Francia, the story of Bertoldo and
Bertoldino (a kind of prose epic), and the
legends and litanies of the saints, being
among their tavourite books.

The Italian peasantry contribute very
largely to the military resources of the
country. They supply the great bulk of
the soldiers; they are the raw material
which the Italian government employs to
fight its battles and defend its frontiers;
turning them in some cases into heroes,
and in others into powder machines—
warranted, gun in hand, to go off at a
moment's notice. Do not let it be supposed,
however, that these sons of the soil are
exceptionally brave and warlike; that they
take a particular delight in fighting, or in
achieving military glory. They are simply
poor (poor at least in ready money), and
cannot buy themselves off from the government.
If soldiering were a matter of
choice, it is doubtful whether the king
would receive as many recruits from the
peasantry as would suffice to equip a single
regiment. The contadini are a peaceful
race: docile and patient to a fault; capable
of great acts of self-denial, but not addicted
to rebellion or to political or social risings,
either in defence of a right or in revenge