y, as a system, is in a most backward state. Its
cultivation is the cultivation of Ireland. And yet Italy is excelled by
few countries on earth, perhaps by none, in point of its external
defences, and its inexhaustible internal resources; which, however,
under its present Government, are utterly wasted. On the north it is
defended by the wall of the Alps, and on all its other sides by the
ocean, whose bays offer boundless facilities for commerce. The plains of
Lombardy are eternally covered with flowers and fruit. The valleys of
Tuscany still boast the olive, the orange, and the vine. The wide waste
of the Campagna di Roma is of the richest soil, and, spread out beneath
the warm sun, might mingle on its surface the fruits of the torrid with
those of the temperate zones. Instead of this, Italy presents to the
traveller's eye a deplorable spectacle of wretched cabins, untilled
fields, and a population oppressed by sloth and covered with rags. The
towns are filled mostly with idlers and beggars. With all my inquiries,
I could never get a clear idea of how they live. The alms-houses are
numerous; for when a Government puts down trade, it must build hospitals
and poor's-houses, or see its subjects die of starvation. In Rome, for
example, besides the convents, where a number of poor people get a meal
a day,--a sufficiently meagre one,--there is the government
_Beneficenza_, which the more intelligent part account a great curse.
Some fifteen hundred or two thousand persons, many of them able-bodied
men, receive fifteen baiocchi,--sevenpence half-penny,--per day, in
return for which they pouter about with barrows, removing earth from
the old ruins, or cleaning the streets, which are none the cleaner, or
picking grass in the square of the Vatican. Many deplorable tales are
told in Rome of these people, and of the dire sacrifice made of the
female portion of their families. But the grand resource is beggary,
especially from foreigners; and if a beggar earn a penny a day, he will
make a shift to live. He will purchase half a pound of excellent
macaroni with the one baiocchi, and a few apples or grapes with the
other; and thus he is provided for for the day. The inhabitants of these
countries do not eat so substantially as we do. Should he earn nothing,
he has it in his choice to steal or starve. This is the prolific source
of brigandage and vagabondism.

In the country, the peasants (and there almost all are peasants) live by
cult