What has the Englishman of to-day in
common with that rather lovable fop, drunkard and bully who would faint
with ecstasy over Byron's Parisina after pistolling his best friend
in a duel about a wench or a lap-dog? Such differences as exist between
races of men, exist only at a given moment.
And what, I sometimes ask myself - what is now the distinguishing feature
between these southern men and ourselves? Briefly this, I think. In
mundane matters, where the personal equation dominates, their judgment
is apt to be turbid and perverse; but as one rises into questions of
pure intelligence, it becomes serenely impartial. We, on the other hand,
who are pre-eminently clear-sighted in worldly concerns of law and
government and in all subsidiary branches of mentality, cannot bring
ourselves to reason dispassionately on non-practical subjects. "L'esprit
aussi a sa pudeur," says Remy de Gourmont. Well, this pudeur de
l'esprit, discouraged among the highest classes in England, is the
hall-mark of respectability hereabouts. A very real difference, at this
particular moment. . . .
There is an end of philosophizing.
They have ousted me from my pleasant quarters, the landlady's son and
daughter-in-law having returned unexpectedly and claiming their
apartments. I have taken refuge in a hotel. My peace is gone; my days in
Taranto are numbered.
Loath to depart, I linger by the beach of the Ionian Sea beyond the new
town. It is littered with shells and holothurians, with antique tesserae
of blue glass and marble fragments, with white mosaic pavements and
potteries of every age, from the glossy Greco-Roman ware whose
delicately embossed shell devices are emblematic of this sea-girt city,
down to the grosser products of yesterday. Of marbles I have found
cipollino, pavonazzetto, giallo and rosso antico, but no harder
materials such as porphyry or serpentine. This, and the fact that the
mosaics are pure white, suggests that the houses here must have dated,
at latest, from Augustan times.
[Footnote: Nor is there any of the fashionable verde antico, and
this points in the same direction. Corsi says nothing as to the date of
its introduction, and I have not read the treatise of Silenziario, but
my own observations lead me to think that the lapis atracius can
hardly have been known under Tiberius. Not so those hard ones: they
imported wholesale by his predecessor Augustus, who was anxious to be
known as a scorner of luxury (a favourite pose with monarchs), yet spent
incalculable sums on ornamental stones both for public and private ends.
One is struck by a certain waste of material; either the expense was
deliberately disregarded or finer methods of working the stones were not
yet in vogue. A revolution in the technique of stone-cutting must have
set in soon after his death, for thenceforward we find the most
intractable rocks cut into slices thin as card-board:
