This paucity of genius may be no more than a coincidence, but it strikes me, nevertheless, as extraordinary that a country which has enjoyed freedom as this country has for the past fifty years, has not manifested the fruits of its liberation from tyranny and oppression such as were manifested in France after the French Revolution, when once its devastation had been cured. If the child is father to the man, it stands to reason that indulgence and training during childhood will manifest their effect during maturity, and success in any activity of human life stands in direct relation to imagination or vision and industry. It likewise follows that if we neglect to facilitate the development of the former and to develop the appetite for and form the habit of the latter during the early years of life, it is too much to expect the display of them in later years. It is quite possible, it seems to me, that the reputation for lack of directness in their dealings with the peoples of other nationalities, their circuitousness in the business affairs of life, their secrecy or lack of frankness and candor, their ceremoniousness, their failure to cement a solid friendship with other nations of Europe, may, in some measure at least, be linked up with the suppression of the play instinct in childhood and the subservient place which they have given to women. CHAPTER XVII "IF A MAN WALKETH IN THE NIGHT, HE STUMBLETH BUT IF HE WALKETH IN THE DAY HE SEETH THE LIGHT OF THIS WORLD" My morning walks take me the length of the Janiculum. In the early light of these autumn days Rome and its settings take on an expression of seductive resignation due largely to the clouds which rob it of that glare which is the most trying feature of summer in Rome. The clouds permit streams of light to filter through, as if from a monstrous search-light, especially over the Castelli Romani and the Alban Hills. Ordinarily Monte Cavo is on the horizon line, but to-day, after the sun had been nearly an hour on its diurnal way, hundreds of parallel bundles of light were directed perpendicularly upon it, so that another chain of mountains came into view beyond, and the decaying villa surmounting it seemed to be in a valley atop of a mountain peak backed by other peaks. The way from my _villino_ to St. Peter's is past the Garibaldi monument, and I am well acquainted with the countenances of his generals and his guard, whose life-size busts in marble flank the monument in long, parallel rows, constituting an alley leading up to it. If their effigies do them justice, they were fine-looking, intelligent, and resolute. It takes me also past the hideous lighthouse which Argentina thrust upon the Italians, and which has been erected upon a spot from which one has perhaps the most commanding view of Rome, its near and distant environment.