There was a good deal of tinware,
too, glittering in the sunshine, especially around the pedestal of the
bronze statue of Duke Ferdinand, who curbs his horse and looks down upon
the bustling piazza in a very stately way. . . . . The people attending
the fair had mostly a rustic appearance; sunburnt faces, thin frames; no
beauty, no bloom, no joyousness of young or old; an anxious aspect, as if
life were no easy or holiday matter with them; but I should take them to
be of a kindly nature, and reasonably honest. Except the broad-brimmed
Tuscan hats of the women, there was no peculiarity of costume. At a
careless glance I could very well have mistaken most of the men for
Yankees; as for the women, there is very little resemblance between them
and ours,--the old being absolutely hideous, and the young ones very
seldom pretty. It was a very dull crowd. They do not generate any
warmth among themselves by contiguity; they have no pervading sentiment,
such as is continually breaking out in rough merriment from an American
crowd; they have nothing to do with one another; they are not a crowd,
considered as one mass, but a collection of individuals.
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