The object of such committees is to do for the good of mankind what a
single nation is powerless or unwilling to do. Your behaviour at
Herculaneum is identical with that of the Turks at Nineveh. The system
adopted should likewise be the same.
I shall never see that consummation.
But I shall not forget a certain article in an American paper - "The New
York Times," I fancy - which gave me fresh food for thought, here at
Patirion, in the sight of that old Hellenic colony, and with the light
chatter of those women still ringing in my ears. Its writer, with whom
not all of us will agree, declared that first in importance of all the
antiquities buried in Italian soil come the lost poems of Sappho. The
lost poems of Sappho - a singular choice! In corroboration whereof he
quoted the extravagant praise of J. A. Symonds upon that amiable and
ambiguous young person. And he might have added Algernon Swinburne, who
calls her "the greatest poet who ever was at all."
Sappho and these two Victorians, I said to myself. . . . Why just these
two? How keen is the cry of elective affinity athwart the ages! The
soul, says Plato, divines that which it seeks, and traces obscurely
the footsteps of its obscure desire.
The footsteps of its obscure desire - -
So one stumbles, inadvertently, upon problems of the day concerning
which our sages profess to know nothing. And yet I do perceive a certain
Writing upon the Wall setting forth, in clearest language, that 1 + 1 =
3; a legend which it behoves them not to expunge, but to expound. For it
refuses to be expunged; and we do not need a German lady to tell us how
much the "synthetic" sex, the hornless but not brainless sex, has done
for the life of the spirit while those other two were reclaiming the
waste places of earth, and procreating, and fighting - as befits their
horned anatomy.
XVI
REPOSING AT CASTROVILLARI
I remember asking my friend the Roman deputy of whom I have already
spoken, and whom I regard as a fountain of wisdom on matters Italian,
how it came about that the railway stations in his country were apt to
be so far distant from the towns they serve. Rocca Bernarda, I was
saying, lies 33 kilometres from its station; and even some of the
largest towns in the kingdom are inconveniently and unnecessarily remote
from the line.
"True," he replied. "Very true! Inconveniently . . . but perhaps not
unnecessarily. . . ." He nodded his head, as he often does, when
revolving some deep problem in his mind.
"Well, sir?"
"Inasmuch as everything has its reasons, be they geographical,
sociological, or otherwise . . ." and he mused again. "Let me tell you
what I think as regards our respective English and Italian points of
view," he said at last. "And to begin with - a few generalities! We may
hold that success in modern life consists in correctly appreciating the
principles which underlie our experiences - in what may be called the
scientific attitude towards things in general.
