Moreover, it is strange to note how, with the vulgarisation of the towns and of the landscapes in this classic land, the human physiognomy loses its classic unity and grace, grows heavier, coarser, meaner, commoner, changes indeed entirely its type and colouring; the camus or the snub nose replaces the aquiline, the scrofulous mouth replaces the lips shaped like a Cupid's bow; the eyes diminish in size and grow lack-lustre; the beautiful oval outline of cheek and chin alters to the bull-dog jaw and puffy cheeks; the clear and pure skin alters to the sodden, pallid, unwholesome complexion of the new type. This is no exaggerated statement; anyone can see the change for himself who will take the trouble to observe such young Italians as throng the second-rate and the third-rate _cafés_ and dining-saloons of cities, and then go into the more remote country, and see the Italiote race still in its integrity, in old-world hamlets of the Abruzzi or the Apennines, in forest-sheltered nooks of the Sabine or the Carrara mountains, in sea-faring, wind-swept villages of the Veneto, in nomad sheep-folds on the oak-studded grass plains of the Basilicata, or in old walled towns, calm and venerable, in the lap of the high hills, where the shriek of the engine has not yet been heard; where it is still unknown, that which Loti calls in his latest work, 'cette chose de laid, de noirâtre, de tapageur, d'idiotement empressée, qui passe vite vite, ébranle la terre, trouble ce calme délicieux par des sifflets et des bruits de ferailles, le chemin de fer, le chemin de fer!--plus nivelant que le temps, propageant la basse camelote de l'industrie, déversant chaque jour de la banalité et des imbéciles.' In the provinces he will still find, in thousands of living creatures, the youths of Luca Signorelli, the knights of Giorgione and Carpaccio, the young gods of Paolo Veronese, the noble grey-beards of Tiziano, the stately women of Michelangiolo, the enchanting children of Raffaelle, and Correggio. But in the towns, and in the country where it receives the moral and physical miasma of the towns, he will find little else but the debased modern type, with its snigger of conceit, its cynical grin, its criminal's jaw, its cutaneous eruptions, its dull and insolent eyes, its stunted growth, and its breath foul with nicotine and chemical drinks, such as the modern schools, and the modern scientists, and the modern dram-shops have made it.