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Then occurred one of those revelations of character with which Nature is always ready to trip up merely human judgment. Aunt Viney, an unrelenting widow of calm but unshaken Dutch prejudices, high but narrow in religious belief, merged without a murmur into the position of chatelaine of this unconventional, half-Latin household.
The half-Latin city of Geneva was the source of that stream of democratic opinion in church and state, which, flowing to England under Queen Elizabeth, was repelled by persecution to Holland, and thence directed to the continent of North America."
Here it is, this little nation, only a trifle larger than the State of Pennsylvania, a half-Latin island in an ocean of Magyars and Slavs. Their speech when it is not French is full of Latin echoes, and a Rumanian, however mixed his blood, is as fond of thinking himself a lineal and literal descendant of the Roman colonists as a New Englander is of ancestors in the Mayflower.
Now in mineralogy there are many half-Greek and half-Latin terms, very hard to articulate, and which would be most trying to a poet's measures. I don't wish to say a word against so respectable a science, far be that from me.
Hitherto the northern architect and the Italian architect are governed by the same instinct, and gratify the same penchant; but while the northern artist, frankly Gothic, embroiders his tower with delicate moldings, and complex flower-work, and a stone lacework infinitely multiplied and intersected, the southern artist, half-Latin through his tendencies and his reminiscences, erects a square, strong and full pile, in which a skilful ornamentation does not efface the general structure, which is not frail sculptured bijou, but a solid durable monument, its coating of red, black and white marble covering it with royal luxuriance, and which, through its healthy and animated statues, its bas-reliefs framed in medallions, recalls the friezes and pediments of an antique temple.
Here communed we three, blown from various winds, to this local Bohemia: Max, native of the free German City of Frankfort, operatic manager in Rio Janeiro, musician in New York, Denver resident by adoption, Philadelphia newspaperman by preference; Breffny, born in a Spanish village, reared in Continental countries, professedly an Irishman, but more than half-Latin in temperament and appearance, a cyclopedia for the benefit of his friends, and myself.
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