ITALIAN YESTERDAYS.*
THE readers of Mrs. Hugh Fraser's A Diplomatist's Wife in Many Lands will remember the chapters which described her childhood in Rome. 1a her new "Collection of Memories" she returns to the same city and, to some extent, the same theme. "Recollections," she says, "of my own experience have found a place beside the stories of saints and sinners long passed away from the land where they played their parts." Perhaps in Rome itself this latter element will be found most useful The ordinaty guide-books are more con. burned with the classical remains, and the few whose taste leads them to the study of the Christian antiquities will find ' • Itai, nsto;isys." ti. Iluirh Frisiv- Von**, illitchilmoi ant Co.
flea sm..; '
in Mrs. Fraser a very competent guide, who has taken real. pains to make her readers share her own enthusiasm. She has, collected the traditions relating to the martyrdoms of St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. Cecilia, the founding of St. John Lateran and St. Peter's, and the exploits of Theodosius and Alaric, and if some of the details are introduced by "May we not imagine I" or some kindred phrase, those who read Italian Yesterdays on. the spot will not be disposed to find fault with their cicerone. But the special charm of Rome to some readers will be best conveyed by the childish recollections which find a place from time to time amid this historical or legendary matter. "In a snow-bound land of pale suns and wintry wastes" she can, shut her eyes and smell the bitter-sweet of the Campagna, thyme and daisy, and almost hear the faint piping of the solitary shepherd-boy sitting on the low stone fence while his flock nibbled audibly at the newly sprung grass," Or she can call up the Grotto of Egeria, "with the broken statue and the shadowy crystal of its mysterious spring, its sides and vault one mantle of diamond-sprent maidenhair fern; the moist air and soft green light—a reflection from sun and grass outside—making it a place where the most light-hearted child could not but feel the solemnity of something very ancient and very spiritual." There was not a touch of exaggeration about Mrs. Fraser's mysticism, for she could "leap back to earth with a bound" and join her playmates in a "breathless game," which began with an incantation, as to the origin of which she asks to be enlightened. Perhaps some reader who has made a study of "counting-out" rhymes may be able to help her
"Intery, miutery, eatery, corn, Apple seed and apple thorn, Wire, brier, limber, lock, Seven geese in a flock, Sit and sing.
By a spring I Out—Out?"
The players made a band-in-hand ring, a word was counted to each, and the one to whom the last "Out" fell had to fly, Unfortunately, much of the Rome of Mrs. Fraser's childish recollection is a recollection and nothing there. " All that is ancient and beautiful ,is an insult to the industrial nobodies, with their sordid past and their ignoble future." It may fairly be doubted, however, whether we English people have much right to be hard on the Italians. It is true, they have more, and more beautiful, things to destroy than we have, and the destruction that an Italian builder can point to as the result of his " improvements " is greater in proportion than anything that his English fellow-worker can claim for himself. But the less we have, the greater should be the care taken of what there is, and the carelessness with which we look on at the ruin of English landscape by the pulling up of wayside flowers, the lopping of hedge-row timber, and the cutting down of trees which might have helped to soften the inevitable change from country to town, leaves us scanty right to censure similar indifference in other countries.
Previous page
