Italy Revisited - Page 2

deprecates irritation in the shabby green
and grey uniforms of all the Italian officials who stand loafing
about and watching the northern invaders scramble back into
marching order. Wearing an administrative uniform doesn't
necessarily spoil a man's temper, as in France one is sometimes
led to believe; for these excellent under-paid Italians carry
theirs as lightly as possible, and their answers to your
inquiries don't in the least bristle with rapiers, buttons and
cockades. After leaving Modane you slide straight downhill into
the Italy of your desire; from which point the road edges, after the
grand manner, along those It precipices that stand shoulder to
shoulder, in a prodigious perpendicular file, till they finally
admit you to a distant glimpse he ancient capital of Piedmont.

Turin is no city of a name to conjure with, and I pay an
extravagant tribute to subjective emotion in speaking of it as
ancient. if the place is less bravely peninsular than Florence
and Rome, at least it is more in the scenic tradition than New
York Paris; and while I paced the great arcades and looked at the
fourth-rate shop windows I didn't scruple to cultivate a
shameless optimism. Relatively speaking, Turin touches a chord;
but there is after all no reason in a large collection of
shabbily-stuccoed houses, disposed in a rigidly rectangular
manner, for passing a day of deep, still gaiety. The only reason,
I am afraid, is the old superstition of Italy--that property in
the very look of the written word, the evocation of a myriad
images, that makes any lover of the arts take Italian
satisfactions on easier terms than any others. The written word
stands for something that eternally tricks us; we juggle to our
credulity even with such inferior apparatus as is offered to our
hand at Turin. I roamed all the morning under the tall porticoes,
thinking it sufficient joy to take note of the soft, warm air, of
that local colour of things that is at once so broken and so
harmonious, and of the comings and goings, the physiognomy and
manners, of the excellent Turinese. I had opened the old book
again; the old charm was in the style; I was in a more delightful
world. I saw nothing surpassingly beautiful or curious; but your
true taster of the most seasoned of dishes finds well-nigh the
whole mixture in any mouthful. Above all on the threshold of
Italy he knows again the solid and perfectly definable pleasure
of finding himself among the traditions of the grand style in
architecture. It must be said that we have still to go there to
recover the sense of the domiciliary mass. In northern cities
there are beautiful houses, picturesque and curious houses;
sculptured gables that hang over the street, charming bay-
windows,