diminishing census; and Italy, under the same laws, is not only rapidly
approaching national bankruptcy, but is in parts already depopulated by
an emigration so extensive that it can only be compared with the
westward migration of the Aryan tribes. The forced subdivision of
property from generation to generation is undeniably a socialistic
measure, since it must, in the end, destroy both aristocracy and
plutocracy; and it is surely a notable point that the two great European
nations which have adopted it as a fundamental principle of good
government should both be on the road to certain destruction, while
those powers that have wholly and entirely rejected any such measure are
filling the world with themselves and absorbing its wealth at an
enormous and alarming rate.

[Illustration: VILLA BORGHESE]

The art of the Renascence has left us splendid pictures of mediaeval
public life, which are naturally accepted as equally faithful
representations of the life of every day. Princes and knights, in
gorgeous robes and highly polished armour, ride on faultlessly
caparisoned milk-white steeds; wondrous ladies wear not less wonderful
gowns, fitted with a perfection which women seek in vain today, and
embroidered with pearls and precious stones that might ransom a rajah;
young pages, with glorious golden hair, stand ready at the elbows of
their lords and ladies, or kneel in graceful attitude to deliver a
letter, or stoop to bear a silken train, clad in garments which the
modern costumer strives in vain to copy. After three or four centuries,
the colours of those painted silks and satins are still richer than
anything the loom can weave. In the great fresco, each individual of the
multitude that fills a public place, or defiles in open procession under
the noonday light, is not only a masterpiece of fashion, but a model of
neatness; linen, delicate as woven gossamer, falls into folds as finely
exact as an engraver's point could draw; velvet shoes tread without
speck or spot upon the well-scoured pavement of a public street;
men-at-arms grasp weapons and hold bridles with hands as carefully
tended as any idle fine gentleman's, and there is neither fleck nor
breath of dimness on the mirror-like steel of their armour; the very
flowers, the roses and lilies that strew the way, are the perfection of
fresh-cut hothouse blossoms; and when birds and beasts chance to be
necessary to the composition of the picture, they are represented wi