Rondinello! rondinello! Tu sei nero, ma sei bello. Cosa fà se tu sei nero? Rondinello! sei il premiero De' volanti, palpitanti (E vi sono quanti quanti!) Mai tenuto a questo petto, E percio sei il mio diletto.[11]
[11] The author wrote the verses first in English, but he found it easy to write them better in Italian. They stood in the text as below:--
Swallow! swallow! though so jetty Are your pinions, you are pretty: And what matter were it though You were blacker than a crow? Of the many birds that fly (And how many pass me by!) You're the first I ever prest, Of the many, to my breast: Therefore it is very right You should be my own delight.
_Cornelia_.--Here is the cocomero; it cannot be more insipid. Try it.
_Tasso_.--Where is the boy who brought it? where is the boy who sang my Aminta? Serve him first; give him largely. Cut deeper; the knife is too short: deeper, mia brave Corneliolina! quite through all the red, and into the middle of the seeds. Well done!
The cumulative or aggregative property of wealth and power, and in a less degree of knowledge also, make up in time a consolidation of these elements in the hands of particular classes, which, for our present purposes, we choose to term an aristocracy of birth, wealth, knowledge, or power, as the case nay be. The word aristocracy, distinctive of these particular classes, we use in a conventional sense only, and beg leave to protest, _in limine_, against any other acceptation of the term. We use the word, because it is popularly comprehensive; the [Greek: hoi aristoi], distinguished from the [Greek: hoi polloi]: "good men," as is the value of goodness in the city; "the great," as they are understood by penners of fashionable novels; "talented," or "a genius," as we say in the _coteries_; but not a word, mark you, of the abstract value of these signs--their positive significations; good may be bad, great mean, talented or a genius, ignorant or a puppy. We have nothing to do with that; these are thy terms, our Public; thou art responsible for the use made of them. Thou it is who tellest us that the sun rises and sets, (which it does not,) and talkest of the good and great, without knowing whether they are great and good, or no. Our business is to borrow your recognized improprieties of speech, only so far as they will assist us in making ourselves understood.