OUIDA ON THE ITALIANS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1974, 19 September 1889, Page 31

OUIDA ON THE ITALIANS.

Ouida has been moved by a statement in Mr Marion Crawford's new story " Sant' Ilario " that "no foreigner has ever understood the Italians," and that they are " very simple creatures," to send to a syndicate of provincial newspapers her own impressions of the Italian people. She gives them credit for personal courage and for supreme distinction of manner ; but otherwise her estimate is by nojmeans flattering. Ouidaenforces her points by a number of entertaining anecdotes : —

"A VERY SIMPLE CREATURE."

" There are few characters as beautiful a3 mine in the world. I am good to imbecility," said an Italian to me this year. He was in all appearance . a " very simple creature." In fact, he is a man of about 45 years old. He has a frank, smiling, kind face. He began life as a servant, then became a stuffer of birds, then set up a modest shop of odds and ends of bric-a-brac. Little by little his shop and his commerce have grown ; he has combined with the profitable trade of manufacturing antique objects the still more profitable trade of money-lending. He is known to be a strazzino (usurer), but ,this doss not impair his credit. On the contrary, it enhances it. "Ha gran' nome sulla piazza," all his townspeople say in speaking of him. He has purchased lands and houses and theatres. He has utterly ruined numerous families. He is keen as a knife, cruel as a ferret, sharp as a needle. But he says he is "good to imbecility," and says it with so pleasant a countenance, so frank a good faith, that if Mr Crawford has the honour of his acquaintance, he undoubtedly classes him as " a very simple creature."

ITALIAN VANITY.

The overweening vanity of the Italian lends itself constantly to his destruction ; he is convinced that no one can cheat him, and this blind belief in himself causes a futility which makes him frequently a prey to ' the cunning of others. The most conspicuous trait in the Italian character is vanity. If a woman tells him he may call and see her, he is apt immediately to believe that she offers him the tenderest rendezvous. It is impossible to make him see his own mistakes, or any inferiority of any kind in himself. Whatever he does is in bis own eyes well done, and if it be not so also in your eyes the fault is yours. It is this vanity which makes Italy bo dangerous a political factor in European policy, and which English statesmen so perilously flatter because they never know that it exists. It is to this vanity that their own statesmen successfully appeal "when they rely on their bombast about African victories, and German admiration, and European alliances, lo blind the nation to the deadly yoke of a ruinous taxation and the fatal blister of a perpetually debilitating and irritating civil legislation.

A NATI N OF LIARS.

It is this vanity, not any simplicity, which, played upon, leads them into deceptions. They have also singularly short memories, which is in itself a perilous defect in those who make falsehood a fine art. A gardener who wanted a holiday asked me once to let him go away for three days, as his old mother was dying a dozen miles away. He went, and on his return displayed every aspect that profound grief could assume ; his mother having, he said, breathed her last at the very moment of his arrival. Time passed, and when another summer arrived, this same youth begged leave to go and see his old mother, wu o this time was ors ly seriously ill. He had quite forgotten the fictitious death of her over which he had wept so copiously 12 months before. It is needless to add that his revered parent had been neither ailing nor moribund at either time. Another time a shepherd brought me a dog for sale, and with tears related the animal's talent as a sheep dog, his own devoted attachment to the creature, and the grief he felt at being compelled, by the command of his master, to part from bis beloved four-footed friend, who worked with him by day and slept with him by night. I bought the dog, and a little later discovered that the shepherd had purchased him that very day for a few francs from a peasant. What was remai&aWe in

this instance was the elaborate comedy acted, the inimitable skill with which the shepherd wept over the dog at parting with him, and related his exploits with the flock ; and the absolute needlessness of this dramatic fable, as, wanting at that time a dog of this kind, I should have bought him equally willingly without any history.

"SO TERY ENGLISH, YOU KNOW."

A great and lamentable mania for imitating English, Americans, and Germans in their worst points is, unhappily, on the increase with every year; aud the results, though sometimes comical, are always disastrous. " I have left my wife drunk on a heap of stones in the road ; she is so very English, you know 1 " said not long ago a courtly and accomplished Italian gentleman, exceedingly proud and triumphant over his announcement.

CRUELTY TO BIRDS AND ANIMALS.

That Italians are cruel is often said, and is often true : but it is a cruelty often born of indifference and nurtured on the believe dinned into them first by priests, and now by scientists, that animals are utterly beneath consideration. To work an animal to death for gain is quite justified in their eyes; and attention to the comforts and affections of animals seems to most of them a sentimental absurdity. They do horrible things to animals without seeming to be aware that it is any brutality. An English lady died whose fondness for dogs had amounted to insanity — she had between 30 and 40 of them. On her death her son-in-law — "an Italian of very high rank — had all the poor creatures taken to the slaughter house, with directions to shut them all up together. This was done ; neither he nor any one thought any more about it. The [dogs were left to die of hunger and thirst, and when several days later an inspector opened the door of the chamber in which they were confined a scene too piteous and horrible to describe met his sight. No man of high rank in any other nation could have done such a thing with impunity. The ceaseless brutality to birds is incessant, and is the more striking as contrasted with the loveliness and innocence of their victims. Italians everywhere persecute birds with a rancour which seems incredible. Their utter ignorance of the agricultural utility of many species makes them see in every winged creature an enemy and a proper prey. Neither the song of the nightingale nor the plumage of the oriole protects them from slaughter. There are fairs at which the only articles for sale are poor blinded chaffinches. Tne rarest birds are sold for the roasHngspit in all the markets. The children o£ the aristocracy are allowed to regard it as their choicest sport to crush the heads of the birds caught alive in the decoy-nets, and are not ashamed to go out with a cage of blind finches or a chained owlet to entrap wheaters, thrushes, starlings, blackcaps, larks, peewits, and all the numerous feathered tribes which flock to Italy to meet a sad and unmerited fate. There are good bills for the preservation of birds before the Chambers, and addresses and petitions are constantly made to the Throne and the Ministers for a similar end ; but it is of no avail. No one cares, and the birds perish every year.