350 MORE POT-POURRI 



Epicurean,' 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 instru- 

 ments of labour lie untouched, hung with wreaths of 

 flowers ; while masters and servants together go in sol- 

 emn 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 has long since become unin- 

 telligible. 



' 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 bloom, to strew before the quaint 

 images of the gods — Ceres and Bacchus, and the yet 

 more mysterious Dea Dia — as they passed through the 

 fields, carried in their little houses on the shoulders of 

 white -clad youths, who were understood to proceed to 

 this ofi&ce in perfect temperance, as pure in soul and 

 body as the air they breathed in the firm weather of 

 that early summer-time. The clean lustral water and 

 the full incense -box were carried after them.' 



So far the description is exact. The butchery which 

 disgusted Marius, Christianity has swept away ; but 

 everything else remains almost entirely the same. 



All trace of costume amongst the peasants has dis- 

 appeared even in this Arcetri neighbourhood, the most 

 simple and countrified side of Florence. The people, 

 from the outside, look well-to-do and comfortable, and 



