Alone By Norman Douglas













































































 -  What says Craufurd Tait Ramage, LL.D.? Their
country life consists merely in breathing a different air, though in
nothing - Page 104
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What Says Craufurd Tait Ramage, LL.D.?

"Their country life consists merely in breathing a different air, though in nothing else does it differ from the life they live in town."

He notices things, does Ramage; and might, indeed, have elaborated this argument. The average Italian townsman seems to have lost all sense for the beauty of rural existence; he is incurious about it; dislodge him from the pavement - no easy task - and he gasps like a fish out of water. Squares and cafes - they stimulate his fancy; the doings and opinions of fellow-creatures - thence alone he derives inspiration. What is the result? A considerable surface polish, but also another quality which I should call dewlessness. Often glittering like a diamond, he is every bit as dewless. His materialistic and supercilious outlook results, I think, from contempt or nescience of nature; you will notice the trait still more at Venice, whose inhabitants seldom forsake their congested mud-flat. Depth of character and ideality and humour - such things require a rustic landscape for their nurture. These citizens are arid, for lack of dew; unquestionably more so than their English representatives.

POSTSCRIPT. - The pavements of Florence, by the way, have an objectionable quality. Their stone is too soft. They wear down rapidly and an army of masons is employed in levelling them straight again all the year round. And yet they sometimes use this very sandstone, instead of marble, for mural inscriptions. How long are these expected to remain legible? They employ the same material for their buildings, and I observe that the older monuments last, on the whole, better than the new ones, which flake away rapidly - exfoliate or crack, according to the direction from which the grain of the rock has been attacked by the chisel.

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