Every day he
threatened to withdraw his custom; every day he sent for the landlady,
pointed out to her how vilely he was treated, and asked how she could
expect him to recommend the Concordia to his acquaintances. On one
occasion I saw him push away a plate of something, plant his elbows on
the table, and hide his face in his hands; thus he sat for ten
minutes, an image of indignant misery, and when at length his
countenance was again visible, it showed traces of tears.'--(pp.
102-3.)
The unconscious paganism that lingered in tradition, the half-obscured
names of the sites celebrated in classic story, and the spectacle of the
white oxen drawing the rustic carts of Virgil's time--these things roused
in him such an echo as _Chevy Chase_ roused in the noble Sidney, and made
him shout with joy. A pensive vein of contemporary reflection enriches the
book with passages such as this:--
'All the faults of the Italian people are whelmed in forgiveness as
soon as their music sounds under the Italian sky. One remembers all
they have suffered, all they have achieved in spite of wrong. Brute
races have flung themselves, one after another, upon this sweet and
glorious land; conquest and slavery, from age to age, have been the
people's lot.
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