Socially, the talents of the Romans are not higher than our own. The Italian people have not the social gifts which are the _privilegium_ of their Latin neighbour. On the society of ancient Rome was superimposed clerical Rome--a city where the sex which makes society was nowhere, where the _pezzo grosso_ in every drawing-room was a Roman cardinal, not a great lady; and there can be little doubt that this has not proved a civilising influence on the Roman. But in natural gifts of disposition the Italian greatly excels us; and in no English gathering can the charm be approached which Italians will impart to an _alfresco_ party, an impromptu _festa_--often including a great mixture of classes--when the simplicity, the unfailing good humour, and the successful efforts to please are a lesson to the Englishman. The Italians by gathering together make a natural _festa_, as by walking they make a natural procession--something that is graceful and unselfconscious, absolutely simple without missing stateliness. _The Romans and Art_ The art history of Rome is as distinct from that of the rest of Italy as is its social, its religious, or its political history. We look in vain to Rome for a first-rate picture, a first-rate poem, even--with the exception of Palestrina--for a first-rate composer.[8] The fatal facility which hampers all Italians, who can achieve with little labour what less gifted peoples travail to attain, meets in the Roman that curious inconclusiveness, that strange universal sterility, which begins with the character itself. Nevertheless the Roman has not failed to give us what it is his function to give--he has always been a fine-art critic; every great thing has come before him, and of all he has been an incorruptible judge, seldom deceived, using all the powers of _finezza_, of ridicule, of satire, and of fine judgment at his command, to raise or to create a standard of fine work. If there is one art which may be said to be not only the gift of Italy but to have remained Italian, it is singing; and here the Roman has kept in the forefront both as critic and executant. The Italian really _loves a voice_--the Englishman loves the sentimental rendering of a theme; and the criterion of vocal sound which the Italian possesses, he finds, perhaps, in his own throat. "Roman throats and chests must, in some particular way, be differently constructed from those of other people" wrote Walter Pater; and the resonant voices of Italians may be due to the absence of the protruding German and English chin which captures and muffles so many of our vocal tones. [8] _Clementi_, indeed, was a Roman, and a Roman buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey.