They have in their blood the old Greek sensitiveness to suffering, and they dislike painful scenes and disastrous catastrophes; and this sentiment they carry to extremes. Although they have the finest representative of Othello--Salvini--at this moment in Europe, the terrible scene of the murder of Desdemona is a shock that many would shrink from witnessing. They will bear any strain on the imagination, but their fine-strung nerves revolt against the terrible in action. To this natural refinement is owing much of that peculiar softness of manner and reluctance to disoblige which foreigners frequently mistake for some especial desire to win their favour. The idleness which would make an Englishman awkward sits gracefully on the Italian. He knows how to “do nothing” with dignity. Be assured, if Hercules had been of Anglo-Saxon blood, Omphale would never have set him down to spin; but being what he was, I could swear he went through his tomfoolery gracefully. And with all this, is it not strange that these are the people who furnish the most reckless political enthusiasts of the world, and who, year after year, go to the scaffold for “an idea”? There is something hysterical in this Italian nature, which prompts to paroxysms like these--some of that impulsive fury which, in the hill-tribes of India, sends down hordes of fanatics to impale themselves on British bayonets. The men like Orsini abound--calm of look, mild of speech, and gentle in manner, and yet ready to commit the greatest of crimes and confront the most terrible of deaths for a mere speculative notion--the possibility of certain changes producing certain contingencies, and of which other changes are to ensue, and Italy become something that she never was before, nor would the rest of Europe suffer her to remain, if ever she attained to it. Wine-tasters tell us it is vain to look for a bottle of unadulterated port: I should in the same way declare that there are few rarer things to be found than a purely Italian society. The charm of their glorious climate; the beauty of their country, the splendour of their cities, rich in centuries of associations, have attracted strangers from every corner of the Old World and the New; and the salons of Italy are but caravanserais, where all nations meet and all tongues are spoken.