Page:Compromises (Repplier).djvu/111

 Rh of writers who give it with reluctant sincerity; of Borrow, for example, who firmly believed he hated many things for which he had a natural and visible affinity. "To the honour of Spain be it spoken," he writes in "The Bible in Spain," "that it is one of the few countries in Europe where poverty is never insulted nor looked upon with contempt. Even at an inn the poor man is never spurned from the door, and, if not harboured, is at least dismissed with fair words, and consigned to the mercies of God and His Mother."

The more ribald Nash, writing centuries earlier, finds no words too warm in which to praise the charities of Catholic Rome. "The bravest Ladies, in gownes of beaten gold, washing pilgrims' and poor soldiours' feete. … This I must say to the shame of us English; if good workes may merit Heaven, they doe them, we talk about them."

The Roman ladies "doe them" still; not so picturesquely as they did three hundred years ago, but in the same noble and delicate spirit. Their means and their methods are far below the means and methods of charitable