Carnival in a little Italian town, as we have said, is no very grand thing, and as a mere question of fun it is no doubt amusing only to people who are ready to be amused. And yet there is a quaint fascination in it as a whole, in the rows of old women with demure little children in their laps ranged on the stone seats along the bridge, the girls on the pavement, the grotesque figures dancing along the road, the harlequins, the mimic Capuchins, the dominoes with big noses, the carriages rolling along amidst a fire of sugarplums, the boys darting in and out and smothering one with their handfuls of flour, the sham cook with his pots and pans wreathed with vine-branches, the sham cavalier in theatrical cloak and trunk hose who dashes about on a pony, the solemn group tossing a doll to a church-like chant in a blanket, the chaff and violet bunches flung from the windows, the fun and life and buzz and colour of it all. It is something very different, one feels, from the common country fair of home. In the first place it is eminently picturesque. As one looks down from the balcony through a storm of sugarplums the eye revels in a perfect feast of colour. Even the russet-brown of every old woman's dress glows in the sunshine into a strange beauty. Every little touch of red or blue in the girls' head-dresses shines out in the intense light. As the oddly attired maskers dart in and out or whirl past in the dance the little street seems like a gay ribbon of shifting hues winding between its grey old houses with touches of fresh tints at every window and balcony. The crimson caps of the peasants stand out in bold relief against the dark green of the lemon-garden behind them. Overhead the wind is just stirring in the big pendant leaves of the two palm-trees in the centre of the street, and the eye once caught by them ranges on to the white mass of the town as it stands glowing on its hill-side and thence to the brown hilltops, and the intense blue of the sky.
The whole setting of the scene is un-English, and the scene itself is as un-English as its setting. The fun, the enjoyment, is universal. There is nothing of the complicated apparatus which an English fair requires, none of the contrivances to make people laugh--the clowns, the cheap-jacks, the moveable theatres, the vans with fat women and two-headed calves, the learned pigs, the peepshows, the peripatetic photographers, the weighing-machines, the swings, the merry-go-rounds. And so there are none of the groups of vacant faces, the joyless chawbacons lounging gloomily from stall to stall, the settled inanity and dreariness of the crowd that drifts through an English fair. An English peasant goes to be amused, and the clown finds it wonderfully hard work to amuse him. The peasant of Italy goes to Carnival to amuse himself and to amuse everybody else. He is full of joyousness and fun, and he wishes everybody to be as funny and as joyous as himself. He has no notion of doing his merriment by deputy. He claps his mask on his face or takes his bag of flour in his hand, and is himself the fun of the fair. His neighbour does precisely the same. The two farmers who were yesterday chaffering over the price of maize meet each other in Carnival as Punch and Harlequin. Every boy has his false nose or his squeaking whistle. The quiet little maiden whom you saw yesterday washing her clothes in the torrent comes tripping up the street with a mask on her face. The very mothers with their little ones in their laps throw in their contribution of smart speeches and merry taunts to the fun of the affair. It is wonderful how simple the elements of their amusement are and how perfectly they are amused. A little masquerading, a little dancing, a little pelting with flour and sugarplums, and everybody is as happy as possible.