The Human Race. Figuier Louis
25.—FISH-VENDORS AT OPORTO.
The streets of Oporto are much enlivened by the appearance of the peasants in their various brilliant dresses, who there vend oranges, vegetables, cheese, or flowers.
Fig. 25 represents the costume of fishmongers at Oporto.
Italians. No part of Europe can be compared with Italy, for softness of climate, clearness of the sky, fertility of the soil, and pureness of the atmosphere. The soil, which is very undulating, is watered by numerous streams, and permits largely of cultivation; while the mountains conceal precious metals, and beautiful marbles. No country is better protected by nature.
On the north arises a broad barrier of stupendous mountains, while the remaining sides are protected by the sea. Along the coast are vast ports, with good harbours; and lastly, this portion of Europe alone has the advantage of offering ready access to both Asia and Africa.
The fertility of the soil, the mild temperature, and the large variety of natural productions which furnish good food, all indicate that Italy should possess a fine, vigorous, and intelligent population. And, indeed, the Italians possess these qualities.
We shall first examine rather more closely, the origin of this people, and the differences they present in various parts of the peninsula.
The Latin family which gave its name to the human group with which we are now concerned, had Italy for its home. In Italy, therefore, we should expect to meet with it. But we should be deceived were we to expect to find the pure Latin type among the modern Italians. The barbarian invasions in the north, and the contact with Greeks and Africans in the south, have wrought much alteration in the primitive type of the inhabitants of Italy. Except in Rome, and the Roman Campagna, the true type of the primitive Latin population is hardly to be found. The Grecian type exists in the south, and upon the Eastern slope of the Apennines, while in the north, the great majority of faces are Gallic. In Tuscany and the neighbouring regions are found the descendants of the ancient Etruscans.
What most interests us is the primitive Latin population. This is met with, as we have said, in and around Rome, and in order to find it we must go there.
The features of the early Latin people can be imagined without difficulty, by reference to busts of the first Roman emperors. We may thence arrive at the following characteristic features, as probably those of the ancient Italian races. The head is large, the forehead of no great height, the vertex (summit of the cranium) flattened, the temporal region protruding, and the face proportionally short. The nose, which is divided from the forehead by a marked depression, is aquiline; the lower jaw is broad, and the chin prominent.
26.—ROMAN PEASANT GIRL.
The modern population of Rome, without absolutely reproducing these features, still retain their beautifully pure characteristic lines.
27.—ROMAN PEASANTS.
In fig. 27, which represents a group of peasant men and women of Rome, we easily recognize these celebrated types of countenance, so familiar to every artist. The distinguishing marks will be easily seen in the Roman peasants, who, quitting their native country, seek their livelihood in France as models.
28.—YOUNG GIRL OF THE TRANSTEVERA.
As one of these types taken from nature, we would call the reader’s attention to fig. 28, which represents a young Roman girl from the quarter on the banks of the Tiber called Transtevera, and also to fig. 29, which is a faithful portrait of peasants from around Rome.
It would be a fruitless task, were we, in studying the modern Romans, to seek among them traces, more or less eradicated, of the old Roman blood.
In a population which has been so degraded, oppressed, and polluted as this, by ages of slavery and obscurity, we should find nought but disturbance and chaos. We can make no reference to family life in this land of convents and celibacy, nor speak of intellectual faculties in a country where we see a jealous tyranny narrowing the minds of the inhabitants, and an authority that is seated in the blackest darkness, moulding body and mind in ignorance of morality and education. We should need the greatest power of penetration to find, in the effeminate and degenerate population of Modern Rome, the genius of the ancient conquerors of the world.
There are, however, reasons for hoping, that Rome, being now released from Papal authority, and having, since the year 1871, become the Capital of Italy and the residence of King Victor-Emmanuel, will gradually cease to feel the preponderance of the sacerdotal element.
Young Romans playing the favorite Italian game, la mora, with its usual accompaniment of gesticulations and shouts, is a very common street scene. The two persons playing this game raise their closed fists in the air, and then, in letting them fall, open as many fingers as they may think proper. At the same time they call out some number. The winner is he, who, by chance, calls out the number represented by the sum of all the fingers exhibited by the two players. If, for example, I call out five, and at the same time open two fingers, whilst my adversary displays three, which added to mine make five, the number called by me, I am winner. The arms of the two players are raised and lowered at the same time, and the numbers are called simultaneously, with great rapidity and regularity, producing a very singular result and one incomprehensible to a stranger.
La mora is played all over Italy.
But it is not alone in the city of Rome that the characteristic features of the ancient Latin race are to be found; the traveller passing through the suburbs of the capital of the Christian World, Frascati or Tivoli, will still encounter vestiges of the old Latins hidden beneath the sad garments of misery. (Fig. 29.)
29.—STREET AT TIVOLI.
It may be said that Rome at the present day is a vast convent. In it the ecclesiastical population holds an important position and plays an important part. This, it is, which imparts to the Eternal City its austerity, not to say, its public sadness and moral languor. We shall therefore close our series of picturesque views of the inhabitants of Modern Rome, by glancing at the costumes of the principal dignitaries of the ecclesiastical order, their representation in fig. 30 being followed by the reproduction of a well-known picture, representing the Exaltation of Pio IX. (fig. 31).
30.—A CARDINAL ENTERING THE VATICAN.
The Latin type, which physically if not morally is met with in a state of purity at Rome, and in the Roman Campagna, has, on the other hand, undergone great modification in the provinces of the North, as well as in those of Southern Italy. Let us first consider the Northern provinces.
Northern Italy, endowed to perfection with natural advantages, washed by two seas, watered by the tributaries of a large river, possessing land of extraordinary fertility, nourishes a race in which the Latin blood has mingled with that of the German and Gaul. In Tuscany and the neighbourhood are, as we have said, the descendants of the old Etruscans, and further north are the offspring of Germanic and Gallic races.