It Has Its Advantages;
When There Is A Ring At The Door The Housemaid, Instead Of Panting Up
From The Kitchen To Answer It, Has Merely To Fall Down Five Pairs Of
Stairs.
It cannot he denied, either, that the steep incline gives a
charm to the streets which overcome it with sidewalks and driveways and
trolley-tracks.
Such a street as the Via Garibaldi (there is a Via
Garibaldi in every Italian city, town, and village, and ought to be a
dozen), compactly built, but giving here and there over the houses'
shoulders glimpses of the gardens lurking behind them, is of a dignity
full of the energy which a flat thoroughfare never displays or imparts.
Without the inspiration lent us by the street, I am sure we should never
have got to the top of it with our cab when we went to the Campo Santo;
and, as it was, we had to help our horses upward by involuntarily
straining forward from our places. But the Campo Santo was richly worth
the effort, for to visit that famous cemetery is to enjoy an experience
of which it is the unique opportunity.
I wish to celebrate it because it seems to me one of the frankest
expressions of national taste and nature, and I do like simplicity - in
others. The modern Italians are the most literal of the realists in all
the arts, and, as I had striven for reality in my own poor way, I was
perhaps the more curious to see its effects in sculpture which I had
heard of so much.
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