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    SENT FBOM ITALY. 197

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    . Any Mountainous Prop It Is Social Orti...

    the want in Italy * of those moral ideas and feelings which form the dailportion of English or American manwomanand child .

    y every , , It does not seem to me that any amount of liberty , of discipline , or of political institutions would ever infuse an ideal into the instinctive

    Italian race , nor that it is right and wise to demand that they shall possess it . Their own perfection they can doubtless attain , but it is

    not ours . Considered therefore from this southern land , thoughts which seem at home to possess roundness and completeness sink

    into mere parts of the whole ; and aims which are all absorbing in London , are reduced in proportion when measured against the

    vastness of Rome , whose history embraces many ages of time , and three great empires of faith , and as many mighty dominions in

    politics , social and domestic . It may easily be imagined , that , sitting hi and gh towers up amidst on to the the gigantic broad ruins grey , and sweeps looking of the out Campagna over the domes , from

    Albano to Soracte , my mind should revert to the home work , to the ferment of thought and feeling in our periodical press , and particularly to the numerous discussions everywhere rising upon the

    claims and the duties of women , to the stirring life which rested not an hour , while that calm setting sun , sinking into the western waters of the Mediterraneantouched with crimson the pinnacles of St . John

    Lateran and the round , roof of St . Stefano on the _Cselian Hill , and lit up the green slopes -where Tusculun and Alba Longa are seen no more .

    As I looked over this immense expanse , there suddenly rose who before have my here mind lived a vision and died of the . Women countless of multitude nations of women and of many ,

    many costumes ; Etruscans , adorned with fine gold , very proud in of their the an regal cient lineage the republican , allied both and to the Egyp imp t and erial to times Greece women ; Romans who

    , , , lived under the most despotic and the most just laws , and who were virtuous and respected under the first epoch , and debased and

    de-Then graded I at thoug the ht very of time the when early Christian they had secured women , so saints much , virg of freedom ins , and .

    mar and tyrs of hundreds ; of the armies still busy of nuns within whose its walls rule had pray gone ingteaching forth from or Rome tend- ,

    feared ing the neither sick ; of the women axenor who the were stake very nor brave , the hungry in the , old war times of , beasts , and

    in that very Colosseum , which lifted , its ruined arches before me in the red radiance . One half of the great nations of antiquity , one half

    of the church militant , —these were women , and as I looked abroad over Romeand thht of themI felt how partial are the efforts

    of any particular , oug nation in the , solving of moral questions which have foundfrom to agesome sort of practical solution in a

    , age , million homes . Let none think this reflection far-fetched . It is impossible to

    country travel , b to y the another power from of steam the , metropolis with sudden of the swiftness present from to one the

    metropolis of the past , , from England to Italy , from London to

    • V

    Sent Fbom Italy. 197

    SENT FBOM ITALY . 197

• Citation
  • English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), May 1, 1859, page 197, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01051859/page/53/