baleful effects of the world's sentimental, impotent sympathy), there is
something pathetic in the patient content with which Italians work. They
have naturally so large a capacity for enjoyment, that the degree of self-
denial involved in labor seems exorbitant, and one feels that these
children, so loved of Nature, and so gifted by her, are harshly dealt with
by their stepmother Circumstance. No doubt there ought to be truth in the
silly old picture, if there is none, and I would willingly make-believe to
credit it, if I could. I am glad that they at least work in old-world,
awkward, picturesque ways, and not in commonplace, handy, modern fashion.
Neither the habits nor the implements of labor are changed since the
progress of the Republic ceased, and her heart began to die within her.
All sorts of mechanics' tools are clumsy and inconvenient: the turner's
lathe moves by broken impulses; door-hinges are made to order, and lift
the door from the ground as it opens upon them; all nails and tacks we
hand-made; window-sashes are contrived to be glazed without putty, and the
panes are put in from the top, so that to repair a broken glass the whole
sash is taken apart; cooking-stoves are unknown to the native cooks, who
work at an open fire, with crane and dangling pot-hooks; furniture is put
together with wooden pegs instead of screws; you do not buy a door-lock at
a hardware store,--you get a _fabbro_ to make it, and he comes with a
leathern satchel full of tools to fit and finish it on the door. The
wheelbarrow of this civilization is peculiarly wonderful in construction,
with a prodigious wooden wheel, and a ponderous, incapable body. The
canals are dredged with scoops mounted on long poles, and manned each by
three or four Chiozzotti. There never was a pile-driving machine known in
Venice; nor a steam-tug in all the channels of the lagoons, through which
the largest craft are towed to and from the ports by row-boats. In the
model of the sea-going vessels there has apparently been little change
from the first. Yet in spite of all this backwardness in invention, the
city is full of beautiful workmanship in every branch of artificing, and