They grace the back steps of a rather shabby villa in the country, - Demosthenes and Cicero, larger than life, dreary, funereal memorials of the follies of our fathers.
The simple days we have been speaking of did not, however, outlast the circle that inaugurated them.About 1867 a few rich New Yorkers began "trying to know the Italians" and go about with them.
One family, "up to snuff" in more senses than one, married their daughter to the scion of a princely house, and immediately a large number of her compatriots were bitten with the madness of going into Italian society.
In 1870, Rome became the capital of united Italy.The court removed there.The "improvements" began.Whole quarters were remodelled, and the dear old Rome of other days, the Rome of Hawthorne and Madame de Stael, was swept away.With this new state of things came a number of Americo-Italian marriages more or less successful; and anything like an American society, properly so-called, disappeared.To-day families of our compatriots passing the winter months in Rome are either tourists who live in hotels, and see sights, or go (as far as they can) into Italian society.