’I say, Caper, does it ever come into your head to people all this broad Campagna with old Romans?’ asked Rocjean.

’Yes, all the time.  Do you know that when I am out here, and stumble over the door-way of an old Roman tomb, or find one of those thousand caves in the tufa rock, I often have a curious feeling that from out that tomb or cave will stalk forth in broad daylight some old Roman centurion or senator, in flowing robe.’

‘Do you ever think,’ asked Rocjean, ’of those seventy thousand poor devils of Jews who helped build the Coliseum and the Arch of Titus?  Do you ever reflect over the millions of slaves who worked for these same poetical, flowing-robed, old senators and centurions? Ma foi! for a Republic, you men of the United States have a finished education for any thing but republicans.  The great world-long struggle of a few to crush and destroy the many, you learn profoundly; you know in all its glittering cruelty and horror the entire history, and you weave from it no god-like moral.  Nothing astonished me more, during my residence in the United States, than this same lack of drawing from the experience of ages the deduction that you were the only really blessed and happy nation in the world.  Your educated men know less of the history of their own country, and feel less its sublime teachings, than any other race of men in the world.  The instruction your young men receive at school and college, in what way does it prepare them to become men fit for a republic?’

‘You are preaching a sermon,’ said Caper.

’I am reciting the text; the sermon will be preached by the god of battles to the roar of cannons and the crack of rifles, and I hope you’ll profit by it after you hear it.’

‘Well,’ interrupted Caper, ‘what do you think of the English?’

’For a practical people, they are the greatest fools on the earth.  Thoroughly convinced at heart that they have no esprit, they rush in to show the world that they have a superabundance of it....  It interferes with their principles, no matter; it touches their pockets, behold it is gone, and the cold, flat, dead reality stares you in the face.’

’You are a Frenchman, Rocjean, and you do them injustice.  Had Shakspeare no esprit?’ asked Caper.

‘Shakspeare was a Frenchman,’ replied Rocjean.

‘We—­ll!’

‘Prove to me that he was not?’

‘Prove to me that he was!’

’Certainly.  The family of Jacques Pierre was as certainly French as Raimond de Rocjean’s.  Jacques Pierre became Shakspeare at once, on emigrating to England, and the ‘Immortal Williams,’ recognizing the advantages to a poor man of living in a country where only the guineas dance, took up his abode there and made the music for the money to jump into his pockets.’

’Very ingenious.  But in relation to Byron, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, and—­as we are in Italy—­Rogers?’