342 MORE POT-POURRI 



pavement of which was drawn out in a beautiful coloured 

 pattern made of the petals of flowers Poppies, Roses, 

 Larkspurs, the brilliant yellow Broom and all between 

 the pattern filled in with little leaves of bright green Box. 

 The effect was to me quite new and very decorative. The 

 procession passed on each side, and the priest alone, 

 carrying the Host, was esteemed worthy to walk straight 

 down the middle of this Nature-coloured carpet. Nothing 

 could have been more rurally peaceful and lovely than the 

 whole scene. In the earlier days of the century we were 

 taught to believe the troubles of Italy, like the troubles of 

 Ireland, were owing to Catholicism. Now the theory 

 is that the Latin races are dying out ; but if this is true, 

 is it certain they are dying of Catholicism ? Is it not 

 quite wonderfully clear the Italians have never lost their 

 Paganism ? I confess, as I watched the whole scene, I 

 could only think of Pater's opening to ' Marius the Epi- 

 curean/ in which he describes how the purer forms of 

 Paganism had lingered in the villages after the triumph of 

 Christianity ' a religion of usages rather than the facts 

 of belief, and attached to very definite things and places.' 

 Then comes the description of the ' little ' or private 

 Ambarvalia in the home of the youth Marius, and it 

 almost exactly describes what I saw this June day quite 

 at the end of the nineteenth century. ' At the appointed 

 time all work ceases ; the instruments of labour lie 

 untouched, hung with wreaths of flowers ; while masters 

 and servants together go in solemn procession along the 

 dry paths of vineyard and cornfield. . . . The old Latin 

 words of the Liturgy, to be said as the procession moved 

 on its way, though their precise meaning was long since 

 become unintelligible. 



* Early on that day the girls of the farm had been busy 

 in the great portico, filling large baskets with flowers cut 

 short from branches of Apple and Cherry, then in spacious 



