various dialects will be put to a severe test. Come when it may, the change will have in it much that is desirable for Italy: of this there can be no question; nor can it be disputed that as a whole standard Italian offers a more complete and plastic medium of expression than Venetian, or Neapolitan, or Sicilian. Nevertheless, in the mouth of the people the local dialects have a charm which standard Italian has not--a charm that consists in clothing their thought after a fashion which, like the national peasant costumes, has an essential suitability to the purpose it is used for, and while wanting neither grace nor richness, suggests no comparisons that can reflect upon it unfavourably. The naive ditty of a poet of Termini or Partinico is too much a thing _sui generis_ for it to suffer by contrast with the faultless finish of a sonnet in _Vita di Madonna Laura_. Sicily is notoriously richer in songs than any province of the mainland; Vigo collected 5000, and the number of those since written down seems almost incredible. It has even been conjectured that Sicily was the original fountain-head of Italian popular poetry, and that it is still the source of the greater part of the songs which circulate through Italy.[A] Songs that rhyme imperfectly in the Tuscan version have been found correct when put into Sicilian, a fact which points to the island as their first home. Dr Pitre, however, deprecates such speculations as premature, and when so distinguished and so conscientious an investigator bids us suspend our judgment, we can do no better than to obey. What can be stated with confidence is, that popular songs are inveterate travellers, and fly from place to place, no one knows how, at much the same electrical rate as news spreads amongst the people--a phenomenon of which the more we convince ourselves that the only explanation is the commonplace one that lies on the surface, the more amazing and even mysterious does it appear. [Footnote A: "Noi crediamo ... che il Canto popolare italiano sia nativo di Sicilia. Ne con questo intendiamo asserire che le plebi delle altre provincie sieno prive di poetica facolta, e che non vi sieno poesie popolari sorte in altre regioni italiane, ed ivi cresciute e di la diramate attorno. Ma crediamo che, nella maggior parte des casi, il Canto abbia per patria di origine l'Isola, e per patria di adozione la Toscana: che, nato con veste di dialetto in Sicilia, in Toscana abbia assunto forma illustre e comune, e con siffatta veste novella sia migrato nelle altre provincie."--_La Poesia Popolare Italiana: Studj di Alessandro d'Ancona_, p. 285.]