My impression was that almost anything might happen in Italy. While I was in Rome, the Pope was drawing protests from even the most conservative clerical dailies for his obscurantism. The country seemed to be disillusionizing itself about representative government, which, though it had become perfectly democratic, and had the most sweeping program of social reform, was clumsy and ineffective, and had utterly failed to carry out the popular hopes. The Crown scarcely seemed to be taken much more seriously than in Norway. Republican sentiment cropped up in unexpected places. Nationalism grew apace, cleverly stimulated by the new capitalistic bourgeoisie and the new industry, which first impressed you as you came through the long string of gayly-colored, swarming factory towns on the coast between Ventimiglia and Genoa. Political parties, Nationalist, Constitutionalist, Republican, Socialist, etc., seemed as numerous as in France, but there was not the same fluctuation, for the expert governmental hand kept a majority, in the Camera. This body gave little of the impression of dignity that one had felt in the French Chamber. One felt that while in Italy democratic feeling was almost as genuine and universal as in France, political democracy had by no means proved its worth. That Latin passion for intellectual sincerity and articulation--that quality which makes the Latin the most sympathetic and at the same time the most satisfactory person in the world, because you can always know that his outward expression bears some relation to his inward feeling--had resulted, as in France, in the duplication of parties, which were constantly holding congresses and issuing programs, and then splitting up into dissentient groups. This trait may be unfortunate politically; but it certainly makes for sincerity and intelligence, and all the other virtues which our Anglo-Saxon two-party system is well devised to destroy.