f the Campagna,
saunters after his sauntering flock, crawling afoot, the gallant
buttero, in the saddle from morning to night, represents that
aristocracy which among all uncivilized races and in all uncivilized
times is the attribute of the mounted as distinguished from the
unmounted portion of mankind. And if this fact is recognized by the
generality of the world in which he lives, it is very specially
assumed to be undeniable by the buttero himself. There is always a
smack of the dandy about him. He is proud of his appearance, of his
horse and of his mastery over him. He knows that he is a picturesque
and striking figure, and the consciousness of the fact imparts a
something to his bearing that is calculated to make the most of it.
His manners and ways of life, too, are really more tinctured by
civilization than those of the rest of the rural population among whom
he lives. And this arises mainly from the fact that his occupations
bring him more and more frequently into contact with his superiors in
the social scale. The agricultural system prevailing in the district
around Rome differs markedly and essentially from that in use
generally in Tuscany. There the system of rent is almost unknown. The
present tiller of the soil occupies it on condition of rendering to
the landowner the half of the produce of it, and this arrangement is
conducted under the superintendence of a _fattore_. But the
widespreading possessions of a Roman landowner are for the most part
let to a speculator, who is termed a "mercante di campagna." The
commercial operations engaged in by these "merchants of the country"
are often very extensive, and many of them become very wealthy men. It
is hardly necessary to say that neither they nor their families live
on, or indeed in most cases near, the land from which they draw their
wealth. They are absentees, with a paramount excuse for being so. For
the vast plains over which their herds and flocks and droves wander
are for the most part scourged by the malaria to such an extent that
human life, or at all events human health, is incompatible with a
residence on them. The wealthy _mercante di campagna_ lives in Rome
therefore, and his wife and family take the lead in the rich, but not
in the aristocratic, circles of the society of the capital. One of
these men may be seen perhaps at a "meet" of the Roman hunt, mounted
on the best and most showy horse in the field, attended probably by a
smart groom leadi