like to sit by its source in the woodland solitude, and let fancy have
her way.
In these garden walks I met a group of peasants, evidently strange to
Cosenza, and wondering at all they saw. The women wore a very striking
costume: a short petticoat of scarlet, much embroidered, and over it a
blue skirt, rolled up in front and gathered in a sort of knot behind
the waist; a bodice adorned with needlework and metal; elaborate
glistening head-gear, and bare feet. The town-folk have no peculiarity
of dress. I observed among them a grave, intelligent type of
countenance, handsome and full of character, which may be that of their
brave ancestors the Bruttii. With pleasure I saw that they behaved
gently to their beasts, the mules being very sleek and
contented-looking. There is much difference between these people and
the Neapolitans; they seem to have no liking for noise, talk with a
certain repose, and allow the stranger to go about among them
unmolested, unimportuned. Women above the poorest class are not seen in
the streets; there prevails an Oriental system of seclusion.
I was glad to come upon the pot market; in the south of Italy it is
always a beautiful and interesting sight. Pottery for commonest use
among Calabrian peasants has a grace of line, a charm of colour, far
beyond anything native to our most pretentious china-shops. Here still
lingers a trace of the old civilization. There must be a great good in
a people which has preserved this need of beauty through ages of
servitude and suffering. Compare such domestic utensils—these oil-jugs
and water-jars—with those in the house of an English labourer. Is it
really so certain that all virtues of race dwell with those who can
rest amid the ugly and know it not for ugliness?
The new age declares itself here and there at Cosenza. A squalid
railway station, a hideous railway bridge, have brought the town into
the European network; and the craze for building, which has disfigured
and half ruined Italy, shows itself in an immense new theatre—Teatro
Garibaldi—just being finished. The old one, which stands ruinous close
by, struck me as, if anything, too large for the town; possibly it had
been damaged by an earthquake, the commonest sort of disaster at
Cosenza. On the front of the new edifice I found two inscriptions, both
exulting over the fall of the papal power; one was interesting enough
to copy:—
“20
SEPT
., 1870.
QUESTA
DATA
POLITICA
DICE
FINITA
LA
TEOCRAZIA
NEGLI
