covenanters and the republicans of that class the name of the Scotch beverage of sour milk, whose virtue they considered so expressive of their dispositions, and which is called _whigg_. So ridiculous in their origin were these pernicious nicknames, which long excited feuds and quarrels in domestic life, and may still be said to divide into two great parties this land of political freedom. But nothing becomes obsolete in political factions, and the meaner and more scandalous the name affixed by one party to another the more it becomes not only their rallying cry or their password, but even constitutes their glory. Thus the Hollanders long prided themselves on the humiliating nickname of "Les Gueux:" the protestants of France on the scornful one of the _Huguenots_; the non-conformists in England on the mockery of the _puritan_; and all parties have perpetuated their anger by their inglorious names. Swift was well aware of this truth in political history: "each party," says that sagacious observer, "grows proud of that appellation which their adversaries at first intended as a reproach; of this sort were the _Guelphs_ and the _Ghibellines_, _Huguenots_ and _Cavaliers_." Nor has it been only by nicknaming each other by derisory or opprobrious terms that parties have been marked, but they have also worn a livery, and practised distinctive manners. What sufferings did not Italy endure for a long series of years under those fatal party-names of the _Guelphs_ and the _Ghibellines_; alternately the victors and the vanquished, the beautiful land of Italy drank the blood of her children. Italy, like Greece, opens a moving picture of the hatreds and jealousies of small republics; her _Bianchi_ and her _Neri_, her _Guelphs_ and her _Ghibellines_! In Bologna, two great families once shook that city with their divisions; the _Pepoli_ adopted the French interests; the _Maluezzi_ the Spanish. It was incurring some danger to walk the streets of Bologna, for the _Pepoli_ wore their feathers on the right side of their caps, and the _Maluezzi_ on the left. Such was the party-hatred of the two great Italian factions, that they carried their rancour even into their domestic habits; at table the _Guelphs_ placed their knives and spoons longwise, and the _Ghibellines_ across; the one cut their bread across, the other longwise. Even in cutting an orange they could not agree; for the _Guelph_ cut his orange horizontally, and the _Ghibelline_ downwards. Children were taught these artifices of faction--their hatreds became traditional, and thus the Italians perpetuated the full benefits of their party-spirit from generation to generation.[51]