VENETIAN DINNERS AND DINERS.


When I first came to Venice, I accepted the fate appointed to young men on
the Continent. I took lodgings, and I began dining drearily at the
restaurants. Worse prandial fortunes may befall one, but it is hard to
conceive of the continuance of so great unhappiness elsewhere; while the
restaurant life is an established and permanent thing in Italy, for every
bachelor and for many forlorn families. It is not because the restaurants
are very dirty--if you wipe your plate and glass carefully before using
them, they need not stomach you; it is not because the rooms are cold--if
you sit near the great vase of smoldering embers in the centre of each
room you may suffocate in comparative comfort; it is not because the
prices are great--they are really very reasonable; it is not for any very
tangible fault that I object to life at the restaurants, and yet I cannot
think of its hopeless homelessness without rebellion against the whole
system it implies, as something unnatural and insufferable.

But before we come to look closely at this aspect of Italian civilization,
it is better to look first at a very noticeable trait of Italian
character,--temperance in eating and drinking. As to the poorer classes,
one observes without great surprise how slenderly they fare, and how with
a great habit of talking of meat and drink, the verb _mangiare_
remains in fact for the most part inactive with them. But it is only just
to say that this virtue of abstinence seems to be not wholly the result of
necessity, for it prevails with other classes which could well afford the
opposite vice. Meat and drink do not form the substance of conviviality
with Venetians, as with the Germans and the English, and in degree with
ourselves; and I have often noticed on the Mondays-at-the-Gardens, and