Let this stand for a type of the change which had passed upon Genoa and
has passed or is passing upon all Italy. The trouble is that Italy is
full of very living Italians, the quickest-witted people in the world,
who are alert to seize every chance for bettering themselves financially
as they have bettered themselves politically. For my part, I always
wonder they do not still rule the world when I see how intellectually
fit they are to do it, how beyond any other race they seem still
equipped for their ancient primacy. Possibly it is their ancient primacy
which hangs about their necks and loads them down. It is better to have
too little past, as we have, than too much, as they have. But if
antiquity hampers them, they are tenderer of its vast mass than we are
of our little fragments of it; tenderer than any other people, except
perhaps the English, have shown themselves; but when the time comes that
the past stands distinctly in the way of the future, down goes the past,
even in Italy.
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