BOOKS.

HOME LIFE IN ITALY.* THIS book is likely to be the most informal of the capital series to which it belongs. It is nowhere expository ; it is a succession of sketches, often dramatic in form, which have the cumulative effect of conveying a true idea of the characters and customs of the Italian people among whom Mrs. Aubrey Waterfield has lived. It is agreeable and graceful from beginning to end. But, unfortunately, her experience leaves out a very large slice of Italian life, and that the most notable in recent history. She writes of country people and country towns, but all the recent political and industrial history of Italy tells us of a new people and a new life. Roughly, this new life might be dated from the time of the Abyssinian adventure. The disastrous battle of Adowa was a parting of the ways. The lesson of that dismal failure was deeply learned, and was one of the many influences which persuaded the Government and the people to remedy inefficiency and want of caution at the source. The national finances have since been set in order ; the real scientific and industrial ability of the nation has expressed itself increasingly in the manufacturing districts of the North. The serious and successful commercial class, with a standard of comfort of its own, has become a very large and permanent element in the country. The Latin intelligence and fine imagination, sharpened by the quick life of great towns and its modern interests, crave more and more for intellectual satisfaction; and the Italian artisan of to-day has as speculative and insatiable a mind as one could find in similar classes anywhere in the world. Of all this Mrs. Waterfield says nothing. On its political or public side what we have indicated may justifiably be considered outside

her scope ; but it is to be remembered that it has its reflection, and a very precise one, in the home life of Italy. For com- prehensiveness we cannot compare this book with the Home Life in Germany of Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick. Having said this,

we are free to emphasise again the charm of Mrs. Waterfield's method in its own field, and may add here that it is greatly illuminated by Mr. Waterfield's excellent illustrations.

W hat could be more delightful than Mr. and Mrs. Water- field's experience ? They went to live in a half-rained ancient

fortezza perched upon lofty and precipitous rocks. With good fortune you can still pick up in Italy for a small sum a feudal castle with its unscalable approaches and outworks.

From this headquarters Mrs. Waterfield came into contact with her neighbours. It is very pleasant to read nearly four hundred pages not once disfigured by the Britannic assump- tion that British customs are necessarily the standard by which other nations should be judged, every variation being regarded as a declension. Of course Mrs. Waterfield did not find that there was a wide area from which to choose her servants :—

" Our proclamation for a servant met with a dead silence, which surprised me, as so many of the people were very poor. But I after- wards learnt that service is looked upon as a degradation, only to be entered by the unfortunate. The reason is that the middle- class housewife does the cooking and most of the housework herself, the servant being employed to do the rough jobs, to carry water from the well and rinse the clothes in the river. Now an Italian does not mind what hard or menial task she undertakes, so long as it is within doors, but the carrying of water from the well, with the eyes of all the neighbours upon her, seems to mark her humble walk in life."

But having got servants eventually, she had the humour and

good sense (which are generally the same thing) not to dis- parage their eccentricities, but to coax out the valuable qualities in them. Economy exercised in the interests of an employer is one of these qualities which come naturally to an Italian countrywoman. But of course this is not peculiar to Italy. The German servant thinks economy the first virtue and point of pride in a household, and it is the economy of the housewife as much as anything which compels her admira- tion. How different, and we cannot help saying how much more vulgar, is our way in England, where wastefulness is frequently regarded as a form of generosity ! Of one of her servants Mrs. Waterfield writes "She has all the amusing vanity of a child joined with native

Apennines. By Lina Duff Gordon

n* HpreubreyWeWins :).LeWttersithfirlrIllustrat tions by Anbrejo.WLaterfleloa. 6ctd,Ranetad ustrationa from Photographs. London : Methuen and shrewdness. In her pride of the Fortezza, I believe she would like us to sit all day on a golden seat dressed in our best, and pretend to be living in a fairy kingdom. Certainly she is always distressed when I walk out in a tweed skirt, and wants me to trail through the town in a festal garment. Once when I was going to attend a christening she prepared an evening gown, and was terribly disappointed that I did not wear it. Like her neighbours, she thinks that to dress simply to pass through the-town and actually wear a silk blouse in the evening, with only a husband to see you, is turning things upside down."

The reader of this book will carry away one impression, perhaps, above others, and that is of the ceremony of offering wine to a visitor in every Italian household, however humble it may be :—

" A special bottle of an old vintage, from their last remaining farm, was brought in upon a brass salver ; a spotless napkin was spread upon my knees and a footstool placed under my feet. The men stood, the madre settled down to enjoy herself, and the young wife sat by me with her baby clinging about her neck and curling up its pink toes in lively expectation of a sponge cake dipped in the wine. I protested against the custom of giving wine to such young children, and, as usual, was worsted in my attempts at reform. ‘. Ah V said the young mother proudly, 'you can have no idea, Signora, what a stomach my child has ; she can digest anything ; it is all a question of habit; she likes the wine, dear little thing, and it makes her cheeks red. You perhaps do not know the proverb, Signora : "Good wine makes good blood."' Certainly Italian children look healthy enough; perhaps it is the case of the sur- vival of the fittest. The old mother confessed that she could not do without her daily glass of wine. This one she sipped with the air of a connoisseur, and, with many apologies to my illustrious presence, she explained with great naivety what infinite good it did her digestion- ' a little wind and then I feel so well '—while the sons both said 'truly, truly,' very impressively. I was grateful to the family—they did not force the wine upon me with barbaric hospitality, but upon my refusing a second glass only held the bottle out invitingly towards me, saying with much feeling, Signora, we will not press you again to take more wine, because we know that it is not the habit in your country to drink at this hour. But we wish you to know that we offer it to you with all our hearts, and welcome you to our poor house.' We all bowed to each other, smiled, and then resumed conversation."

One cannot help noticing in books about other countries how often national customs are supposed to be peculiar to the nation of which the author writes, although they are really racial. All the Latin races have common characteristics. What you see in Italy you will often enough see also in France and Spain. It is not peculiar to Italy to buy small portions of meat and chickens instead of the joint of beef or the leg of mutton or the whole bird which we buy in England, apparently for the purpose, we might add, of wasting a large proportion of it. Again, the unnecessary noises of the streets—the shouts and whip-crackings---in Italy belong to several other nations. We in England have noise enough in all conscience, but the unnecessary human noises are less than in any country we know. Nor is what may be called the ritual of the sofa peculiar to Italy. The sofa is the recognised place of honour, in which no guest may sit except by notorious right or special invitation, in Germany and throughout Scandinavia, and we dare say in other countries. Perhaps Mrs. Waterfield perceives less of the truth than is usual with her in writing of the family in Italy. We are apt to think that family ties mean less to the French and Italians

than to us because they have no word equivalent to our "home." But we can, and generally do, deceive ourselves.

The French word "foyer," for instance, is too often over- looked; it has a very real application to family life; and as for the obligations of Frenoh relationship, they are conceived on a very wide scale, and are submitted to with a devotion which would be regarded as Quixotic self-sacrifice in England. But on the whole an Italian, we think, would read this book with a

predominant sense of pleasure that his country has been so sympathetically observed and so well understood by an Englishwoman. The sense of nationality which derives itself

from Garibaldian days is still only opening its wings. The Italians are susceptible to praise and sensitive to blame.

When Carducci is translated and praised in England, they are rapturously pleased. When Shakespeare is praised in Germany, the Englishman is often inclined to be supercilious

or patronising, or, again, to act as though the homage of a foreigner were a matter of complete indifference and un- importance. We hope this sunny book will make many English readers know Italians better.