Arizona republican., 1914-08-08
ITALY TURNS GERMANS INTO SENTIMENTAL
 PiGS."

It long ago that Roger Ascham said that "Italianate Englishman devil incarnate" After four centuries Oliver MadoX Hueffer tries to match it or outdo it by describing the German who has yielded the spell of Italy 'an ami mated confectionery pig Italy he goes makes the Germans "greasily sentimental, as if they had bathed themselves in macaroni; it renders them vegetably materialistic if the only thing that mattered in life were oranges" This outburst is in- spred by recent novel by Vernon Lee called Louis Norbert" He doesn't like Vernon Lee because she is "Itaianate." Her works seems to offer him sterized atmosphere like that to be found in the work called John Inglesant or in the writings of the late Walter Pater." In (London) the outlook he tells why he believes he has the right to say such things
 If he were an Englishman he reflects, he would be either much less much more frightened. Tt would depend upon whether should like to become devil incarnate or not
 Some do; men don't. For, whereas the effect of Italy upon the German is to render him sobbering sentimentalist, it's effect the English mind is something much more subtle and something much more dangerous. I am talking of the English mind, and there are very few English minds. The English without minds who feel called to go to Italy just end in wearing blue flannel collars, gowns made of cotton serge, amber necklaces and Preraffaelite attitudes. And they don't matter; they aren't even a nuisance, as my countrymen are.
 But when it comes to English mind-and of course I am thinking of Vernon Lee-the problem of Italianization grows into something much more formidable 1 don't mean to that I like it; frankly, don't. I almost wish that every Eng lshman of intellect who feels call to go to Italy might be drowned in crossing the channel or at least killed in a railway accident just snort of Milan Milan won't do him much harm. And poor old Italy itself feels just like this It is tired. poor thing of mincing around among corner lots ana battlefields But the effect of Italy the English mind is certainly not to render it more sentimental
 .''I suppose the Italian climate is an ntenslfier of character Sentmentaliss like myself 1t renders abominabIv sentimental; the cold, cynical, selfish and restrained English mind (and the English mind is really always all these things) it renders colder, more cynical more selfish and retrained Italy in fact turns the thinking Englishman into some thing like the Jesuit of picturesque fiction UT course that is an exaggeration; but the tendency is there. -
 Wandering among the beautiful groves medltat- ing among the so graceful ruins the Englishman acquires something of the truly classical frame Of mind along with something of an ingenuity that IS purely devsh Vernon Lee, for instance strikes me as something much more of a wizard than a comforting human being upon whose shoulders one might want to cry Because take it that the test or a. really satisfactory intimacy is the possession by either party of such a shoulder.
 q don't know why living in Italy should have that effect upon the English mind. I suppose it is does the trick All the contrasts all the civilza- tions crumbng into another, in layer upon layer among the most beautiful of all landscapes, must render you more cynical if you have turn for cyncism'