Women above the
poorest class are not seen in the streets; there prevails an
Oriental system of seclusion.
I was glad to come upon the pot market; in the south of Italy it is
always a beautiful and interesting sight. Pottery for commonest use
among Calabrian peasants has a grace of line, a charm of colour, far
beyond anything native to our most pretentious china-shops. Here
still lingers a trace of the old civilization. There must be a great
good in a people which has preserved this need of beauty through
ages of servitude and suffering. Compare such domestic utensils--
these oil-jugs and water-jars--with those in the house of an
English labourer. Is it really so certain that all virtues of race
dwell with those who can rest amid the ugly and know it not for
ugliness?
The new age declares itself here and there at Cosenza. A squalid
railway station, a hideous railway bridge, have brought the town
into the European network; and the craze for building, which has
disfigured and half ruined Italy, shows itself in an immense new
theatre--Teatro Garibaldi--just being finished.
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