and which is perhaps partly the result of their ancient civilization. At
any rate, it fascinates a stranger to see people so mutually gentle and
deferential; and must often be a matter of surprise to the Anglo-Saxon, in
whose race, reclaimed from barbarism more recently, the native wild-beast
is still so strong as to sometimes inform the manner. The uneducated
Anglo-Saxon is a savage; the Italian, though born to utter ignorance,
poverty, and depravity, is a civilized man. I do not say that his
civilization is of a high order, or that the civilization of the most
cultivated Italian is at all comparable to that of a gentleman among
ourselves. The Italian's education, however profound, has left his
passions undisciplined, while it has carefully polished his manner; he
yields lightly to temptation, he loses his self-control, he blasphemes
habitually; his gentleness is conventional, his civilization not
individual. With us the education of a gentleman (I do not mean a person
born to wealth or station, but any man who has trained himself in morals
or religion, in letters, and in the world) disciplines the impulses, and
leaves the good manner to grow naturally out of habits of self-command and
consequent habitual self-respect.

The natural equality of the Italians is visible in their community of good
looks as well as good manners. They have never, perhaps, that high beauty
of sensitive expression which is found among Englishmen and Americans
(preferably among the latter), but it very rarely happens that they are
brutally ugly; and the man of low rank and mean vocation has often a
beauty of as fine sort as the man of education and refinement. If they
changed clothes, and the poor man could be persuaded to wash himself, they
might successfully masquerade, one for another. The plebeian Italian,
inspired by the national vanity, bears himself as proudly as the noble,
without at all aggressing in his manner. His beauty, like that of the
women of his class, is world-old,--the beauty of the pictures and the