Could anything be more significant of the profound degradation of a people than the abject character of the complimentary and social dialect of the Italians, and the pompous appellations with which they dignify things in themselves insignificant, as well as their constant use of intensives and superlatives on the most trivial occasions? Is it not a notable fact that they, who for so long a time had no country,--on whose altars the fires of patriotism have, till of late, burned so feebly,--use the word _pellegrino_, “foreign,” as a synonym for “excellent”? Might we not almost infer _a priori_ the servile condition to which, previous to their late uprising, centuries of tyranny had reduced them, from the fact that with the same people, so many of whom are clothed in rags, a man of honor is “a well dressed man”; that a man who murders in secret is “a brave man,” _bravo_; that a _virtuoso_, or “virtuous man,” is one who is accomplished in music, painting, and sculpture,--arts which should be the mere embroidery, and not the web and woof, of a nation’s life; that, in their magnificent indigence, they call a cottage with three or four acres of land _un podere_, “a power”; that they term every house with a large door _un palazzo_, “a palace,” a lamb’s fry _una cosa stupenda_, “a stupendous thing,” and that a message sent by a footman to his tailor through a scullion is _una ambasciata_, “an embassy”?
Let us not, however, infer the _hopeless_ depravity of any people from the baseness of the tongue they have inherited, not chosen. It makes a vast difference, as Prof. Marsh justly observes, whether words expressive of noble thoughts and mighty truths do not exist in a language, or whether ages of soul-crushing tyranny have compelled their disuse, and the employment of the baser part of the national vocabulary. The mighty events that have lately taken place in Italy “show that a tone of hypocrisy may cling to the tongue, long after the spirit of a nation is emancipated, and that where grand words are found in a speech, there grand thoughts, noble purposes, high resolves exist also; or, at least, the spark slumbers which a favoring breath may, at any moment, kindle into a cherishing and devouring flame.”[8]