V.

Full twenty years have pass'd since then.
   You're married-- more's the pity!
Your husband, worthiest of men,
   Has business in the City.
And lots of merry children press
   Around the knee maternal,
Whose never-ceasing joyousness
   Is not at all supernal.

VI.

And I, on whatsoe'er I'm bent,
   From Camberwell to Carrick,
While passing bills in Parliament,
   Or bottles at the Garrick,
While lounging on the steps at White's,
   Or 'neath Tod Heatley's awning,
Smoking a strong cigar o' nights,
   Or mild one in the morning--

VII.

Conversing "horse " with Tattersall,
   Or " shooting-coat " with Skinner,
At Naples' public carnival,
   At Friendship's private dinner--
Though but an ordinary man,
   Pleasure or gain pursuing,
I've ne'er forgotten little Fan,
   And Childhood's early wooing.

ITALIAN MEN AND BROTHERS.

LAST week a German lady of rank and culture
said to me, à propos of the present condition
and prospects of Italy, " A liberal despotism is
what is needed for these people. They are not
to be trusted with self-government. The
Italians have absolutely no sense of the 'point
d'honneur.'"

It may be worth while at this moment, when
so much is being said and written about Italy
by declared enemies and-- alas! too often--
injudicious friends, to set forth a plain statement
of facts which have come under my own
knowledge, and which set the national character in a
favourable light. My object is not to show that
all virtue in this land is monopolised by Papalini
or Mazziniani, supporters of the " extreme left,"
disciples of Menabrea, Rattazzi, or Garibaldi.
What I believe, and what I desire to make others
believe, is simply that, amongst these twenty-five
millions of Italian-speaking men and women, there
is an amount of human worth not inferior, in
proportion to their numbers, to that of any other
continental people. And here I must premise that
I am well aware that human worth in Italy—at
least in some parts of it-- exists under
conditions nearly as unfavourable to its development
as those of a grain of wheat cast upon a
stony soil, or sown in sand, or choked with foul
weeds. And in all parts of the peninsula the
soil has been for ages so ill cultivated as to be
yet far from having regained its pristine fertility.
On the other hand, I know, too, that the
human plant must victoriously assert its right
to flourish-- by flourishing. To nations, at all
events, we are forced to apply a portion of the
Darwinian theory of natural selection, and say
to the peoples, " Only those who can live, may."

Let us see, then-- beginning with small
particulars, and leaving to abler hands the task of
rising to vaster generalities-- how far my friend
the German baroness was justified in her assertion
that Italians have absolutely no sense of
honour. Some sense of honour, some standard
of principle, is, I suppose we are all agreed,
as essential to a national existence in the great
European family, as oxygen is essential to
individual human life. A moral atmosphere so
foul as to be absolutely without the vivifying
presence of conscience, would speedily result in
the material as well as spiritual ruin of a
nation.

But I maintain that Italians, considering
them broadly as a nation, are far—incalculably
far—removed from any present approach to
such a condition of moral asphyxia.

"In the first place," said my friend, who had
recently been making a tour in the south, in
Naples and Sicily-- " in the first place, they hate
this constitutional government, and grumble
terribly at the taxes."

Now, I do not know enough of the internal
condition of the Neapolitans under the old
régime, to be able to form an accurate
comparison between the burdens they had to
support in the days of King Bomba and his successor,
and the present taxes which are levied on them.
The means of acquiring such accurate information
are at my hand, but I purposely refrain
from using them; firstly, because I have no
pretension to make this paper a political essay;
and secondly, because I am willing, for the
purposes of my argument, to admit that the
Neapolitans do " grumble terribly at the taxes."
Granted. What then? They pay them. The
majority, at least, pays the taxes without bloodshed,
without martial law, without even a street
row. I have heard of a country still reputed
to have a foremost place amidst the nations,
wherein tax-paying is not yet considered to
rank among the few unalloyed pleasures of life.
Under what conceivable circumstances can we
picture to ourselves the hard-working
householders of Manchester or Glasgow, or York or
Exeter, so inflamed with patriotic fervour as to
hold jubilee meetings to congratulate each other
on the occasion of the income-tax being raised
a penny in the pound?

Individual men will grumble-- especially in
Italy, where copious talk is the habitual
safety-valve for carrying off peccant humours
from the body politic—will grumble and fret,
and make disadvantageous comparisons between
the " good old times" and the bad new ones.
But, nevertheless, there is a sound heart in the
great mass of the nation that beats loyally for
Italy, and is jealous of her glory and her
prosperity a heart that is noble enough to endure
patriotic sacrifices, and tender enough to be
pierced by national humiliation.

"But," says the German lady once more,
"they are poor creatures. They get tête-montée
with enthusiasm, but it turns out like the crackling
of thorns under a pot. They cannot last.
They have no constancy-- no staying power."