persons of any age or sex in that country, if the world has been as
justly, as it has always been firmly, persuaded that the people of Italy
are effete in point of good faith. I have seen much to justify this
opinion, and something also to confute it; and as long as Garibaldi lives,
I shall not let myself believe that a race which could produce a man so
signally truthful and single-hearted is a race of liars and cheats. I
think the student of their character should also be slow to upbraid
Italians for their duplicity, without admitting, in palliation of the
fault, facts of long ages of alien and domestic oppression, in politics
and religion, which must account for a vast deal of every kind of evil in
Italy. Yet after exception and palliation has been duly made, it must be
confessed that in Italy it does not seem to be thought shameful to tell
lies, and that there the standard of sincerity, compared with that of the
English or American, is low, as the Italian standard of morality in ether
respects is also comparatively low. With the women, bred in idleness and
ignorance, the imputed national untruthfulness takes the form naturally to
be expected, and contributes to a state of things which must be examined
with the greatest caution and reservation by every one but the Italians
themselves. Goethe says that there is no society so corrupt that a man may
not live virtuously in it; and I think the immorality of any people will
not be directly and wholly seen by the stranger who does not seek it.
Certainly, the experience and acquaintance of a foreigner in Italy must
have been most unfortunate, if they confirm all the stories of corruption
told by Italians themselves. A little generous distrust is best in matters
of this kind; but while I strengthen my incredulity concerning the utter
depravation of Venetian society in one respect, I am not disposed to deal
so leniently with it in others. The state of things is bad in Venice, not
because all women in society are impure, but because the Italian theory of
morals does not admit the existence of opportunity without sin. It is by
rare chance that a young girl makes acquaintance with young men in