But it is perfectly easy to understand them. For thirteen centuries this
pilgrim-movement has been going on. Thirteen centuries? No. This site
was an oracle in heathen days, and we know that such were frequented by
men not a whit less barbarous and bigoted than their modern
representatives--nothing is a greater mistake than to suppose that the
crowds of old Rome and Athens were more refined than our own
("Demosthenes, sir, was talking to an assembly of brutes"). For thirty
centuries then, let us say, a deity has attracted the faithful to his
shrine--Sant' Angelo has become a vacuum, as it were, which must be
periodically filled up from the surrounding country. These pilgrimages
are in the blood of the people: infants, they are carried there; adults,
they carry their own offspring; grey-beards, their tottering steps are
still supported by kindly and sturdier fellow-wanderers.

Popes and emperors no longer scramble up these slopes; the spirit of
piety has abated among the great ones of the earth; so much is certain.
But the rays of light that strike the topmost branches have not yet
penetrated to the rank and seething undergrowth. And then--what else can
one offer to these Abruzzi mountain-folk? Their life is one of
miserable, revolting destitution. They have no games or sports, no
local racing, clubs, cattle-shows, fox-hunting, politics, rat-catching,
or any of those other joys that diversify the lives of our peasantry. No
touch of humanity reaches them, no kindly dames send them jellies or
blankets, no cheery doctor enquires for their children; they read no
newspapers or books, and lack even the mild excitements of church
_versus_ chapel, or the vicar's daughter's love-affair, or the squire's
latest row with his lady--nothing! Their existence is almost bestial in
its blankness. I know them--I have lived among them. For four months in
the year they are cooped up in damp dens, not to be called chambers,