It is said that the Roman belittles things, that he is an easy despiser. Perhaps the gift of _criterion_ nourished among the grandeurs of classical and Christian Rome is a sorry preparation for enthusiasm over the sights to be seen in other men's cities. The fact too that his pride sometimes forbids his stooping to means which ensure the success of his "Italian" brother who comes fortune-seeking to Rome, joined to his sincerity and hatred of humbug are, he thinks, the reasons why as a rule he is cordially detested by other Italians. The "clericals" have another explanation; the Romans are hated, according to them, because they would take no part in the doings which led to the union of Italy and the invasion of Rome. We may give a little weight to all these reasons and yet understand that the Roman is disliked on other counts. His pride, so think other Italians, is altogether too immoderate for his achievements; and when they entered Rome they found a people devoid of the mental and moral qualities which make fine manners--a certain amount of self-forgetting and graciousness of mind. [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO ARA COELI FROM THE FORUM The ever-open door of the popular Franciscan Church on the Capitol hill, which became in the middle ages the centre of the civic life of the Roman people. See pages 6, 57.] After "the Italians" entered the city, these provincial animosities waxed fast and furious. Men from the north were dubbed _buzzuri_, Neapolitans got nicknamed _cafoni_, and to this day a residence of twenty or thirty years does not preserve the hapless "_forestiere_" and his family from such epithets as _buzzuri_ and _villani_ if they presume to come to words with "a Roman of Rome." On the other hand "the Italians" returned these compliments with interest: the Romans were unlicked cubs, _maleaucati_, lazy, ignorant--the proud tetragram S.P.Q.R. was rendered by the Neapolitans _Sono Porci Questi Romani_ "these Romans are pigs"; while the Roman, finding in the Neapolitan a man still dirtier than himself, retorted that the "Neapolitans' sky is beautiful, and it is clean, because they can't reach it" ("Il cielo di Napoli e bello, ed e pulito, perche non arrivano a sporcarlo").