The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1886-12-10
THE MODERN ITALIAN.
He Cares Little for the Art Treasure OF
His Country and Its Landmarks of
HlstOry.

In the November North american Re-
VteD Ouida says that "Whatever may be
the opinion of Europe as to the political
advantages accruing to it from the in
dependence of Italy, it must be mourn
fully confessed that the losses to art and
to history through it are greater than
any which could have been caused by
centuries of neglect or long years of
hostile occupation and devastating war.
1t is scarcely to be measured, indeed,
what these losses are; so immense are
they in their extent, so incessant in their
exercise, so terrible in their irreparable
infamy. No doubt it could never be
foreseen, never be imagined, by those
who brought about and permitted the
consolidation of Italy into one kingdom,
that the people, nominally free, would
become the abject slaves of a municipal
despotism and of q barbarous civic
Italian independence possessed that
power of foresight which would have
told them that It's issue would be the
daily destruction, by hordes of foreign
workmen, of its treasures of art, and
its landmarks of history. Yet there is
no exaggeration in saying that there is
nothing less than this.
''Italy can not be narrowed to the
petty bounds of a kingdom created yes
terday; she has been the mistress of all
art, the muse and the priestess of all
peoples. What the the Italians do
ing with her? II is sickening TO note
nj 20 ranArI NAfhirr, nriua
back to the world what, day by day,
municipal councillors having houses to
sell. syndicates and companies merely
looking for spoilation and speculation,
contractors who seize on land as a
trooper seizes on n girl in a sacked
town, are all taking from the fairest
and the most ancient cities and towns
on earth.
IL wholly fail to account, on any
philosophic or psychological grounds,
| for the utter deafness of soul which has
come upon the Italians as n nation.
Born with loneliness of all kinds, nat
ural and architectural, around them,
the aesthetic should be as instructive in
them as their movements of limbs or
lungs. Instead of this, it is entirely
gone out of them. They have no feel
ing for color, no sense of symmetry,
and little or no sense of reverence for
the greatness and the gloriousness of
the past"
OF Rome, Ouida says: "The leaders
of an invading and victorious army
would have been ashamed to cause the
havoc and the blasphemy which the
Roman municipality have carried out
with shameless callousness; the indig.
nant voice of Europe would have bid.
den Suwarrow, Napoleon, Con,
stable dc Bourbon stay his hand had he
dared to level with the dust the august
monuments of which neither the majesty
nor the memories have power to daunt
the impious hand of the nineteenth cen.
fury Edilizia."
The Italians themselves are ''insensi
BILE to the horror of their work, just as
they are unconscious why yellow, blue,
and green chairs on red carpet offend
a delicate taste. To whitewash frescoeG
walls; to make old monasteries lool
brand new; to scrub peel and Skin
sculptured marbles; to daub over beau
tiful arches and columns and cloisteri
with tempera painting, mechanically
reproduced in one set pattern over ant
over again, over miles of stucco; TO out
rage the past and vulgarize the present
to respect nothing; to set the glarins
seal of despotic and bourgeois admins
tration over all of which ages have mad,
lovely and reverent-all this they thinl
an admirable and hygienic work, Will,
they let human eXcrement be strewr
broadcast over the fields and emptied int
the street at midday under boiling heat
and set the guards of their rivers t.
drive out with blows of the scabbart
the poor children who would fain splasl
and battle in them under canicula
suns. The excuse of hygiene is onl,
the parrot cry which covers the passion
for iconoclasm and destruction. Il,
make their own interest while the mo
ment lasts is the only desire at tn
heart of all these civic councillors ant
engineers, architects and contractors
house-owners and spectators. To pet
ty personal purposes and selfish person
al profits everything is sacrificed by the
innumerable aSSeSSari, cOnSigLieri and
sindaci by whom Italy is regarded a:
the Turkish pashas regarded the Egypt
ian fellah.
Could Dante come to life, no curse he
ever breathed upon his countrymon
would be one-half so fierce and deep as
that with which he would devote the
Italian of the close of the nineteenth
century to the vengeance of the offended
gods. But Dante's self would say his
curses TO deaf ears, wadded close will
the wool of vanity and greed"