other nations. They possessed the creative faculty once; they have lost
it in our day, and it does not appear that they are likely to regain it.
On the other hand, the Italians are remarkable engineers, first-rate
mathematicians, clever, if unscrupulous, diplomatists. Though they
overrate their power and influence, they have shown a capacity for
organisation which is creditable on the whole. If they fail to obtain
the position they seek in Europe, their failure will have been due to
their inordinate vanity and over-governing, if I may coin the word,
rather than to an innate want of intelligence.

The qualities and defects of the Italian nation all existed in the
Pandolfi family. Marzio possessed more imagination than most of his
countrymen, and he had, besides, that extraordinary skill in his manual
execution of his work, which Italians have often exhibited on a large
scale. On the other hand, he was full of bombastic talk about principles
which he called great. His views concerning society, government, and the
future of his country, were entirely without balance, and betrayed an
amazing ignorance of the laws which, direct the destinies of mankind. He
suffered in a remarkable degree from that mental disease which afflicts
Italians--the worship of the fetish--of words which mean little, and are
supposed to mean much, of names in history which have been exalted by
the rhetoric of demagogues from the obscurity to which they had been
wisely consigned by the judgment of scholars. He was alternately weak
and despotic, cunning about small things which concerned his own
fortunes, and amazingly foolish about the set of ideas which he loosely
defined as politics.

Lucia's nature illustrated another phase of the Italian character, and
one which, if it is less remarkable, is much more agreeable. She
possessed the character which looks at everything from the point of view