The last day of the carnival is the gayest in the year. The Roman populace carry their rage for amusements to a perfect fever, unexampled elsewhere. The whole town is disguised; the very gazers from its windows are masked. This begins regularly to the appointed day, neither public nor private affairs interfering with its indulgence. Then may one judge of the imagination possessed by the herd. Italian sounds sweetly even from their mouths. Alfieri said that he went to the market of Florence to learn good Italian. Rome has the same advantage; and, perhaps, these are the only cities of which all the natives speak so well that the mind is feasted at every corner of the streets. The kind of gayety that shines through their harlequinades is often found in the most uneducated men; and during this festival, while exaggeration and caricature are fair play, the most comic scenes perpetually recur. Often a grotesque gravity contrasts the usually vivacious Italian manner, as if their strange dresses conferred an unnatural dignity on the wearers. Sometimes they evince so surprising a knowledge of mythology, in the travesties they assume, that one might suppose them still believers in its fictions. Most frequently, however, they ridicule the various ranks of society with a pleasantry truly original: the nation is now a thousand times more distinguished by its sports than by its history. Italian lends itself so easily to all kinds of playfulness, that it needs but a slight inflection of voice, a little difference of termination, lengthening or diminishing the words, to change the entire meaning of a sentence. The language comes with a peculiar grace from the lips of childhood. The innocence of that age, and the natural archness of the southern tongue, exquisitely contrast each other.[1] One may almost call it a language that talks of itself, and always seems more witty than its speakers.