We may confide in
the ability of the Italians to carry out their undertakings and to pay
the cost out of their own pockets. It is easy to criticise them, but we
cannot criticise them more severely than they criticise themselves; and
perhaps, as our censure cannot profit them, we might with advantage to
ourselves, now and then, convert it into recognition of the great things
they have accomplished.
XIII
CASUAL IMPRESSIONS
The day that we arrived in Rome the unclouded sun was yellow on the
white dust of the streets, which is never laid by a municipal
watering-cart, though sometimes it is sprinkled into mire from the
garden-hose of the abutting hotels; and in my rashness I said that for
Rome you want sun and you want youth. Yet there followed many gray days
when my age found Rome very well indeed, and I would not have the
septuagenarian keep away because he is no longer in the sunny sixties.
He may see through his glasses some things hidden even from the eyes of
the early forties.
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