veliness was more resplendent made
By the mere passing of that cavalcade."

It seems almost a pity to contrast with these the comment of a careful
and sympathetic student of the agricultural Italy of the age of
King Umberto: "To return to the question of the natural richness of
agricultural Italy," says Dr. W.N. Beauclerk in his _Rural Italy_
(1888), "we may compare the words of the German ballad: 'In Italy
macaroni ready cooked rains from the sky, and the vines are festooned
with sausages,' with the words today rife throughout the Kingdom,
'Rural Italy is poor and miserable, and has no future in store for
her.' The fact is that Italy is rich in capabilities of production,
but exhausted in spontaneous fertility. Her vast forests have been cut
down, giving place to sterile and malarious ground: the plains and
shores formerly covered with wealthy and populous cities are now
deserted marshes: Sardinia and other ancient granaries of the Roman
Empire are empty and unproductive: two-thirds of the Kingdom are
occupied by mountains impossible of cultivation, and the remainder is
to a large extent ill-farmed and unremunerative. To call Italy the
'Garden of Europe' under these circumstances seems cruel irony."]

[Footnote 48: As we may assume that the yields of wine of which
Fundanius boasts were the largest of which Varro had information in
the Italy of his time, it is interesting to compare them with the
largest yields of the most productive wine country of France today.
Fifteen cullei, or three hundred amphorae per jugerum, is the
equivalent of 2700 gallons per acre: while according to P. Joigneaux,
in the _Livre de la Ferme_, the largest yields in modern France are
in the Midi (specifically Herault), where in exceptional cases they
amount to as much as 250 hectolitres to the hectare, or say 2672
gallons per acre. It may be noted that the yields of the best modern
wines, like Burgundy, are less than half of this, and it is probable
that the same was true of the _vinum Setinum_ of Augustus, if not of
the Horatian Massic.]

[Footnote 49: The modern Italian opinion of farming in a fertile but
unhealthy situation is expressed with a grim humour in the Tuscan
proverb: "in Maremma s'arricchisce in un anno, si muore in sei mesi."]

[Footnote 50: This is Keil's ingenious interpretation of an obscure
passage. We may compare the English designation of a church yard as
"God's acre." What Licinius Crassus actually did was, while har