Speaking broadly, there is no one at once so thoroughly Roman and so
thoroughly non-Roman as the Roman noble. This is no paradox, no play on
words. Roman nobles are Roman by education and tradition; by blood they
are almost cosmopolitans. The practice of intermarrying with the great
families of the rest of Europe is so general as to be almost a rule. One
Roman prince is an English peer; most of the Roman princes are grandees
of Spain; many of them have married daughters of great French houses, of
reigning German princes, of ex-kings and ex-queens. In one princely house
alone are found the following combinations: There are three brothers: the
eldest married first the daughter of a great English peer, and secondly
the daughter of an even greater peer of Prance; the second brother
married first a German "serene highness," and secondly the daughter of a
great Hungarian noble; the third brother married the daughter of a French
house of royal Stuart descent. This is no solitary instance. A score of
families might be cited who, by constant foreign marriages, have almost
eliminated from their blood the original Italian element; and this great
intermixture of races may account for the strangely un-Italian types that
are found among them, for the undying vitality which seems to animate
races already a thousand years old, and above all, for a very remarkable
cosmopolitanism which pervades Roman society. A set of people whose near
relations are socially prominent in every capital of Europe, could hardly
be expected to have anything provincial about them in appearance or
manners; still less can they be considered to be types of their own
nation. And yet such is the force of tradition, of the patriarchal family
life, of the early surroundings in which are placed these children of a
mixed race, that they acquire from their earliest years the unmistakable
outward manner of Romans, the broad Roman speech, and a sort of clannish
and federative spirit which has not its like in the same class anywhere
in Europe. They grow up together, go to school together, go together into
the world, and together discuss all the social affairs of their native