Page:Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843 - Volume 2.djvu/290

 No one can talk to them without perceiving latent, under ignorance and superstition, great natural abilities, and that heartfelt piety which springs (as our higher virtues do,) from the imagination which warms and colours their faith. Poor people! how I long for a fairy wand which would make them proprietors of the earth which they till, but must not reap. How sad a thing is human society: yet it is comforting, even where we find the laws by which it is said to be held together—but which ought rather to be likened to an iron yoke, pressing it down and depriving it of its native strength and elasticity—yet, I say, it warms my heart when I find the individuals that compose a population, poor, humble, ignorant, misguided, yet endowed with some of the brightest gifts of our nature, and bearing in their faces the stamp of intelligence and feeling. I never lived among a people I liked so well as these Sorrentines. I hope I am not deceived: but Mr. Cooper, who sojourned here a few months, and Mrs. Starke, who lived here for years, evidently regard them with more liking and esteem than the poorer classes usually inspire.

Our way of life is regular enough, as in hot countries it always must be. The mornings are