When I first came to Venice, I accepted the fate appointed to young men on the Continent. I took lodgings², and I began dining drearily³ at the restaurants. Worse prandial fortunes may befall one, but it is hard to conceive of the continuance of so great unhappiness elsewhere; while the restaurant life is an established and permanent thing in Italy, for every bachelor and for many forlorn families. It is not because the restaurants are very dirty—if you wipe your plate and glass carefully before using them, they need not stomach you; it is not because the rooms are cold—if you sit near the great vase of smoldering⁴ embers in the centre of each room you may suffocate⁵ in comparative comfort; it is not because the prices are great—they are really very reasonable; it is not for any very tangible⁶ fault that I object to life at the restaurants, and yet I cannot think of its hopeless homelessness without rebellion against the whole system it implies, as something unnatural⁷ and insufferable.

But before we come to look closely at this aspect of Italian civilization, it is better to look first at a very noticeable trait of Italian character,—temperance in eating and drinking. As to the poorer classes, one observes without great surprise how slenderly they fare, and how with a great habit of talking of meat and drink, the verb mangiare remains⁸ in fact for the most part inactive with them. But it is only just to say that this virtue⁹ of abstinence seems to be not wholly the result of necessity, for it prevails with other classes which could well afford the opposite vice¹⁰. Meat and drink do not form the substance of

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