establishment on the Fibreno, and is exported to the Levant, and even to the Brazils.

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9. AGRICULTURE.

The agriculture of the Papal States, with the exception of the system which prevails in the Roman Campagna, differs very little from that of Tuscany; but we look in vain for the active industry which has rendered the territory of the Grand-Duke the garden of Italy. The leading peculiarity of the Papal system is the prevalence of immense farms in the least cultivated districts. The Campagna immediately around Rome, called by the Italian agriculturists the Agro Romano;" the vast tract of Maremma, which spreads along the coast from the Tuscan frontier to that of Naples; and the marshy land in the neighbourhood of Ferrara and Ravenna, are all cultivated upon the system of large farms, and are consequently in the hands of a few wealthy agriculturists. In other parts of Italy the farms are generally of small size, and have poor landlords and still poorer tenants. The large estates are held in mortmain; the longest leases are for life, and the shortest for twelve years. The Maremma district is divided among 150 farmers. The Agro Romano, containing about 550,000 English acres, is divided into farms varying from 1200 to 3000 acres: some, however, are much larger, as, for instance, the celebrated farm of Campomorto, which contains not less than 20,000 acres. This immense tract is in the hands of about forty farmers, who are called "Mercanti di Campagna," and form a corporation protected by the Government, and possessed of peculiar privileges. Each Mercante rents several farms, paying a fixed rent only for the cultivable ground: many of them are extremely rich, and live in palaces at Rome, where they have counting-houses and clerks to transact the business of their farms. The smallest farms of the Agro Romano require a capital of 20007., while the largest require one of 20,0007.; the rent alone of the farm of Campomorto, mentioned above, is 5000l. a-year. Leases at fixed rents are rare in the Papal States, except in some of the great farms and in the Maremma, where estates are occasionally subdivided and underlet to small farmers. The mezzeria system, or the plan of colonizing, everywhere prevails. This system, which dates from the earliest times of Italian history, is founded on a division of profits between the landlord and tenant: it necessarily implies a mutual good faith between the parties, and an entire reliance on the integrity of the cultivator. In Tuscany, where the system flourishes in great perfection, its advantages are considered by some to counterbalance its practical evils; but in the Papal States it has produced great wretchedness among both tenants and labourers. The mezzeria may be defined as a kind of unwritten contract or partnership between the landlord and tenant: the landlord supplies capital, the tenant finds labour and the implements required in ordinary cultivation. The seed for sowing is paid for jointly, and the produce of the farm is equally divided.

All extra work, such as embanking, planting, reclaiming waste lands, &c., falls upon the landlord, who pays the tenant wages for this additional work. Whatever may be thought of this system at first sight, it has been proved by experience that an equal division of the produce is impracticable in the Papal States, where the people are deficient in the industry and thrift which are characteristic of the Tuscan countryman. The tenant is therefore unable to live on the half produce, and is consequently in perpetual debt to his landlord. This result is again practically shown by the fact that a farm on the mezzeria system does not return more than 2 per cent. on the capital, while one held on lease generally returns 3 per cent. The land also in the neighbourhood of Rome, which is farmed out at fixed rents, sells readily for forty years' purchase; while no one will purchase a mezzeria farm who does not obtain 5 per cent. net for his capital. The most profitable kind of agricultural occupation is grazing in recent years mulberries have been a more satisfactory investment even than the olive. The vineyards require great care, and with few exceptions make inadequate returns. The system of farming in the Roman plain is in many respects peculiar. In the first place, the farmer seldom lives on his estate, the solitary casale being tenanted by the fattore, or steward, and by the herdsmen. In the winter the farm is covered with cattle: the number of sheep collected on the Campagna at that season is said to amount to 600,000; and the large grey oxen, which are bred for the Roman market, cannot be much less than half that number. The herdsmen are seen riding over the plain wrapped in a sheep-skin cloak, and carrying a long pike: the horses they ride are almost wild, and are turned loose in summer among the woods and morasses of the coast, where they mingle with the buffaloes and herds of swine which people that desolate tract. As the summer draws on, the climate becomes too unhealthy for the cattle the sheep and oxen are then driven from the plain to the cool pastures on the Sabine hills, to the high ground in the neighbourhood of Rieti, and even to the mountains of the Abruzzi. At harvest time the heats are of course terrific, and the malaria assumes its most deadly character. The peasants from the Volscian hills and from beyond the frontier come down into the plain to earn a few crowns for the ensuing winter: they work in the harvest-field all day under a scorching sun, and at night sleep on the damp earth, from which the low heavy vapour of the pestilent malaria begins to rise at sunset. Even the strongest and healthiest are often struck down in a single week; before the harvest is gathered in, hundreds of hardy mountaineers have perished on the plain, and those who survive either die on their return home or bear the mark of the pestilence for life. As soon as the harvest is over the immense Campagna is utterly deserted: the herdsmen are absent with their cattle, the fattore takes refuge in Rome, and the labourers retire to the few scattered villages on the outskirts of the plain, where they imagine that they enjoy an immunity from the

malaria, which even there follows them with its fatal influence. After each harvest the land, in some parts of the Maremma more especially, is generally left to pasture for an indefinite time, the farmer seldom allowing more than one wheat crop in four years. In the more peopled districts there is an annual rotation from corn to spring grasses. In all parts of the States the agricultural implements are of the rudest kind; the native manufacture never deviates from the primitive style which has prevailed for ages, and the heavy duties on articles of foreign manufacture prohibit the introduction of the improvements of other countries.

10. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE COUNTRY.

It is impossible to travel over Italy without observing the striking difference between its northern and southern provinces. The traveller whose object is to combine instruction with the other purposes of his journey, will discover on crossing the frontier of the Papal States that he has entered on a country of new associations and ideas. A class of objects, differing altogether from those to which he has been accustomed in Northern Italy, will be presented to his notice; and unless he be prepared to appreciate them, he will not only lose a great portion of enjoyment, but will be induced to believe that the sole interest of the country is centred in its great capitals. That portion of Italy which it is our province to describe in the present volume includes within its limits a field of study and observation almost inexhaustible. Though rifled for centuries by all classes of writers, there is still no part of Europe which the traveller will find so richly stored with intellectual treasure. From the North it differs mainly in this, that it is preeminently the Italy of classical times. It carries the mind back through the history of twenty centuries to the events which laid the foundation of Roman greatness. It presents us with the monuments of nations which either ceased to exist before the origin of Rome, or gradually sunk under her power. Every province is full of associations; every step we take is on ground hallowed by the spirits of the poets, the historians, and the philosophers of Rome. These however are not the only objects which command attention. In the darkness which succeeded the fall of Rome, Italy was the first country which burst the trammels in which the world had so long been bound; constitutional freedom first arose amidst the contests of the popes with the German emperors; and in the republics of Middle Italy the human mind was developed with a rapidity and grandeur which Rome, in the plenitude of her power, had never equalled. The light of modern civilization was first kindled on the soil which had witnessed the rise and fall of the Roman empire; and Europe is indebted to the Italy of the middle ages for its first lessons, not only in political wisdom, but in law, in literature, and in art. The history of the Italian republics is not a mere record of political party, or of the struggles of petty princes and rival factions: it is the record of an era in which modern civiliza

tion received its earliest impulses. Amidst the extraordinary energy of their citizens, conquest was not the exclusive object, as in the dark ages which had preceded them: before the end of the thirteenth century the universities of the free cities opened a new path for literature and science, and sent forth their philosophers and jurists to spread a knowledge of their advancement. The constitutional liberties of Europe derived inestimable lessons from the free institutions of Italy, and the courts of the Italian princes afforded asylums to that genius which has survived the liberties in which it had its origin. The middle-age history of Italy, and particularly of its central provinces, has hitherto been scarcely regarded by the traveller, although in many respects it is not less interesting than the records of classical times. The intimate connection of her early institutions with those of England, and the part which many of our countrymen played in the great drama of Italian history, associate us more immediately with this period than with any other in her annals. We may perhaps recognise, in the energy and originality of the Italian character during the middle ages, a prototype of that prodigious activity which our own country has acquired under the influence of the lessons which they taught her. We must at least regard with respect a people who have done so much in the great cause of human amelioration, and admit that the period in which Italy started from her slumber, and led the way in the march of European improvement, is one of the most brilliant eras in the history of the world.

The physical characters of Central Italy are not less interesting than its historical associations. To apply our remarks more particularly to the Papal States, we may say without hesitation that their resources have hitherto been very imperfectly appreciated. We are convinced that no people in Europe have been so little understood, or so much misrepresented. The traveller who has been in the habit of hurrying from Bologna to Florence, and from Florence to Rome, neither stopping to explore the objects which present themselves on the road, nor turning aside into less beaten tracts, can have formed no idea of the treasures of art abundantly placed within his reach. He can have had no opportunity of becoming acquainted with the true character of the people, or of knowing the charms of the provincial cities. In regard to art, it is a great mistake to suppose that it can be studied exclusively in the galleries of the great capitals. The filiations of the different schools, the links of the chain which connect together the leading epochs, not merely in painting, but in architecture and sculpture, are to be sought, not in the halls of the museums and palaces of Rome, but in the smaller cities, where every branch of art, under the patronage of the local sovereigns or the republics, has left some of its most important works. No one who has not deviated from the high roads can know how richly the Papal States abound in provincial cities, in which we find all the elegancies of life combined with museums, and palaces, and institutions, far beyond most

other countries of Europe. It is only by seeking them in their own homes that we can appreciate the educated and courteous character of the provincial nobility, the intelligence of the middle ranks, and the merits of a very noble peasantry. We know nothing more delightful than the unaffected hospitality which the stranger meets with in the smaller towns, or the security felt among the open-hearted people, who have not lost their national character among the crowds of the great capitals. The stranger who possesses the main secret to the confidence of the people-the power of conversing with them in their own language-may travel over all parts of the States and be sure of finding friends. We have explored the least known and least frequented districts, have traversed the mountains unprotected, and have dwelt among their remotest villages for days together, with a sense of security which we had never occasion to regret.

The scenery of central Italy is another charm which will appeal probably to a larger class. Whatever may be the beauties of particular districts traversed by the high road, the finest characters of Italian scenery must be sought, like the people, beyond the beaten track. The fertility of the March of Ancona, the rich cultivation of Romagna, the beautiful country intersected by the Velino, the Metauro, the Anio, and the Sacco, have each an interest of a different character, which the traveller will not be long in appreciating as they deserve. Nothing can be more picturesque than the forms of the Umbrian mountains, or more rich than the delicious valleys which burst upon the traveller at different stages of his journey. Nature there appears in a richness of colouring to which the eye has never been before accustomed. In the southern provinces the purity of atmosphere is combined with an harmonious repose of nature, the costumes of the people are in the highest degree picturesque, and the buildings have the rare merit of being perfectly in keeping with the scenery.

Among the first objects which will be presented to the traveller, the monuments of antiquity are the most important. We shall therefore state, as concisely as possible, such general facts in reference to their archæological characters, as may be necessary to prepare the traveller for their study.

13. PELASGIC ARCHITECTURE.

No circumstance is so much calculated to mislead the stranger who travels into Italy for the purposes of study, as the frequent misapplication of the terms Pelasgic, Cyclopean, and Etruscan. Every specimen of ancient architecture in middle Italy has been called by one or other of these names, merely because the style is colossal compared to the later works of Roman construction. Even the best-known cities of Etruria, where we have the monuments of a people confessedly distinct from all the other inhabitants of the Italian peninsula, have been described as Cyclopean and Pelasgic. The three terms have sometimes been applied to the same