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COUNTRY LIFE IN PIEDMONT.

COUNTRY LIFE IN PIEDMONT.

ANTONIO GALLENGA,
AUTHOE OP 'HISTOEY OF PIEDMONT,' ' EBA DOLCI1TO,' * HALT IN 184S,'
ETC. ETC.

LONDON:
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLT.
1858.

PBINTED BY
JOUS EDWAKD TAYLOR, LITTLE GOEEN STREET,
LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS, LONDOM.

8 57^

TO
HIS MAJESTY VICTOR EMANUEL II,
KING- OP SABDINIA,
"ii be galantuomo,"
eEJjts SSSorft is Inscribes
WITH THE WABMEST FEELINGS OT LOYALTY, ATTACHMENT,
AND GEATITtTDE, BY
THE AUTHOR

" When Victor Emanuel was informed of the language held at the Tuileries,
he wrote with his own hand to General Della Rocca, his agent in Paris, that ' for
eight centuries past the Princes of the House of Savoy had always held their
brows erect, and that he would not begin to abase his own, that his people had
entrusted to him the custody of their liberties, and he would never betray them.' "
— The Times, March 21, 1858.

PREFACE.

Can the Italians be painted by one of them
selves ? Shall the world never hear the last about
the titles of Italy to the " first rank," — about the
destinies of a country privileged "never to die"?
Perhaps caricature may, in such a portraiture,
be as difficult to guard against as flattery.
Perhaps age and sorrow, long abode among
strangers, and hope deferred that maketh the
heart sick, may so far have quelled the confidence
and broken the pride of overweening patriotism,
that in his anxiety not to be too lenient, an
Italian may become too harsh to his country.
Between the two extremes there may also be
a middle course. There comes upon most of us,
with the lapse of years, a reaction against head
long self-conceit, a mistrust of all foregone con-

Vlll PREFACE.
elusions, an anxious longing to prove everything,
to run over and new-test all our tenets, to re
mould our whole being ; we turn mind and heart
into a blank tablet, whereon to photograph, as
it were, every ray that may seem to us to pro
ceed from God's own Truth.
In such a frame of mind we may easily be
brought to do justice to us and all that belongs
to us ; we may rise above that natural but some
times blind fondness which springs from the
associations of happy early life, from the charms
of sky, soil, and climate, the traditions of glo
rious annals, and the achievements of master
minds. He who has long meditated on the text,
" Homo sum," is not likely to have his judgment
clouded by " the proud consciousness of being an
Italian." And as soon as truth becomes in a man's
heart stronger than patriotism, so soon it will be
found that patriotism itself is strengthened by
truth. There is in that calmness which arises
from depth of conviction, in that plain utterance
which results from uprightness of motive, a power
far outweighing the warmth even of genuine en-

PREFACE. IX
thusiasm; nothing is so strong as the ipse dixi
assertion of a man visibly placed beyond reach
of passion. Be the cause ever so holy, it is best
entrusted to him who can prove that there is
something he holds more sacred than the cause
itself; the most strenuous champion of his coun
try is he who will dare to say all the evil no less
than all the good he knows about it; who can
point back to a whole life of unswerving, uncom
promising veracity ; who can lay his hand upon
his heart and say, without fear of contradiction,
" Arnica Italia, magis arnica Veritas."
Perhaps it will be said that I am taking too
lofty a station, in ushering in a work simply
descriptive of manners and customs, in which
every allusion to political topics has been studi
ously avoided. But I am convinced that truth
must have great weight even in trifles ; that the
mere picture of country life may and should be
made strict matter of conscience. Even as an
artist, it is only by following the True, that man
may hope to achieve the Beautiful. What I
offer to the Reader in the following pages may
not be real truth — truth absolute, — but it is at

X PREFACE.
least my truth. I have dived into the well after
the priceless jewel. I may have " caught a crab"
{piffliato un granchio) as the Italians have it, that
is, blundered and gone wrong in my plunge. I
have no right to be angry with any one who may
refuse to believe what I say, but I should cer
tainly not be pleased with any one who should
deny that i" believe what I say.
It is only a few days since a writer in the
Quarterly Review* complained that it was im
possible to get at the real facts of Italian life.
Unquestionably English tourists, though excel
lent observers, hardly allow themselves leisure
to look below the surface ; and the Italians, who
cannot see their own faces, yet flatter themselves
that they know them too well by heart to deem
it worth while to look at their reflection in the
glass. Such a task would require the deep know
ledge of a native, and the fresh glance of a
stranger; the cool impassiveness of the latter,
yet something of the active love by which the
former alone can be sustained in his labour.
* Quarterly Eeview, No. 206, April, 1858 ; art. ' Tours and
Tourists in Italy.'

PREFACE. XI
Lively curiosity — or, it is but justice to say,
earnest interest — arises in every English bosom
concerning Piedmont, that " heart of Italy,"
round which all the vitality of the Peninsula is
at this crisis centred. It is in Piedmont, my
country by blood, if not by birth, that I have
lately studied the Italian character ; and I have
looked for it, not in the worn types of a popu
lous town, but in the more primitive forms of a
rural district. On the good or bad features of
the national character rest all hopes for the new
scheme of a free Constitution in Piedmont ; on
the success of self-government in Piedmont lie
the best chances of a mitigation of the fate of
the rest of Italy. With all the shortcomings of
our people, — and the reader will allow I have
not spared them, — I believe there is enough
soundness in the basis to give us the best assu
rance of the solidity of the rising structure.
A. G.
Kensington, May 1858.

CONTENTS.

Dedication  . . . . . v

Preface

I.
Midnight on the Alps  1
MontCenis. — The Messagerie.— The Road.— Silence and
Solitude. — Darkness and Mystery. — Dreams and Phan
toms. — The Diligence again. II.
The Countby and the People  15
Views afoot. — -Piedmontese Hospitality. — Meekness and
Resignation. — The Bottle.— An old Piedmontese " Ga-
lantuomo " and a " Fine old English Q-entleman." — Le
Vin est mort, vive le Vin! — Reapers and Gleaners. —
Industry and its Rewards. — A retired Workman. —
Piedmontese Germans. — Mountaineer Tenacity. — Major
Garda of Samone. III.
ExTEEIOBS AND InTEEIOES  40
Landscape on a large scale. — Italian Notion of Country
Life. — No Eden for Eve without the Apples. — Family
Ties. — Patriarchal Manners.- — Domestics and Familiars.
—A Sweetened Cup. — Free and Easy Language. — Plain
ness and Squeamishness : inter titrumque.

XIV CONTENTS. IV. Page
Koads and Conveyances  51
Light and Shade. — Shocking Roads. — Good pair of Legs.
—Grandeur and Wretchedness. — Cheapness and Nasti-
ness. — Slow Coaches. — Sorry Cattle. — Italian and En
glish Driving. — A Word and a Blow. — Gar-r-r-ribaldi.
V.
Inns and Inn-Customees  69
Piedmont and Switzerland. — Italian Innkeepers at home
and abroad. — Italian Cookery. — Chambermaids and
Chamberlads. — Ins and outs of Italian Inns. — A Re
veille. — King Dirt. — Piedmont and France.
VI.
Land and Land-Labotjeebs  83
The Weather-glass. — Agriculture. — Plain and Moun
tain Husbandry. — Town and Country. — Owners and
Labourers. — Food of Food- Producers. — Serfs and Free
men. — Husbandmen in Italy and Abroad.
VII.
Land and Land-Eats  .... 102
Meum et Fuim. — Beggar and Vagrant. — Rascally Cha
rity. — Fields and Field-Guards. — Good Fences make
Good Neighbours. — Italian Notions of Country Life. —
Nee Tumultiis nee Solitudo.
VIII.
Watee and Water- Wobks  114
The Land of Undine. — Taxing the Glaciers. — Canals. —
Ricefields. — Water Litigation. — Water Parliament. —
Every River to keep its own Bed. — Where there's a
Will there's a Way. — Bread and Politics. — England
to the Rescue.

CONTENTS. XV
IX. Pege
Woods and Woodmen  127
Tell the Truth and Shame . . the Press. — Lopping and
Chopping. — Stripping the Plain. — Shaving the Moun
tain. — Nakedness of the Land. — Two Definitions to the
word "Liberty." — Hundred Trees for One. — Scarcity
of Fuel. — Woodman spare that Tree.
X.
Spinning- and Weaving  141
The Plough and the Loom. — Coalfields and Water
Streams. — Piedmont and Switzerland. — Cotton and Silk.
— Piedmont and France. — Railways and Factories. —
Mines. — Potteries. — Hands and Wages. — Native and
Foreign Industry. — Wholesale and Retail Dealing. — The
Merchant and the Pedlar. — Higgling and Haggling. —
The Harbour of Genoa. — A League of Small States.
XI.
Heabts and Heabths  167
Winter and Solitude. — Greatness and Dreariness. —
Women, Husbands, and Priests. — Cold Weather in Town
and Country. — No Fuel for your Money. — The Cafe. —
Town and Country Coffee-houses. — -Life Out-of-doors.
— Domestic and Social Life. — Provincial Quidnuncs. —
Death-beds in England and Italy. — Card-playing — Pub
lic and Private Gambling. — The Lottery. — Church and
State Fooleries. — Masquerades and Processions. — Panem
et Circenses. — Drawing-rooms. — The Queen of many
Hearts.— Incense and Tobacco-smoke. — Cleverness and
Bluism. — Convents and Ladies' Schools. — Books and
Readers. — Low Ebb of Italian Literature. — The Mace
donians of Italy. — Frenchified Italy. — Profligacy of the
Stage. — No Translations from German or English.
— Doctor Antonio no Prophet in his own Country. —

XVI CONTENTS. Page
No Readers, no Thinkers.— No Thinking, no Acting.
—Those Wretched Patois.— Language and Civilization.
— Down with the Grumbler !
XII.
Nebves and Muscles  229
Winter Landscape. — A Midnight Scramble. — Siberia in
Italy. — A Few Words on the Italian Climate. — A Public
Dinner. — Public Dinners in England and Piedmont. —
Public and Private Dining. — A Few Words on Italian
Abstemiousness.— The Games of Old Italy. — The Heart
and the Stomach. — Roast Beef and Macaroni. — Diet
and its Effects. — Walks and Rides. — Companions to my
Solitude. — Piedmontese Brothers. — A Stout Old Grand-
sire. — Wearing out of the Celtic Races. — Decline in
France and Piedmont. — Itahan Temperament. — Stout
and Fat. — Blood and Water. — That Murderous Lancet !
— Physical and Moral Softness. — The Land of Sighs
and Tears. — The Child father to the Man. — Italian Ideas
of Education. — First Attempts at Physical Education.
— The Mountaineers Strangers in their own Mountains.
— The Best Mountaineer in Piedmont. — Sports of the
King. — Sports of the People. — Quails and Snipes. —
Larks and Nightingales. — The Gun and the Net. — The
Line and the Lime. — Italians at War and Peace. — Sol
diers and Citizens. — A Gloomy Present. — A Cheerful
Future. — Adieu, my Native Land, Adieu !

COUNTRY LIFE IN PIEDMONT.

MIDNIGHT ON THE ALPS.
Turin, September 1.
Mont Blanc and her rosy sister, the Wetter,
Schreck, and other Horns in the Bernese Ober-
land, and even Noah's old coach-house, Mount
Ararat in Armenia, have all been " done " this
year, as it is right they should be. I have my
self achieved my Alpine ascent. I walked over
Mont Cenis. I beg you will not think too
lightly of my deed. Had I any power of de
scription, I know my narrative would not sound
tame, even by the side of Albert Smith's one
thousand and first performance.
What, in sober reality, is after all an ascent
of Mont Blanc ? You huddle and crouch to
gether, a score of you, in a cleft of the rock of

2 MIDNIGHT ON THE ALPS.
the Grands Mulets,— you consume an intoler
able deal of cold fowl and champagne, — you toil
up in the dark by a slippery snow-path, tied to
gether like so many Spanish onions in a string,
— you have in your ears the din of your jab
bering Chamouny guides, the piteous moans, or
the stale jokes of your jaded, dreary fellow-
Cockneys. In due time you reach the summit —
if you reach it — and in a cruel, cutting, killing
wind, you stand for five, or it may be for ten
minutes upon it, benumbed, bewildered, frost-
•bitten, sick at heart, and have before you —
weather permitting— a bird's-eye view of " all
the kingdoms of the earth." Then down you
slide, or scamper, or tumble, pele-mele, harum-
scarum, riding on your spiked mountain-staff,
like so many witches on their broomsticks, down
on the snow-dust again. You are met in the
valley by a troop of half-cheering, half-jeering
Savoyard ragamuffins, who have got up an ova
tion ready for you, for the sake of the halfpence
vou are expected to sow broadcast amongst
them. You sit down to a hot fork-breakfast,
pen your letter to the ' Times,' and are able to
say, for your lifetime, that you have done it —
you have done Mont Blanc. You have not

MIDNIGHT ON THE ALPS. 6
paused for one moment ; you have not been one
moment alone, not one moment sufficiently col
lected to "realize a sensation." You have seen
and heard and felt nothing.
Now for my achievement. We had dined on
tough mutton, at a dirty hole of an inn at St.
Michael's in Maurienne. I had sat from six
o'clock till midnight in the coupe of the Mes-
sagerie Imperiale, napping for six weary hours,
that being, as you know full well, " my custom
always of an afternoon." I had a Berlin Rath
and Ritter of some kind or other with me, and'
his blooming tender bride on her wedding tour,
who kept nodding most affectionately to the Alps
as they neared, and whose fair blonde head per
petually oscillated like a pendulum between her
husband's shoulder and mine, till it settled com
fortably on the side where her heart beat — I sat
on her left — affording me the benefit of a genial
warmth, which the late hour and the keen moun
tain air rendered anything but superfluous or
unwelcome. On the stroke of twelve we were at Lans-
le-bourg. There I drank a whole King Arthur's
punchbowlfull of coffee and milk; then, while
the conductor, with many an oath, put twelve
B 2

4 MIDNIGHT ON THE ALPS.
mules to his lumbering conveyance, I walked
forth into the night alone.
I felt fresh and strong, and my heart bounded
within me. I brandished my trusty iron-headed
stick, a weapon, as you are well aware, with
which I could crack a bull's frontal bone, let
alone a mere Christian man's skull. We have
travelled together, dear Marmion, and you can
bear witness that I have few, if any, equals for
soundness of lungs and swiftness of foot, espe
cially walking up-hill. It is a peculiarity with
me that I never stay or slacken my pace in the
ascent, however long or toilsome, but ever rush
on and on, as if I meant to take the mountain
by storm. The rapidity and continuity of motion
raises the blood to fever-heat, and gives the brain
something of the actual throbbing of fever. Now
most of us know from experience that no human
enjoyment comes up to the trance of a good fever,
and the lightness and elasticity of the mountain
air impart to the senses a high-wrought excite
ment, which comes as near the spiritualization of
the whole frame as it is possible for us to attain
here below. I travelled with the hurry of a
Queen's messenger, had had two or three sleep
less nights on the journey, and had still the boots

MIDNIGHT ON THE ALPS. 5
on with which I stepped into a cab at my door
in Pockhngton Square, so that long unrest had
brought me to a state of coma which lifted me
up to the highest realms of the unreal.
I had not gone ten yards when the firm tread
of my heel was the loudest — presently the only
sound I heard. The toiling diligence thundered
shortly afterwards behind me, but was soon far
away in the rear, and the jingling of a hundred
bells, and the crack of the whips, and the shouts
of the postilions, and the " Sacres " of the conduc-
teur, who, having no horn to blow, apparently con
secrated his superfluous wind to blow up men
and cattle, ascended, mellowed by the widening
distance, till they died away altogether in the
space I put between me and them.
After two or three turnings in the road, I was
again alone, and silence deepened around me. I
tried two or three snatches of song — marching-
tunes with which I am wont to beguile my way;
but the notes died in utterance. The God of
the Alps awed and hushed me. The road wound
up in the hollow of the valley ; the rocky moun
tain-sides were fringed here and there with
ragged fir-trees ; the view was bounded, the air
close and noiseless, nothing broke the holy still-

6 MIDNIGHT ON THE ALPS.
ness of the night. Now silence and solitude are
the first and foremost elements of all Alpine en
joyment. Another essential condition is perfect
freedom of motion. Where you have to mind and
pick your way, where you apprehend that any
false step, any untoward tumble, may pitch you
over a thousand fathoms' precipice, you must be
a very Syntax if you have an eye for the pictu
resque. But here the road lay before me as
smooth and safe, as firm and compact, as the
carpeted floor of your drawing-room ; mountain
and valley, as far as eye could reach, were almost
as clear and distinct as the fullest noontide glare
could make them. Right before me, where the
jagged mountain-gorge seemed to close the way,
there flashed a blaze of stars such as can only
light up an Alpine atmosphere. Those stars — I
knew them by heart. It was the glorious, gor
geous cluster of the winter constellations just
rising in the east. There was the milk-white
Capella, and the blood-red Aldebaran, and the
ruby Rigel, and topaz Procyon, the pale twink
ling Pleiades, and the flaming belt of Orion.
The very Koh-i-noor of the whole set, my own
Sirius, played bo-peep behind rocks and woods ;
but far up abovehead a planet glowed, Jupiter,

MIDNIGHT ON THE ALPS. 7
I supposed, bright and broad as a bran-new six
pence, a very Bude-light in a whole galaxy of
minor gas-lights. The warmth, the purity, the
calmness of the air was unspeakable.
Presently, however, I issued forth from that
deep gully, and reached more open space ; you
have gone yourself over Mont Cenis, Marmion,
or have crossed the Alps at some other point,
and I, who have been on foot, by night and by
day, summer and winter, up and down, nine out
of ten of those Passes, hardly need describe the
peculiar features of the scenery. Mont Cenis is
by no means the most sublime of mountains,
though its road be perhaps the most striking of
all mountain-roads. You are familiar with the
changes of landscape at every step along the
winding ascent ; now deep in the glen, now high
on the terrace, now thick through the wood, now
close by the foaming cataract, now up on the
dizzy bridge, now edging the yawning abyss.
Well — I reached an open space, and was sud
denly assailed by the roar of the thousand voices
of the Alps. Down on my left dashed the un
seen torrent, down on my right the wind revelled
across the tangled pine-forest. The night was
not so still as it had seemed below, and some

0 MIDNIGHT ON THE ALPS.
thin streaks of pitch-dark clouds scudded like
evil spirits along the narrow gorges, forerunners
of a storm that was brewing in the east.
As yet there was only that low moan, that keen,
fresh, freshening breeze quickening all our senses
and heightening our perceptions, so that I, whose
eyes, like the cat's, are always keenest in the
night air, and whose ears are of the sharpest at
any time, could catch sights and sounds at an
incredible distance and with amazing swiftness.
But somehow the imagination would work upon
all sounds and sights, so as to people every crag
and every bush with unearthly objects, and to
make the air alive with notes and tunes other
than those of the piping wind and of the brawling
brook. The Alps are, on the whole, pretty lonely and
stirless, and, especially on the high-road, singu
larly destitute of animal life. At night, how
ever, a hundred invisible things seem perpetually
rushing past; a hundred unaccountable voices —
voices of the night — blend with the real music of
earth, air, and water. The Alps are haunted !
Heaven ! that I could only write down the
thousandth part of the fancies that flitted across
my mind ! There is no million of miles of space,

MIDNIGHT ON THE ALPS. 9
no million of years of time, a man may not travel
through, in the millionth part of a second, under
such a combination of magnetic causes. You
have noticed the peculiar effect of a gust of wind
through extensive fir-woods : it sounds like the
clash of ten thousand steel blades meeting in
mortal conflict. It seemed to me as if all the
legions that ever toiled up that far-famed ascent
— Gauls, Africans, Romans, Goths, Burgundians,
Langobards, Saxons, and Franks — were now
marching up in the dead of night, in one close
array, and I heard the clangour of their iron tread,
and descried their spears and halberds gleaming
up those star-lighted defiles. Charlemagne and
his host of Franks took my fancy particularly,
and I pictured to myself the meeting of that
monarch with the solitary obscure monk, or
deacon, who came to point out to him an un
known path, which would lead the Franks to
the rear of the Lombard position at the Chiuse,
and give their onset all the irresistible impetus
of a sudden surprise. I was myself by turns the
French King, by turns the Latin monk. I re
hearsed, in the name of this latter, the graphic
speech, in which that lonely wanderer gives an
account of the miraculous way in which Provi-

10 MIDNIGHT ON THE ALPS.
dence had guided him across the Alpine desert,
in the third act of Manzoni's 'Adelchi.' Anon, I
bethought myself of Excelsior : I was Excelsior,
and my stick became his star-spangled banner ;
and I wished and hoped Mont Cenis might, like
Jacob's ladder, reach up to Heaven, and I felt
that I could walk up, up, for ever, sure not only
that my mortal strength would never forsake me,
but that my breathing would become easier and
easier, my limbs lighter and lighter, till my mor
tal frame would be buoyed up into the air, and
the ascent would end in Ascension.
Oh ! what ether is more exhilarating, what
opium can give rise to wilder dreams, than such
as beset us in the pure mountain air and after
a smart mountain walk at midnight? There is
hardly one hour of my life I did not live over
again, hardly a line of poetry I ever read in any
language, hardly three notes of a tune I ever
heard in any land, that did not flit and flash
across my mind in that short spell of clairvoy
ance, — not one familiar face that I did not con
jure up, not one well-known voice that did not
mingle with the eternal roar of the Alpine wilder
ness. And in the midst of that mazy reverie a
thousand evanescent, ineffable sights and sounds

MIDNIGHT ON THE ALPS. 11
came suddenly to startle me : it was now a foot
step — a very distinct footstep — not the echo of
my own footstep — as if of some one dodging me
— close behind me : now a heavy-trailing thing
— some giant snake or other huge monster —
rushing through the bush, almost at my feet :
now a great flitting shadow towering on my path,
and moving straight in my direction : a dark de
mon spreading his bat-like wings, ready to enfold
me to his breast. Oh, the endless jugglery and
phantasmagoria of the night ! and I strained my
eyes so as to pierce the gloom, and stood still
and listened, till the throb of my pulses was the
loudest noise ; but the slightest attempt at seiz
ing any of those sounds and sights would melt
them into nothing : the moment I stilled my
heart, the moment I rallied my wandering facul
ties, nothing but the real was before me. I felt
conscious, all the time, that I stood on the very
brink of the supernatural, that I was walking on
the very border of the " night side of Nature,"
but any attempt to reach over the bourn flung
me back rudely ; back I fell, into the dull, visible
and tangible world.
And I recalled to mind the day — and that day
was hardly fourteen months back in the past —

12 MIDNIGHT ON THE ALPS.
when I travelled over that same Alpine chain,
though on another road, over the Splugen ; tra
velled, but not alone ; when a gentle and beloved
companion pressed close to me, as the sledge
bounded and jolted over the deep ruts of the un
even frozen ground, and she clung gasping and
trembling to me for support; and I was re
minded how that gentle, tender, timid being, so
full of youth and life and love and happiness,
lay now as cold as the snow she was then passing
over ; and, all on a sudden, I lifted up my voice
till it rang like a bell in the still night air, and I
prayed with a fervour, such as Nature's temple
only, and only sometimes, can inspire, — I prayed
to God Omnipotent that I might be allowed to
break through the barrier that parts us from the
invisible world, — that here, in this great desert,
where no human being was near to see, whence
any tale I might tell would be credited by no
human being, I might, for the shortest instant,
catch a glimpse of the sweet countenance of the
dear departed one' — that I should for once stand
with the Dead face to face. I prayed — and as I
prayed, I gazed wistfully before me, and eagerly
breathed a name — and almost fancied faith and
longing love could work miracles — ay, almost

MIDNIGHT ON THE ALPS. 13
fancied — only fancied ; for it is God's will that the
great depth should never be sounded, that men
should believe because they never can see. Even
on the Alps, at midnight, the dead never return !
In the meanwhile the wind had freshened
into a keen piercing gale ; the clouds rolled
darker and darker, and as I reached the highest
regions, the stars paled one by one, the planet
itself was absorbed, earth and sky mingled ; the
whole atmosphere was invaded by a thick fog,
which lashed my face with almost imperceptible
atoms of I knew not whether rain or snow or
dust. At every new turning I had been plung
ing into more and more palpable darkness, and at
last I moved through such a dense inky-black
medium, that the foot had to dispense altogether
with the aid of the eye. The very mist had be
come invisible.* Past the heavy crosses set up
* " Kicorditi, Lettor, se mai per Alpe
Ti colse nebbia per la qual vedessi
Non altrimenti che per pelle talpe.''
Dante, Purgatorio, xvii. 1-3.
" Call to remembrance, Header, if thou e'er
Hast on an Alpine height been ta'en by cloud,
Thro' which thou saw'st no better than the mole
Doth through, opacous membrane." Cary's Translation.
Who ever observed more correctly or described more forcibly ?

14 MIDNIGHT ON THE ALPS.
to guide the traveller through the winter snows,
but now scarcely discernible from time to time
as they loomed portentous through the dusk —
past the cantonniers' houses placed at short in
tervals by the wayside — past the dilapidated
hospice, all dark and voiceless, and the paltry
mountain inns which have usurped its hospitable
duties, I trod stealthily, wrapt in my cloak, my
self not unlike the spirit of darkness and of storm ;
the very watch-dogs gave no sign. I stood on
the summit; I walked across the plain, along the
icy lakes, the death-lakes, of Mont Cenis. Italy
lay before me, a vast ocean of gloom. I stood at
Grande Croix. Presently a ruddy light, a mere
burning speck at first, then a huge fiery ball,
meteor-like, flashed across the plain, low on the
horizon, in the distance. There came jingling
bells, cracking whips, swearing voices — the lum
bering, thundering, blundering diligence. I
crept into my place beside the Berlin bride, who
was napping and nodding still, drowsier and
warmer than ever. The weird trance was at an
end. The Alps were left behind, and I, a man,
found myself talking, thinking, and acting like
other men.

15

II.
THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE.
Castellamonte, September 22.
I have been carrying a knapsack for more than
fortnight, and feel as if exercise had taken four
teen years off my old shoulders. I have been over
the best part of the Province of Aosta, of that of
Ivrea, called the Canavese, and that of Biella. I
first ascended the bleak and rocky Val d' Oreo,
past Locana and Ceresole, up to the sanctuary of
" Our Lady of the Snow," perched on the crest
which parts Piedmont from Savoy : I then toiled
across the Nivolet Pass, slept at a chalet, where
I had a snow-wreath for a blanket ; went down
the narrow, rugged Val Savaranche, to Villeneuve
in Val d' Aosta ; descended the broad valley to
Aosta, Quart, Chatillon, and Verrex, old King
Mont Blanc peeping over my shoulders the best
part of my way ; hence I struck athwart arduous

16 THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE.
mountain passes into the deepest, steepest gorges
of the valleys of Challand and Gressoney ; I ven
tured far up into the snowy bosom of Monte
Rosa — Queen Monte Rosa — then down the
leafy Vallesa I rejoined Val d' Aosta at Pont
St. Martin; I followed the smooth open valley
down to the good old city of Ivrea. From Ivrea
I crossed the Serra to Biella, sauntered about
the verdant glens of Andorno, roamed about the
dells of Mosso and Trivero, ascended the St. Ber
nard, the camp of my old friend Fra Dolcino,
and down by the valley of St. Nicholas I issued
forth into the open plain. I coasted the skirts
of the hills from Cossato to Biella, re-crossed the
Serra to Ivrea, and went round the hills west
ward, till at last I hung up my mountain-staff as
a trophy at the door of a friend at this place.
It takes more time to effect such a journey
than to write it down thus summarily, I can tell
you ; and if you will take the trouble to follow
my footsteps on a good map, you will say it is
pretty well for only one pair of legs, with never
a change or relais on the road. Upon these
good old supporters I have been, in more than
one instance, moving for fourteen and even six
teen hours in the long summer day. I have seen

THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE. 17
the last star at dawn and the first at twilight ;
all a-glow from sunrise to sunset, I have dipped
twice and thrice in the icy Alpine streams, even
in the molten snow of Monte Rosa and the
Iseran. I have tempered my frame like iron with
fire and water, and have worn out two pairs of
thick shoes in as many weeks.
From all this hard work, besides health and
spirits, I have derived the benefit of this lesson,
that it is impossible to become acquainted with
this or any other country without travelling it,
dog-fashion, — " per la posta dei cani," as the
phrase is here, — on foot.
I was tolerably conversant with the beauties
of these valleys before, having made excursions
across them in every direction ; but was always
travelling as a Signor Inglese, — a kind of dull,
proud, repulsive animal the people here are
mightily shy of, — a being they are greatly prone
to admire even beyond his deserts, but of whom
at any rate they stand in great awe, and to whom
consequently they seldom open their houses,
never their hearts. This year I had one or two
letters of introduction, substituted an Italian
banditti hat for the English travelling-cap, and
found myself " at home with the Piedmontese." c

18 THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE.
So astonishingly great is the hospitality of this
Subalpine people, that by virtue of those two
letters I was able to travel for two weeks and
some days without ever, except on one occasion,
seeing the inside of an inn. The inns of the
country are generally of the most wretched de
scription ; hence the eagerness of the people to
save the travellers from the miseries of their ac
commodation, hence the readiness of the tourist
to waive ceremony, and accept kindly what is
kindly offered. Hospitality is proverbially the
virtue of halfrcivihzed races ; it is hard to have
to pay in thanks the debt you would and could
rather discharge in good solid coin : but the
Piedmontese are to a great extent the untra- •
veiled inhabitants of an un travelled country. Cu
riosity mingles with kindness in their eagerness
to see strangers within their doors, and any way
farer who chooses to make himself agreeable, or
who by his manners and habits can break the
monotony of their sequestered existence, repays
them amply for any comfort it may be their good
luck to have in store for him. The cordiality of
the Piedmontese never belied itself, so far as I am
concerned, at least ; and I am at the present mo
ment staying at a house where they "took me

THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE. 19
in" for one day, and now coolly propose that I
should prolong my stay for a month.
Unbounded, generous hospitality is, you will say,
characteristic of all thriving agricultural coun
tries. Those who gather from a plentiful land
the fruits of the earth most immediately contri
buting to man's sustenance, are always, espe
cially if their means of export do not keep pace
with their production, glad to share with friends
and guests those bounties of Providence which
would otherwise be wasted ; and every one is
acquainted with the outburst of generosity of
the peasant-girl who pressed a king to partake of
some apples, assuring him, that what he did not
take " would be given to the pigs." In the same
spirit, as I threw a word across the hedge to a
group of rustics busy gathering in their walnuts,
to congratulate them on the bountiful harvest ;
" Yes," they cried out joyously, holding up their
baskets or aprons : " Have some ! have some !
There is enough for cats and dogs this year."
That plenteousness makes bounteousness we
know from the contrast between Lombard lavish-
ness and Tuscan or Genoese niggardliness. The
inhabitant of the fat plains of Upper Italy goes
by the name of lupo Lombardo, Lombard wolf.
c 2

20 THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE.
His openhandedness keeps pace with his appe
tite ; he is ever ready to " eat and let eat."
The sad fact is, however, that Piedmont, for
the last six or seven years, has been anything but
the land of plenty ; and as you travel through the
country, you feel sure that your hosts freely give
you what they can scarcely spare. Piedmont is
not in the plain, not wholly in the plain, but ra
ther on the slope, " at the foot," of the mountain
{a pie del monte). The valley of Aosta, those of
the Oreo, of the Cervo, and Sesia, are only a part
of Switzerland, the outskirts of Helvetia, with a
gleam of Italian sunshine. They are above all
things wine-growing countries ; and for the last
six or seven years neither these nor any of the
richer provinces of Pinerolo, Saluzzo, Cuneo, and
Mondovi, nor any part of the Riviera of Genoa,
have had a drop of wine. The lands of Asti and
Montferrat have to some extent been free from
the great scourge of the grape-disease, and last
year especially they sold at a very high price
what other people lacked. I saw, two years ago,
such desolation in the Gulf of Spezia — which is
little else than a great vineyard — as I could hardly
have expected to witness even in this poverty-
stricken " Garden of Europe." This year there

THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE. 21
was, all over Piedmont, but unfortunately not in
Genoa, great hope that the disease was at an end ;
the grape was sound, though scarce, and the
vine-stock— or the wood, as they call it here —
was recovering its fresh, healthy appearance. The
vintage however is of the very scantiest, and
the most blooming districts of the Canavese and
Biellese were about a month ago visited with
such a terrific wind and hailstorm that the coun
try still bears a look of utter devastation. After
tantalizing months of slow ripening, the grapes
have been dashed from the people's lips by half
an .hour's conflict of the raging elements. You,
who live in dull, sober England, hardly know the
effects of the war that earth and sky, air and
water, here wage against man and his works.
The Alps, on the Italian side, are stripped of the
glorious timber which used to clothe them, almost
within reach of man's memory ; but the valleys,
especially of Piedmont, are luxuriant with the
richest vegetation. Everywhere along the moun
tain slope, at the outlet of every dell and glen,
and halfway down to the plain, you have such
walnut and chestnut trees as need fear no com
parison with the glorious English oak, or the
prouder New England elm ; the walnut tapering

22 THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE.
up to the sky, and then arching its far-reaching
branches all round, umbrella- wise ; the chestnut
hugging the parent earth lovingly, and spreading
its broad foliage almost horizontally, so as to
mantle the hill-slope from end to end. Well — all
along the picturesque road which they here call
" la strada della Serra," from Ivrea to Biella, I
have seen hundreds and thousands of magnificent
trees, chiefly tall, pine-like walnut-trees, torn up
by the roots, and crushing vines and maize-fields
under their weight, the wreck and havoc of the
whirlwind and storm I alluded to. Imagine,
there is scarcely a house, barn, or church, in the
whole territory of Biella, that has not been in
need of a completely new roof, every tile of the
old one being shattered to fragments by the piti
less hail. There is hardly a garden but has to
be altogether re-stocked with new plants, as the
few old ones left standing are so scorched and
blasted as to allow no hope of recovery. With
all this destruction, however, the land of the sun
bears yet a cheering look, and every peasant
greets you with a merry face. You can scarcely
enter a dwelling in all Piedmont where the good
man or the good woman will not beg you to
be seated, and forthwith produce the noted cob-

THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE. 23
webbed flask, and, not ask you whether you will
drink, but first fill the glasses all round, then
bid and expect you to empty yours as a matter
of course. Morning, noon, or night, it makes
no difference, nor are the manners of the upper
classes on this point at variance with those of
the lower, nor does it matter whether you are fa
miliar in the house or au utter stranger. " Any
friend of a friend is a friend," and in less than
two minutes you find yourself hobnobbing and
glass-jingling with a man you never saw before,
and never in all probability will see again, but
who, if he cannot drink for the sake of " auld
lang syne," earnestly solicits, glass in hand, " your
better acquaintance." Women and young girls,
with eyes as sparkling and lips as red as the
ruby liquor before you, give you the encourage
ment of their smile and example; for no one
shuns wine, nor need any one dread the honest,
genuine, harmless, though generous liquid. With
all the disease and the scarcity and dearth, there
is wine still in the country, and you may still have,
at any inn by the wayside, a bottle, chiefly of
Montferrat, for twenty-four sous (one shilling), —
a very high price here ; but in most private houses
you have the relics of old vintages, from 1749

24 THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE.
upwards, chiefly those of 1811 and 1846, which
were famous years ; and although the Piedmon
tese in these hard times stints himself in the
beverage which is as necessary to him as the
air he breathes, still, no sooner does a friend or
stranger's figure darken his door, than the old
wine must be forthcoming, as if the mere fact
that any man met with a " dry" welcome on the
threshold of a Subalpine dwelling were likely to
endanger the honour of the country.
It is no more than three days ago chance led
to this town, in quest of me, an English gentle
man, tall and stately, intelligent, highly practical,
courteous and affable, who has been an object of
wonder to these rustics ever since, and who in
his turn, an observant man, has taken in the
good and evil of the country at a glance, and by
the shake of his head, rather than by words,
intimates that he has seen much more to pity
than to envy. We were coming down the castle
avenue, and had reached the first houses in the
town, when we were met at the door of one of
these houses by an old gentleman, well-born
and well-mannered, who has reared several sons
and has seen them all take wing one after an
other, who now lives alone, and, as Dante has

THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE. 25
it, " seems hoarse through long silence."* Cu
riosity about the tall Milord, brought even
him into the street ; and, although I had only
seen him once in my life, he walked up to us
with a graceful ease, led us into his neat par
lour, and forthwith placed before us a bottle of
wine — such a wine as my English friend pro
tested he had never tasted in either hemisphere.
The flavour of that flask, and the manners of our
entertainer, made such an impression upon this
somewhat fastidious traveller, . as will in some
degree reconcile him to the dirt, slovenliness,
beggarliness, which, in his opinion, pervades
everything south of the Alps. Our old friend,
too ill for his own part to allow himself any
beverage stronger than water, did not suffer a
drop of his nectar to be left in the bottle, but
saw us emptying glass after glass with a satis
faction which told of the enjoyment the fruit
of his vineyard had afforded him in merrier
days. A drop left in the glass, or a glass left
in the bottle, is considered a sign of ill man
ners in Piedmont ; and the rustic who is in
vited to drink, invariably turns his glass down-
* " Chi per lungo silenzio parea fioco."
Dante, Inferno, c. i. v. 63.

26 THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE.
wards when he has done, to show his entertainer
how thoroughly he has acquitted himself of his
task. Ten to one, too, the man who has been
plying you with wine till he can force no more
down your throat, will take you to his neigh
bour's house, and this latter to another neigh
bour's, and as every visit is merely a repeti
tion of the same libations, the ushering in of a
stranger into a Piedmontese circle becomes to
lerably irksome, and may prove somewhat dan
gerous in the long-run. Little will it avail a
poor wight to shirk the wine, for then he will be
plied with coffee, liqueurs, etc., and allowed no
peace till his host has obtained an answer to his
inexorable " What will you take ?" Mountaineers
all over the world are brewers of strong waters,
and the Piedmontese, whose dinner always ends
with a cup of coffee, and whose coffee is in
variably followed up by a chickett, or thimble-
glass of Chartreuse, Bon Savoyard, Mistrd, or
any of the hundred liqueurs which constitute
the pride of his own or of the adjoining Alpine
regions, will expect you, if you object to quaff
bis wine in its natural state, at least to sip it in
its quintessence. Often you will have the wine
and liqueur to swallow too.

THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE. 27
Open-hearted, earnest, and even, if you will,
obtrusive, as the Piedmontese always are in their
hospitality, there is something in their humour
this year which makes them more than ever
friendly and obliging. Materially speaking, in
deed, they are worse off than ever this season. The
harvest is a dead failure. The wheat has yielded
scarcely more than half the average crop. The
Indian or Turkish corn, maize or melica, the staple
food of all the North-Italian peasantry, is almost
entirely burnt up with the drought. The chest
nuts are extremely scanty ; there is a rot in the
more abundant walnuts. The disease that has
so long ravaged the grape — Crittogama, or Cryp-
togama, they call it — has extended its ravages to
the potato-fields and the orchards, so that fruit
of every description is both very scanty and very
inferior in quality. There have been cruel frosts
in the spring, freshets and hailstorm's in the
summer, and now an obstinate drought in the
autumn. Nothing thrives but the taxes, which
Count Cavour, under necessity to pay the ex
penses of the Crimean war — that fine war ! —
and to supply the means for indispensable public
works, is laying upon the land without mercy.
The seasons are out of all reason and reckoning,

28 THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE.
the winter bitterly cold, the summer fearfully
hot, the spring rainy and foggy, — such weather
as "the oldest inhabitants never remember,"—
as man, always ready to extol the past at the
expense of the present, is too apt to say at all
times; and all this, as the priests never cease
to urge, ever since the Statuto, or Constitution,
was promulgated. The very climate and sky
has something heretic — English — in it, like the
body politic : even the olive, palm, lemon, and
orange trees of the Riviera of Genoa have all
been killed by the northern blast ; and whole
forests of agrumi, or tropical plants, were lost last
winter, an evil irreparable for several years ; as
if the keen air of freedom rendered this part of
Italy too bleak a region for them. Nevertheless
the Piedmontese keeps up his spirits ; for hope
is strong at his heart, and hope is by far a
greater comforter than actual enjoyment. The
wine-press, a primitive, unwieldy machine, made
up of huge timbers, which cumbers the best part
of the premises of a wealthy farmer in these
parts, after standing idle for the last six years,
has at last once more come into use ; and al
though the landowner assures you he shall only
have three brente, or barrels, where he once used

THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE. 29
to gather forty cart-loads of grapes, yet he tells
you in the same breath, it is something to have
any vintage at all, and he firmly thinks this
will be the last year of the grape-disease : as for
mere hail-storms, with those he has long been
familiar, and he knows how to take them as God
sends them. It will require two or three years,
certainly, ere the vines have attained their for
mer luxuriance, and the vineyards their wonted
tidiness and fertility ; more than ten years ere
the cellars are replenished to the amount of the
happy years gone by; but in ten years "we
shall again have wine that may be termed old,
and then we will better attend to the making
of it, and enter into competition with France
and Spain, and see whether or not we can find
a market for the pure juice of the grape in the
London Docks."
Not the least melancholy feature in the picture
of this scanty Piedmontese vintage, is the dread
ful hurry in which it is carried on. The grapes
are gathered in unripe, and are sure to yield sour
wine : but the owners are anxious to bring them
in, — full three weeks before the proper time, —
for the poor people, who have not seen grapes for
six years, are frantic for them, and are not to be

30 THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE.
kept off by any amount of vigilance. Anything
more striking than the calmness, soberness, and
earnestness of these kind, good, generous people,
I have seen nowhere. They have a serious,
silent, modest, docile, and somewhat shy look,
which seems to me akin to the little I know of
the English character. They are only gentler and
meeker, less self-confident than the fortunate
builders of "the Empire on whose boundaries
the sun never sets." They are by no means
loud, but thoughtful, and at any rate no talkers
or gesticulators, like the rest of the Italians. No
French swagger, no Lombard or Tuscan chatti-
ness and frivolity about them. They have a dig
nified, firm, resigned, patient air, — the air of men
fit to govern themselves, as well as to " rule over
the stars." They take you over their fields and
gardens and vineyards : they show you the spot
where the great cedar, or cypress, or weeping-
willow, shaded their house, — where the arbour
threw its cool, impenetrable shadow over their
favourite walk. There is no murmur, no peevish
despondency over the loss they have sustained.
It is only sad, solemn, patient regret, such as
might be felt by one pointing to the dead body
or the untimely grave of a beloved person. It is

THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE. 31
all, " The Lord gave and the Lord has taken
away." It is not because the destruction of their
vineyard leaves them poorer by a year's income
that they mourn, you would say ; it is because
that vineyard was part and parcel of their house
and home, an object of family love and pride,
for the loss of which, wealth never, and time only
after long waiting, can make up.
You must remember that, although Piedmont
is essentially an agricultural country, and the
calamities of the last six years have greatly im
poverished it, yet these mountain provinces are
comparatively wealthy, and can scarcely be made
absolutely poor. The whole of the male popu
lation especially of the upper valleys, emigrate
yearly. All the Biellese are masons. The Cana-
vesans are carpenters and woodmen, the people of
Val Sesia are house-painters, those of Val Gres-
soney and other glens of the Val d'Aosta and Val
Sesia, who are half- Germans, travel to Germany
and engage in trade, sometimes even in banking
business, and attain ultimately very considerable
wealth. All of them, however, come back for
the winter to their native homes, and there is
hardly an instance of a Piedmontese mountaineer
settling permanently abroad. Their industry,

32 THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE.
frugality, and native ingenuity, enable them, in
many instances, to realize very conspicuous for
tunes. There are impresarii, as they are called,
or builders, in the Biellese valleys, who can boast
of having reared up those fine blocks of buildings
which embellish modern Turin, and have carried
off with them to their mountains a very fair and
well-earned percentage of the money that has
been invested in those structures : that monev is
always spent by them in their native country,
generally for the benefit of their country and
countrymen. After working in the construction
of houses for other folk, the Biellese builder is
especially anxious to frame a house for himself.
The house will be in nine out of ten instances
too large for him, and some part of it at least is
sure never to come to its completion ; yet any
thing like the neat, stately, substantial, elegant,
gay-looking, and according to Italian views, even
comfortable dwellings you see about these val
leys, — all of them with their little bell and clock
tower, and a clock or at least a sundial in
front of them,— is not to be found even in the
most thriving districts of Germany and Swit
zerland. There is a gentleman at Quittengo, in Val d'An-

THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE. 33
dorno, (to quote one case out of many, among
the mountains of) Biella, who was the chief di
rector of the works for the great tunnel of the
Giovi, on the Apennines, above Genoa, at the
time of the construction of the railway there.
Well, the man has now retired to his native vil
lage, still in the prime of life : he is scarcely forty
years old, with a very large fortune, and a
family of eight children. He has employed for
several years more than two hundred of his
fellow-villagers, converting his father's hut into a
palace, and his father's bare rocks into a garden.
He is in no hurry about the completion of his
enterprise ; indeed the Italians have a proverb,
that " he who builds a house must be ready to
be carried out of it feet foremost the moment he
has laid the last stone." Were the work at an
end, most probably the man would die of sheer
inaction ; but he has made the best part of it
habitable, he has polished and furnished it sump
tuously, entirely by the aid of native labour and
with the materials of the country. Such oak
wainscots and beech-wood floors I have seen no
where in the world, nor such presses, bookcases,
and whatnots. There he spends his life, a master-
builder and carpenter, though only an amateur,
D

34 THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE.
to his dying-day ; he spends it in deeds of benefi
cence, in the exercise of hospitality, in the educa
tion of his children, for whom he has procured
German, Tuscan, and other tutors and gover
nesses. I have spent four-and-twenty hours with
him, and I assure you his house exhibits all that
refinement and luxury, — flowers, music, books
journals, and social enjoyment, — can do to enli
ven a sublime and lovely, though even in sum
mer a rather dreary mountain solitude. Murray
has already told you that in Val Gressoney are
to be found boors, who for half the year are at
Vienna, bankers, barons, and even counts of the
holy Roman Empire. The same phenomenon is
to be met with in almost all these valleys. La
Trinita in Val Gressoney, Macugnaga in Val d'
Anzasca, Alagna in Val Sesia, and other villages
close to the high Alps, are German communi
ties flourishing on Itahan ground.* One or more
* How they got there is a mooted point amongst the
learned; but, for my own part, I incline to the poetical
hypothesis, that they descend from the Cimbrian army routed
by Marius on the Raudian fields ; they had, in all probabi
lity, come down by the Simplon Pass ; and missing their way
in the confusion of their flight, they found themselves at the
head of valleys, with snowy ridges and impervious precipices
all around them. In the valleys they settled, chose their
home where chance threw them, defended it against the na-

THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE. 35
villages of that description are found at the top
of every valley round Monte Rosa ; and the Ger
mans say they are so many sentinels placed to
guard that noble mountain, lest the Italians (Wal-
schen) should run away with it. That these Teu
tonic colonists should keep up a connection with
the parent race, and should find a welcome and
employment in the great money marts of Ger
many, seems natural enough ; but the villagers
of the purely Italian or Piedmontese districts are
no less enterprising or successful. Some of them
indeed seem to belong to both races, and have a
name to the north and a name to the south of the
Alps. The banker Zumstein of Gressoney, for
instance, goes equally by the name Della Pietra.
The fortune and rank to which one of these
mountaineers may rise in foreign lands, by no
means interfere with the footing of perfect equa
lity and independence with which he is treated
in the country. Let emperors and kings la
vish ever so many diplomas on the stock-jobber
who has helped them to a loan, he will never be
tives, who perhaps hardly grudged them such bleak soli
tudes ; and as they had their wives and children with them,
they for a long time so shunned intercourse and inter
marriage with their Italian neighbours as to send down their
original national type to the latest posterity.
D 2

36 THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE.
a Baron in his native valley. Genuine patriarchal
democracy thrives here. These people seem to look
upon one another as brothers of the same family,
or at least as clansmen of the same tribe. The
good-fortune attendant upon the exertions of one
of them, gives him no right to look clown upon
those of the same kith and kin, but rather em
powers these to look for their own just share of
the good things their townsman has come by. He
is expected to make the best use of his wealth,
and that means, to render it accessible to his coun
trymen, by some enterprise, in which all or most
of them may bear a hand.' Property is here
greatly divided and subdivided, and every man
has a true mountaineer's love of land. An acre
of thin pasture, or even of barren rock on the
hill-slope, sells much higher than the deepest and
fattest field on the plain. I have seen the most
extravagant offers for utterly useless land — nay
for the veriest stones and gravel — obstinately re
jected by men brought with their families to the
very verge of starvation. There is no importance
of rank, no power of wealth, no bond of grati
tude, that will induce these mountaineers to part
with even six feet of land they once get hold of.*
* A friend of mine at Samoen, near Ivrea, a jolly, good-

THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE. 37
My friend at Quittengo showed me some patches
of very meagre heath, breaking up his estate here
and there. ¦ He has been soliciting the owners,
bribing them by all deeds of kindness, tempt
ing them with the most lavish offers, but they
cling to their own. They will give him their
lives, if he need them, but not their forefather's
acres or portions of acres, nor those which they
hope to send down to their children's children.
The best of the joke is, that they never meet his
request with a flat refusal. They are all willing
enough to sell ; but this man has made a solemn
vow, by his father's deathbed-side, not to part
with the little plot of land : another is only a
natured old soldier, Major Garda, with a beautiful villa on the
summit of a hill, showed me, iu the middle of a wood close to
his house, a bare rock, not more than six feet square in ex
tent, about the size of a good dining-table, but which gave
strangers a right of way through his property ; he told me
his father and himself had for years and years begged for
that rock at any price, and he at last succeeded in wrench
ing it from the owner by the mighty bribe of 900 francs. He
added with a chuckle, that he had, by way of revenge, nearly
broken the heart of the covetous old curmudgeon, by showing
him 2000 francs in bright gold in his strong box, and assuring
him that he had set apart all that lump of money merely for
the purchase of the long coveted-rock, and that he (the owner)
had only to have held out a few days longer to make sure
of more than twice the amount of the offer upon which the
bargain had been struck.

38 THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE.
trustee for his younger brothers, and needs the
consent of them all ; and some of them are mi
nors, others far away in California, etc. As the
Italians have it, "Un finto non posso, per un
vero non voglio :" — Anglice, " They can't, because
they wont."
A considerable amount of industry is, besides,
visible in these countries. There are silk-spin
ning mills beside every water-stream. There
is a large cotton manufactory at Pont in Val
d'Orco, in Canavese, and numerous woollen ma
nufactories in the valleys of Mosso, in the Biella
mountains. The owners travel to Hungary and
the East, for the purchase of their wools, and ma
nage to thrive, although their mills lie so deep
in the hollow of the valleys, that they neither
have nor can hope for many years to have pass
able roads, and their goods have to be carried
on mule-back. They manage to thrive, owing to
the wonderful plenty of water-power, and the
great cheapness of labour. Piedmont is now
awakening to the importance of industry. It is
only for the last five or six years that full scope
and development is given to it. These valleys
and mountains, which contrived to work in spite
of a stolid despotic government, which were

THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE. 39
never inactive in the worst of times, will now
redouble their efforts under better auspices ; they
will take the lead in the general movement, and
the whole country will make hay while the sun
shines.

40

III.
EXTERIORS AND INTERIORS.
Castellamonte, September 27.
Could I flatter myself that I possess eloquence
to befit the subject, I think I should never live
long enough to descant on all the ineffable
beauties of this dear old land of Piedmont.
The lack of a fair sheet of water is indeed felt,
for the Lakes of Orta and Maggiore are with
out the bounds of Piedmont proper, and the
lakelets of Avigliana, of Azeglio, etc., are but
little gems, scarcely twinkling in the vastness
of the verdant landscape. But the wide, wide
plain, visible from every brow and cliff of the hills,
is itself by turns a lake, a sea, a forest, or a gar
den ; and when the light, gauze-like, ash-coloured
morning mist lies gently heaving and subsiding
upon it, no stretch of imagination is required

EXTERIORS AND INTERIORS. 41
to fancy that it hides the surface of a broad ex
panse of the purest water.
I called the plain wide, but, unlike the even
flats of Lombardy, the level land of Piedmont
is nowhere too wide. From the terrace of the
Castle-on-the-hill, that gives the name to this
little country-town, — a castle perched scarcely
five hundred feet above the level ground, on the
very toe of this great mountain-foot of Pied
mont, — I can behold Turin and its eminences,
backed by the endless range of the Montferrat
hills, as if they were only an hour's short walk
away, though the nearest distance across is full
five-and-twenty English miles. I see the craggy
pinnacle of Monte Viso, with all the stupendous
jagged chain of the Maritime Alps, distinctly
carved in the dark deep azure of the Italian sky,
clear and distinct, yet enhanced and heightened
and made weird and spectral and dreamy by the
almost imperceptible film of the summer haze, —
for the first touch of autumn has scarcely reached
us yet, — and the eye pierces far beyond those
airy summits, so that I fancy it sweeps, sweeps
on over the lands of Liguria and Provence, till
it catches the reflection of the glittering Me
diterranean wave. Oh, the unspeakable beauty

42 EXTERIORS AND INTERIORS.
of a bright day in Piedmont ! and how thankful
ought we to be to this Alpine climate, which only
allows comparatively few of them in the year, so
as not to cloy us with the monotonous serenity
of more southerly climes ! I walk round to the
other platform of the castle, and look to the
north and west, and behold the broad valleys of
the Oreo, Locana, Soana and Ceresole, teeming
with a luxuriance of unbroken green, closed in
by the brown, bare, bleak mountain-wall, en
compassing us all round, — the rugged shield
of Italy, — all ragged, and steep, and precipitous,
tipped here and there with the snowy crests,
the prodigious maze of bold outlines, heaped up,
piled up, in mighty confusion, laid out like stage
decorations, dotted with hamlets, castles, and
convents at prodigious heights ; and, higher still,
the white walls of lonely chapels or sanctuaries,
where, on the spots once sacred to the god Pen,
pilgrims now pay their yearly worship to " Our
Lady of the Snow," or to St. Bernard of Aosta,
the " Apostle of the Alps."
That miraculous mountain - range spreads
north, west, south ; and the eye is only bounded
on the east by the unmatched crest of the
Serra, a most unique, most lovely object, a long

THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE. 43
smooth, green, wood-mantled ridge, straight as
a sword's edge, steep as a garden-wall clothed
with ivy, the offshoot of a glacier in times of
yore, as naturalists tell us, imperceptibly sliding
down from yon Mont Baron, a last watch-tower
of the Alps, and merging into the plain so im
perceptibly that the eye can hardly descry its
nethermost limits. Were I to go up half an
hour's walk to yonder bluff, the Serra would
soon be over-mastered, and then the view would
command the whole Pennine chain, Monte Rosa,
the Tyrol and Friuli mountains, — the latter like
faint, white clouds low on the horizon, encom
passing the interminable plain, with the Dome
of Milan and the Arena of Verona, the whole of
North Italy for hundreds of miles. Nowhere
does the earth lend man the eagle-glance more
mightily than on these Subalpine summits, where
the advantage of situation is aided by the sap
phire transparency of an Italian atmosphere, by
the play of light and shade, of mist and fleecy
cloud, of gorgeous sunrise or sunset tints, of
wide streaks of gold and purple, — by a whole
phantasmagoria of meteorical combination,
From the godlike poetry of the land, to the
humble prose of its inhabitants, the transition

44 EXTERIORS AND INTERIORS.
is astounding. The good people gaze on their
shady hills with placid, contented eyes : they in
hale the fresh fragrant breeze with sound elastic
lungs : they love their country, as men who can
breathe freely nowhere else ; but they evince no
enthusiasm, and would be much puzzled were
they called upon to say what they see lovely in
it : and while your delighted soul pants to take
in the whole panorama, they urge you to peep
through their spyglass in search of some pe
culiar insignificant spot, which they name with
most persevering topographic accuracy. "There!
there ! behind that large elm-tree— close to that
cleft in the hill, — that is the belfry of that village
where that priest committed that great murder,
for which he was hanged on that gibbet, which
was reared by our carpenter here in the town,"
etc. The Italians have no eye for the beauties
of nature, and seldom affect any love for them.
There is not a single landscape description in the
whole range of Italian literature, unless we take
as such the stiff and formal gardens of Alcina
and Armida by Ariosto and Tasso, which are no
more landscapes than the Tuileries garden is a
park, — no landscape-picture from Dante to Man-
zoni, and this latter had all the models of Ger-

EXTERIORS AND INTERIORS. 45
many and England before him. The Italian is no
lover of the country ; he dreads of all things an
isolated dwelling. If he cannot live in the ca
pital, then in a provincial city; if not, in a coun
try-town ; then in a village ; only not in a coun
try-house ; they huddle together in their squalid
boroughs and hamlets, and the happiest man is
he whose forefathers have built their home in
the narrowest, closest court or alley hard by the
market-place. Every man owns a vineyard, and
every vineyard has a hut; but that hut is no
man's abode, or only the luckless hind's, who
digs and prunes it : for the rest, no man deems
it a pleasure to live in the country, unless there
be harvest or vintage to be gathered in. I re
member a lady with luxuriously fair, rich com
plexion, melting blue eyes, and a great display
of tender sentiment, whom I had one day coaxed
into a walk even beyond the Place d'Armes, the
world's end for the little world of Turin. It was
in the witching month of May, and I asked her
if she would not at that season rather be in the
country. " In the country ! " ejaculated the fair
one, with a half-astonished, half- terrified look.
" What on earth should one go to the country
for now? surely there is no fruit to eat." In

46 EXTERIORS AND INTERIORS.
their dingy provincial towns they huddle toge
ther, landowners, farmers, and most of the la
bourers ; and every town gives itself the airs, and
revels in the light gossip, of the capital; every
town has a cafe, or a score of cafes, to idle away
time in, all with their tawdry, smoky, gilt and
mirrored rooms. Even Castellamonte, with its
four thousand souls, if so many, rejoices in its
six cafes and a theatre, — in sooth only a half-
amateur, half-professional theatre, — and has its
play once a week in the fine season, and, of all
nights in the week, on the Sunday evening. Tell
it not in Exeter Hall !
Yet a great deal of poetry might be squeezed
out of this simple, humble, homely Piedmon
tese life. There is harmony, loveliness of family
affection here, such as is utterly unknown in
proud England. The Canavesans, or people of
the. Province of Ivrea, are famed throughout
Piedmont for their hot blood and quarrelsome
temper. The time is not long gone by when
every man carried a knife about him ; and when
wine was plentiful, a fair in which no more
than two or three stabbing brawls occurred
was reckoned dull. Yet deeds of revenge or
premeditated hurt, or a wound inflicted in cold

EXTERIORS AND INTERIORS. 47
blood upon an unarmed foe, were utterly un
heard-of. The people had their stabbing-
matches, as John Bull has his boxing-bouts.
It was all fair-play, and done in the heat of
Italian passion; and if the champions survived,
they would embrace and be friends, like men
of honour after a chivalrous duel. For the
rest, where do two or three generations of
parents and children, married sons and step
sons, mothers and daughters-in-law, live more
lovingly together than amongst this primitive
race ? The partition of goods amongst brothers
after the father's decease is a very uncommon
occurrence here. The abolition of the law
of primogeniture is only less ruinous to old
Houses in this country, owing to this instinct
of union and concord. The eldest son steps
into the place of the lamented parent, the right
ful head of the family: his youngest brothers
affect a taste for celibacy, lest, by too great an
increase of the family, they should make too
wide a breach in the common patrimony. The
daughters are portioned off; the younger sons
live in unconscious dependence, yielding, either
from a feeling of love or from family pride, or
from custom, to their eldest brother those pri-

48 EXTERIORS AND INTERIORS.
vileges which the law allows to the first-born in
aristocratic England and Germany. The very
construction of their old spacious roomy houses,
intended for the purpose of due case in una casa,
— two or more homes in one mansion, and war
ranted to endure for centuries — induces them to
abide under a paternal roof, which can far more
easily be shared between them than disposed of.
There is a primitive, patriarchal ease and fami
liarity in the intercourse between brothers and
sisters-in-law, between friends and neighbours,
between masters and servants, so thorough, so
innate, so ingenuous, that a stranger is for some
time puzzled to make out their mutual relations ;
and it is quite the stranger's fault, if before three
days are over he is not himself placed nearly
on the same footing with all and each of the
family circle in which he has become domes
ticated. The country wench that brings me up
my coffee in bed, as plump, solid, and rosy a
mountain lass as ever danced on the green, in
quires about my health, and asks how I have
slept, with as much earnestness as if she were
charged by her master with the performance
of the wonted civilities. Sometimes my morn
ing visitor, with the fragrant Mocha, is a still

EXTERIORS AND INTERIORS. 49
more interesting person, — a very aged woman
(people in these hilly regions grow " old as the
hills,") a kind of housekeeper or nondescript ser
vant — for she will not hear of being made a pen
sioner — a darling old body, by name Minchina,
who has been nurse to three generations of her
masters, who is an oddity and a character in her
own way, enjoying in the house the privileges of
a court-jester, and who, as I burn my lips with
her coffee is as inexhaustible as she is naive in
her condolence about my " dear departed one,"
or congratulations about my " darling living little
one," volunteering sympathy like one entitled to
my confidence, and indeed deserving it. In the
Biellese it was the lady of the house herself, the
wife of a judge, born and bred in Turin, a ma
tron of forty-five, still as fresh and lovely as any
high-born English lady of the same time of life,
as young and blooming as her daughter, who
was just on her visit home after her honeymoon,
who stood by my bed-side, — by the bed-side
of me, a stranger, whom she had never seen
before the previous evening, — at six o'clock in
the morning, with the exhilarating cup, which
throughout Italy ushers in the duties of the
toilet. There is no false shame in this blessed

50 EXTERIORS AND INTERIORS.
country ; and even for people who own large
palaces, with eight or ten grand saloons, the
lady's reception-room is often the sleeping apart
ment. In you are shown, from room to room,
till you think there is no end to them ; and in
you are ushered, into the sanctum-sanctorum of
your friend's wedded home, and sit down on a
sofa, by the large, old-fashioned four-poster, —
a very bed of Ware for its length, width and
height : they do know how to make a bed in
these countries, and regular nuptial couches are
only known in Old England and Old Italy;
the bed well trimmed and perfumed, with lace-
bordered pillows and green silk counterpane,
and with the veiled paraphernalia of beauty's
domestic altar* coquettishly half-hid behind the
curtains. Opposite to you, the languid lady of
the house sits, in all probability in her arm
chair by the fire, never thinking it the least
harm in the world to perform her maternal
duties in your presence, as she talks composedly
with you, and with perhaps half a score of her
admiring cavaliers on their morning call. And
wherefore not ? Is the picture she exhibits in
* " L' ara tutelar di sua beltade."
Parini, PI Giorno.'

EXTERIORS AND INTERIORS. 51
any manner more offensive or repulsive than the
" Madonna and Child," hanging by two out of
three altars in every church throughout the Ca
tholic world? " E la vergogna inutile
Dov' e la colpa ignota."*
A great deal of what is said about the im
morality of Italian women is plainly false, or be
longs exclusively to the painted countesses and
duchesses of the Grand Ducal Court at Florence,
or to the scarlet adventuresses of Papal Rome.
In the middle and lower ranks, especially of
North Italy, I need no other surety of the chas
tity of women than their off-hand, unsuspicious,
guileless behaviour, and frank exercise of hospi
tality. Such perfect confidence would disarm the
most satanic profligacy.
Unquestionably there is, in the free and easy,
naive, primitive language used before women,
and sometimes by the women themselves, in this
country, — in their readiness, nay anxiety, to call
things by their names, — enough to startle and
shock and revolt the more fastidious ears of an
English, and still more of an American, lady.
Undoubtedly there are things in nature that
* Parini, ' Odi.'
E 2

52 EXTERIORS AND INTERIORS.
ought never to be mentioned to ears polite, and
the remotest allusion to which should be con
veyed in the most adroit and delicate manner,
and only in cases of absolute necessity. The
Italians are guilty of dwelling with almost es
pecial fondness on topics that were better, and
that could be, in many instances let alone : but
I am not sure your fair ones of England and
Yankeeland do not carry their squeamishness too
far, when they fancy that " a rose by any other
name would not smell as sweet," or, vice versa,
that an object calculated to produce a disagree
able impression in plain old Saxon, may be men
tioned with impunity by borrowing a mincing
word out of the French dictionary. If you are
under the painful necessity, my dear Miss Jo
nathan, of awakening in my mind the shocking
idea of the " legs" of a table, you can hardly
hope to modify the sensation by the use of the
chaster expression of the " limbs" or even the
" supporters" of the table aforesaid.
I have been rambling from hill to hill, from
vineyard to vineyard, and have been making
merry with many a family over their scanty vin
tage — too scanty, alas ! — and have been stuffed
with a greater profusion of luscious grapes than

EXTERIORS AND INTERIORS. 53
either the worthy people could spare or than could
do me good ; and after half an hour's genial inter
course, the ladies and young ladies of the house
have taken my proffered hand in both their
hands, and looked up with their soft brown eyes
into my eyes, and bidden me good-bye with a
wistfulness, as if they really would have given
anything in the world to detain me ; so that I
need only be a coxcomb, to flatter myself that the
whole female world in the Canavese is in love
with me, and that I should have but to try to
make the best of the opportunity, to be a man
a, bonnes fortunes amongst them all. I happen
however to know what it all means ; and I am
certain that any stranger has but to make him
self " at home with the Piedmontese," or indeed
with most Italian people, to feel convinced that
their kindness is unmatched in the world, — a
kindness which would cover a multitude of sins,
if indeed there were more sins to hide here than
elsewhere.

54

IV.
ROADS AND CONVEYANCES.
Castellamonte, October 16.
I hesitated for some time whether or not I
should continue this correspondence, dear Mar-
mion, for the time had now arrived to exhibit
the less pleasing side of an agreeable picture ;
and I feared I might spoil the impression I have
made on your mind by describing this country,
as I have done, and as it really is, as something
between a material Eden and a moral Arcadia.
You profess yourself however so 'charmed' with
what you have read, and the subject possesses at
the present moment such lively interest for your
English friends, that not only will I go on yet
awhile, but even empower you to make such use
of my letters as you think proper ; as I am ac
customed to think that there can never be any
harm in telling the whole truth, and I proceed to

ROADS AND CONVEYANCES. 55
paint Piedmont as it is, and as I heartily would
wish it were not.
Those who have read the graphic description
of England as it was under the second Charles, as
given by the master pen of Macaulay, will easily
conceive the social and moral condition of this
beautiful country at the present day. Piedmont
is in everything nearly two centuries in arrear
of modern — at least English — civilization. We
know what prodigies two hundred years of free
life have operated, not only in broad wealthy
England, but even in the most barren districts of
Scotland, and all over the three kingdoms, with
the exception of a few irreclaimable Welsh and
Irish counties. The last nine years have done
wonders for Piedmont ; and as the country has
natural advantages almost unequalled, — as the
rapidity of the means of communication, and
the diffusion of knowledge grounded on a system
of popular education, have a tendency to hasten
improvement with a speed beyond all calcula
tion, — as, moreover, one of the most character
istic virtues of the Piedmontese is great docility
and susceptibility of discipline, — I have no doubt
that the second or third generation of this
people, unless some untoward event stops their

56 ROADS AND CONVEYANCES.
present course, will have attained such a degree
of polish and refinement as will place them by
the side of the most gifted and prosperous na
tions. To begin then with what first strikes a tra
veller on his arrival : nothing can well be more
shocking than the roads, public conveyances,
and houses of entertainment in this country.
Bad as they were before 1848, they have fallen
into even greater neglect since that year, because
the new impulse given to public enterprise by
the working of the Constitution has been, justly
and naturally enough, turned to the railways,
in the construction of which truly the Govern
ment, as well as the people at large, have done
wonders. The railways however do not by any
means cross the country in every direction, and
many of these districts are sure to be roused
by the archangel's trump sooner than by the
shrill sounds of the locomotive's whistle. Now,
it seems here to be a settled maxim, that rail
roads are everywhere to supersede roads, so that
the latter are allowed to fall into decay, not only
in the enjoyment, but even in the mere pro
spect and expectation of railways. A Bill went
through the Chambers last Session, by virtue of

ROADS AND CONVEYANCES. 57
which all roads running parallel to a railway in
operation cease to be maintained at the charge
of the State. Wherever steam forsakes the tra
veller, it leaves him to grapple with difficulties
which render a journey an almost Herculean feat.
We have in Piedmont royal, provincial, and mu
nicipal roads, so called, as the construction and
keeping of them devolves on the Government, on
the counties, on the boroughs or parishes ; but
it would be difficult to say which are the most
abominable. We are here, in the province of
Ivrea, near the mountains, and have our choice
of the best granite, or indeed of any other rock
or stone most favourable to the maintenance
of the roads ; so that, in sober fact, the roads
of these districts are amongst the very best in
the kingdom, and infinitely better than those
of the province of Turin. Indeed, all round the
capital, and quite at its gates, even on the great
post-road which, from Mont Cenis, leads to
Lombardy, we have nothing better than either
a desert or a swamp ; dust three feet deep in
dry weather, — mud hardly fordable after three
days of rain. Let no mounted lover of roman
tic promenades venture ten yards beyond the
town avenues, or the Place d'Armes; the big,

58 ROADS AND CONVEYANCES.
loose, treacherous stones, with which the people
make their roads, will be sure to break the
horse's shins and knees, if not the neck of the
rider himself. But let us keep to the pattern
roads of the Canavese. Imagine that the dis
tance between Castellamonte and Turin is only
fifteen Piedmontese, that is, about two-and-
twenty English miles. A common stage-coach
in England, as the road is a downright level,
as smooth as a billiard-table, would run over
it in two hours. I have myself walked it in
little more than five hours, and, by the bye, the
people here never cease wondering at such an
astounding feat of pedestrianism. Well, we
have two diligences or omnibuses plying daily be
tween this place and the capital, and under fa
vourable circumstances the journey is performed
in four and a half or five hours. A little rain
or frost in winter, however, or a prolonged
drought in summer, accumulate such prodigi
ous depths of mud or dust, as to lengthen out
the journey to seven, eight, or even ten hours.
You may well believe me, that such is the rate
of travelling all over Piedmont, the main roads
to France and Italy not excepted ; and it would
be unfair to deny that not only England, France,

ROADS AND CONVEYANCES. 59
or Switzerland, but even Lombardy, Tuscany,
and the Duchies, are far better off in point of
roads. Nor is it any matter of wonder ; for up
to 1848, Piedmont was the paradise of priests,
and that theocratic rule had eaten up, impover
ished, and besotted this poor, ingenuous, confi
ding, but somewhat dull and slow people, more
than that of any other part of Italy, always with
the exception of the Papal States and the Two
Sicilies. A fault common with all Italian roads, and
traceable to ancient ideas of Roman magnifi
cence, is their absurdly great width. There is
hardly a road across this vast plain of Pied
mont that will not give passage to six carriages
abreast. To say nothing of the deplorable
waste of land in an extremely fertile country,
where every square inch of ground is, or might
be made, worth its weight in gold, it ought to
occur to the road-makers that the maintenance
of such a road occasions useless trouble and
expense. But the high-roads in Piedmont, as
almost everywhere in the absolute States of the
Continent, have been the work of despotic so
vereigns, who looked more for show than for
use, and who carved out the ground rather with

60 ROADS AND CONVEYANCES.
reference to their arbitrary pleasure, than with
due regard to the interest of their subjects, or
the extent of their means ; and the example being
set by the contractors of royal roads, it has
been followed by those who constructed provin
cial and other minor lines of communication.
These vast tracts of waste land, which bear the
name of roads, must necessarily be very diffi
cult to keep in a proper state of drainage, and
indeed the difficulty must seem so insurmount
able to these worthy people, that the very at
tempt is scarcely anywhere made. The road is
generally level, and deep ruts and hollows are
made by almost every waggon going by. Add
to this, that the wise laws prescribing a thick
ness of wheel proportionate to the weight of the
waggons are totally disregarded. For the re
pairs of the road, gravel, pebble and flint-stones
of every dimension, from a walnut to a bomb
shell, are generally brought in from the nearest
mountain brook or wayside ditch, and thrown
upon it with no very sparing hand. Let the
rubbish amalgamate and coalesce as it lists
the general result is, that the unmanageable
pebbles and flints lie unbroken and loose on
the road, till rain buries them deep in the mud •

ROADS AND CONVEYANCES. 61
they are an encumbrance and a stumbling-block
till they utterly disappear. All along the line of
road there are cantonniers, busied in mending,
cobbling, and patching the deepest holes, scratch
ing here and filling up and smoothing down
there, raking up and sifting, and knocking those
wretched flints and pebbles about, to coax them
into something like order and shape : but the
whole order of macadamization, if it may be
called so, is wrong ; the material is bad, and its
preparation worse ; the labour of the canton
niers is thrown away. The fault lies chiefly in
a false economy ; for, as I said, excellent stone
might be conveyed from almost every part of
the great mountain-side of Piedmont, and all the
roads in the State might be properly macada
mized, and be made smooth as marble, hard as
granite, and compact as mosaic, as they are in
England, and at about one-third of the price of
what they cost in England ; but gravel and flint
cannot and will not hold together; the loose,
round, villainous stones lie everywhere half-hid
in the mud or dust, and the bumping and
thumping and jolting and jerking over them,
is no less hard upon the woodwork, steel, and
springs of the coaches, than upon the flesh and

62 ROADS AND CONVEYANCES.
bones of the luckless traveller. The most pro
voking part of the matter is, that all along the
principal roads, at the distance of about ten
yards or less, on both sides, are little granite
posts, standing about the height of a man's
knee, answering no purpose whatever that I
know of, unless that of breaking the wheels of
any carriage that a restive horse or a drunken
coachman may drive too close to them. These
posts, — paracarri, as they are called — rompi-
carri, as they ought to be called, — properly
broken up, would furnish materials for the
macadamization of the roads, at least for some
time. The Italian roads, straight, stiff, and mo
notonous for lines of ten, twenty, and even
fifty miles, are, by the order of Government, clear
of trees, bare and open as far as eye can reach ;
partly because in olden times the bush was
thought to breed bandits and footpads, partly
also because the shadow of trees is deemed in
jurious to the road, — as, indeed, it is likely to
be where the roads are so clumsily constructed,
and so wretchedly kept in repair; but in the
luxuriant Canavese, the ordonnances of the Go
vernment are often disregarded ; Nature sets
even royal decrees at defiance, and the chest-

ROADS AND CONVEYANCES. 63
nut-groves, the festooned vine-arbours and other
plantations, or spontaneous shoots, border the
road on both sides, screening the traveller in
deed from the intolerable glare of the open
plain, and adding to the beauty, freshness, and
coolness of the road, but, by impeding the action
of the air and sun, increasing also the difficulty
of keeping it in bearable condition. Even here
however straight, broad lines are the order of
the day ; the old, shady, winding roads are fast
disappearing, and superseded by new highways,
twice as ugly, uncomfortable, and disastrous.
Roads so constructed are not of course to
be travelled over except by the strongest, that
is to say the heaviest, vehicles ; nor can such
huge lumbering machines of diligences and om
nibuses, — corriere, veloci, or velociferi, as they
are outrageously misnamed, — such berlines as
are here used from necessity, be drawn by any
except the strongest, that is, the heaviest, cattle.
London drayhorses alone could achieve the
feat without being more than half-killed by it ;
but the Italians have a breed of lean, bony,
long-legged, long-tailed, half-starved post-horses,
which by dint of the most ruthless whipping,
goading, and cudgelling, can only be kept, on

64 ROADS AND CONVEYANCES.
very even, smooth ground, at a sort of sorry
jogging, stumbling, blundering, floundering half-
trot. On the slightest ascent or descent,— even
where, according to the Italian saying, " All' in-
giu tutti i Santi aiutano" (downhill every Saint
bears a hand), — or at any spot where the ruts
are but two inches deep, or where stones have
been freshly thrown on, and the ground re
cently grubbed up, the horses must walk, — and
such a funereal walk ! Even under the most
propitious circumstances, from one-half to two-
thirds of the journey is performed at this snail's-
pace. In foul weather, walking throughout is the
order of the day, and with the additional agre-
ment of very refreshing stoppages, — stoppages
often without any apparent motive; more frequent
ly rendered necessary by " a screw being loose"
somewhere ; for there never yet was an Italian
postilion, vetturino, or driver of any kind, who
had not to alight at about every half-mile's dis
tance to look to his harness, — .that harness which
always wants mending, and is never mended but
on the King's highway, as a diversion to break
the monotony of the journey.
This is the way we travel in Piedmont, and if
we wished for consolation we should have to look

ROAD'S AND CONVEYANCES. 65
back to those days when in England also, " as
late as the reign of George II. , the coach of his
Queen, Caroline, could not be dragged from St.
James's to Kensington in less than two hours."
Such is our rate of speed here now, — anywhere,
at least, out of the reach of railways. It is but
fair to add, that these latter are already in an ad
vanced state, that they are managed with praise
worthy order and punctuality, though they are
rather " slow and cheap," as everywhere else on
the Continent ; slow, at least, to my mind, for
you know, Marmion, I am, for no earthly reason,
always in a bustle, always in hot haste to get
on, whether I walk, ride, drive, or steam, — a fault
for which I am cruelly punished in this country,
not only by the dullness of all locomotion, but
also and still more by the perfect nonchalance
with which all my fellow-travellers, whilst I
am vainly fretting and fuming, most provokingly
" smoke, and take it easy."
I have tried, on these same roads, hired and
even private horses, but with very imperfect suc
cess, as the roads present insurmountable difficul
ties, and on the other hand, with the exception
of a few English hacks doing duty as chargers
for the officers of the army, and of some Mecklen-

66 ROADS AND CONVEYANCES.
burg carriage-horses in and about Turin, the cattle
are worse than indifferent. The custom in Italy,
even in the army, is to stuff horses with hay,
and stint them in corn : so that even the best
teams, when compared with the same animals in
England, have always a languid, shuffling gait,
and a hangdog, lackadaisical look. The waste of
whipcord is here prodigious, and the handle is
almost invariably laid upon the poor brute's back
before the journey is over : so that a few miles'
drive with a Piedmontese coachman would make
a member of the " Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty," etc., perfectly mad. Luckily the tem
pest of blows is relieved by an occasional oath ;
and it would be impossible to describe the awe
these wretched four-legged creatures stand in
of the Madonna and the Saints. I remember
a Swiss-Italian postilion, in the Canton Ticino,
had recourse to a still more formidable name.
It was in 1849, and the country was full of the
exploits of that stout-hearted condottiero whose
defence of Rome in that year will rank among
the greatest military deeds of modern Italy:
whenever the man's cattle flagged in their exer
tions, down came the whip, and with it a roaring,
rattling shout of " Gar-r-r-ribaldi !" and away the

ROADS AND CONVEYANCES. 67
poor fagged jades would tug and strain and pull
as if the very enemy were at their heels. No'Sa-
racen mother ever started from her slumbers to
clasp her infant to her breast in greater anguish
and terror, as the bare name of the Lion-hearted
King flashed across her mind. What a contrast,
my dear friend, to those sleek, smooth- coated, fiery
spans and teams of geldings, upon the crupper
of which your dainty English Jehu scarcely suf
fers the end of the whip to drop imperceptibly for
the tenth part of a second, and sets his cattle off,
as if that whip-end had been a lighted match
setting fire to the train of a mine !
I truly believe those oaths act as a tonic to the
horses, at the same time that they seem to afford
relief to the overwrought feelings of the driver.
I mentioned to you in a previous letter that tall,
stately English gentleman who has favoured me
with a visit in this out-of-the way corner of
the globe. Well — he undertook the other day to
drive a hired horse and dog-cart all the way from
Turin to this place. He prides himself on being
a good whip, as he indeed is at most practical
matters connected with field-work or sport.
Well, Sir ! he was six mortal hours in conveying
us over the distance, and was stiff and stark in

68 ROADS AND CONVEYANCES.
every bone and muscle for three days or three
weeks afterwards, from the tremendous exertion
of tugging at the reins and belabouring the back
of our sorry Rosinante. Whip and reins won't
do it, I tell you, unless the Virgin and the Saints
have a hand in the business. St. Anthony is
said to be the special patron of cattle ; but what
can he have to say against the queen and all the
host of heaven, who seem to take part with the
ruthless oppressor, and to lend their names to
add weight and energy to his arm ?

69

V.
INNS AND INN-CTJSTOMERS. Castellamonte, October 17.
Mine host of the ' Falcon ' at Berne, a competent
authority in such matters, assured me that no
less than forty million francs come yearly into
Switzerland, with the great influx of tourists and
pleasure-seekers who repair to the mountains in
the short summer season, between July and Sep
tember. Now as there are two sides to these moun
tains, and as, in my humble opinion, the Italian
side of the Alps is by no means less grand and
picturesque, and infinitely more verdant, luxu
riant and lovely, than the Helvetian side, there
is no mortal reason why the Italian dwellers on
the Alps, and especially the Piedmontese, should
not come in for their fair share of the millions
which make Swiss innkeepers the magnates of
their land. The only reason is the very dismal

70 inns and inn-customers.
accommodation afforded by Subalpine hotels.
Be it remembered that at Turin and Genoa
some of the most comfortable, no less than splen
did hotels in the world are to be found ; that the
summer palaces at Chamouny are kept by Pied
montese and Savoyards, in a style which leaves
little or nothing to envy in the most gorgeous
establishments at Vevey, Friburg, and Basle;
that the prince of hotel-builders in England is
Vantini, an Italian, and that the ill-starred but
well-deserving caravanserai at Slough, was found
ed by Dotesio, a Piedmontese. Travel through
France or Germany, through England or Ame
rica, and you will see that an Italian has as much
shrewdness, suppleness, and skill in the public
service as any native of other countries. It is
only at home that he is a careless, slovenly inn
keeper : and the reason is to be found, not in the
want of intelligence or enterprise of the indivi
dual, but in the general looseness of manners, in
the uncleanness of habits, in the backward state
of civilization in the masses. The Piedmontese
country -inns are unfortunately such as the good
people need or want ; and as few foreign tra
vellers are to be found sufficiently venturous to
pioneer the way, and put themselves to incon-

INNS AND INN-CUSTOMERS. 71
venience for the comfort of those who may come
after them, no demand arises for better accom
modation, — no one ventures upon a speculation
which seems to offer no chance of a good return.
There is everywhere reciprocity between cause
and effect. As we have seen that bad roads
make bad horses and conveyance, and bad
means of communication deprive the country of
those means by which roads and all other things
are improved, so we see here that lack of travel
lers starves the inns, and wretched inns scare the
travellers away. I have known tourists, whole
tribes of English tourists, with a complete array
of couriers, maids, tutors, and governesses, pause
on the Grand St. Bernard, inhaling the sweet
balmy air coming up from the Val d' Aosta — that
loveliest of valleys — and inquire whether no better
inn had yet been established in the ancient city
of Augusta Prsetoria than the old ' Golden Lion,'
of which either they had such horrid recollection,
or of which common report gave such a shock
ing account ; and upon hearing that the ' Golden
Lion ' still reigned alone, I have seen them turn
their faces backwards, and scamper down the
narrow northern valley, to their cheerless but
cosy and clean quarters at Martigny.

72 INNS AND INN-CUSTOMERS.
Not but that good inns are to be found on the
Italian side of the Alps, on the high-road of
English tourists, on the Lake of Como, and even
along the shores of Lake Maggiore; and one
of the most delightful public-houses to stop at
is certainly Ronchetti's unpretending inn, on the
margin of the lake at Orta ; but these are only
the exceptions, and in the untrodden wilds of
Piedmont, as for instance here in Canavese, black
holes and lurking-places are found such as would
beat back a Mungo Park, a Livingstone, or any
other undaunted explorer of the savage world.
We must not be so unjust to Piedmontese or
other Italian innkeepers, as to deny that they
are a civil, obliging, and innately kind-hearted
race; and that any traveller who condescends
to be friendly and chatty with them, will com
mand anything that either the house or the
country for miles around can afford, let alone the
landlord's confidence, good counsel and sympathy
whether needed or not ; — that what they call la
cucina, (i.. e. their cookery,) even in remote vil
lages, is as good as Italian cookery may be said
to be anywhere, — every Italian but myself being
in fact by instinct a cook; and that the speed
and readiness with which fowls are caught, killed,

INNS AND INN-CUSTOMERS. 73
spitted, roasted, and dished up within half an
hour of the traveller's arrival, are wonderful, or
rather magical. Italy is the land of improvvisa-
tori, and an Italian Boniface must be a clumsy
botcher indeed who cannot get up a dinner at a
few minutes' notice. Italian life is, even in small
villages, all out-of-doors ; and in the poorest
country-places there are numerous stray fellows,
who regularly breakfast at a cafe and dine at a
tavern. So the tables are always laid. The kit
chen of an Itahan inn, no matter of what de
gree, has always a warm hearth, and its larder
is more plentifully stored than a public-house in
England of the same description. Every nation
like every individual has its mission upon earth,
and John Bull's particular calling is drinking.
" An intolerable deal of sack to the ha'p'orth of
bread." Unfortunately man cannot live by bread or
even by macaroni and risotto* alone ; and with
the exception of the table, or rather of the dishes,
— I mean of their contents, — there is hardly any-
* Risotto, a Milanese dish, made everywhere in Italy, but
nowhere so good as in the Lombard capital, is one of the very
best things in this sad world to eat. The chief ingredient is
rice, but with an endless variety of gravies, sauces, spices, con
diments, seasonings, etc.

74 INNS AND INN-CUSTOMERS.
thing in an Italian inn a traveller at all squeam
ish can put up with. The most grievous evils
to be complained of may be epitomized in
noise, dirt, and universal disorder and confusion.
There are no bell-ropes in Italian inns, or only
ropes with no bells to them, or only ropes and
bells with no waiters to answer them. A cham
bermaid is an unknown, rather than a rare bird
in this climate : all the service allotted to her in
England or Germany is performed by camerieri,
or waiters, warranted to do everything, and ex
pected to be in an indefinite number of places
at the same time. This substitution of male
for female attendants, so derogatory to the dig
nity of the stronger sex, is also decisive as to
the want in these establishments of tidiness,
decency, and cleanliness, — virtues belonging to
feminine instinct; and the popping in of an
unwashed, lubberly fellow, to answer a sum
mons from the sanctuary of a well-bred, delicate
English lady or young lady, has been sufficient,
in more than one instance, to empty a French
or Italian house of all its guests, and to set the
'Times' or Murray's Handbook for ever against
it. Bad as these the best hotels in reality are in

INNS AND INN-CUSTOMERS. 75
their interior, they are yet still worse in their
external appearance. Even in the inns of pro
vincial towns of some pretensions, such as Ales
sandria, Novara, Ivrea, or Casale, and in the se
cond-rate houses of entertainment, — those which
are called the hotels du pays, in Turin or Genoa, —
there is something forbidding, something chill
ing, killing, in the welcome you meet with. You
alight before an open coach-door at the entrance
of a vast stable-yard, and you are lucky indeed
if you do not find your progress obstructed by
heaps of dung carefully laid in your path. That
patriarchal custom of joining the rustico, i.e. the
stables, to the civile, i.e. the house, — putting men
and beasts under the same roof, — which is still al
most universal in Italy, from the prince's palace to
the humblest farmhouse, obtains equally with all
the old-fashioned Italian inns. Enter: — the walls,
the door-posts, the whole dwelling within and
without, everything bears a look of dismal squalor
and decay. A compound of the most villainous
stenches from the open, steaming kitchen, from
the yawning stable, and from worse places, no
less conspicuous and wide open, takes away your
breath. You have to address half-a-dozen gaping,
staring stable-boys, ere you find one to point out

76 INNS AND INN-CUSTOMERS.
the entrance to the human department of the inn.
You find no bell to announce your arrival ; hardly
a man to pay you the least attention, much less
to look to your luggage, or to rid you of your
bags, cloaks, umbrellas, and hat-cases. Bar and
other offices are generally " upstairs." When you
have ascended tbe stairs, and succeeded in com
ing up with the landlord or head waiter, their cor
dial greeting, their friendly bustle, might indeed
make up for previous neglect ; but you always
seem to catch them at the wrong moment, always
find them unprepared, as if theirs were any
thing but an open house, and a traveller the most
unlooked-for thing in the world. They never
know what rooms they have undisposed of ; they
march you up to the third or fourth floor, then
down again to the second or first, then along
the right-hand, then along the left-hand cOrridor ;
they poke their noses into twenty occupied rooms,
to the great dismay, inconvenience, and annoy
ance of the sleeping or dressing indwellers. They
bawl out to each other, the landlord to the land
lady, and the latter to the waiter, — " Try No. 57,
No. 46, No. X, Y, Z,"— till they at last find a va
cant bed-chamber, which has perhaps been unte
nanted, and alas ! forgotten, uncared for, unswept,

INNS AND INN-CUSTOMERS. 77
and unaired for a week. The bed is all unmade,
the small water-jug is empty, what ought to be
empty is full. There is something close, stuffy,
sickening, about the whole establishment, as in
deed there is about the interior of coaches, omni
buses, railway-carriages, and other places where
Italians congregate ; for men seem to hate free air,
in proportion as nature gives it them fresh, sweet,
and pure ; and you are fain to obey the waiter's
summons, who bids you go down, with unwashed
hands, to the salon for your supper, — glad to come
back to your night lair as late, and as much in
the dark, as you can manage, and only sorry that
you cannot shut all your senses against unpleasant
sounds and smells, as you close your eyes against
disagreeable sights. In the morning, or rather
before morning, — for we are all dreadfully early
people in these parts, — your ears are greeted, by
way of a serenade, with the scraping, scraping of
the Boots, or waiter-of-all-work doing duty as
Boots, (for they have no idea of division of la
bour in Italian inns,) cleaning your shoes in the
open corridor close by your door and window,
with those very hands that are to bring in your
breakfast, bread-and-butter and all, together with
the shoes, half an hour later. Anon there arises a

78 INNS AND INN-CUSTOMERS.
great stamping and tramping of the horses that
are being groomed by the ostlers in the yard be
neath ; and presently the rolling and thundering
of the lumping conveyances that are to start at
break of day, rattle every glass in your window,
as they tug and pant and labour to go through
the rough-paved gateway. Then there is knock
ing at your next-door neighbour's, or by mistake
at your own door, to ask whether it be not you
who are to be off by the early coach at six ; or
may -be it is the cunning waiter, officiously waking
you up to inform you that " it is only four, and
you have still two hours for your slumber." That
matter is no sooner settled, than the early traveller,
all muffled and cloaked, is to be seen going along
the corridor, and casting a glance at your bed
and nightcap through the window, the shutters of
which the waiter thought it no business of his
to fasten in the evening. No silence, no privacy,
no rest, from earliest morning till very late in
the evening. As soon as daylight comes in,
look round ! See the plaster peeling off, falling
off from the unpapered, dingy walls. Look at
the state of the uncarpeted floor, never washed,
swept perhaps once in the year. You take a
clean shirt out of your portmanteau, and are awk-

INNS AND INN-CUSTOMERS. 79
ward or unlucky enough to let it drop on the
floor ; let it fall where it may, it will require laun
dress's work ere you can think of putting it on
again. You cannot brush past a wall, either in
bedchamber, parlour, or staircase, but you must
needs have your coat cleaned anew. You can
not lay your hat on a chair, sofa, or table, but
you must needs pass your silk handkerchief
over it ere it be fit to cover your head once
more. The amount of dust and dirt is appalling
everywhere. Nor is the inn alone objectionable
on that score ; the cafe, the church, the court
house, all public places and most private houses,
are in the same state of uncleanliness. The very
style of building, the nature of the houses, war
ranted to last a thousand years, and suffered to
go without repair for nearly the whole period, the
absolute want of house-painting, and the chari
ness of whitewashing, contribute to wrap every
thing in a dusky, greasy, dingy coat of dirt, to
give everything the look of discomfort and dilapi
dation. Whatever may be the political opinions
of the Italians about other matters, they are cer
tainly all conservatives as to dirt.
Under such circumstances, mine host of the
' Cock,' the ' Crane,' or the ' Stork,' is the least

80 INNS AND INN-CUSTOMERS.
to blame; what can one man do against such
odds ? Where is the use of the poor fellow's
dusting, rubbing, and scrubbing, against ninety-
nine out of a hundred of his customers, all con
spiring to soil anything the poor wight has con
trived to make clean? The Piedmontese, and
indeed all Italians, at the present day, smoke like
Germans and spit like Yankees. Tobacco has
forced back European civilization three hun
dred years, and the vile habit is gaining ground,
at least south of the Alps. A smoker is of ne
cessity an unclean animal, and our smokers are
even fouler than the foul practice need make
them. Bad as things are in Piedmont, we are not at
least, it must be said, denied the consolation that
matters are not only not better, but far worse,
in France, especially in Southern France. Your
' Empereur,' or ' Ambassadeur ' at Lyons or
Marseilles, is not only as foul an animal as
the Subalpine ' Stork ' or ' Pelican,' or ' Bonne
Femme,' (i. e. woman without a head, a favourite
sign in this country,) but he is a far surlier,
snarlier dog to boot. He is a National Guard,
a newspaper-reader, a patriot, and heaven knows
what besides. He is a discontented, dogmatic,

INNS AND INN-CUSTOMERS. 81
intolerable being. He lectures you at the very
time he fleeces you ; may-be he rates, bullies,
and all but positively blows you up besides.
He looks at you with a sort of propriete c'est
le vol, envious, vindictive scowl ; and you feel
sure he is all the time busy with the calcu
lation of the time that must elapse ere the uni
versal culbute takes place, which is to "right"
everything; when you shall have to exchange
parts, and it will be your turn to stand before
him, cap and bill in hand, and when he feels
confident he will be too knowing to allow you
even the poor consolation of cheating him, as
he is at this moment swindling you.
Those who have any distinct idea of what
England- was at the time when Falstaff took
"his ease in his inn," need not despair of the
eventual improvement of such things in Piedmont
also. Already, as I have said, specimens of the
very best and best-conducted hotels are to be
seen in the great cities, and I feel decidedly
more comfortable at Feder's in Turin, Genoa, or
Nice, than in any house in the same style on
the Continent. The ' Petit Paris,' at Chambery,
is a charming resting-place, and the success of
the hotel-keepers at Chamouny has emboldened

S3 INNS AND INN-CUSTOMERS.
some Piedmontese speculators to open comfort
able houses for the Signori Inglesi at Cormayeur,
in Val d' Aosta, at Domo d'Ossola, Orta, and
Varallo. In Val Anzasca, Val Gressoney, and other
favourite haunts of foreign tourists, matters are
rapidly mending. The gold that foreign visi
tors leave behind is the least benefit they confer
upon the country ; they bring civilization and re
finement, comfort and cleanliness, with them in
their carpet-bags. The first-comers indeed must
give proof of heroic self-denial and devotion to
the public good ; but let them be cheered by the
idea, that they not only work for the welfare of
those who follow in their track, but contribute
also to the physical and moral regeneration of
a good-natured, well-disposed people, who only
need to know better in order to do better,. A
journey through Piedmont is a deed of charity
and humanity.

83

VI.

LAND AND LAND-LABOTJRERS. Castellamonte, November 16.
I do not know, Marmion, what sort of weather
you have in England, but the Paradise of North
ern Italy has surely never been more like a Para
dise than this blessed autumn. I have been in
Piedmont since the end of August, and for nearly
three months we have had every possible variety
of fine skies, uninterrupted but twice for inter
vals of two or three days by heavy rains. I
never felt more forcibly than I do now the
correctness of the saying, that three-fourths of
the gladness, if not the happiness, of healthy,
feeling beings depends on mere atmospheric
conditions. Here, close on the Alps, the inces
sant play of mountain cloud and valley mist
does away with that cloying uniformity of blue
Italian sky which sometimes proves wearying to

84 LAND AND LAND-LABOURERS.
the Northern traveller, and makes him pant even
for a London fog by way of a change. The ve
getation has been dying away so gently, so im
perceptibly, that many of the hardier trees — the
mulberry, the cherry, etc., have hardly turned a
leaf. The oak, as you are aware, never sheds its
leaves for the winter in this country, but keeps
the whole of its sere foliage till spring clothes
it with new verdure. As the first frosts have
been rather sudden and severe, it is singular to
see, on a bright morning, the ground under the
trees thickly strewn with leaves unseared and
unwithered, with the whole mantle of the tree at
once borne away by sudden death, rather than
by - lingering decay. As the cold at night in
creases — for in the daytime the sun has still al
most unendurable power — the atmosphere waxes
purer and brighter, and the view, unimpeded by
the falling foliage, overstretches a broader ex
panse, and acquires new beauty from the endless
variety of the autumn tints.
I again walked the day before yesterday from
Turin to this place, a distance of fifteen Pied
montese, or twenty-two and a half English miles,
in little more than five hours, — a far brisker
pace than that at which the lumbering machine

LAND AND LAND-LABOURERS. 85
which they call the Corriera travels. 1 had the
Alps on my left, from the broad gate of the
Valley of Susa, to the close gap of that of the
Dora Baltea at Ivrea, and the Montferrat hills
from Turin to Chivasso and Casale on my right.
Though the whole distance from the latter, at
starting, was hardly one-tenth of the distance
from the former, and towards the close of the
journey the distances were reversed, yet the
minor hills on one side, and the greater moun
tains on the other, seemed equally at hand the
whole time; for such is the infinite transpa
rency of the Italian air, that objects twenty or
thirty miles off, are descried with a vividness
and minuteness as surprising as if they were
within • reach of the hand. It is but right to
state, however, that such an autumn, at least in
Piedmont, is of rare occurrence, and the people
here are as much delighted and surprised at
this kind dispensation of Nature as I may be.
Well: as I walked the other day and looked at
the new furrows all sparkling with dew, and at the
scanty woods, gay with their russet hues, I could
not help thinking what a happy country this is,
and how infinitely happier it might be made, if
men would only, as they now seem to begin to

86 LAND AND LAND-LABOURERS.
understand that they should do, give thanks to
the Creator by turning all their power to the
improvement of what He has created. I have al
ways understood that England is the best culti
vated of all European lands ; that Holland ranks
next to England for the thrift of its husbandry,
and Lombardy next to Holland. Now Piedmont
— geographically as well as historically, a part of
Lombardy — is hardly half as well tilled and kept
in trim as either Austrian Lombardy or the
Duchies of Parma and Modena, and is therefore
six times removed from the improvements that
agriculture has attained in England. Piedmont
is said to produce only two-thirds of the bread
necessary for the consumption of its population ;
but this is said of the whole State, and includes
barren Savoy, with the whole Alpine range, and
the Riviera of Genoa, where man would strive in
vain to turn stones into bread. And you must
observe that the population is here in an inverted
ratio to the fertility of the soil ; so that whilst the
broad deep plain is almost a blank, only dotted
here and there at wide distances with closely-
built towns and villages, and rare straggling
farmhouses, the hill-sides and the valleys up to
the bleakest cliffs and most impervious crags are

LAND AND LAND-LABOURERS. 87
crowded with human habitations, churches, and
villages; and the cultivation mantles the very
brows of lofty peaks, where you would say there
is hardly room enough for an eagle to perch.
The love of the mountaineer for his rugged home
is quite marvellous, and all the more surprising,
as it does not spring from a love of the beauti
ful in nature, but, as it would seem, from mere
animal instinct of adhesiveness and long habit,
which renders the air and climate of the Alps a
second nature to the Alpine rustic. There is cer
tainly no fault to be found with the mountaineer's
husbandry ; for, as he chooses his home in the
barren wilderness, it is but natural that he should
strive to make it yield all it can ; indeed he is
rather addicted to over-cultivation, and will even
till mountain-slopes which he should rather leave
alone ; as the spring thaw or the autumn rain
often brings the land, and the seed he trusted to
it, down with a rumbling noise about his ears.
He will also not unfrequently coax up a few vine
tendrils where the fir could hardly thrive, and
manage to keep cows where goats would almost
starve. It is only on the plain that agriculture is de
ficient, as well as backward, and there the first

88 LAND AND LAND-LABOURERS.
cause of the evil must undoubtedly be ascribed
to scantiness of population.
It is important to observe, in the first place,
that in Piedmont, as throughout Italy, the land
owners never, and the labourers but seldom,
live on their lands, — at least in the plain. The
owner and the labourer of truly valuable soil are
hardly ever the same person. Agriculture is not
looked upon with sufficient respect and affection
by the Italian ; and ever since the time when the
Fabii and Pisos and Lentuli forsook their fields
for the idleness and corruption of imperial Rome,
no man in Italy who can help it has ever con
descended to whistle at the plough. Whoever
has land enough, or can by any other means eke
out ever so wretched an existence in Turin, will
hardly think of occupying his house at Ivrea or
Pinerolo ; and whoever has a house at Ivrea or
Pinerolo, would be deemed half crazy if he lived
at his villa two or three miles — nay, half a mile
- — away from other habitations. The landlord
hastens to forsake the land, and scarcely ever
graces the property which supports him with
more than a fortnight's or a month's visit in the
autumn. The peasantry thernselves crowd to
gether in their dingy villages, and have often a

LAND AND LAND-LABOURERS. 89
day's journey to travel before they reach the
fields entrusted to their care. Large farms exist
indeed here and there throughout the plain, —
farms in the style of those of Lombardy; for
the provinces of Novara, Lomellina, and even
Vercelli, (the latter after four-hundred years' an
nexation to Piedmont,) are still as Lombard in
their features, manners, habits and language as
ever they were under the Visconti, — huge blocks
of building, with high walls all round, and deep
moats, half-messuages, half-fortresses, intended to
stand storm and siege in case of need. For, after
all, this loathing of the Italian for rural seclusion
and isolated dwellings, however it may now have
become mere matter of taste and habit, arose
at first from the insecurity of a country invaded
for so many centuries by hordes of barbarians in
times of war, and infested by bands of even more
barbarous malefactors in days of peace. It is still
the case at the present day, owing to the imper
fect state of communication and the consequent
difficulty of procuring the necessaries (not to say
the luxuries) of life in any home, chosen at even
the smallest distance from the busy haunts of
men. Country life would hardly be so charming
even in England, were the baker's or butcher's

90 LAND AND LAND-LABOURERS.
carts not to come round with their daily supply
of new bread or fresh meat, and were not the
brisk postman, or the tidy, punctual stage-coach
guard to leave the ' Times,' the new number of
the * Quarterly,' or the last batch of Mudie's
novels at your lodge every morning. It would be
still less attractive, if you were to have huge iron
bars at your ground7floor casements, instead of
the wide French windows opening on your lawn,
and endless bolts and bars on your door, lest you
should " wake up in the morning and find your
throat cut from ear to ear ;" and if you were
obliged to shun the deep wood or the open com
mon, to escape being pounced upon by half-a-
dozen bandits, and hurried away to the hills, to
be released only upon payment of a ransom equal
to one-half of your income. Such was the state
of things in olden times, that made the Italian the
gregarious urban being he even now is; such
it was only fifty years since all over the Penin
sula ; such it is at the present moment in most
of the Roman and Neapolitan provinces*. In
* Only two or three years ago the better classes at Bologna
and all over Romagna were offered the alternative in the
summer, either to stay in town and die of the cholera, or fly
to the country, there to fall into the hands of the banditti.
They chose the cholera as the minor evil.

LAND AND LAND-LABOURERS. 91
Piedmont the removal of the causes may lead to
the cessation of the fatal effects.
The farms on the plain, at the present day,
may be said to be generally too large for the
number of men destined to till them, — especially
in a primitive country where the husbandman's
toils are hardly relieved by the co-operation of
machinery, — and the husbandry must needs be,
as it is, clumsy, careless, and slovenly. By far
the greatest part of the Piedmontese landed pro
perty is cultivated by mezzadri — metayers, or
halflings — as they are called ; labourers, that is,
sharing the profits in kind with the landowner,
generally on equal terms, instead of paying a
fixed rent in specie. Between landowner and
land-labourer no connection exists. At harvest-
time the master comes or sends for his own
portion of the labourer's produce, and contri
butes his share of the seed : it seldom happens
that he has intelligence or liberality enough to
desire or propose any improvement, or to fur
nish the capital necessary to carry it through.
The terms upon which landlord and peasant
agree for the cultivation on half-profits are ge
nerally fair enough ; but they are entirely arbi
trary, dependent upon the wording of a purely

92 LAND AND LAND-LABOURERS.
private contract, and must press more or less
heavily on the peasant in proportion as the land
is more or less fertile, and as he .starts with
means more or less sufficient to secure his inde
pendence of a greedy employer. In some parts
of Lombardy and the Duchies, the mezzadri,
though so called, are fain to put up with only
one-third instead of half the produce, when the
lands are of great natural fertility ; and, on the
other hand, they get as much as two-thirds when
the lands are extremely and irreclaimably barren.
Agreeably to the general custom, the metayer
should bring to his farm, and keep at his ex
pense, all his own implements of husbandry, and
half at least the labouring cattle. But if the
poor peasant makes an unlucky start, if his mas
ter has to buy ploughs, carts, etc. for him, and
to supply him with all the necessary cattle, —
or " capital," as it is called ; or if, in years of
scarcity, he has to provide the peasant with means
of sustenance, and even with the whole corn for
seed, then the poor labourer falls helplessly into
his master's clutches, and finds himself involved
in difficulties from which he may never extricate
himself. It is easy to see that agricultural im
provement must needs be very slow, in a country

LAND AND LAND-LABOURERS. 93
where a new plough or a new threshing-machine
must be bought by a poor ignorant rustic, who
has no occasion to touch money from year's end
to year's end, or purchased for him by a towns
man destitute of all technical knowledge, who is
generally apt enough, and is at any rate strongly
suspected of being apt, to make the most of his
labourer's wants and deficiencies.
This system of husbandry, primitive and un
satisfactory as it may seem in point of real agri
cultural economy and social progress, might have
its advantages in matters of justice and humanity,
were men no worse than they should be. The
constant intercourse and mutual dependence of
master and labourer might prove highly bene
ficial to the rural population; but intercourse
there is unfortunately little, and the dependence
weighs cruelly on the labourer alone. The land
lord's object — owing especially to the subdivi
sion of property, consequent on the abolition of
the law of primogeniture, and to the anxiety of
proprietors in reduced circumstances to keep
up a style disproportionate to their diminished
income,— is merely to grind down his labourer ;
the labourer has no redress or revenge, save only
that of cheating and robbing his master. The

94 LAND AND LAND-LABOURERS.
word mezzadro has been punningly converted
into mezzo-ladro (half-thief), and the reciprocal
mistrust and ill-will tend daily to widen the es
trangement between rich and poor. Civiliza
tion, mental cultivation, agricultural improvement,
are utterly impossible in a country where master
and man shun all fellowship and contact, and
look upon each other with feelings of unmitigated
hostility. Plunged into deep ignorance, the luck
less hind resists innovation, whenever it is at
tempted, as something intended to defraud him
of the reward of his labour, or to supersede his
usefulness. I travelled across this same coun
try with an intelligent Englishman — the same I
have repeatedly mentioned — and he was shocked
to see such primeval ploughs and rakes and har
rows, as reminded him of the instruments de
scribed and of the agricultural methods recom
mended by Virgil and Columella. Great efforts
have been made of late to introduce new imple
ments of husbandry from England, and to esta
blish model farms : we have in Turin an " Agra
rian Society," which played a very important
part in the political movements leading to the
Constitution of 1848 ; and agrarian reviews and
magazines, no less than an agrarian professor-

LAND AND LAND-LABOURERS. 95
ship at the University, are not wanting. Some
enlightened gentlemen, such as the Prime Mi
nister Count Ciavour, his brother the Marquis of
Cavour, and others, have taken to farming with
great zeal, as well as success, and have inspired
their tenants and dependants, and to some ex
tent their neighbours, with an eager longing for
profitable innovation ; but the vast mass of the
rural population, though docile and naturally
intelligent, are too utterly destitute of education
to appreciate any endeavour that may be made
to lighten their work or improve their condition.
The circumstance that many of the commonest
peasantry reside in the minor towns and villages
rather than in isolated houses, however injurious
it may be to the interests of agriculture, might
at least be turned to the advantage of the people
themselves, by placing the means of education
immediately within their reach ; but the effect of
education is upwards, and the man who can read
or write in these parts often thinks agriculture,
or indeed any manual work, beneath him, as it
must seem to be in a country where so little is
done towards raising the husbandman above the
condition of the most wretched slave, nay, of the
merest beast of burden. Education must spread

96 LAND AND LAND-LABOURERS.
wide and sink deep, ere it can work out its true
regenerating effects. In the meantime, it would
be difficult to conceive anything more melancholy
than the condition of the field-labourers in Pied
mont, at least on the plain ; and the hardships
and miseries they have to endure are the more
heart-rending, as they fall on a sober, hardwork
ing, early-rising, long-enduring race. Their po
lenta, or Indian meal-porridge, which would be a
substantial and relishable food, becomes distaste
ful and even unwholesome, by being their con
stant, almost exclusive nourishment.* That whole
families will go through the year with scarcely a
taste of fresh meat once a fortnight or a month,
will hardly be credited in England ; nor will it be
easy to conceive how, in a country where in or
dinary years the vintage would supply the wants
of six times the actual population, the labouring
man has often to drink water the winter through,
merely from want of vats, casks, and other neces
sary vessels ; all the while the rank grapes are
literally rotting on the branches. Their houses,
which, although solid and sufficiently spacious,
* An intelligent Piedmontese, who came back from Eng
land a month ago, and had visited the London Penitentiaries,
assured me that the lowest convicted felon in England fares
more sumptuously than the best free labourer in this country.

LAND AND LAND-LABOURERS. 97
are so dilapidated and squalid as to be scarcely
distinguishable from the abode of unclean ani
mals, would yet be good enough in the sum
mer-time for a people, and in a country, where
shelter at that season is hardly needed by day
or night ; but they become worse than useless in
the short but cruelly sharp winter months, when
the deplorable scarcity of fuel, consequent on the
destruction of the woods, drives them from their
hearth, and compels them to herd and huddle
with the cattle in their stables, — their low, noi
some, air-tight, suffocating stables, — whence they
only emerge in the spring, green and yellow
from long seclusion and exposure to the mi
asmas of a mephitic atmosphere.
The inhabitants of the high-lands, though
hardly less wretched than their brethren of the
plain generally, at least rejoice in the conscious
dignity and responsibility of independent beings;
for property in the high Alps and Apennines has
been at all times too barren to tempt the cove
tousness of wealthy landowners, and what is not
common pasture and waste heath is parcelled out
among the people, who are now, as their fathers
have been from time immemorial, tilling their
own soil. They would hardly be able to get their
H

98 LAND AND LAND-LABOURERS.
daily bread out of the thin narrow slips and
patches that have fallen to their lot, did they
not, as I told you, make up for their scanty in
come by turning a hand to any kind of work, and
earning their sustenance at home or abroad by
the exercise of a variety of trades.
Strange to say, actual misery seems to stop
short of the limit of perpetual barrenness ; it is
only on the rugged cliffs, and on the bare rocks
of the upper valleys, that man, doomed to lack all
but the air and light of heaven, contrives to pro
cure for himself what niggardly Nature denies.
In the high valleys of Piedmont, as in Glarus,
St. Gallen or Appenzell, you find in the same
cottage the proprietor as well as the husband
man, and no less the silk or cotton spinner, — on a
small scale, the agriculturist's and the manufac
turer's business united in the same man and the
same family.
It would be an error, I think, to fancy that
the comparative ease and prosperity of the moun
taineer merely arises from the infinite subdivi
sion of property, and from the advantage he
enjoys as the cultivator of his own ground. I
really believe he is thriving in spite of all this.
I have seen in Germany, on the Rhine, a vast

LAND AND LAND-LABOURERS. 99
population amongst which the havocs of the
French Revolution have shared as freely as on
the Alps, a land far more bountiful than that
which has been for centuries partitioned among
the dwellers on the Alps ; and I have seen the
former eaten up by Jewish harpies to whom the
improvident bumpkin is driven to mortgage his
land, till the burdens upon it well-nigh equal its
value, when the husbandman himself and all his
family and the whole village, with the parson at
their head, must pack off to America, whilst the
money-lending Jew scrapes together the forsaken
slips and patches, rebuilds the large fortune which
levelling republicans had wrenched from the
hands of the old feudal aristocracy, rises may-be
to the rank of a great banker, a baron, and Pala
tine count, and begins the line of a new, equally
grasping, only somewhat more sordid and shabby
nobility. No, no ! the causes of the well-being of the
Piedmontese or Swiss mountaineers lie in the
very hard-heartedness of the country they have to
contend with. The small patch of ground, that
constitutes the pride of their birthright, is little
more than a garden to their home ; it yields
them more flowers than fruit. They know that
h 2

100 LAND AND LAND-LABOURERS.
they have to earn their bread notwithstanding,
and they set to work like men who have nothing
to hope but from their own unceasing exer
tions. It is thus that, all the world over, man
will do better when toiling under the stepmotherly
frowns of Nature, than when basking in the light
of her maternal smiles.
But even amongst the well-to-do highland ers
of the loftiest Alpine valleys in Piedmont you
look in vain for that tidiness, cleanliness, thrifti-
ness, which is so pleasingly striking in the cor
responding districts of German Switzerland. The
transition from the Northern to the Southern
watershed, from the abodes of the Teutonic to
those of the Celtic races — may-be also from Pro
testant to Catholic communities — is everywhere
perceptible, and the difference is by no means
in our favour. Though our mountaineers are
without contradiction the most reputable part
of the Piedmontese population, and the Pied
montese are the most healthy and vigorous
race in Italy, yet that " Italienische Nachlassig-
keit," or Italian neglect and slovenliness, which
Zschokke justly imputed to the whole nation, is
still very plainly discernible amongst our Alpine
people, up to the very crest of the mountains,

LAND AND LAND-LABOURERS. 101
and it will probably resist the action of civili
zation for ages. All the tribes of mankind have
their own gift, and ours is certainly not in
dustry and thrift : it is idle, I think, to hope
that education will in all instances counteract
instinct.

102

VII.
LAND AND LAND-RATS.
Castellamonte, November 19th.
It is difficult to foresee what fifty years' rational
freedom may do for this or any country ; but it
is most certain that there is ample room here for
improvement. Not to wander away from mere
material well-being, and especially from agricul
tural prosperity, it is but fair to start from the
fact, that Piedmont is, to say the very utmost,
only half cultivated. One of the greatest hin
drances to the establishment of a good system
of agriculture lies in the insecurity of landed
property. By far the largest portion of the fields
and vineyards, and all the woods and pastures,
are unenclosed. Fences and hedges of the clum
siest kind are to be seen here and there ; but
as the property, which, especially in mountain dis
tricts, has, as 1 told you, always been parcelled out

LAND AND LAND- RATS. 103
into small lots, has since the French Revolution
of 1789, and the consequent abolition of the
rights of primogeniture, been further divided and
subdivided almost to infinity, a great many pro
prietors have no access to their little patches of
ground except through their neighbours' estates ;
so that an almost universal right of way has been
established throughout the most valuable lands.
The consequence of this state of things will be
readily apprehended in England. Where a man
feels that he must share the income of his land
with any passing vagrant, who may have a fancy
to help himself to what lies so invitingly open to
his rapacity, the love of property must needs be
comparatively weak, and all attempts at improve
ment feeble and inefficient.
Another circumstance contributes to the inse
curity of the property, and to that I have already
alluded, when I said that scarcely any of the
rich land-owners, and few of the land-labourers,
reside on their own acres, but prefer huddling
together in towns and villages. You traverse
vast tracts of fertile territory, which seem to be
long to no one. The rural population in Italy,
and especially in Piedmont, is sound and honest
in the main ; else the fruits of the earth would be

104 LAND AND LAND-RATS.
gathered by anybody rather than him who is by
right of possession and labour entitled to it,
and there would soon be an end to all valuable
cultivation. Nevertheless a certain amount of
vagrancy and beggary — of what is called pro
letariat — exists here also; and to some extent
petty pilfering, and " snapping up of unconsi
dered trifles," is and must ever be unavoidable.
The Priests have at all times fostered mendicancy
throughout the Catholic world, as if fearful lest
charity should come to an end with the cessation
of proper objects on which to exercise it. They
have encouraged the notion that a little glean
ing, a little picking and plucking, constitutes no
theft. They have given rise to some villainously
pious sayings, such as " La roba ch' e nei campi
e di Dio e dei Santi," — (God and the Saints to
all men yield the fruit that ripens in the field), —
tending to establish a theory of Christian com
munism, easily converted into practice by a
people amongst whom the disciples of Francis of
Assisi have countenanced idleness and made beg
gary synonymous with holiness.
I have already told you that this year, when
grapes again made their appearance, after a suc
cession of no less than six blank vintages, they

LAND AND LAND-RATS. 105
had to be gathered in almost green, and the
wine to be made nearly worthless from sourness,
owing to the almost utter impossibility of guard
ing them, as they were stolen from the vines
before they could come to any maturity. A few
basketfuls of grapes used always to be taken
away by petty thieves within men's recollection,
and the proprietors winked at these depreda
tions, good-naturedly observing that Providence
produced enough for themselves and their neigh
bours ; but in proportion as the bountiful fruit
grew scarce, the thieves waxed numerous, da
ring, and indiscreet; and the landowner and
vine- dresser were obliged to make haste and
snatch their scanty crop, ere it was carried away
under their very nose by those who neither paid
nor toiled for it, reasonably concluding that even
sour wine was better than no wine.
The only remedy would be, since the enclo
sure of lands has become to a great extent an
impracticable undertaking, the enlistment of a
good rural police, and to that we shall come in
the end, I have no doubt ; but the sudden intro
duction of free institutions has to a certain extent
loosened the bonds of ancient discipline, and it
will be some time before the municipal organiza-

106 LAND AND LAND-RATS.
tion of the country exhibits all the strength and
compactness, and acquires the control exercised
by ancient absolutism. As the season of vintage
draws near, landlords and labourers pitch their
tents on their vineyards, and by frequent ran
dom discharges of old firelocks and blunder
busses they endeavour to scare away the ama
teurs of cheap grapes, and persuade them that
the fruit is still sour ; but it would be desirable
that the youth of the better classes, now organ
ized in National Guards, should leave the genial
but empty talk of their cafes, and volunteer a
little patrolling about their own and their neigh
bours' grounds by night. Society is here, as
elsewhere, in open war between the habentes
and the non-habentes ; and it is necessary that
the former should combine against the latter, not
only for their own, but for the common good.
Moreover it is not merely ripe grapes and other
fruits that require close and sleepless watch, nor
is autumn the only season open to depredation.
The climate of Northern Italy, though bright and
healthy, is far more severe than that of England,
and the country is almost wholly destitute of the
fuel necessary to resist the short but inclement
winter-season. The poorer classes, ill-fed and ill-

LAND AND LAND-RATS. 107
lodged, suffer dreadfully from want of fire ; for
the warmth of their stables will not at any rate
cook their viands, and they are consequently not
at all scrupulous as to the means of procuring
fuel. A vineyard in Italy requires a large amount
of stakes and trellises, and other wooden frame
work, and the half-frozen peasants are too apt
to repair to the vine-clad hills to pick up a
few "needless" sticks: when the needless sticks
have been carefully gleaned, they venture upon
the needful stakes ; so that when spring comes,
the proprietor often finds that the vineyard has
to be built and propped up afresh. Hedges,
young wood, and the very vines themselves,
escape with difficulty the rapacity of the hard-
driven poor; and a vineyard cultivated under
such trying circumstances is not likely to yield
half the income it might otherwise produce.
Hence the cultivator must needs be disheartened,
and his work necessarily spiritless and slovenly.
Meadows and cornfields would seem to offer
less temptation, or fewer opportunities, to the de
predator than the vineground or the orchard ; yet
I have seen even Indian corn or maize gathered
in unripe this year, lest other hands might help
themselves to it than those which had sown it.

108 LAND AND LAND-RATS.
As to the woods, away from habitations, they are
stripped to the last stick. There ensues, as you
may readily imagine, great demoralization in the
country, both among the poor, who lose every
clear notion of meum and tuum, and amongst
the owners, who are in some instances becoming
possessed with the idea that, the less they do
for the improvement of their lands, the less they
expose themselves toloss and disappointment.
Bad as matters are here in Canavese, where the
generous nature of the people makes them recoil
from the baseness of sneaking theft, they are far
worse in the lands of Asti and Montferrat, where,
I am told, the lower population of such towns as
Casale, Asti, etc. regularly issue from their gates
every morning, to re-enter them in the evening
with their loads of dry or green sticks, basket-
fuls of grapes, or even sacks of corn, all unlaw
fully come by. The mischief is yet greater about
Turin, most of the lovely villas on whose collina
invariably change masters every second or third
year, from the impossibility the proprietors expe
rience, after a short trial, of defending even the
shrubs of their fancy gardens from the activity
of the light-fingered community.
These crying evils, however, begin to bring

LAND AND LAND-RATS. 109
about their own remedies, and most of the rural
townships are already busy with the institution
of a powerful and efficient rural guard. It is ne
cessary however that every man should, in the
first instance, be his own policeman. The coun
try has no lack of stones, and the Italians are
remarkably clever in the construction of stone
fences and uncemented walls, — muri a secco, — of
which the Etruscans left them such solid models
on so gigantic a scale, and which provide so good
a means of enclosure where wood is not easily
obtained. Thorns and brambles also grow up with
astonishing rapidity, and the rankness of the
hedges is such that, with proper care, they would
protect the grounds even more effectually than
either wooden fences or stone enclosures. But
the landowners should shake off their sloth, and
go to work with a good will, and to this, sheer
necessity will soon drive them. Symptoms of
greater love for the country are everywhere per
ceptible in Piedmont, since the earliest dawn of
her new liberties, and the villeggiatura or country-
season now very generally extends to four or five
months. It is to be hoped, that the prevailing
security of the rural districts will gradually wean
the proprietors from their dull provincial towns,

110 LAND AND LAND-RATS.
and induce them to live with their peasantry, not
near, but actually on, their estates. The dread of
a real country-house, with its silence and lone
liness, is however very strong in Italian hearts ;
and I believe I have won the reputation of a
crazy " originale," or eccentric person, merely
because I have bought a little bit of land close
to the gate of this town, and design to rear my
habitation on the summit of a hill, which I can
at any time reach by a five minutes' moderate
walk from the high-road. " What on earth will
you do at such a distance from other people's
dwellings ? "
When I look around me, and behold the
wretched hovels with which the present gene
ration, even of people in good circumstances,
are willing to put up, for the sake of huddling
close together; and, on the other hand, glance
at the ruined castles and monasteries everywhere
dotting the crests of the hills, I cannot help
thinking of the Italians as a shrunken and
dwindled race. Not far from this place, little
more than a mile above Ivrea, there stands still the
Castle of Montalto, long the abode of an eagle-
eyed, falcon- winged feudal line. The last of that
family, an old lady, lived there alone during a

LAND AND LAND-RATS. Ill
long period of blind widowhood, — alone with a
few aged attendants, who dropped one by one by
her side, dying all of them of old-age. The heirs
of the title and estate had built for themselves
a palace, in a snug sheltered nook in the hol
low, close to the village below, in the dust and
noise by the roadside. The proud matron alone
resisted all their importunities that she would
come down from her lonely hawk's nest. Montalto
rises at the entrance of the broad open valley
of the Dora ; the wind from Mont Blanc sweeps
keen and searching over it, and in its stormy
moods would seem strong enough to blow the
castle and its inmates down into the wide, wind
ing stream. Yet the Countess clung fast and firm
to her rock -built, ancient stronghold ; alone she
would stick to her fathers' eyrie, though it had
become too bleak, and steep, and dull, and dreary
a nest for the chattering brood of jays and pies
which went by her father's name. There she
died, last of her house and home ; and there she
lies,— the ruins of her chapel and castle no less
a monument to her proud, untamed spirit, than
an evidence of the degeneracy of her young de
scendants. We must always keep in mind, that the utterly

112 LAND AND LAND-RATS.
destitute population in these districts is neither
very numerous nor hopelessly abandoned to their
evil courses ; so that the institution of sensible
poor-laws, the suppression of convents, and the
advance of education, would do more towards a
cessation of rural depredation than even good
fences or incessant patrolling. The Italian of
the lower ranks, especially in Piedmont, is not
naturally addicted to thieving ; on the contrary
I will venture to say that honesty is more com
mon here amongst the neediest people than in
any country I have yet visited. It is the extreme
good-nature, the carelessness and indulgence of
the landowners themselves, combined with the
foolish notions of monkish liberality about alms
giving, that have perverted the ideas of right
and wrong amongst the suffering poor. They
steal with a perfectly easy conscience : people
have come to think that there is little harm in
the theft of a bunch or two of grapes, and in
picking up a stick or two, from the mere fact
that every door, gate, or wicket stands invitingly
open, and that nobody seems to care whether
man or beast step in and take away what first
comes to hand or mouth. The Italians have
learned from a bountiful soil to be lavish of their

LAND AND LAND-RATS. 113
own. The scourge of a few years' scarcity has
•done immense good, inasmuch as it has taught
the proprietor that it is neither for his own nor
for the public benefit that the fruits of the earth
should be wasted, or spoiled by being gathered
unripe. Let us hope that the hard-won lesson
may not be lost during the new years of plenty
that seem now forthcoming. There are other
evils the country has to contend with, other
enemies, other and more formidable thieves the
landowners have strenuously to oppose ; and in
order that they may have the strength and the
means, the thews and sinews necessary to arm
and combine against these, it is well that no
mau should go to wrork with the apprehension
of working for others, under the chilling influ
ence of a sic-vos-non-vobis foreboding.

114

VIII.
WATER AND WATER-WORKS.
Castellamonte, November 29.
If there be one feature peculiarly charming in
this most lovely and delicious country, it is deci
dedly the abundance, freshness and purity of its
watercourses. People who come into Italy from
Switzerland, and hardly pause at the foot of the
mountains, are rather too apt to descant on the
contrast between the full, limpid, water-streams
on the north, and the muddy, dry, sandy, gravelly
torrent-beds on the south of the Alps. But if we
consider that the course of the rivers is so much
shorter on the southern side, and that on the
north the waters from a hundred glaciers diverge
over all the Continent of Europe, through France,
Switzerland and Germany, whilst on the con
trary they converge upon one single stream on
the south, in Italy, we shall have some difficulty,

WATER AND WATER-WORKS. 115
at a first glance, to conceive how the heat of
the sun may have power to absorb all the waters
which pour down upon the southern slope. The
phenomenon will be easily explained by the fact,
that in the south the rivers are to a great extent
emptied for the purposes of irrigation. Here,
where I now reside, close au pied des monts, the
water is only too plentiful : it rushes in brawling
brooks, dashing streams, arrowy canals, down
every hill-side, along every road or by-road, close
by the hedge of every field, making everything
brilliantly green, and enlivening the landscape with
its incessant murmur. From the broad, mighty
mountain-torrent, that waters this part of the Ca
navese, or Province of Ivrea, — a torrent called by
geographers the Oreo, but which the peasantry
call Z'acqua d'oro, either on account of some
particles of gold that are actually found in its
sands, or more likely from its fertilizing qua
lities, — a hundred canals and minor rivulets
gush forth, which cover the land for several miles
on the plain, and enable the cultivator to mow
four rich crops of hay yearly, under the scourge
of a burning Italian sun. Nearly the whole level
of the Canavese land may be, at the pleasure of
its fortunate inhabitants, under-water. 1 2

116 WATER AND WATER-WORKS.
Yet these streams, which nature intended as
the greatest blessing to this blissful country, are
not only not used to the best advantage by the
inert and careless population, but are to a great
extent suffered to become one of their chief
sources of evil and misery. A clever English
engineer* published a few years ago a work on
"The system of Irrigation in Piedmont and
Lombardy," and gave his full meed of praise to
the industry and intelligence shown by the Ita
lians in making the most of the natural advan
tage of their perennial Alpine streams. It must
however be observed, that the most beautiful hy
draulic works by which the plain, or rather the
great marsh, of North Italy has been so won-
drously drained, levelled, fertilized, and turned
into a garden, bear, with scarcely an exception, an
ancient date, and that the skill and enterprising
spirit of the Italians, in this, as well as in all other
branches of public good, have slackened ever
since the country fell either under the control of
foreign dominators, or under the sleepy rule of
narrow-minded absolute national rulers. AH that
* Colonel Baird Smith, who was sent to the North of Italy
by the East India Company to examine the system of irriga
tion.

WATER AND WATER-WORKS. 117
may be said of the system of irrigation of North
ern Italy applies rather to Lombardy, and to that
part of Piedmont which was once Lombardy,
such as Vercelli, Novara, and Lomellina, than to
any other part of Old Piedmont, that is, those
Provinces originally dependent on the House of
Savoy, such as Mondovi and Cuneo, Susa and
Ivrea, etc. All, or nearly all, the praise the Italians
deserve on the score of public activity, decidedly
belongs to the stormy life of those mediaeval, re
publican, municipal times, which were otherwise
fraught with such lasting calamities to the coun
try. In Piedmont itself the irrigation is still in
a very imperfect, unsatisfactory, slovenly state ;
and half a century's work will be required, ere
the free Piedmontese bring their country to the
same flourishing condition as that attained four
hundred years ago by their Milanese brethren.
Some excellent works have nevertheless been
undertaken, and carried through, in olden times
by the wisest princes of the House of Savoy;
as, for instance, the beautiful watercourse from
Ivrea to Vercelli, commenced by Amadeus VIII.
in the fifteenth century, and the bright, pellucid,
swift-rushing canal from this place, Castellamonte,
down to Caluso, bearing the name of Naviglio

118 WATER AND WATER-WORKS.
di Caluso, which was made by a nobleman in the
eighteenth century. But a score or two of such
canals would by no means be too many for this
Province merely, and the same benefit co.uld be
easily extended to the whole plain of Upper
Piedmont. The central part of this vast plain is
still to some extent barren, from an injudicious
waste of its most precious waters, and ninety-
nine out of a hundred parts of the work remain
to be done. In the lands of Susa, Pinerolo, and
Saluzzo, the husbandman by the river-side draws
the water from the streams in driblets for his
own purposes, and no attempt is made towards
an intelligent combination of mutual assistance,
and a wise distribution of the precious element.
Lawsuits between private individuals, and even
between various communities, on the subject of
rights of irrigation (ragion d'acqua, they call
them) infringed upon, are innumerable as well
as interminable ; and the township of Cavour, for
instance, has been waging a war of that nature
against the village of Bibbiana for three hundred
years, without ever finding a tribunal competent
to pronounce a definitive sentence on the merits
of their respective claims. In the territory of Ver
celli, on the contrary, where the system of irri-

WATER AND WATER- WORKS. 119
gation, as in Lombardy, leaves little to be de
sired, a kind of Water-Parliament has been lately
instituted, a Board of gentlemen freely elected by
the whole body of landed-proprietors enjoying
" right of water," by which all their conflicting
interests are impartially defended, all disputes
peaceably settled, and the equitable allotment of
the common treasure carefully attended to. This
great and pleasing step towards the establish
ment of a local and special government, is mainly
due to the influence of the active and enlightened
statesman now at the head of public affairs, Count
Cavour, who owns vast lands in the Province,
and who exercised great moral ascendency, not
only over his immediate neighbourhood, but also
over the whole agricultural and industrial com
munity in this country, even previous to his ac
cession to office.
It is only in this same Province of Vercelli,
and in the adjoining districts of Novara and Lo-
mellina, formerly part of the Duchy of Milan,
that the water, so wisely turned to agricultural
purposes, is partly used for soaking those risaie,
or rice-grounds, which are justly considered the
plague-spot both of this part of the country, and
of Lombardy, Parma, and Modena, contributing

120 WATER AND WATER-WORKS.
to the wealth of individuals at the expense of
the health of the masses. In Piedmont proper,
in the lowlands of Cuneo and Saluzzo, where
rice-fields were once, they have been drained by
the rigid decrees of the humane Princes of Sa
voy, two or three centuries since. There is no
doubt but the average of life for labourers in
the rice-plantations, owing to the necessity of
leaving the ground under water during the best
part of the hot summer months, scarcely ex
ceeds thirty years ; and whole districts, with
minor towns and villages, and even the old cities
of Novara, Vercelli, and Mortara, suffer severely
from the vicinity of the pestilential fields. The
wealth accruing to the country from this fatal
cultivation is however too great, for any Govern
ment rashly to interfere with its pernicious source.
Provident measures are indeed taken to hem in
and lessen the evil, by limiting the cultivation of
rice to certain districts, fixing the maximum oj
land to be employed for this purpose by each
proprietor, and removing it as far as possible
from crowded habitations. It is also urged by
the advocates of this evil practice, that the low
flats of those Provinces have always been, and
ever will be, marshy and swampy, and that the

WATER AND WATER-WORKS. 121
alternative lies between ricegrouncls and unre
claimed, unmitigated quagmires ; that not only
is the . unwholesomeness of the territory by no
means to be ascribed to the cultivation of rice,
but that it is to some extent kept under con
trol by that very system of cultivation ; the only
means of turning the lands to the best advan
tage being in fact also the sole means of sub
jecting the unavoidable malaria to certain rules,
and keeping it within certain bounds. These ar
guments, like those brought forward in justifica
tion of negro slavery in America, may perhaps
be rather specious than sound ; and it behoves
the representatives of a free country like Piedmont
to test and discuss them, — to see that no love of
unhallowed gain should interfere with those con
siderations for the preservation of human life,
and those measures concerning the public health
which ought always to be the paramount object
of all legislation.
But if men have done so little as yet towards
making the best use of the rivers which God has
given for the happiness of the country, even less
care has been taken to prevent their doing the
mischief which a little attention and foresight
might so easily have averted. Every mountain

122 WATER AND WATER-WORKS.
stream in Piedmont, and indeed throughout
Italy, occupies twice, thrice, and even ten times
more bed than ought to be allotted to it. The
waters come tumbling, rolling, roaring, thunder
ing madly down, from this wall-like southern de
scent of the Alps. The nature of the ground, com
bined with the stripping of the mountain-sides,
and the destruction of the primaeval forests by
the heedless boors of the Alps, have removed all
barrier or restraint to the fury of the waters ; and
in spring, when hot suns and hotter southern
winds produce by their joint action a rapid thaw
in the upper snows and glaciers, down comes the
flood with irresistible fury, and down come large
masses of rock and earth, the very bowels of the
mountains; the rivers swell, till they flood the
land ; they choke up the arches of the bridges,
till they force those feeble structures, as well as
walls, dykes, and all other human contrivances
down with them ; and the lovely valleys, and
broad patches in the plain, after one of these
heavy floods, present little more than bare wil
dernesses of sand, gravel, and fragments of rock.
The plan is, too generally, to give the stream as
ample a berth as possible ; and in many cases,
as for instance on the Magra, near Sarzana and

WATER AND WATER- WORKS. 123
the Gulf of Spezia, the river spreads out over all
the level land, and is only checked by the na
tural barrier of the mountains between which it
was bidden eternally to flow.
That the evil was originally one of nature's
own making, that it admits only of partial re
medy and gradual mitigation, it would be unfair
to deny ; but it is also just to confess, that the
unthrift and improvidence of the people have
much aggravated it, and that great energy and
ingenuity may considerably diminish, and even
tually cure it.
In the first place it is to be hoped that an in
telligent, firm, and really free Government will
remove the original cause of the evil ; first, by
good, stringent laws against the felling of such
forest-trees in the mountains and valleys as may
have yet escaped the Vandalism of the people,
and may be deemed conducive to the soundness
and security of the mountain-sides ; secondly, by
encouraging, by ample rewards, the plantation
of forest-trees, wherever they may be of use,
for the same purposes ; thirdly, by the construc
tion of good bridges, dykes, dams, causeways,
and similar contrivances, to compel the streams
to keep their own beds. It is very plain, in

124 WATER AND WATER- WORKS.
the meantime, that, in proportion as canals are
diverted from the main course of the rivers,
for purposes either of irrigation or navigation,
the power of doing mischief will, in a great mea
sure, be taken from the rivers themselves; but
it would be idle to suppose that a Government,
however enlightened and active, can carry on
such undertakings to any extent. Much will be
obtained by the Piedmontese from their rulers,
if they are only allowed to act for themselves ;
and the present political condition of the coun
try is such, that its full development is (as
indeed it ought everywhere to be) left to pri
vate enterprise and associate endeavour. It is a
misfortune, as I have before hinted, that pro
perty is here greatly subdivided, and capital very
scarce. Every suggestion for work requiring
great exertion, but sure to yield the largest re
turns, is invariably met by the Italian with his
chilling " Non c' e denari" (money is wanting).
Good strength of will and energy, and the habit
of thrift and labour, are also wanting neverthe
less ; and when I see, as I saw at Sarzana, the
cafes of a dingy, dirty, poverty-stricken, dilapi
dated, old town, crowded with a tall, hale, and
muscular, but listless, languid, lazy youth, busy

WATER AND WATER-WORKS. 125
doing nothing, or at most playing cards, and
discussing Sebastopol or the Danubian Princi
palities, I feel inclined to fall upon them whip-
in-hand, and tell them that, if they want money,
land, and wealth of any description, they have
only to issue forth, spade in hand, from their
crumbling town-walls, wage war against the river
that bathes those walls, and rescue, inch by inch,
mile by mile, the rich fields that their fathers'
sluggishness and their own, have allowed their
uneasy neighbour to overwhelm. The same might
be said of any other district, along any other
stream. The Italians have it everywhere in their
power to turn a scourge into a blessing, if they
will only understand that rivers are the worst of
masters when they cease to be the best of ser
vants. The country can, most undoubtedly, whatever
uninformed writers may say to the contrary, sup
ply very skilful engineers, and very able, indus
trious, and indefatigable workmen. Nothing is
more striking, at every step through the country,
than the fine style, craft, and solidity of some of
the bridges and other structures reared by a
people who, amidst all their present decline, are
yet apt to draw inspirations from the memorials of

126 WATER AND WATER- WORKS.
Roman magnificence. Only three miles below
this place, at Rivarolo, on the Oreo, is a bridge
which combines the greatest ingenuity with the
finest grandeur of design, and which may well
defy all that the rage of that most wrathful of
Alpine streams can bring to bear against it. The
means only are said to be wanting, and, under
the pressure of so many calamities as have af
flicted the country, they must needs be limited.
May not English capitalists come forward to
our assistance ? I know that railway contrac
tors cannot say they have ill invested their ca
pital in this country. Could not companies be
formed for the construction of bridges and dykes,
the draining of marshes, and rescuing waste lands
from the beds of overflowed rivers? Would
it not be worth while for some of your specu
lators to help the Piedmontese in the war in
which they must needs engage against Nature,
and come in for a fair share of the spoils of
victory ?

127

IX.
WOODS AND WOODMEN.
Castellamonte, December 1.
You ask me, dear Marmion, why I doom these
remarks of mine, on the condition of this coun
try, to the obscurity of private correspondence ;
why I do not prefer to publish them, and espe
cially to bring them out in Italian, for the be
nefit of Italians. I am sure, Marmion, you are
welcome to print these letters of mine in En
gland, if you think they will find more readers
than "either two or none." But for what concerns
Italy, I must tell you, there is hardly a word I
have written to you that I have not again and
again printed and published here, I know not with
what profit to the country, but certainly with no
small trouble and discomfort to myself. Some
of the Turin newspapers have been very savage
against me ; they have torn the thin veil of the

128 WOODS AND WOODMEN.
anonymous, which I sometimes deemed it expe
dient to put on, and come to a very easy guess
of the writer's name, so as to answer by person
alities the censure I allowed myself upon " mea
sures not men," indeed upon matters of public
concern. All this would by no means dishearten me. I
feel in my conscience that I love this country as
warmly as any of the gentlemen who are so se
vere against me, though my love is possibly of
a nature different from theirs. The pictures of
the country I give in these sketches, I have laid
before them in the plainest language I could
command. I have tried to convince the Pied
montese Press, that the Paris Congress, Bolgrad
and the Bessarabian frontier, and other topics of
general European importance, with which they fill
up four and even eight columns of their lead
ing-articles, talking of what they know next to
nothing about, repeating all they can pick up
from French newspapers — the only oracles their
scholarship enables them to consult, — and dealing
it out with so little skill, that the very language
they write in smacks of the original they copy
from, being in reality nothing but bastard French
diluted into very thin, wishy-washy Italian, —

WOODS AND WOODMEN. 129
that the discussion of these great topics, I say, is
not the only, nay not even the main part, of their
task, as organs of public opinion in Piedmont ;
that there are a thousand social and moral, ma
terial and economical subjects, upon which this
modest, docile, highly sensitive and thoroughly
disciplined or disciplinable people need to be in
structed; and that they most miserably neglect
and betray their duty, when, instead of putting
their shoulder to the wheel, and opening in their
columns a free field for useful and wholesome
discussion, they denounce a comparative stranger,
who irr his own blunt and clumsy way tries to
throw some light on such subjects, and who,
however he may be charged with ignorance and
may fall into error, may at least lay claim to up
rightness of intention, real good-will, and fear
less, uncompromising love of truth. Let them be
lieve it who list, I have a great, strong, anxious,
eager love for this fcountry and this people, — for
the whole country and people of Italy; but it is a
restless, jealous, impatient, and, if you will, in
discreet love, which, even if it exaggerates the
good qualities of the land and its inhabitants, does
not blind me to their faults, but rather inspires
me with a hot zeal to point them out, with a fa-
K

130 WOODS AND WOODMEN.
natic desire to chastise and correct them. I hope
I can ascribe the faults to their proper causes ; I
hope I have full faith in the possibility, and even
facility, of seeing them amended and eventually
removed; I hope I can perceive and appreciate
symptoms of progress as readily as any of my
neighbours ; but I also believe no good can come
from concealing, palliating, or with perverse stub
bornness denying these faults. Nor do I think
that I shall be doing any harm, if, by allowing
you to publish my letters, I shall lay these faults
open to foreign as well as to native readers ; or
that I shall thereby deserve the titles of " de
tractor and slanderer" of the Piedmontese and
other Italians, which have repeatedly beeri applied
to me. I have great faith in the fullest, broad
est propagation of truth. I have said all I could,
I trust, to excite in English hearts a strong inter
est in behalf of these people ; but in order that
English sympathy may be o"f practical use, it is
well that it should be fully enlightened about
the real condition of the country. That Italy is
sick, and grievously sick, no man will be bold
enough to gainsay; nor will any man dare to
assert, that the only evils she is suffering from
are the Austrians and the Pope, although they

WOODS AND WOODMEN. 131
may be the original causes of all her malady.
Now, although I am not one of those who think
that any political good can ever come to Italy
from French or English military or diplomatic aid,
yet I know there are a thousand moral and social
evils which intercourse and mutual good under
standing between this country and nations placed
in more favourable circumstances may gradually
heal ; and I believe the first step towards effect
ing such a cure must be coming at the real truth
of the evils themselves.
I was saying, and now repeat, that one of the
greatest injuries inflicted upon Italian agricultural
economy resulted from the all-sweeping destruc
tion of the fine timber that once mantled the
Alps and Apennines. The hatred of the Italian
husbandman for all kind of foliage could not be
greater, if every stick growing on his fields had
the baneful properties attributed to the Upas-tree.
The whole of this plain lying so lovingly before
me, as I stand on the platform wild on which my
new home is slowly rising, is indeed like a vast
plantation or half-cleared forest ; but there is not
a bush, not a single plant, that has not its uses.
Away from the hills you see nothing but short,
stunted, stripped mulberry-trees, all-important to

132 WOODS AND WOODMEN.
the silk trade ; closer to us, there are rows of
young chestnut saplings, alders, and other trees
necessary to make stakes for the vineyards ; but
they are all carefully clipped, shorn, maimed, and
crippled, so that in the heat of summer you will
not find an inch of ground where you may rest
in the shade. The exigencies of Italian husban
dry may require it, and I have nothing to say ;
but in the deep valleys, and along the steepest
hill-sides, glorious walnut- and chestnut-trees
used to grow, some of which are still there,
bearing witness to the prodigious strength and
fertility of the soil; but they are disappearing
with amazing swiftness, and the next generation
of Italians will have to go to England or Ger
many, to conceive even an idea of what a real
tree should be like.
I am not quite an old man yet, but I remem
ber, both in the hilly and in the level regions of
all Italy most glorious, gorgeous oak-trees, which
could fear no comparison with the English kings
of the forest. The Italians of those days suffered
them to stand, not on account of their beauty,
but for the sake of the acorns with which
their long-legged pigs could be fattened. How
good pork is now obtained, and the far-famed

WOODS AND WOODMEN. 133
salami or sausages made, I know not ; but I
know that the fine old oaks have disappeared,
and the few young plants that have grown up
here and there, almost , in spite of the owners of
the soil, are either stripped of their branches up
to the topmost shoot, or are shorn down to un
seemly pollards, a very useless encumbrance to
the soil. A curse upon their axes ! All round
Turin, on the high-roads to Rivoli, Moncalieri,
Stupinigi, etc., only twenty years ago there were
such magnificent avenues of trees as hardly any
country in the world could match. The trees
are mostly still there, but mere skeletons of
their former selves — the bare trunks, with hardly
more shade than the mere timber can cast. Even
the plane, lime, and horse-chestnut trees on the
fine promenades round the capital, — those which
have not fallen before the invasion of brick and
mortar, such as the Viale del He and Viale del
Valentino, — are yearly lopped and chopped, till
the heavy overgrown stem acquires dimensions
grotesquely disproportionate to its dwarfish limbs.
There are ten-thousand reasons for cutting and
maiming; here, the view of the second-floor
windows is obstructed, — there, the air of the first-
floor rooms is confined; the tree drinks up the

134 WOODS AND WOODMEN.
oxygen necessary to human respiration, the Ita
lians think ; and, both in town and country, they
remove from their homes all trace of verdure,
as if every dwelling-house were a fortress, and
wanted free space for the sweep of its guns.
The same fate is now clearing the ground even
of the no less stately, but more useful, wal
nuts and chestnuts. The shade of the first of
these trees is considered to have a murderous
effect on the ground where it grows. Of the
chestnuts a few are still standing in remote cor
ners ; about a score of them, close behind this
castle, are the only objects of the kind which re
create my sight for many miles around ; but far
away in the darkest recesses of the mountains, a
kind of universal conspiracy seems to have been
got up among these Alpine people, — a destruc
tive mania to hew and sweep down everything that
stands on roots, notwithstanding the Saturnian
acorns that used to be their staple food. So
many chestnut-trees have been done away with,
that a bushel of chestnuts, which ten years ago
used to be worth half a bushel of maize or melica
(Indian corn), exchanges now at par. As to the
glorious pine, beech and fir-trees which formerly
mantled the Alps and Apennines to the loftiest

WOODS AND WOODMEN. 135
summits, " sweeping the stars like a great be
som," as Tassoni quaintly said in the early part
the seventeenth century, —
" L'Apennin le cui selve ombrose e folte
Servon di scopa alle stellate volte," —
actually nothing remains, or only some gnarled
and thunder-riven trunks here and there, on sum
mits positively inaccessible to the woodman's
axe ; for in sooth whole forests have been hewn
down, before the destroyers had well made up
their minds by what road the timber could be
carried into the plain, so that it has often been
left to rot and moulder where it fell. Were it
not for the spontaneous vegetation springing
from the perpetual moisture of the Alpine streams,
there would be no reason why the whole Pied
montese region should not look as dreary and
desolate as any of the dry and rocky districts of
the adjoining Provence.
There are huge pyramids of mountains now
bare and bleak from base to summit, miserably
bare and bleak, which men still| living and still
young remember seeing richly mantled with all
but primaeval forests. As I travelled over the
high ridges which part the valley of Sessera from
that of the Sesia, I passed thousands of huge

136 WOODS AND WOODMEN.
trunks clumsily cut two or three feet above-
ground ; and my guide assured me the destruction
of the majestic timber, of which those stumps
were the relics, dated no further back than
1848, when, on the first proclamation of the Con
stitution, the ignorant boors had taken it for
granted that all the old social ties would be
loosened, and that therefore the old forest-laws
dictated by the provident princes of the House
of Savoy in olden times should be at once set at
nought. A friend I met at Turin bade me congra
tulate him on the good-luck that had befallen him,
in having obtained from the Parmesan Govern
ment permission to level with the ground some
thousand beech-trees still growing in an inviolate
spot near the Apennine summit, on the banks of
the Lago Santo or Holy Lake, — hallowed ground,
as the appropriate name implies, — one of those
temples of nature which the worst of Attila's
Huns would have scrupled to desecrate. It is
everywhere the same, — every man cutting down,
no man planting. The wanton lavish and waste
is as lamentable as the Vandalism of blind self-
interest. I have seen in the valleys of Centovalli
and Onsernone, near Locarno, in Italian Switzer
land, hundreds of dells and glens so green and

WOODS AND WOODMEN. 137
luxuriant as to be almost impervious, and from
that very cause blessed with sound hill-sides,
pure rills and ever-moist, ever-verdant pastures,
— I have seen, I say, a pine-tree which might
boast five hundred years' growth at least, tall, ta
pering, towering, a giant on the summit of a giant
precipitous mountain-slope, nay, of a steep wall
like ravine, — I have seen it cut, and let down the
slippery declivity, although it could only reach
the bed of the torrent that was to convey it to
the Lake Maggiore by forcing its way through
many fathoms of wood of minor growth, — crush
ing, maiming perhaps, a hundred of its younger
generation in its crashing descent.
What the climate of Northern Italy may have
gained, by rending and tearing and finally alto
gether doffing the thickly wadded cloak which
bountiful Nature had given for its defence, me
teorologists will tell you. It seems as if the Alps
were destined to be no protection to Italy either
against nature or men. For myself, though I
love this country at all times, I must confess that
summer is the only season in which it is pos
sible to live in it comfortably. The houses here
are all made of brick and stone, — wall, vault,
floor, staircase and hall, — chiefly, if not simply, on

138 WOODS AND WOODMEN.
account of the fearful price of timber and all
other building wood; and as carpets are little
known and hearth-rugs not at all, the cold of
the mildest winter-day is much more painfully felt
within than out of doors. Fuel is, to say the
very least, thrice as dear in Turin as it is in
London. Feder will charge you five francs a
day for anything like a decent wood fire in a mo
derate-sized room in his hotel, nor do I think the
charge exorbitant; I have tried private house
keeping, and found that fire was the most for
midable item in my daily expenditure. Here
in the country the people light no fire except to
cook their meals : the poor, as I told you, crowd
together in their unwholesome stables, the well-
to-do-people in their peiles or poeles, a kind of
German stube, or small chamber with double
doors and windows, and a pestiferously close
air, where the scantiest flame from a close stove
enables them to keep soul and body together.
As I cannot, like most of my friends here, sit
with my cloak and hat on under a roof, or warm
my hands with a maritino (little husband), or
small earthen pot with more cold ashes than
warm embers in it, — as I cannot have my bed
warmed with a prete (priest) or wooden frame-

WOODS AND WOODMEN. 139
work with a pan of charcoals burning in it, as the
unwholesome practice is here, — and as my chance
of a bright open chimney fire lies between green
wood and unpurified peat, the former fiercely
attacking the eyes with its pungent smoke, the
latter distressing the olfactories with its earthy
smell, — I am, in spite of myself, compelled to
think of a speedy removal to Turin, where En
glish coke at least, if not English coal, is to be
had for my money.
All this has been brought about in Italy, not
(to say the truth) by the Austrians or the Pope,
but by the improvidence, carelessness, selfishness,
deadness to the beauties of nature, and deafness to
her lessons, which absolute rule have engendered
and fostered in the country. Even at the present
day in Piedmont, where the blessed light of free
dom is beginning to dawn, there is no reasoning
with the heedless boor. Say what you will in
behalf of useful or ornamental trees, he will
only point to the immediate private gain that
can be derived from an irreparable public loss.
When I remonstrated with the ruthless forester
at Centovalli about the ruin his enormous pine-
tree would cause amongst the younger plantation
underneath, and pleaded for its life, he coolly

140 WOODS AND WOODMEN.
informed me that the trunk of that tree, when
it once got to Locarno, would fetch one hundred
and fifty francs ; and the whole ditty, " Wood
man, spare that tree !" could have no charm to
break the spell of the silver glittering in antici
pation before his eyes.
Nor is it of any use to preach by example, by
planting and defending the trees growing on your
estates. Woods, like meadows, vineyards and
other lands, but more so than other lands, are
invitingly open to men and cattle. Try to
make up for the old trees that have been felled,
by planting young wood in their stead, and your
neighbour's goats will come in and brouse away
on your hill-sides, till they have made every
square foot of it as smooth as an English lawn.
I have bought and transplanted, on the beauti
ful plateau that is to be the garden round my
house, several hundred ash-trees, and Catalpas,,
and Paulonias, glorious, broad-leafed trees, these
latter unknown, I believe, in England, but thri
ving with an astounding rapidity, and attain
ing a gigantic size in North Italy, — obtaining
them at a reasonable price from the head-gar
dener of the magnificent park-like grounds ad
joining the lofty castle of Aglie, the more than

WOODS AND WOODMEN. 141
royal country-seat of the Duchess of Genoa.
Well, I am assured that before next spring hardly
a stick will be left; and as I pointed to the siepe-
moria, or hedge of dry brambles, with which I
have provisionally fenced round my new pur
chase, they frankly tell me that the dry wood
will go first, and the green young plants must
follow. I heartily hope they exaggerate, but it
is difficult to reason with men starving either
with cold or hunger ; and the law has little or no
power in these matters, and is only severe with
those who venture in self-defence to take it into
their own hands. The peasantry quote some un
defined rights of pasture over nearly all unenclosed
property, and herds and flocks are literally eating
away the whole of the spontaneous vegetation of
the country. With it the moisture of the land
is dried off, and a thousand fountains, that used
to keep the hill-side fresh and verdant, have
rapidly disappeared. I have in former letters
alluded to the fatal effects of this destructive
work on the soundness and security of the hills,
and on the violence of the unchecked water
courses. Remove the network of the roots of
the trees, and the whole of the hill, up to the
primitive rock itself, must needs slide down and

142 WOODS AND WOODMEN.
go to raise the bed of the torrent, and lay
waste the subjacent plain. The floods in Italy,
as well as in Southern France, have become
matter of half-yearly occurrence, and people can
not or will not refer the effects to the obvious
causes. The whole Alpine region seems to me
(a religious lover of hill and dale, of wood and
stream) to be gliding down, toppling down,
rolling down ; and at any rate the whole beauty
of the graceful drapery with which Nature had
clad these glorious mountain masses is perhaps
for ever lost to our posterity.
Now, why should all this catalogue of evils,
this long jeremiad, if it ever were printed, inter
est English readers ? the Turin papers will say ;
or what good can come to Italy from thus lay
ing bare her sore wounds before foreigners ? I
answer quickly : If by merely mentioning the
appalhng, ever-growing scarcity and dearth of
fuel in Italy, I could only awaken the covetous
ness and love of enterprize of English colliers,
to think of supplying the Piedmontese (now
bound to them by a compact of free-trade) with
coals at little more than Newcastle, or Man
chester, or even London prices, I should not
have wasted my time in writing this letter, nor

WOODS AND WOODMEN. 143
you, Marmion, in having it published. And if
the improvidence of the Italians could convey a
useful lesson to the English, as to the impor
tance of saving and cherishing their woods,—
for in Lancashire and Yorkshire, I regret to say,
the shade-dreading husbandman is already too
eagerly preferring the useful to the beautiful,
and levelling with the ground in one hour trees
which have taken centuries to grow, — no trifling
advantage would be conferred upon the general
cause of human well-being.

144

X.
SPINNING AND WEAVING.
Castellamonte, December 5.
Piedmont is eminently and essentially an agri
cultural country. I hope I have given sufficient
arguments to satisfy you that a more provident
and powerful legislation, the liberal and wise em
ployment of capital, and a vast and general change
in the habits and manners of the people, would
so far improve the cultivation of the land, as to
enable it to support twice the number of its pre
sent inhabitants. The same remarks will equally,
and in a still greater degree, apply to other parts
of Italy, and especially to the Two Sicilies, the
islands of Sardinia and Corsica, and a large por
tion of the Roman States.
But, although it is of vital importance that
Piedmont should turn its main endeavours to
agricultural pursuits, and although but little ad-

SPINNING AND WEAVING. 145
vantage may be hoped from diverting the atten
tion of the people to other objects, whilst the main
aim of human labour — that of producing human
food — is so imperfectly attained, still there is no
doubt that Piedmont is, and may become more
and more, a manufacturing country, and that in
dustry in all its branches is, and may more and
more be made, auxiliary to the main interests
of the community, and largely contribute to its
well-being, its power and importance.
Those sanguine partisans of Young Italy, who
would fain claim for their country a pre-eminence
no less material than intellectual, no less social
than moral, and who flatter themselves that Italy
holds now, or may hold under a different Govern
ment, the same position amongst nations which
she held in Roman and mediaeval times, — have
lost sight of the great fact that Italy has no coals,
and but little, if any, hope of ever discovering
mines of those precious black-diamonds. Till
some of the scanty veins of lignite, or anthra
cite, which sanguine speculators every year fancy
they find in the mountains of Genoa, Tuscany
and Naples, attain any degree of importance, or
till some of the specious schemes for burning
water, or for propelling machinery by gas ob-
L

146 SPINNING AND _ WEAVING.
tained by some miraculous chemical process, are
brought to light, — such schemes prove as ruin
ous in this country as the South-Sea bubble
did in England ; Italy will necessarily be tribu
tary to England or Belgium, or to some of the
North- American provinces, for coal ; and the high
freight of so unwieldy a mineral will always ren
der an industrial competition between the Medi
terranean countries and the northern storehouses
of coals a very difficult task for the former.
Still Piedmont and Northern Italy, as well as
Switzerland, enjoy a vast amount of water-power,
which, coupled with the cheapness* of labour,
may enable them to carry on several important
branches of industry with great credit and emo
lument to themselves. The Cantons of Zurich,
St. Gallen, Glarus, Appenzell, etc., have raised
themselves to the rank of first-rate manufactur
ing districts. Industry goes there hand in hand
with agriculture. The cottage, busy with spin
ning and weaving, to a great extent rises in suc
cessful opposition to the tall, hot, noisome factory ;
and the happy peasant, with his whole family-
circle, alternates his work at the loom with the
more wholesome labour in the field. Geneva
and Neufchatel have pursued for centuries some

SPINNING AND WEAVING. 147
branches of finer industry, in which they have
obtained a decided advantage over French and
English competitors.
Now nothing is done in any part of Switzer
land that may not with the same, and even a
greater, chance of success, be attempted in the
mountains of Piedmont and all over Lombardy.
There is, for instance, a watch and clock manu
factory at Cluses, in the valley of the Arve, in
Savoy, which may be looked upon as a success
ful branch of the workshops of the same des
cription in Geneva, and several very able watch
makers have already for many years been settled
in Turin. Every Piedmontese valley, and most
of the villages, boast their spinning and even
their weaving house. The greatest establish
ment of that kind is to be found at Pont, in
the Val d' Oreo, about seven miles from this
place : it employs from twelve to fifteen hun
dred hands, and it has another house con- .
nected with it at Annecy, in Savoy, of equal or
even greater magnitude. Another large manu
factory is flourishing at Intra, on the Lago Mag-
giore. All these are cotton-mills. In the val
leys of Mosso, in the Province of Biella, there are
extensive manufactures of woollen-cloth. The
l 2

148 SPINNING AND WEAVING.
Waldensian valleys, urged by that thrift which
seems to be peculiar to all Protestant communi
ties, and aided by their brethren from French
Switzerland and England, rank among the most
industrious of Piedmontese subjects. Cotton and
wool are likewise spun and woven in less quan
tities in most of the other valleys ; and there are
iron and copper works, paper-mills, glasshouses,
tanneries, etc. to be met with in every minor
town and village throughout Piedmont. Most
of the large houses of rich landowners have be
sides afilatoio, or silk-spinning establishment.
Silk, it is well known, is one of the most valu
able products of the country ; and, although Pied
mont is far behind Lombardy and the Duchies,
both for the quantity and quality of its silk, yet
great care has of late been bestowed both on
the plantation of mulberries and the improve
ment of the spinning establishments. The di
rection and example of several political refugees
from other parts of Italy, some of whom, have
carried their wealth along with them and bought
lands, while others have taken upon themselves
the direction of model farms, are not lost upon
the Piedmontese, who are thus richly rewarded
for the hospitality granted to those fugitives in

SPINNING AND WEAVING. 149
1848. The rows of mulberry-trees growing along
the road-side, on a vast estate farmed by the bro
thers Berti Pichat, of Bologna, near Lombardore,
half-way between this place and Turin, are kept
in a trim altogether unmatched in Piedmont;
and in Castellamonte itself a native of La Marca,
Zenocrate Cesari, by the introduction of the
seed and the method of spinning of his own coun
try, has doubled the income of the silk trade,
both to his own benefit and that of all who will
listen to him.
Beyond the mere spinning, however, the Ita
lians have as yet made little progress ; and it is
one of the curious phenomena of this country,
that, whilst cotton-mills and woollen-cloth manu
factories have achieved some success, — though
the Piedmontese have to contend with all the
crushing competition of the English, from whom
they buy their materials, and though they must
purchase their wool from Germany, Hungary,
and even from the East, — they have as yet done
next to nothing towards shaking the monopoly
of Lyons and other parts of Southern France in
the production of fine silks. They tamely submit
to sell their fine silk thread to the French for 10,
to buy back the French silk stuffs for 100, and

150 SPINNING AND WEAVING.
even 400 and 500. Some of the very best
velvet, as everybody knows, is manufactured at
Turin and Genoa, and strong silk stuffs come
from Florence and Naples, and partly also from
Lombardy and Piedmont. But the trade in fine
silks proves still anything but beneficial to the
richest of all European silk-growing countries ; for
every fine lady, or even lady's maid, in Turin or
Milan would consider herself disgraced if the
gown she puts on had not the mark of a Parisian
or Lyonnese house. I am not aware that any
great efforts are made to share with the French
the golden profits they derive from a branch of
industry which they originally learned and inhe
rited from their Italian neighbours ; but this I
know, that any attempt at competition would
have to contend with that silly fashion and pre
judice by which shopkeepers and shop-custo
mers, at Turin and throughout Italy, conspire
to depreciate anything national; so that home
manufactures must needs be in many instances
palmed upon the purchaser under the false name,
label, and cover of foreign productions.
But whether for the purpose of silk, cotton or
wool, there is no doubt that the perennial, never-
waning, never-freezing waters of the Alpine

SPINNING AND WEAVING. 151
streams offer a vast field for enterprising manu
facturers, and that great capitalists will find in
this country the best opportunities for profitable
investment. A few English men of business,
attracted to the Waldensian valleys by feelings of
religious sympathy, have settled in the country,
and turned the limpid waters of the Pellice to
good account by opening cotton-mills at La
Torre, with, I believe, considerable success.
Every one of the two or three hundred valleys of
Piedmont offers, to say the least, as much chance
for profitable speculation. I have heard intelligent
manufacturers in England state, that the advan
tage which the cheapness of water-power has over
industry carried on by steam-engines, is almost
counterbalanced by the difficulty and expense of
carriage, inseparable from the mountainous dis
tricts in which water-power abounds; but in
Piedmont this difficulty is already to a great ex
tent, and may eventually be altogether, overcome.
Every valley in Piedmont opens upon a plain as
level and smooth as a billiard-table. The Wal
densian valleys at Pinerolo, those of the Po and
its tributaries at Saluzzo, that of the Dora at
Susa, that of the Stura at Cuneo, that of the
Tanaro at Mondovi, etc. are already in commu-

152 SPINNING AND WEAVING.
nication with the capital and with the sea, by
means of railways, which every mill-owner can
easily bring to the very doors of his factory. Be
side the main arteries leading from Genoa and
Turin to France, to Switzerland, to Lombardy
and the Duchies, minor railways are in every
direction running up to the foot of the hills.
In less than a twelvemonth separate lines will
reach the valleys of Lanzo, those of the Oreo at
Rivarolo and Castellamonte, that of the Dora
Baltea at Ivrea, and those of the Cervo and Sesia
at Biella, Santhia and Gattinara. Every factory,
every workshop enjoying the benefit of the over
flowing streams of the Alps, will be enabled to
have its warehouses in Turin, and hence secure
a double communication with the Mediterranean
at Genoa and by the new railway now in con
struction at Savona. The whole of Piedmont will
be made into a circle, every point in whose cir
cumference will be brought into railway com
munication, and as it were into contact, with a
common centre. The woollen-cloth manufacto
ries in the mountains of Biella have contrived to
thrive, although, as I have said, they must send
to the remotest countries for their raw materials,
and although the material as well as the finished

SPINNING AND WEAVING. 153
work must go in and out of their deep glens,
through steep, narrow paths, hardly fit for the
surest-footed mule. How will it be when capital
be found tp bring railways to open these valleys,
and when tramways or other such contrivances
are made to penetrate to the very doors of the
mills? Industry in Piedmont is yet in its infancy ;
no man can say to what, results capital and in
telligence, aided by freedom, may lead it. The
mountains are rich, besides, iu mineral wealth,
of which, I believe, no living man can tell the
amount. With the single exception of the all-
important coals, I think there is hardly any of
the precious metals that may not be found in
large quantities in the bosom of the Subalpine
valleys. To say nothing of gold, which was so
plentiful in the time of the ancient Salassi and
the Romans, in the lands of Aosta and Ivrea, and
some veins of which are still open in the Val
Anzasca, in the Val d' Oreo, and in Savoy, iron,
copper and other more useful metals abound,
though but a small portion is now brought to
light. The old Counts and Dukes of Savoy pur
sued mining industry with an eagerness which
slackened under their less enterprising royal sue-

154 SPINNING AND WEAVING.
cessors. Many people are now turning their
attention to the subject, and search is only im
peded by that great evil which delays the deve
lopment of all industry in Piedmont, the lack of
capital. Very excellent quarries of granite and
other rock and stone are in full activity at Pont,
at Andorno, and all over the mountain region.
This trade will be multiplied a hundredfold, in
proportion as railway and other communication
enables the miner to send his material to the ca
pital and to other towns, where streets and houses
alike need it.
Castellamonte has also its precious produce
and profitable industry. From time immemorial
these people have been digging the clay of their
hills, and converting it into useful if not sumptu
ous earthenware. The Castellamonte pots {Pig-
natte di Castellamonte) have been long renowned
all over Piedmont. Lately this industry has as
sumed a high degree of magnitude and impor
tance, by the construction of close and open
stoves, and other warming and cooking appara
tus. Throughout Piedmont and Northern Italy,
the German and American stove is rapidly su
perseding the genial but wasteful fireplace, and
Castellamonte will soon have to supply the whole

SPINNING AND WEAVING. 155
country with every variety of these necessary con
trivances. They carry on likewise a very exten
sive trade in ornamental bricks for house-floors,
glazed tiles, flower-vases, pedestals, and other
stands of every description. All this ware is
heavy and brittle, and its carriage on wheels is
necessarily cumbrous, expensive, and unsafe : if,
as we feel confident, within a year, a railway
communication is opened with Lombardy and
the Duchies, the trade of these potters will be
in a short time at least doubled and quadru
pled. The success of Piedmontese industry for a
great many years will rest on the extraordinary
cheapness of manual labour. A ploughman,
reaper, or gardener, will work the whole day for
a remuneration seldom exceeding thirty French
sous (Is. 3c?.) ; but as field-labour is subject to
frequent interruption, nothing is easier than to
find able and strong hands to work in the mills
at the rate of fifteen sous to a franc (7^d. to
lOd.) for a man, and eight to ten sous {Ad. to
bd.) for woman or child. And let no one think
lightly of the efficiency of Italian working-men.
I have heard foreign mill-owners and manufac
turers, not only in Piedmont, but even amongst

156 SPINNING AND WEAVING.
the much-despised Lazzaroni of Naples, assert,
that they could nowhere find more robust and
healthy, assiduous, sober, docile, and intelligent
workers than in Italy, — in any part of Italy, —
so long as they are well fed and kindly treated,
so long as they find that exertion is made worth
their while. Indeed, the account of the lower
order of our countrymen given by foreign mer
chants, long settled in the land, is such that I
might fear to repeat their words, lest they
should be ascribed to patriotic partiality on my
part. They do not, I am sorry to add, entertain
an equally good opinion of the middle and upper
classes ; and they say, for instance, that in the
mills, although the workmen themselves are
everything their employer could wish, it is al
ways necessary to have foreign foremen, overseers,
clerks, and the whole staff of directors of the
works, without whom nothing like order and dis
cipline can be maintained. Sad to think ! It is
everywhere the case with long-enslaved people,
that the quality in which they show the greatest
deficiency is, naturally enough, aptitude for com
mand. The French and Austrians in Italy, the
English in India, are always able to raise the
most powerful armies among the subjected peo-

SPINNING AND WEAVING. 157
pie, but those armies prove utterly worthless the
moment they cease to be officered by the so
vereign nation.
It is a no less melancholy, no less undeniable
fact, that in every branch of finer craft, in every
speculation of a more enlarged trade, you find in
Piedmont, as well as all over Italy, the highest
ranks occupied by foreign — especially Swiss and
German — settlers. The wealthiest bankers, the
greatest merchants, the most enterprising manu
facturers, at Turin no less than at Milan, Flo
rence, Rome, or Naples, are mostly adventurers,
who seek and find their fortune in a country in
which the natives complain of inability to get
bread for themselves. It was once the boast
of Genoa that no Jew had ever succeeded in
settling in that . town, because " it took seven
Jews to ' do ' a Genoese ;" yet now not merely
Jews, but other people not remarkable for extreme
sharpness or adroitness, — nay, those very Ger
mans about whose obtuseness the supple Italian
has so many tales at his fingers' end, — not only
take up their residence at Genoa, but command
the greatest resources, enjoy the greatest credit,
and constitute a kind of commercial aristocracy
among themselves. Not the least unpleasant

158 SPINNING AND WEAVING.
feature in the matter is (as I, who am hardly
looked upon as an Italian amongst these foreign
settlers, and before whom they consequently prac
tise no concealment, have but too frequent oppor
tunities to ascertain), that these worthy people
entertain the utmost scorn and disdain of the
southern race amongst whom they have found a
home ; they shrink from intercourse with them in
all matters unconnected with business ; keep up
their own language, faith, and manners, apart from
their neighbours ; remain for several generations
unnaturalized, and resent as an insult (even when
born and brought up in the country) any attempt
to designate them as Italians. How different
from men of the same race and kindred in Eng
land, whole colonies of whom flourish in Man
chester, Leeds, Liverpool as well as in London,
who show the greatest anxiety to merge as soon
as possible into the vigorous and fortunate, all-
absorbing Anglo-Saxon people, and feel as a
grievance any allusion to their alien extraction or
descent !
Ichabod, Italy ! how has thy glory departed
from thee ! And it is but poor consolation to
ascribe the success of these strangers to the
unbounded capital they dispose of ; for most of

SPINNING AND WEAVING. 159
them come to Italy almost entirely destitute of
means, and it is the country itself which throws
open in their favour the sources of its wealth.
I knew a German at Genoa, who had come from
the native shores of his Bodensee, a lad with no
fortune but his wits, and who died in the prime
of life, at five-and-thirty, yet managed to leave
property to the amount of £90,000 ; although he
had lived for several years like a prince, and had
lavished enormous sums # on a fancy villa on the
banks of his native lake at Lindau, — a paradise
which his liege Bavarian sovereign in vain co
veted, and for which he offered not only all the
money that had been squandered on it, but even
knightly honours and patents of nobility in ex
change. No, no ! the secret of these aliens' success lies
not in that wealth which, according to the old
Itahan saying, " maketh wealth ;" they owe their
good-fortune to their superior moral no less
than mental education, to their habits of stea
diness, assiduity, and regularity in business, to
their extensive knowledge of men and things,
their grasp of the general tendencies, fluctuations
and vicissitudes of trade ; their good courage and
even audacity in launching into vast and some-

160 SPINNING AND WEAVING.
times hazardous operations; and, above all, to
the fairness and frankness of their dealings ; to
their reputation, well or ill grounded, for strict
uprightness and punctuality in all their transac
tions ; to that straightforward honesty which, in
commerce as well as in diplomacy, is invariably
the best policy.
It is painful to have to say it of the descend
ants of the princely merchants of Venice, Florence,
and Genoa, — of the descendants of those Lom
bard money-lenders of Asti and Chieri, who laid
the first basis of banking operations throughout
Europe, — yet it is but justice to avow, that Ita
lian men of business are rather petty mercers
and pedlars than merchants, — higgling, haggling,
chaffering shopkeepers, rather than high-minded
dealers. Sellers and buyers are always at open
war in this country, and the purchase of a gown
or a filagree silver head-dress always gives rise
to a skirmish between the counter-kicker at any
of the shops under the portici della fiera at
Turin, and the high-dressed fair customer who
comes to him for her finery. It is less for the
purpose of cheating, one woidd say, than for the
pleasure of wasting time, and the chance of exer
cising their wit and displaying their glibness of

SPINNING AND WEAVING. 161
tongue, that the Italians — last of European Chris
tian nations — seem to find it impossible to sell at
fixed prices. The sale of the meanest twopenny
trifle, in ninety-nine out of a hundred shops be
tween the Alps and the sea, is achieved by means
of long diplomatic negotiations, akin to those we
read of in ' Eothen' as characteristic of Eastern
bazaars. So general and so mutually understood
is the practice of asking ten for what is eventu
ally sold at five, and so universal is the custom
of tendering five in answer to any demand of
ten, that you have to bandy words with your host *
when you come late from a journey before you
secure your apartments, no matter how tired and
sleepy and eager to occupy them you may be ;
and you have to knock off a few farthings from
the bill of the eating-house-keeper, no matter
how much the higgling dispute may spoil your
digestion, lest you be set down as a soft or green
customer upon whom it were almost a pity not
to practise further imposition. Mind, I do not
mean to say that this Italian system of bargain
ing, when well established and understood as it
is, may be liable to greater abuses than any
other manner of dealing : on the contrary, I
am perfectly sure that a shopping lady in Italy
M

162 SPINNING AND WEAVING.
can feel easy, because she knows she must have
her eyes open, and be ready to fight in self-de
fence, whilst the safest scoundrel amongst shop
keepers, if he chooses to be tricky, is your seller
at fixed prices. I, at least, for one, have been
again and again swindled in Oxford Street or
Cheapside, when tempted by the low figure of
some merchandise priced and ticketed in the
shop-windows, by an easy sleight-of-hand of the
tradesman, whipping off the labelled ware and
substituting other articles of inferior description.
But, my friend, life is short, and the higgler
' cheats both himself and his customer of what is
worth better than money ; and there is some
thing mean and paltry in the innumerable gra
tuitous lies with which sliding sales must be
necessarily carried on, greatly derogatory to the
dignity of real trade, and betokening a low and
backward civilization.
Truly the Middle Ages would seem to cling
to this poor Italian land with perverse tenacity.
I met, not many months ago at Genoa, an Ame
rican skipper, who had sailed with his fine clip
per in six-and-thirty days from New Orleans, and
had been above forty days landing his cargo ;
such being the condition of the harbour of that

SPINNING AND WEAVING. 163
famous Queen of the Mediterranean, owing to the
want of docks, wharves and jetties, that every
bale of merchandise has to be hauled from the
ship into a boat, and rowed to shore, thrown
upon the beach, then carried on the shoulders of
the camalli, facchini or porters, to the custom
house. What Genoa was in the palmy days of
the War of Chioggia or of the Crusades, that
she is at the present day ; and the shocking con
dition of her harbour is not so much the con
sequence of the universal neglect and decline into
which everything Italian is suffered to fall, —
for Genoa is still young and fresh, and full of
life and spirits, — as of some narrow-minded con
siderations for the interests of the carriers, (who
would deem themselves ruined if any human
contrivance were to supersede their usefulness as
the merest beasts of burden,) and of jealousy on
tbe part of the owners and masters of some of
the lesser craft of the country, who would dread
competition with the larger shipping of other na
tions, were the port ever so secured against wind
and wave, and ever so well furnished with con
veniences for loading or unloading, as to give a
fair choice between it and any other civilized
harbour. I know my friend the Yankee captain
m 2

164 SPINNING AND WEAVING.
protested that for the future he would take his
wares to Marseilles, to Trieste, to any place, ra
ther than to a country in which naval matters
are hardly more advanced than among the South-
Sea Islanders.
This matter of the great Ligurian seaport how
ever, like so many other evils which had been
suffered to attain gigantic dimensions in Pied
mont, is attracting the attention of the present
Sardinian Government, and bills are in readiness
for the prolongation of the moles of Genoa, so
as to render the port completely land-locked ;
for the removal of the royal navy to the Gulf
of Spezia; and for the construction of suitable
commercial docks in the Darseiia or Wet-Dock,
and other places left vacant by the men-of-war
and arsenals. The rivalry of Trieste oh one side,
and of Marseilles on the other, is of so great a
moment at the present emergency, that eithe
Genoa must cease to exist, or she must rise to a
far greater importance than she ever attained in
the epochs when she triumphed over Pisa, and
brought Venice herself to the greatest straits.
The whole Eastern trade — so materially increased
since the opening of an overland route to India,
and destined perhaps to attain a far wider scope,

SPINNING AND WEAVING. 165
if the scheme for a canal through the Isthmus
of Suez is ever realized — must needs find its
way either from Trieste over the Sommering,
or from Marseilles through France, or else from
Genoa over Mont Cenis, the St. Gothard, or the
Luckmanier to the Atlantic and the German
Ocean. The tunnel of the Alps, between Mo-
dane and Bardonneche, across Mont Cenis, is al
ready in contemplation, and a bill to that effect
is going through both Houses of Parliament at
Turin at the present moment ; whilst intelligent
persons are weighing the respective advantages
of the Luckmanier and the St. Gothard, to decide
upon the route which is to unite the Mediterra
nean with the Rhine. For the good success of
all these undertakings, it is chiefly important that
the harbour of Genoa, naturally one of the most
spacious, most deep and most accessible in the
Mediterranean, should be in proper trim ; and
Heaven grant that the efforts of a provident
free Government may be crowned with success,
and that the remedy to so inveterate an evil may
not come too late !
Most assuredly, in the future prospects of Ge
noa, not merely Liguria and Piedmont, but the
whole of Northern Italy, Switzerland and Ger-

166 SPINNING AND WEAVING.
many, and more especially England, are vitally
concerned. It would certainly not, so far as I
can see, be for the good of Great Britain, that
all the Eastern trade should be engrossed by
either of the great powers of France or Austria.
The time has come, I believe, in which Eng
land should strain every nerve to establish a line
of communication which, beginning at Genoa,
should come up to the Lago Maggiore at Arona,
from Arona should cross the Alps, either above
Coira into the upper valley of the Rhine, or above
Altdorf into the Lake of the Four Cantons to Lu
cerne, then should come down to the Rhine at
Basle, and follow the course of the stream as far as
Cologne to the Dutch portend the Belgian rail
ways. It might then be easy to form a commer
cial league, in which Piedmont, Switzerland, the
minor German states of Baden, Darmstadt, Nas
sau, and Bavaria and Prussia, no less than Bel
gium and Holland, should be invited to enter,
and of which Great Britain should take upon
herself the leadership and protectorate.
Could any of your public men, Marmion, be
made to turn his attention to the subject ?

167

XI.
HEARTS AND HEARTHS.
Castellamonte, January 7.
Here I am, left alone in this dreary mansion,
to go through my first experiment of Italian
country-life in winter. It was my free choice, and
I had no lack of timely warning. My kind host
and friend, the Judge, shifted his quarters this
year a month later than usual, both on account
of the unusually mild and genial temperature of
the season, and also to allow me to linger among
these rural scenes as long as natives of this land
would deem it at all practicable. We are but a
short quarter of a mile from the little country
town, in a large house on the plain, and close to
the wayside ; but the alternate frosts and thaws
have made so sad a work of what is under all cir
cumstances a shockingly bad road, that a drive
even to the cobbler's stall at the entrance of the
town is more than your wheels and springs and

168 HEARTS AND HEARTHS.
axletrees are worth ; and if you attempt to walk,
you run a fair chance of leaving your boots and
very socks sticking in the greasy quagmire. So
long as we had to contend with no greater hard
ships than the impossibility of getting fresh sup
plies from the butcher's shop, we might leave
that matter to our faithful Savoyard, Paschal, the
major-domo, who overruled all his mistress's
objections by that famous saying of a supple
finance-minister to his royal lady : " Madame, si
c'est impossible, cela se fera; si ce n'est que diffi
cile, c'est fait." But when going to Mass on a Sun
day had become an ail-but desperate undertaking,
the fairer portion of a community gave unmistake-
able symptoms of imminent mutiny; the Judge, a
constitutional monarch, at the utmost, in his own
household, and for his own part by no means loth
in this instance to touch with the sceptre the bill
handed over by both the male and female houses
of the domestic parliament, issued his decrees
for a general move. He opened his hazel eyes
very wide, and raised his bushy eyebrows very
high, when I signified my intention to stay and
take care of the empty house ; but when he saw
that it was really no jest, and that I was no more
cracked than an eccentric Englishman of ave-

HEARTS AND HEARTHS. 169
rage oddity, he commended me to the care of
the Castalda, or farmer's wife, and forthwith pro
ceeded to take measures for his speedy removal.
Part of the lighter furniture, spoons and other
household goods, agreeably to the somewhat im
provident or stingy habits of the people here and
in other parts of the Continent, were forwarded
to Turin by heavy vans, the ladies contriving for
a day or two to make nutcrackers of their ivory
teeth, and the men to use the horse-trough for a
washhand-stand ; and, at last, on a fine morning,
the omnibus, in which all inside and outside
places had been previously bespoken, drove up
to the door, took up its live freight of sons and
daughters, aunts and mothers-in-law, nurses, lady's
maids, and pets of every description, and away
tugged the poor six lean jades, at a pace not
greatly exceeding the speed of the bullocks which
are not unfrequently yoked before them ; the
kind Judge, and the young advocate his son-in-
law, nodding to me a last good-bye from the top
of, the conveyance, with feelings akin, I dare say,
to the sailors who rowed away from the isle of
Juan Fernandez, leaving Alexander Selkirk alone
in the desert home of his choice. A wilful man
must have his way.

170 HEARTS AND HEARTHS.
There is a pleasant fiction spread abroad, that
Italy is the land of perpetual spring; and the
inhabitants of the country, who ought to know
better, acting upon the strength of that egregi
ous popular fallacy, take no heed of the cutting
cold weather which is but too sure to visit them
once a year. The town houses are, generally,
bleak and dreary enough ; but the country resi
dences are warranted for summer use only, and
the man who would weather the cruel blasts of
the Tramontana or north -wind under no better
shelter, might just as well pitch an Arab's tent
on the ice of the Neva, and try to make himself
at home in it.
The Italian, though no giant, must have plenty
of space to move through. He takes in, in his
palace, as much of earth's surface, and as much
of earth's atmosphere, as wide walls and lofty
vaults can contain. He builds himself a house
which he is seldom tidy enough to furnish, never
rich enough thoroughly to warm. His domestic
hearth, if it ever were properly lighted, has now
utterly gone out : he has burnt his last stick.
The Italian must, for warmth, either bask in the
sun like a lizard, or repair to his reeking, steam
ing cafe, his musty church, or his stifling theatre.

HEARTS AND HEARTHS. 171
There is an old adage in all languages, that
"when poverty comes in at the door, love flies
out at the window." It might be equally said in
Italy, that " when the wife fights the fire at the
chimney, the husband takes down his hat and
cloak from their pegs in the hall." There are
lamps, we all know, which only "light up the
darkness :" an Italian fire generally only serves
to intensify the cold. Now hearts and hearths
go together : no warmth of domestic affection can
stand the chill of these dreary Italian habita
tions. A single fire at an hotel in Turin, as I
think I have told you, is charged five francs a
day : firewood in private establishments is pro
portionately expensive ; and I was fain to put up
with poor English coke, twice or thrice as dear
as in London, and to look upon it both as the
greatest economy and the dearest luxury. Now
Italian incomes cannot generally afford such an
expenditure. No human dwelling in all Turin is
blessed with a good open fire, except the En
glish Minister's, and, I believe, independent of
his good honest genial heart, Sir James Hudson
attracts his many visitors by the delightful glow
of his handsome apartments. For the rest, in all
public offices and most private houses, they are

172 HEARTS AND HEARTHS.
trying all kinds of German, Swiss, and American
stoves and furnaces ; but I am a fire-worshipper,
and must see my God's face or I die.
Bad as things are in the capital, however,
the houses are huddled together, and people have
their favourite haunts and resorts, and, in short,
they are used to it, as eels are to being skinned
alive. There are men who will put on hats and
cloaks as soon as they get out of bed, and sit,
and read and write, and dine and sup in them
till they go to bed again ; women there are who
will go about with their maritino, or little hus
band, in their hands, or sit with it under their pet
ticoats by day, and take their prete, or priest, into
their beds at night, and so contrive with just a
few embers in those funnily-named warming-pots
and pans, to keep soul and body together.*
* The maritino is a little earthen pot, somewhat in the
shape of a round, convex flower or work basket, with a round
handle, and sometimes a grated lid to it. Civilized ladies prefer
a chaufferette, or ember-box, made of tin and wood, which they
put under their feet. The prete is a huge wooden frame, ter
minating in four huge horns, which is thrust into the bed be
tween the sheets, and containing a pan, with all but live embers
in it, — a very clumsy and dangerous substitute for a hot-
water warming-pan. It is put into the bed, and there left for
hours before bed-time, so that the heat may go through the
very mattresses, bolsters and pillows, as well as sheets, blan
kets, quilts and counterpanes. The happy mortal who steps into
the Priest's place may be literally said to be " hot as a toast."

HEARTS AND HEARTHS. 173
After all, nothing is more wonderful than
man's power of accommodating himself to all
circumstances. There are people shaking and
shivering under the colonnades of the Via di Po at
Turin, — shaking and shivering, and yet creeping
along at their wonted snail's-pace, to the great
inconvenience of those who are goaded on by the
pinching, benumbing blast, and who are wedded
to the idea, here apparently scouted, that there is
heat in brisk motion, — shaking and shivering, I
say, and yet wrapt, and swathed and buried under
mountains of cloaks and burnouses, and furs,
and English " nose-hiders" [cache-nez Anglais,
the last Parisian importation), — but who would
yet delude you and themselves into the belief
that it is actually " not cold," (with the thermo
meter at sixteen degrees below zero, Reaumur,
at the Valentino Palace, by the river-side) ; and
others who gravely assure you, " nothing is more
pernicious to health than to have a fire in one's
room, let alone to sit by it." It is otherwise
however in the country, where, in the estimation
of the bravest Polar-bear of them all, it is really
" impossible" to live, in the winter months, and
where in fact " nobody" lives. The peasantry
have their homes with oxen and cows in the

174 HEARTS AND HEARTHS.
stables ; the small gentry — very small indeed-
together with some of the most luckless employes,
and a sprinkling of doctors and lawyers and such
small deer, reside in their country towns, of which
Castellamonte is perhaps not the worst possible
sample, and which are as many Turins, more or
less in miniature, with colonnades a yard or so
lower and gloomier, cafes a thought dingier and
greasier, churches a shade chillier and mustier (I
believe I have Mr. Thomas Carlyle's authority
for these comparatives), and, in some of them, all
but unbearable theatres.
To winter in Castellamonte, therefore, though
anything but a wise or plausible, would have
seemed to my friends at least a feasible, scheme.
They might question my taste, but would not go
so far as to dispute my sanity ; but to live in an
isolated dwelling, — in a summer palazzotto, com
fortless, matless, curtainless, blindless, with walls
three feet thick, and ice-like Venetian floors, with
shaky doors and cracked windows, and a whole
quarter of a mile from the nearest human habi
tation, — did man in his senses ever dream of
such a thing ?
But, dear Marmion, I was out of humour with
the world and with myself; and I had spoken

HEARTS AND HEARTHS. 175
in such glowing terms of the delight of country
residence in England, of the charms of solitude,
of self-concentration and scrutiny, of the im
portance of relying on one's own resources, and
grounding one's own independence on the con
sciousness of entire self-sufficiency, that I thought
I could do no less than make good my proud
words by brave deeds, and resolved upon making
a trial of my powers of endurance, even had I
in the end to be reduced to some of the most
desperate shifts of Robinson Crusoe's ingenuity.
I have now been by myself nearly four weeks,
but the real winter only set in after Christmas.
The cold is seldom so severe in these truly
Subalpine districts of the Canavese as it is at
Turin, a town in the open plain, with a northern
aspect, and with the Montferrat hills on the
" wrong " side. Here, on the last slope of the
mountains, with the whole Alpine crest to answer
the purpose of a screen and cloak, the climate
is rather damp and gloomy than rigid. Away
from the blasts of the Tramontana, we feel the
heat of the sun in the coldest months, and on the
lowest declivities of the hills the snow hardly
ever dwells. So long as it is possible to be in
the open air, life is easy enough ; but before sun-

176 HEARTS AND HEARTHS.
rise and soon after sun-down the cold is intense ;
a sharp, deep frost seizes the still, thin air, and
hardens the ground for two or three feet below
the surface. Owing to the thickness of the walls,
and the narrowness of the deep old-fashioned
windows, the temperature indoors is hardly af
fected by the sun's warmth ; the chill settles
ip the house night after night, and the winter
deepens in it apace. Away from the sun, in fact,
we are not in Italy, but in Switzerland, in the
centre of vast snowy masses and glaciers. Now
comfortless as the house is made by its very
solidity, and as chilly by day as in the dead of
the night, it must however be endured, as the
noon thaw renders the roads almost impassable.
Fire is therefore a great desideratum, and fire I
was determined to have. I summoned the far
mer's wife to my aid, and had soon used up the
few poor sticks that were to boil the rustic fa
mily's pot the winter through. In the meanwhile
the wood I had ordered from various quarters
arrived at last, notwithstanding the opposition I
met with from the monopolists, who direct all
fuel to the metropolis, and the delay occasioned by
impracticable roads ; but after three or four at
tempts, I came to the mortifying conclusion that

HEARTS AND HEARTHS. 177
I had only stocked my friend the Judge's cellar
for next year's consumption, as in about a twelve
month it might be hoped that the green logs
would be sufficiently dry to fizz at least, if not to
crackle on the hearth. I then sent for a load of
peat, but the stench from it is more than I can
put up with ; so that I have no resource left
but to wrap myself up in a blanket like an an
cient Roman, and stalk about the vast room, and
stamp and spout and shout, till the good peasant-
woman who comes in with the polenta, or Indian
meal-porridge, which ushers in my plain dinner, is
only confirmed in her shrewd surmise that " the
stranger is daft."
I have sometimes looked in at their cowhouse ;
but the soggezione, or awe, into which the pre
sence even of so unpretending an individual as
the " Sur Cavale " (that is here my designation)
throws those poor troglodytes, would be suffi
cient to deter me from the spot, could I even bear
the most noisome heat which for three months in
the year turns to yellow the roses on the cheeks
of one of the healthiest races in the world, and
could I even overcome the repugnance I feel at
the sight of human beings brought by impro
vidence to confinement in the same dens with
N

178 HEARTS AND HEARTHS.
the brute creation. By day the open terrace offers
me a sunny walk on a dry pavement, the only bit
of dry ground for miles around. In the evening,
when the uppermost crust of the marshy road is
sufficiently hardened to bear me, I must perforce
wend my steps to the town, and take refuge in
that earthly paradise of the Italian, the Cafe.
The Cafe is too decidedly a national institution
for me to venture on a severe criticism upon
it. It is by far a more social, more genial, and
might be made a more comfortable lounge than
the stiff and formal, exclusive and forbidding
English Club. Notwithstanding its open doors,
the Cafe in a large town is a less public place
than a stranger would imagine. Every establish
ment of that description has its own character,
answers its own peculiar purposes, is frequented
by its own regular visitors. There are in Turin,
for instance, where constitutional freedom has
given those shops an unprecedented develop
ment, " black" and " red" Cafes, places for the
rendezvous of all religious and political opinions,
in each of which certain persons at certain hours
never fail to appear, and where certain other
persons cannot by any possibility be seen at any
hour. Democratic as the Cafe is, by its very

HEARTS AND HEARTHS. 179
nature, indifferently welcoming any human being
who will occasionally call for a three-halfpenny
cup of coffee, or a twopenny " piccolo " ice, it
leads however to no improper familiarity, to no
undue intrusion of class upon class, or of indivi
duals upon each other. Such is the discipline,
or say, the innate good taste and discretion of
the lower classes in this country, that you will
see side by side, sitting at adjoining tables, if not
at the same table, the President of the Senate,
the most noble Marquis Alfieri di Sostegno,
a pattern of all courtesy and gentility, or the
Home Minister, the Commendatore Urbano Rat-
tazzi, a man with ermine-like nicety and tidi
ness in his very look, sipping his lemonade, or
cracking his joke with Valerio, Brofferio, or any
of the rabid Opposition party, and the coatless
street- porter, or mayhap the shirtless street-
sweeper, filling his chickett, or sharing his ice
cream with wife and children; all this without
a shade of danger of their interfering with one
another, further than by the mutual exchange
of a bow, or a wave of the hat, the acknowledg
ment of each other's existence which invariably
occurs between any two persons in Italy when
ever or wherever they happen to meet under the
same roof. n 2

180 HEARTS AND HEARTHS.
For all that, however, every Cafe has a name,
a scope, and a character of its own ; and some of
the smallest and cosiest, though by no means ex
clusive/are somewhat shunned by the unwashed
multitude. The San Carlo, the National, and the
Ligurian Cafes, all glittering with gold, are beset
with the sovereign people ; but the Cafe Fiorio,
under the porticoes, the Cafe di Londra, near the
Hotel Feder, and other equally plain and unpre
tending establishments, are the favourite haunts
of the upper classes, and, at certain hours at least,
are, by the silent consent of the masses, almost
entirely reserved for their use. In the matter of
Cafes, as well as on the subject of churches, the
Italians seem to think plainness, or indeed very
shabbiness, the peculiar mark of gentility. In like
manner there are clerical and military, commer
cial and theatrical, students' and artists' Cafes ;
so that if in London it is usual to ask a man
what street or quarter he lives in, to make out his
condition, in Italy it is almost safe to say, " Tell
me what coffeehouse you go to, and I will tell
you who or what you are."
Unquestionably, however, the Cafe is a good
thing, of which the use seldom fails to lead to
abuse. Of the Italians it may be said, not so

HEARTS AND HEARTHS. 181
much that they meet, as that they "pig toge
ther," in their Cafes. The practice of smoking,
so rife of late that the revenue arising from the
tobacco monopoly has risen from five to fifteen
millions within five or six years, and the still
more abominable custom of spitting, on which
unfortunately Government has as yet found no
means to raise a duty, render every place in
Piedmont open to the public unconquerably
disgusting. The contrast between gilt ceilings,
varnished columns, and limned wainscots, with
damp and slippery, and shockingly filthy floors,
bears evidence against a nation so renowned of
yore for its exquisite sense of propriety, and fas
tidious love of the Beautiful : the wet from drip
ping umbrellas, the steam from dank cloaks, the
mud from unscraped boots, mixed with the ashes
and crushed stumps of cigars, and freshened up
by the perpetual shower from the throats of every
man present, make the very ground thick and
sticky under your feet. Add to this the close
pestilential air, the clang of the door perpetually
shutting to, the din and clatter of the scullion
knocking about cups, saucers, pots and trays, as
if collision were to do duty for ablution, and the
shouting of the waiters, determined, as it would

182 HEARTS AND HEARTHS.
seem, that every customer must either be deaf or
should be made so, — and you will have an idea
of the best-regulated Turinese Cafes ; they are
crowded from morning till late at night never
theless ; they increase in number daily, and there
is ample custom for them all. Living from home
becomes a more and more universal practice : the
whole city is little more than a town of taverns,
eating- and coffee-houses : fathers, mothers and
whole families go to the Cafes or Cafes Restau
rants for their breakfast and other meals ; and
bachelors leave their lodgings unshaven, if not
unwashed, and never revisit them till bed-time.
The barber, the boot-black, as well as the cook,
are all ready to wait upon them out of doors.
The fire, in short, is being put out in Italy, and
with it the feelings of home and domestic affec
tions become altogether obsolete. The number
of single men throughout Italy is quite appal
ling; there is no country in which " improvident
marriages" are more carefully eschewed. Celibacy
is indeed becoming so crying an evil, that it
seems surprising Count Cavour, so much at a
loss as he is for means of "raising the wind," has
not bethought himself of a tax upon bachelors ;
for I think him too disinterested to shrink from

HEARTS AND HEARTHS. 183
a measure on the mere ground that he would be
the first hit by its clauses ; but indeed it has
now become very difficult to discriminate between
"the happy men" and the "lucky dogs" in this
country ; and you may chance to live on the most
familiar terms with an amiable cafe companion
for' months and years, ere you get the slightest
inkling as to his being, or not, burdened with a
wife and family. The love of society, the imper
fect education, the mental tameness and plain
ness of the generality of Italian women, the lack
of entertaining books, prevailing custom, and,
above all things, the paltry, scanty fires, and the
naked cheerless apartments, drive the Italian hus
band from the sanctuary of home, and turn him
into a mere lounger, a frivolous talker, a piti
ful idler at a cafe. The very best of men, the
most affectionate of husbands and fathers (and
I know some who are paragons) are no excep
tions to the rule. They have the strongest at
tachment, the highest regard, the most implicit
confidence in the partners of their homes ; but
those homes with a few hours' tete-a-tete in the
evening, even for the short period of a honey
moon, would be unendurable to the most exem
plary Benedict of them all ; and were a man ever

184 HEARTS AND HEARTHS.
so much inclined to sit by his own ingle-nook,
with his wife and children, only for one evening
in the week, he would hardly dare to face the
world and incur the ridicule his domestic tastes
would be sure to stir up against him among his
friends. Beyond the necessary discussions of the
household budget in general, and of the milliner's
bill in particular, and perhaps an occasional cur
tain-lecture respecting the intolerable investment
of the family funds in havannas for the gentle
man, you would say there is no common pur
suit, no common topic of conversation to en
able man and wife to get on together between
dinner and bed-time. A woman — at least one's
own woman — seems to be no helpmate in this
country ; neither in working hours, nor during
that time of relaxation and repose, which in
better-regulated societies is her peculiar province
and domain.
The fire of Italian hearths is going out ra
pidly : the first movement toward political eman
cipation in Piedmont, if it has had the effect of
substituting more earnest talk instead of the
vapid conversation about ballet-dancers and
opera-girls, insipid quips and cranks, ribald jokes,
obscene slang, and infamous slander, which con-

HEARTS AND HEARTHS. 185
stituted the whole entertainment of an Italian
Cafe in olden times, has however increased a
hundredfold the amount of the talk itself. Con
stitutional freedom has broken asunder the last
links of family affection ; by public life the Italian
too readily understands life in public; and his
duty as a free man bids him spend his whole day
either in peripatetic discussion under the porti
coes, or in endless verbiage over his empty news
papers, across the marble table of his noisy, noi
some Cafe.
I find the Cafes at Castellamonte — there are
six of them — not much worse than the fourth or
fifth-rate establishments of tbe same kind would
be in the Capital. The one I frequent, when I am
at a loss where else on earth to betake myself, is,
as a matter of course, the liberal or " democratic"
house. It consists of two or three public rooms,
very dark by day, and very dimly lighted by
night ; the whole heated by a single stove so
dingy and smutty that the outside, if touched,
would blacken your hand hardly less than the
inside. Sit back in your chair, in any chair, and
your coat will stick to it ; rest your elbow on the
table, on any table, and your sleeve will stick
to it ; raise the cup to your lips, and your lips

186 HEARTS AND HEARTHS.
will stick to it ; it is everywhere the same sticky
clamminess, the same musty, fusty, frowzy sensa
tion of uncleanliness. I know not how many years
it would take before I could become used to it.
My friends, however, either do not notice it, or
find it the most natural thing in the world. I
am a very popular personage in this place, let
me tell you. The moment I step in, most of the
customers and the good widow at the counter,
the genius loci, rise to greet me. Cigars and
pipes are taken from every mouth, and, as a
necessary consequence, there follows universal
expectoration. I have to decline, with all civility,
the offers that are urged upon me from this one
and that one, of coffee, punch, and other bever
ages : the latest Opinione and Gazzetta del Popolo
are with the most generous self-denial tendered
to me by every reader. There is not a shade of
servility in all this courteous behaviour. Were I
indeed any man's " better" in this place — which
Heaven knows I am not — there would not be a
person to perceive my superiority, and any at
tempt on my part to assume it would at once
freeze their cordiality, and I should be left alone.
The amiableness and affectionateness of these
good people, and indeed of all Italians, which

HEARTS AND HEARTHS. 187
foreigners too easily mistake for cringing abject-
ness, certainly cover a multitude of sins, and re
concile one to their loud manner of clearing their
throats and blowing their noses, to their thousand
solecisms against mere external good-breeding.
As soon as I am seated, however, the discus
sion of the great topics of the day, which had
been dropped as fully exhausted before I made
my appearance, begins afresh. It is, mayhap,
the eternal question about the Danubian Princi
palities, or very knowing conjectures respecting
the secret intentions of the Czar of all the Rus-
sias, or of the Great Khan of Tartary, or of
Prester John of Abyssinia. The remotest and
most abstruse subject, I grieve to say, is ever
the uppermost in the thoughts and speeches of
people living in out-of-the-way corners. It used
to be matter of necessity under the absolute re
gime, when home topics were excluded from
the budget de omnibus rebus supplied by the one
Gazette circulating throughout the State ; and it
continues to be the case now, under a free go
vernment and a multitudinous Press, from mere
habit, from weakness of intellect, from that in
ertness and supineness which finds it extremely
difficult to conceive how it has now become a

188 HEARTS AND HEARTHS.
duty as well as a right for freemen to mind their
own business.
As a travelled oyster, and a man affected with
incurable Anglomania, I am usually listened to
with attention and deference. Indeed, they are
apt slyly to " set me up " and " bring me out ;"
though, I have no doubt, they laugh in their
sleeves at some of my hobbies, and hold me for
a crotchety, paradoxical — that is their word —
self-conceited visionary. My notions of cleanli
ness, my fondness of cold-bathing, of long sharp
walks, and all violent exercise, my very free stric
tures upon the slovenliness of their husbandry,
their disregard of the rights of property, their
neglect of hedges and fences, — in short, my eco
nomical, social, and moral lectures, — have made
me about as popular as Peregrine Touchwood
at old St. Ronan's. But neither am I with
out my partisans : there are two young advo
cates, — one of them a youth of bright talents,
handsome, well-bred ; the other, a man of strong
plain sense, of sterling worth, — both of whom
have travelled far and wide — in books ; there is
a young apothecary, a self-taught, practical ge
nius, who has turned a barren heath, up the slope
of a hill, into a garden, all by his own unaided

HEARTS AND HEARTHS. 189
industry and intelligence ; there is a dark-browed
physician, deep-read, caustic, and saturnine ; and
a stout, open-faced, open-hearted, jolly surgeon,
— each a philosopher in his own way, the first
of the crying, the second of the laughing school ;
there are, besides, the notary, the civil-engineer,
a priest or two, of those dalla manica larga,
" with the broad sleeve," as the phrase is in Italy,
that is, of the good-natured, easy, and somewhat
loose sort, — men who took up the liberal cause
at the time that Gioberti and Pius IX. made it
popular among the men of their cloth, and have
found it too comfortable a creed, or are now too
honest, or may-be too profligate and disreputable,
to follow the rest of the hierarchy in their back
ward movement. There are also persons of a
humbler station ; for instance, the builder who
is at work on my castellated villa on the top of
a hill, and his sons who do duty as plain brick
layers under him.
You must observe, my friend, that all the
signori, the villeggianti, that is, the well-to-do
people, who come to this place to look after their
farms for the short summer or rather autumn
season, have left us, my host the Judge having
indeed been the latest to decamp ; so that their

190 HEARTS AND HEARTHS.
parlours and drawing-rooms are all shut up, dark,
and silent, and their daily reunions, genial sup
pers, balls, and theatricals have come to an end.
The town is now reduced to its permanent po
pulation, to those who abide here in the sheer
impossibihty of going elsewhere. They are, most
of them, tolerably well off in their way ; petty
landowners with limited incomes, bent upon
eking out their scanty revenues, either by fol
lowing some so-called liberal profession, or by
engaging in some branch of trade or industry :
whatever their real rank or position, the Cafe is
your great leveller, and they all meet here on the
footing of perfect equality. To show you what
simple and primitive, what ductile and malleable
sort of beings they are, I must tell you that I
created a great sensation, no later than last even
ing, by merely pointing out the difference between
an Italian and an English death-bed. To them,
— to the boldest freethinker and most abandoned
libertine amongst them, who harbour in their
heart of hearts a lurking faith that, happen
what may, all accounts must be made square at
the last hour ; that the priest's absolution, the
communion, and extreme unction are sufficient to
send up to heaven, " white as whitest dove," the

HEARTS AND HEARTHS. 191
blackest sinner's soul that ever was, — it appeared
hardly credible that there should be a country
where, when the doctor's work is done, the priest
does not step in, absolute, inexorable, driving
wife and children, friends and parents, from the
couch of the dying, clearing the whole house with
the zeal of Christ turning the money-changers
out of the temple, to reign alone in the chamber
of death, instead of sharing the last duties to
the departing spirit with those who have been
nearest to it on earth, — it seemed inconceivable
to them, that there should be a country, a Chris
tian country too, however heretical in their esti
mation, where love alone officiates by the pillow
of a patient at his last gasp, where the clergy
man's aid is seldom asked and never needed ;
where as many of the beloved ones as are within
reach of a hasty summons, crowd silent and com
posed round the bed, and a tender wife or a
doting mother clasps the hand that is rapidly
slackening and freezing in her grasp ; where the
word of eternal life is read, not in an unknown
dead tongue, not in the unfaltering voice of one
professedly inaccessible to all human feelings,
and, at any rate, blunted by long familiarity
with scenes of sorrow and distress, but in the

192 HEARTS AND HEARTHS.
home-language and tone of the holiest affections,
by one who crushes and stifles her heart to im
part to the supreme moments the befitting calm
ness and solemnity, by one who needs all the faith
in a future state of being, to resist the instinct
that would prompt her to rebel against the in
scrutable Will, which bids her live when all that
made life dear to her is for ever departing. I
declare to you, were a Protestant to preach in
this strain, he could make more converts than
Exeter Hall, with all its evangelical polemics,
will ever achieve ; for the Italians are a sensitive
race, and you must go to their heads through
their hearts.
But the little ascendency I may have gained
over them by my character of a stranger coming
from far-off regions, unable to speak any (to them)
intelligible language besides my stiff and stilted
Italian, and totally at a loss to answer them in
their brisk and pithy patois — which was how
ever my father's native dialect — is fast wearing
off; and not unusually, after a brief but friendly
salutation, they go off in sets of three or four,
and sit down at various tables, intent upon their
game of Tarocchi ; callous now to the direct and
indirect hints so often thrown out by me against

HEARTS AND HEARTHS. 193
the idleness, and stupidity of that their favourite
enjoyment. Card-playing is the besetting sin of
the Piedmontese, as indeed of the Italians of all
classes. In every cafe in Turin, in every tavern
or wine-shop in the country, there is invariably
an innermost room, a sanctum sanctorum, or we
may say Pandemonium, where gambling to some
amount is perpetually going on. I do not be
lieve that ruinous games are generally preferred,
and I know that at any rate the Government
found no great difficulty in the execution of a
decree which banished Roulette, Ecarte and all
other games of hazard, both from their watering-
places, and from notorious hells in the capital and
in the principal towns ; but the love of gam
bling is bred in the bone with the people. As
you walk along the high-road, as you step into
the back parlour of a coffee-shop, you see the
stupid rustics sitting, either on the grass under
the shade of a tree, round a table within the cur
tained niche of a window, or staking on a card
one against another the money they have got at
the market in exchange for their milch-cow or
fatted pig. The manly sports for which Italy
was celebrated, such as the Pallone, an Olympic
game which inspired Leopardi with an ode in the

194 HEARTS AND HEARTHS.
true Pindaric strain, — the Trucco, a play for giants
and athletes, — have all died away, one after an
other, (I remember them in my boyhood) — all of
them, with the single exception of bowls, which is
still indeed the delight of high and low; but the
cards take a great deal of a man's life in Pied
mont in the summer, and well-nigh the whole of
it in the winter-time. It is little consolation
to know that the game is fair and harmless, and
that two or three hours' sitting only go, in fre
quent instances, to decide which of the parties
engaged is to pay for the litre of wine, or the
cup of coffee, they have consumed during the
transaction. It is their time the wretches are
gambhng away ; and it were easy to forgive them,
if they would only touch no cards except at
proper recreation hours ; but step into any Cafe,
at any time of the day or night, and, as sure as
you live, there you have the cursed table, with
four boobies at it, eagerly brooding over their
cards, as if their very life hung on the chance of
their doing one another out of threepence after
sitting hours and hours.
I was descanting upon this great national
failing with a highly distinguished financier one
day, and asked him whether he did not think

HEARTS AND HEARTHS. 195
some summary measure, such as the tax for in
stance of a gold Napoleon upon every pack of
cards, which, like tobacco, are, I believe, a royal
monopoly, would have the effect of hemming in
at least, if not radically curing, the evil. He
answered, that "things must find their own
level, and that an indirect tax, pushed beyond
bearable limits, invariably defeats its purpose."
It seems he did not understand me, or at least
he looked upon the matter as an economist, — I
as a moralist. The business of men of his calibre
is to fill the coffers of the Treasury, no matter
how much the people are beggared and de
graded by indulging them in their stolid, if not
wicked, propensities. It is with the same views
that the Begio Lotto, or public Lottery, a deep-
rooted grievous evil, one of the plagues of old
Italy, to which the constitutional Government
of Piedmont had actually pledged themselves
to put an end, has, on the contrary, been suf
fered by them to assume such alarming dimen
sions, since 1848, that the State now draws from
it a net income of above six millions, instead
of the two millions to which it amounted at the
epoch in which its gradual abolition and eventual
suppression was solemnly decreed. No wonder

196 HEARTS AND HEARTHS.
the astounding success of this huge national
swindle fosters and encourages the private gam
bling habits of the people, and paralyzes the
efforts by which Government would fain break
through such habits. Count Cavour seems to
rest all his hopes in the general advancement of
education and the development of popular indus
try : give the people something to do, he reasons,
and assure them of a fair return for their work,
and the cards will of themselves drop from their
hands, and the lottery-office will lose its custo
mers. But he ought to take example from En
gland, a country he so sincerely admires, where, in
spite of a more widely-spread knowledge, and old-
established trades and manufactures, it has been
found necessary to put down lotteries by legisla
tive enactments, and even to proceed summarily
against betting-offices, when the ancient popular
delusion made its appearance under modern pre
tences, and the old enemy showed himself with
a new face.
On another point, I must say, I am at vari
ance with our enlightened rulers and patriots,
owing, may-be, to my antiquated notions on
public morality. They evince too great an
anxiety to minister to the lazy propensities of

HEARTS AND HEARTHS. 197
the people, by every variety of public rejoicings.
They very nearly quarrelled with the Pope, to
induce him to consent to the abolition of many
of the feast and fast days in the Roman Catholic
calendar, so as to reduce the great solemnities of
the Church to only four great days in the year,
beside the Sundays. Will it be believed, that
they have substituted political instead of religious
festivals ; so that, for instance, in May, the best
part of one week is wasted to celebrate the pro
mulgation of the Statuto. They deem it advisable
by such pageants to interest the ignorant masses
in the new order of things, and to bring it before
them in a tangible form ; and if they limited their
public demonstrations to one day in the year, I
should most heartily join their movement ; but
vast sums out of the public treasury are wasted
to get up tinsel shows, monster concerts, horse
races, etc., etc., prolonging the idleness of the
populace of Turin from day to day for nearly a
week, and enticing the rural population for hun
dreds of miles around, and entailing great losses
in money and time.
No less strenuous efforts have been made to
get up what they call a Carnival in Turin, a
town which has hitherto been free from the silly

198 HEARTS AND HEARTHS.
exhibitions which, between Christmas and Lent,
turn all other Italians into mere children, boobies
and idiots, pampering the natural improvidence
of the people at that season, even by the distribu
tion of bread, wine and sausages, — demoralizing
the masses, in short, by that system of Panem
et Circenses which always marked periods of
decay, and delivered up helpless nations into the
hands of artful despotism. It is very true the
Sardinian Government and Parliament are not as
yet guilty of supplying funds for the Carnival.
They have however countenanced it to the best
of their abilities ; and, under their influence, the
stolid Corporation of Turin have not only given
what they could ill spare (considering they can
not carry on their expenditure without raising
a duty on market provisions at their gates, imi^
tating those wise French economists who in
vented the octroi), but they have actually pro
moted subscriptions amongst the chief traders
under the Turin colonnades, contending that the
attraction of the provincials to the Capital by
means of the senseless mummeries of Carni
val, could not fail to give a momentous im
pulse to the " commerce " of the country ; thus
wilfully falling into the egregious error of the

HEARTS AND HEARTHS. 199
French, that the swelling of the till of a few
metropolitan shopkeepers is a symptom of the
trading affluence and prosperity of the whole
community. Incited by the example of the Capital, the rural
population, who have no means for the celebra
tion of political or Saturnalian festivities, have
gone back to their high-masses, processions and
other shows with which the priests since time
immemorial were wont to amuse them. Church
holidays are kept now throughout Piedmont,
and in Genoa especially, as zealously as they ever
were before their suppression in 1848 ; and, al
though something might have been gained by
that enactment, which at least transferred such
sacred anniversaries as were not abolished, from
the week days to the Sundays, yet the leisure-
loving people contrive to gratify their inclina
tions anyhow, either by altogether disregarding
the Government's injunctions, or by taking their
share in each other's solemnities ; the village that
rejoices in the patronage of St. Bernard, for in
stance, attending the fine doings at another
hamlet that may happen to acknowledge as its
patron St. Maurice ; and in return, the faithful
flock of St. Maurice never failing to return the

200 HEARTS AND HEARTHS.
compliment to their polite neighbours when the
day of St. Bernard comes round.
No, no ! the Italians have no lack of induce
ments to make life all play and no work, and
the Piedmontese, although certainly the wisest,
bravest, and most sober of Italians, will not
hold out long against such temptations as our
modern economists seem bent by main force
upon throwing in their path.
But I perceive I am, almost in spite of myself,
drifting into politics, and I ought not to forget
that you will have "none of it." Suffice it to
say, that the game of Tarocchi is even a greater
eyesore to me in the little cafe of Castellamonte
than its all-pervading dirt ; so that, after having,
according to my foolish custom, inveighed against
it with more zeal than discretion, with an ear
nestness indeed that has won me here, as in
Turin, the unenviable appellation of " II Bronto-
lone " (the grumbler), I find now no other way
of protesting against it than refusing to coun
tenance it with my presence; so that the mere
fact of the greasy pack being brought forth is
a signal for me to take up my hat and walk.
There is, so far as I know, no ladies' society in
Castellamonte in the winter, and at any rate I

HEARTS AND HEARTHS. 201
was asked to none. The male part of the commu
nity are all assembled at their cafes, where they
abide till bed-time. It is otherwise in Turin ;
in that city some of the most civilized beings
are content with seeing their friends, and gather
ing a certain amount of gossip at their coffee
houses in prima sera, that is, till eight or nine
o'clock, after which hour they generally either ad
journ to the theatre, which is the universal draw
ing-room, with warmth and light gratis, or assem
ble in a few houses well known to be always
open for the reception of friends. The Italians
have waived all ceremony in their social rela
tions ; anything like formal invitation or dress
ing for a party is now altogether out of the ques
tion. Such a Lady of title, or such a Deputy's or
Avvocato's wife, is said to be " at home" on cer
tain appointed evenings, every week through the
season ; such another is visible in her salon every
evening. I have been in Turin two seasons in
succession, and have given one or two of such
houses a fair trial. With the exception of grand
routs and balls, which are pretty much the
same in all countries, and in which anything
like rational conversation is hardly practicable, I
always met an allowance of five, ten, twenty men

202 HEARTS AND HEARTHS.
to one lady. You see everywhere only the fair
mistress of the house and the crowd of her one
hundred and one cavaliers. The lord and hus
band may be at home, or he may be at his cafe
or the Casino, or he may have gone to swell the
retinue of some other popular Beauty; though
beauty is hardly the word in these cases, as the
ladies who draw the greatest numbers of visitors
to their soirees are but seldom distinguished by
personal attractions. Some peculiar charm or
other there must be about the hostess neverthe
less, and it generally consists of tact, good-nature,
a certain amount of lively sympathetic friendli
ness and affability, of great pliability and accom-
modativeness : all these qualities must be set
off by attentiveness and impartiality towards each
and all the guests, by the constant display of a
ready power of talk, and a corresponding " talent
pour le silence." Such women are rare even in
Italy, but they seem nevertheless the indigenous
product of the soil. It is astonishing to see
upon what limited amount of information an Ita
lian woman fits herself for general conversation :
all her knowledge, like the ware in a French
shopman's window, is on the tip of her blessed
tongue ; and she knows, better than any of her

HEARTS AND HEARTHS. 203
sisters beyond the Alps, how to turn her interlo
cutor's knowledge to her own account. Desti
tute as they are of well-grounded education at
school, the Italian women " finish" themselves in
their drawing-rooms. They are great hands at
picking up bits and scraps, and pumping out
anything there may be in their instructor's brains.
Such women however are, I repeat, very scarce
even in Italy, and in Turin, for instance, out of
ten citizens' wives, hardly one, I make bold to
assert, is presentable. This, and only this, is the
cause why, at almost every house where you are
asked to drop in of an evening, you see Goldoni's
play of " La Donna Sola" daily performed. It is
not jealousy of her neighbour's beauty or accom
plishments which prevents Madame Rosaura from
including Madame Beatrice in the standing invi
tation by which the latter's husband Florindo is
welcomed to her house. It is simply because
Madame Beatrice's husband, if he dared tell the
truth, is ashamed of his wife. "Madame Beatrice,"
the sly rogue will tell you, " is engrossed by her
children's education and the cares of her house
hold, or she is waiting on her aged mother or
invalid sister, or she has a little circle of cava
liers of her own, or is too fond of music to

204 HEARTS AND HEARTHS.
miss one single air at the Opera." In her box
at the theatre every lady can " show". She is
dressed up like " an altar,"* — such is the phrase
in Italy ; and the talk between a recitative and
a cavatina is the flimsiest, and silliest, and most
desultory ; and a lady fair can always easily get
rid of an embarrassing question, or pass off a
smart repartee, by turning from the speaker and
evincing a sudden interest in the fate of the
heroine upon the stage. In the salon it is other
wise : there the hostess must stand the brunt of
the conversation, be it grave or gay : she must
have an answer ready for every question, or, in
her turn, she must puzzle the questioner by an
adroit dodge, and escape by some witty saying
which may make up by its smartness for its lack
of pertinence or opportunity. I greatly regret to
be compelled to add, that some of these queens
of the salon have carried their amiable conde
scension so far as to allow their visitors to turn
their drawing-rooms into cafes, or, to speak more
correctly, estaminets. In more than one decent
* " Vidi le donne mettersi in assetto,
Edabbellirsi che pareano altari."
See a popular Sonnet beginning, —
" Un asino che avea dell' intelletto."

HEARTS AND HEARTHS. 205
house in Turin, the cigar-box lies, amongst other
articles of female industry or accomplishment,
on the lady's work-table. Driven to the alterna
tive of renouncing female society or dropping
the so-called " fragrant weed," the Italian would
have been brute enough to desert the fair one's
bower, had not the latter stooped to the ignoble
compromise of admitting her truant cavalier as
redolent of tobacco as his morning-coat could
well be after hours and hours' indulgence in his
filthiest of enjoyments. Now whenever you, dar
ling ladies, let in the smoker, you can hardly
help admitting as the minor evil the smoke it
self; and when your holy of holies is so far in
vaded, you can do nothing better in self-defence
than try a little cigarrito yourselves. This I
have found to be the case in Turin far more
than I could have wished ; and I had in some
instances to make my way into drawing-rooms,
the darkened atmosphere of which was quite as
intolerable as that of a Croatian guard-room ; in
which I found the solitary lady, the centre of vast
clouds blown at her from all sides. Such is the
incense that the devotion of Italian worshippers
now burns at the shrine of beauty !
The fidelity and assiduity of the ten or twenty

206 HEARTS AND HEARTHS.
" Cavalieri obbligati," doing duty at the same
salon evening after evening, are perfectly amazing
to me. You bid good bye to one of these Cer-
cles, you make the tour of the globe, and come
back to Turin after a twelve or four-and-twenty
months' absence, you go to the same house, and,
twenty to one, you find the same men, each on
his wonted chair, round the identical work-table,
in the presence of the same charmer, — the same
worshippers at the shrine of the same divinity.
Talk of the fickleness of Southern people ! If a
word is said about the lady's going to the Opera,
the whole company rise and adjourn en masse to
the playhouse. If the villeggiatura season takes
the lady to the country, away the whole flock
troop after her, either as guests at her own house,
or as inmates of inns or villas in the neighbour
hood. Italian women never travel ; but if the
Polar Star is obliged to remove to the seaside,
to the baths of Lucca or Recoaro, — an event for
ever memorable, — thither, by centrifugal and cen
tripetal laws, the whole system of stars, planets
and satellites must needs follow. From the bot
tom of my heart I believe, in ninety-nine cases
out of a hundred, such connections are quite
ultra-Platonic, perfectly harmless and honourable.

HEARTS AND HEARTHS. 207
Celibacy, as I said, is the order of the day in
Italy ; all social and domestic institutions con
spire to maintain that great crying evil, and to
increase it. Now a single man has no chance of
enjoying rational female society (in a community
where young Misses count for little or nothing)
on any other terms than by becoming nineteenth
or twentieth in a clever married lady's suite.
Clever ladies are rare birds in Italy, as I said ;
there has been as yet scarcely any educational
establishment in Italy for young women beside
the Convent ; and such women as rise at all above
the common standard, owe their success either
to uncommon natural gifts, or to a certain apt
ness to improve their minds by attrition with
those of their rnale associates, and to pick up
miscellaneous information. As a glaring proof
of the backward state of the female mind in
Italy, I need only advert to the fact that a learned
woman is still looked upon with the idlest pre
judices as a " Precieuse Ridicule." Bas Bleus
have usually empty salons. The charmers are
those who turn all their acquirements to mere
conversational purposes, and who, if they have the
misfortune to be at all uneasy about the colour
of their stockings, keep you in the dark about it

208 HEARTS AND HEARTHS.
by mincingly and coquettishly showing no more
than the tip of their satin shoe.
For my own part, however, I am a selfish dog,
and at my period of life must have at least one
woman at a time all to myself. Although I have
seen more than one of these " receiving" ladies
whose society I really delighted in, although in
deed there was hardly one of them I was not
charmed with, and as a stranger and rare cus
tomer I was allowed to engross more of the
queen -absolute's attention than would fall to the
lot of a mere habitue, I soon felt that it was my
duty to fall back among the multitude. I found
myself more or less thrown upon the same men,
and engaging in the identical talk I had escaped
from at the cafe ; and with a rather misanthropic
declaration, that " Man delights me not, nor wo
man (when she is to be shared with so many)
either," I went back weary and disheartened to
my solitary lodgings.
As this country is now, thanks to the air of
freedom which is fanning its torpid energies into
a new life, rapidly advancing in every branch of
social improvement, it is to be hoped that female
education will not be amongst the last subjects
busying the thoughts of the real lovers of the

HEARTS AND HEARTHS. 209
common weal ; and indeed, it must be cheerfully
admitted, that tolerably good ladies' schools have
lately been opened both in Turin and at Genoa ;
unquestionably we have made a few steps since
the time when the Madre Priora of an Ursuline
pensionnat gravely debated in her awful mind the
mooted points, " whether a girl should be taught
to write, since that necessary accomplishment
might " be turned to the wicked purpose of pen
ning a billet-doux," and whether the fair pupils
should be allowed to go further down than the
chin in their ablution, "lest the sight of their
bare charms should embolden the Devil that
was in them to tempt them with fancies savouring
of vanity or impurity." But a long time must
elapse ere an Italian woman, and indeed even her
stronger half, are supplied with sufficient means
for that education which in other happier com
munities may be said to begin after schooltime.
We have in this country no literature, hardly two
lines calculated to give persons of mediocre un
derstanding and culture that taste for, and habit
of reading, which furnishes the mind with a cer
tain amount of ' Conversation-Lexicon ' informa
tion, and lays a substratum upon which each indi
vidual can day by day raise such a structure of
p

210 HEARTS AND HEARTHS.
light or heavy, solid or desultory erudition as
best suits his wants, his pleasure or taste. To a
man used to English town and country houses,
nothing appears more striking than the almost
total absence in Italy of books, considered simply
as indispensable articles of furniture and objects
of " civilized luxury." People read nothing here
but their own newspaper, (much good may it
do them !) or at the utmost the Steele or the
Bebats. Turin boasts only one Club, and two
or three paltry circulating-libraries. Such towns
as Ivrea, Biella and Casale have actually no esta
blishments of either kind; and the casinos or
clubs that are now being opened in the minor
country towns, such as Andorno, Mosso, Riva-
rolo, etc. (there is a great talk about one at Cas
tellamonte, and my two young advocates are
very ardent and sanguine on the subject) abound
more in packs of cards than sets of books.
Railways exist, but railway libraries are not
even dreamt of; reading, in Italy, is in short
by no means reckoned among the necessaries
of life.
A farrago of books, and even several Reviews,
and literary papers, weekly or bi-monthly, are in
deed published in Turin, as well as in Florence,

HEARTS AND HEARTHS. 211
Milan and throughout the cities of Lombardy;
but they are all productions belonging to Old
Italy; new commentaries on old Dante — that eter
nal Dante ! — .moth-eaten chronicles, or disserta
tions on some antique, cracked Etruscan potsherd,
— very rubbish indeed, without a spark of life in
it. In all these branches of dilettantism Tuscany
has a decided advantage, and, to say the truth,
in all literary, bibliographical or educational ac
tivity. The downright Piedmontese, the descen
dants of the subjects of those Victor Amadeuses
who valued the last of their drummers more than
the greatest of their scholars, continue to this
day to be the "Macedonians of Italy," — a term
which I am far indeed from applying to them as
a reproach. Notwithstanding the truly great men
who have illustrated this country, such as Al-
fieri, Botta, Balbo, and a hundred others, and
the impulse given to all talents by a free Con
stitution, Piedmont shows as yet but little apti
tude for any general proficiency in literature or
art. It may be that my taste has been utterly
spoiled and denaturalized by long residence in
foreign lands, but I cannot really bring myself
to admire, or even to endure, the long-winded,
murky rigmaroles which are here published as
p 2

212 HEARTS AND HEARTHS.
philosophy, nor the dry crude narratives which
go by the name of history, nor the pointless, hu
mourless platitudes which are palmed upon us
as satires, nor the sometimes vapid, sometimes
bombastic, always false, tawdry stuff that is given
out as poetry and romance. If I except an ele
gant historical essay by Carutti on Victor Ama-
deus IL, and a few domestic scenes by a pro
mising young writer of fiction, Bersezio, there
are not three lines in all that appears in Turin,
or even in more prolific Florence, that seems to
me to belong to living literature. I speak with
deliberate boldness, and do not except even the
writings of  and •  whose names have
attained a European reputation. I entertain in
the depth of my heart a shrew7d suspicion, that
their works are even in Italy more extensively
purchased than read, and I know to a certainty,
at any rate, that hardly one page of the whole
set ever had the honour of a. foreign translation.
Truly some of our indignant patriots are fain to
ascribe this latter fact to the mean jealousy and
wilful blindness of foreign nations. But I cannot
lay that flattering unction to my soul, seeing that
full justice has been done abroad to the merits
of Manzoni, Pellico, Giusti, and all Italian writers

HEARTS AND HEARTHS. 213
with only one spark of life in them. Of this
universal conspiracy of all the " Ultramontanes"
to depreciate Italian genius at the present day,
even by insidious comparisons with its achieve
ment in times of yore, our painters also are
wont rather too loudly to complain ; forgetting
that those same foreigners who deny us altoge
ther any skill on canvas, are not unwilling to
bestow their due meed of praise on our marbles.
For myself, as I am in a mood to be communi
cative, I may as well confess that I could never
abide even that flabby and windy Gioberti, al
though it has been for a long time the greatest
heresy to say so ; but I point to the fact, that
neither was he, at any time, a prophet out of
his own country, nor did the worship which was
paid to him in his own country endure the
short period elapsing between the day in which
he reached the acme of his power, and that of
the untimely close of his career.
That Italian men and women read nothing, at
least Italian, chiefly because they have nothing to
read, is a fact of which the unsatisfactory state
of society above described ought to afford a con
vincing proof. Men cannot live even by Dante,
Tasso, and Metastasio alone : the mind requires

214 HEARTS AND HEARTHS.
new and fresh nutriment, as it grows and moves
onward ; and the national literature in Italy has
been at a dead standstill since Manzoni. Be
yond the Trebbia, the Ticino, and the Magra,
the frontier streams of the free Sardinian lands,
this intellectual death is generally, and not quite
unjustly, accounted for by referring it to a
variety of obvious political causes. It undoubt
edly is hard for any man to write, where he
is not allowed, at his own peril, and upon his
personal responsibility, to think and express
what comes uppermost into his mind : but Pied
mont has achieved her freedom ; language and
action are now only limited by the just bounds
of the law, and her mental inactivity (unless
indeed my native impatience makes me unjust
to my countrymen,) is something surprising,
disappointing, disheartening. It is vain to say,
though I hear it incessantly asserted, that public
life absorbs and engrosses here all the most dis
tinguished capacities, so far as to allow no scope
for the mere dreamy work of light literature.
I contend that, for a nation, as well as for an
individual, there is no midway between omnipo
tent energy, and helpless, hopeless prostration, —
no midway between the achievement of nothing,

HEARTS AND HEARTHS. 215
and the accomplishment of everything ; that in
ancient and modern times the country which
boasted the greatest " Doers," — that is, warriors,
statesmen and orators, — was famous at the same
time for the noblest Makers, — that is, poets, ar
tists, and critics.
No little good would accrue to the country,
in the dearth of native productions, from the
free importation of the treasures of more fertile
lands ; and, as far as French literature is con
cerned, there is no doubt but our young politi
cians and our mature ladies of fashion see more
of that than is good for them. The Italians
have no other school of statesmanship than the
Patrie, the Pays, or at most the Belgian Indepen-
dance, of which their own free journals are but a
dull feeble echo. They have no other master of
literature than that Proteus, Dumas, that ranter
Eugene Sue, that mystic George Sand. Even
the least cultivated amongst this somewhat mon
grel Subalpine population, have a sufficient smat
tering of the French language to enable them to
peruse such works in their original garb. To
the absolutely illiterate, bad originals are made
accessible by infinitely worse translations, or by
even more wretched, basely servile imitations.

216 HEARTS AND HEARTHS.
The same may be said of the dramatic stage,
where " La Signora dalle Camellie" had the run
of a hundred evenings in most of the Turin
theatres, in a prose translation, the morbid taste
of the people not being glutted with its long
exhibition under its thin musical disguise of " La
Traviata." The whole produce of the German and English
mind is terra incognita for even the most curious
and enterprising Italian reader; not so much,
or at least not only on account of the national
Italian prejudice revolting against everything
Teutonic, and of the national French prejudice,
which the Italian drinks in with eveiy French
word he reads, against everything British; but
also because the study of the Northern languages
has been till now most miserably neglected in
Italy, and the feeble efforts which are now being
m'ade towards the attainment of such knowledge
are not adequate to overcome the immense diffi
culties with which such pursuits truly test the
Southern student's power of endurance.
Great results might be expected from a liberal
supply of good translations ; but, to say nothing
of the scantiness and incapacity of the men who
might be engaged in the task, and of the enor-

HEARTS AND HEARTHS. 217
mous amount of hard labour it takes to turn
Teutonic into Roman idioms, (so enormous in
deed as to deter from the attempt any but the
most powerful genius, or the most presumptuous
fool — for I confess, for instance, I find it very
hard to turn even my puny English into Italian,
possessing half the pith and nerve of the original,)
there is no doubt but the work is rendered more
arduous by the breach between Italy and the
Northern nations, which has been daily widening
ever since the day when the writers of the ro
mantic school of Manzoni, Grossi, etc. first studied
modern Transalpine productions. I remember
the time when Ferrario published the whole of
Schiller at Milan, and Barbieri all the Waverley
Novels ; and those books, together with Tasso and
Ariosto, contributed to a great extent to form my
own mind and that of my contemporaries ; but
that day has long since gone by, and France now
raises as effectual a barrier to cut us off from
all the rest of Europe, as she herself has raised
against it by her narrow views of classical ex
cellence, by her feelings of national jealousy and
self-conceit. To minds besotted by a blind wor
ship of the stiff models of Racine and Voltaire,
Shakespear will for ever remain a sealed book ;

218 HEARTS AND HEARTHS.
and to palates blunted and corrupted by the high
spices of ' Lelias ' and the ' Mysteres de Paris,'
such works as 'Eothen,' 'The Caxtons,' or
' The Diary of a Physician,' will appear but tame,
tasteless stuff; whilst again such productions as
' Pickwick ' or ' Vanity Fair,' which must needs
be relishable everywhere, cannot be easily made
intelligible to brains circumscribed within such
narrow limits as the untravelled Parisian book
seller's hack moves in. Versions from the En
glish have indeed been attempted since those of
Walter Scott's works ; some of Bulwer's novels,
and even, I believe, a few chapters of one or
two of Dickens', but no book of light literature,
attained any wide circulation, with the single
exception of ' Uncle Tom's Cabin.'*
As to the German writers of the day, I ques
tion whether even the name of the genial Auer-
bach ever crossed the Alps. The failure of the
* The Methodist Pietism of that remarkable American
production has been, I am told, turned into Catholic zeal and
fervour in the process of Italian translation, — to such an
extent, that the main offence of the old Negro, and the cause
of all his sufferings, is referred to his staunch adherence, in
despite of all Legree's lash, to the orthodox dogma of the
Immaculate Conception. I do not know how far Mrs. Beecher
Stowe is likely to be pleased with this change in the tendency
of her production.

HEARTS AND HEARTHS. 219
few attempts that have been made, the conse
quent discouragement of new efforts in that
direction, and the utter indifference, or even su
perstitious disregard of everything, — I will not
say un-Italian, but un-French, — is to me not only
the symptom of a great evil, but also the proof
of its incurable nature. There is something
truly asinine in the self-sufficiency of our Italian
pedants. For my own part, I had endeavoured,
not indeed to enrich Italy with any of the minor
treasures of English or German literature, but
merely to assert the merit of some of those pro
ductions of Italian genius, which have gone to
swell the literary store of a nation possessing
enough and to spare of its own. I was so very
loud and so very earnest, two years ago, in my
praises of Ruffini's works, ' Lorenzo Benoni ' and
'Doctor Antonio,' I said and wrote so persever-
ingly, not only about the real merits, the inter
esting matter, and light agreeable manner of the
works, but also about their astounding success
beyond the Alps, about the many editions those
works have gone through both in England and
America, and about the versions of them that
have seen the light both in France and Germany,

220 HEARTS AND HEARTHS.
— I dwelt so long on the complacency with which
foreign passengers on board the coasting steam
ers sailing from Marseilles to Genoa, passengers
of both sexes, of all conditions, of all nations on
either side of the Atlantic, point to Bordighera,
San Remo, and Riva di Taggia, as spots hallowed
by the fancies of genius, rivalling almost the ce
lebrity which Scott has imparted to every glen
and loch in the Highlands, — I repeated so con
stantly that it was a disgrace to our national
feelings that works which have given foreign
readers a fresh interest in our country should
remain utterly unknown to us, that it spoke
volumes against the sluggishness of our pub
lishers that not one of them should try to turn
an honest penny by works which have filled the
till of a canny Scotch bookseller, — that at last
an unlucky wight of a friend of mine, conver
sant with the. English language, was induced to
go through the labour of the translation ; and an
ill-starred victim of a stationer was found to run
the risk of the publication. Will it be believed ?
the work fell dead from the press ; translator
and publisher burnt their fingers, and there was
no lack of wiseacres to exclaim gravely, and even

HEARTS AND HEARTHS. 221
vauntingly, " that such performances were of too
flimsy a nature to sink to any depth in our Ita
lian atmosphere ; that our national mind was now
ripe for more earnest work, too ripe to be allured
by the mere charms of fiction, and too hard at
work on solid matters to have leisure for the pur
suit of polite literature."
It may be they are right, and I am wrong,
and only a fool for thinking, as I do, that he
has indeed well deserved of his country and of
mankind, who has brought out into the world
something readable ; that he who contributes in
any degree to engender or foster among the
cultivated and cultivable classes the mere want
of reading, gives the public mind an impulse
far more momentous than that which it re
ceives from the mere schoolmaster ; inasmuch as
school- work comes to us in the shape of a task,
often irksome, always limited in its object and
reach ; it leads us rather to the learned professions
than to learning; whilst mere voluntary read
ing, however desultory, miscellaneous, and aim
less, is also by its very nature boundless ; it may
go no further than to afford harmless pastime,
and impart knowledge and refinement ; but it
may also awaken feelings, create longings, arouse

222 HEARTS AND HEARTHS.
energies, strike sparks, lead in short to results
which it was in the power neither of the writer
nor of the reader originally to foresee. I am a
great believer in chance seeds, blown about by
winds, wafted aloft by birds, and providentially
bestowing upon one climate the products which
were deemed the exclusive blessings of another.
That the love of reading does not exist to any
desirable extent in Italy might be proved by the
fact, that I could go all round about Castella
monte and not find anywhere, with the exception
of dusty classics, law-books, medical works, and
the like, a book that might be called a book, or,
what is worse, a man or woman in want of one;
and I should be sorry indeed to be called upon
to draw up a catalogue of the works, other than
mediocre scientific or political essays, which have
issued from the Turin and Genoa Press ever
since Charles Albert's Statuto proclaimed that
Press to be unshackled. Not but that Piedmont
has its living poets, dramatists, novelists, etc.,
but fame does not carry their names very far nor
very long ; their works, after a twelvemonth, are
rather to be found at the trunkmaker's than at
the printer's, binder's, or publisher's.
Under the influence of depressing thoughts and

HEARTS AND HEARTHS. 223
feelings like these, and in the lack of a good fire
and comfortable abode, you must not be sur
prised, my friend, if this is my last letter from
Piedmont, or if you see me following close upon
its arrival. I have had not a few trifling matters
to cause me personal annoyance, but those would
not have induced me to desert what I considered
my post, further than by inspiring me with a
passing preference for solitude and rural retire
ment. Green firewood and offensive peat have
now well-nigh convinced me that no man should
presume to tarry here who is not prepared to
" do in Piedmont as the Piedmontese do." The
habits of the country afford no shelter to an un
social recluse, and I am very nearly starved (with
cold) out of my Diogenes' tub.
It is a melancholy feeling to creep upon a
man, but I really begin to think that a quarter
of a century spent in the various lands of Eu
rope, Africa and America has thoroughly depayse,
estranged me from my country. Between me
and the best of my friends here there is hardly
an inch of undebated ground ; hardly a political,
social, or moral point on which we can come
to a satisfactory understanding. They think me
an oddity, they call me a grumbler, — unamiable,

224 HEARTS AND HEARTHS.
unenviable qualifications both of them, you will
confess. Were there nothing else, their coarse,
vulgar, bastard dialect would be sufficient to
drive me from the country. It is not with the
poor uneducated people I should feel inclined to
quarrel on that score : the very lowest of these
boors understand my Italian, and answer me in
the same language to the best of their abilities.
It is amongst their " betters," those who flatter
themselves that they possess the language, and
who at any rate could improve their knowledge
by daily practice, that their rude Canavese,
Biellese, and other idioms are cherished with a
municipal, local, kennel tenderness which they
would fain mistake for patriotism. At the very
Chamber of Deputies or in the Senate, every
aside in the hall, and not a few of the discus
sions in the offices and committees, are carried
on in the grating provincial Piedmontese. Nor is
the evil at all on the wane ; but, on the contrary,
the decree by which it was ordered, in 1848, that
the instruction in the army — an army consist
ing of Genoese, Sardinians (of the Island) — and
other non-Piedmontese, should be carried on in
the common Italian, has been suffered to become
a dead letter, and the restraint that the presence

HEARTS AND HEARTHS. 225
of so many Italians of other provinces exercised
on Turin society, has now completely worn off, so
that the hideous vernacular is more than ever
the order of the day. Nay, so deep-rooted is the
stupid prejudice, that Tuscans and Romans give
in to the common weakness, and I have heard
such men as the refined Farini breaking their
jaws to utter Subalpine slang, — an effort however,
I rejoice to say, in which they succeeded about
as well as that " Spanish cow " who attempted to
speak French.* No wonder that, when an orator
is on his legs, he appears as awkward in his
unfamiliar Tuscan as a clown in his new suit
of Sunday clothes. Step into the opera-house,
make your way into any of the boxes, walk into
the Place d'Armes, stop near any carriage, nay,
go to a Court ball, or to Cavour's reunion, join
any group, you will see lovely ladies and gay
cavaliers, gentle ladies with good blood in their
veins, robed in the highest pink of fashion, very
mountains of crinoline (they are arrant over-
dressers, our Turin beauties), — accost them, and
you will hear such uncouth words, such harsh
accents, as might in other lands befit a crowd of
* " Paria Francese come una vacca Spagnuola," — a popu
lar phrase in Italy, applying to all who murder a foreign lan
guage. Q

226 HEARTS AND HEARTHS.
laundresses and fishwomen. I know no country
in the world but Italy, where language is not
the test of gentle birth, good-breeding and gene
ral polish. A stranger, admitted for the first time
into a Turin drawing-room, might feel tempted
to think that he is attending a performance
of " High Life Below-stairs." The company are
dressed, and look, like ladies and gentlemen;
their talk sounds far more uncouth than that
of flunkeys and Abigails. Talk of the sweet,
vocal sounds of the South ! Those pretty lips
could utter Roman sounds with sufficiently cor
rect rhythm and tolerable fluency ; but they
think it patriotic to keep up their nasal, guttu
ral, half French, half German, wholly barbaric
jargon, and what would you have to say to it?
That language is the first instrument of civili
zation, as well as the best badge of nationality
and that living languages must live, that is,
be spoken as well as written, studied, discussed
and legislated about, that no man can be elo
quent, either as an orator or a writer, unless he
brings home to his soul and heart the very lan
guage by which he hopes to go to the heart and
soul of other men, unless he not only constantly
speaks that language, but thinks in it, dreams

HEARTS AND HEARTHS. 227
in it, makes it matter of instinct, incarnates in
it even the slightest image, the most transient
shadow of an idea flitting in his brain, — all this
is what no man in this country, or indeed any
where in Northern Italy can be made to under
stand. I say this because, after all, my love of
fault-finding being indulged to my heart's con
tent, I must tell you that there is hardly a ble
mish to be found in this good Subalpine people,
which is not met with in far greater proportion
among the other tribes of the Peninsula placed
under more unfavourable political and social cir
cumstances. When the worst is said, it is im
possible not to find much to admire, to love and
to hope for in this blessed corner of emancipated
Italy. Those who shall live to visit Piedmont
half a century hence, will see most of the evils
removed which now afflict, mortify, and almost
drive to distraction such a hasty, intolerant, in
veterate grumbler as I am.
Only the country must be left to go its own
way, and I have fallen from that fond conceit
and silly presumption which led me to expect
that I could, in any way and to any extent, in
fluence it in its course. I see now I can do no
thing but scold and croak, — not the best method,
q 2

228 HEARTS AND HEARTHS.
I confess, to secure patient listeners or thriving
pupils. I am ashamed of the indiscretion of my
zeal, and have half a mind to punish myself by
quitting this clime of perpetual spring, and re
pairing for a change to the land of Brussels car
pets and open seacoal fires.
Yet two days of this still, keen, cruel frost,
and then "home to old England !"

229

XII.
NERVES AND MUSCLES.
Castellamonte, January 27.
Old Winter is deepening around us, plunging
us, at forty-five degrees of latitude, into all the
horrors of a Siberian climate. There is not a
breath of air stirring : the atmosphere settles and
sinks down upon us, day after day, night after
night, gaining fresh density and gravity with
the gradual increase of its intense stillness. The
magnificent mountains about us are one vast
mass of glancing silver. Their southern side,
barely moistened by the warmest rays of the
noontide sun, hardens again before the evening
twilight, and that alternate thawing and freez
ing of the outward crust substitutes the smooth
ness and brightness of solid ice for the pale, sad,
and somewhat ghastly whiteness of untouched

330 NERVES AND MUSCLES.
snow. Every bough in every tree is clothed in
its quaint winter garb ; such a curious, minute,
glittering fretwork of crystallized dew ! such my
riads of diminutive, drop-like, needle-like, spark
ling icicles ! the whole forest scenery so cunningly
crusted over, so richly sugared and candied !
The effects of light and shade on the high-
polished, mirror-like surface of the vast sur
rounding Alpine chain, would drive poets or
artists attempting to paint them to distraction.
Such golden risings and rosy settings the sun
never displays at any other season of the year,
even in Italy ; its light grows keener as its face
waxes colder; between its disc and our retina,
you would almost say, no tempering medium in
tervenes ; its beams seem to acquire new lustre
from the diamond transparency of the keen air
they glide through : distinctness of outline and
depth of ground, impart new grandeur to the
sublime picture of the boundless hill-range and
interminable plain. Nowhere does the eye of
man take in so much of the earth and the
heavens at one glance. Then the revelry of the
moon, stars and planets in the night ! every
farthing-candle of the sixth magnitude peeping
forth a luminary ! In such a firmament you might

NERVES AND MUSCLES. 231
almost be looking out for the lost Seventh of
the Pleiades.
Oh ! but it is bitter, bitter cold for all that.
I took, some nights ago, one of my famous long
walks by starlight. We are digging a well at
my villa residence, that is to be, on the top of
a hill close by. - I had, with my usual judgment
and foresight, made choice of a site for a house,
and left it to chance or Providence to supply
the house with water. The consequence was,
that on a mountain-side bubbling all over with
springs, quite an Undine region, I had hit on the
only dry spot for a home; so that a well had
to be dug ; and as people in this country look
out for hidden veins of the pure element at the
coldest season, when the very heart of the Alps
is frozen, and the rivers are at the lowest ebb,
because a supply obtained under such circum
stances can never fail for all the rest of the year,
— I took the opportunity of the hard frost, and
went to fetch an engineer from Turin to direct
my excavation.
I beat up the man's quarters at midnight,
after the Opera, roused him v from his slumbers
in his warm bed, bade him dress hastily, take his
hat and walking:stick, and so hurried him out of

232 NERVES AND MUSCLES.
town, just as the middle star in Orion's Belt was
about to reach the meridian.
What a grand rate we went at! The en
gineer was a tall thin man, dry as a stick, but
tough and wiry, inured to hardships by long
exposure to the elements in the pursuit of his
calling. Notwithstanding the length of his legs,
he would have been no match for me at an Al
pine ascent. Even on the plain he panted not
a little, as he trudged after me, five or six yards
in the rear ; the beaten track on the deep frozen
road not allowing two of us to walk side by
side. On we marched, with heads thrown forward
facing the keen night breeze, without one word
or one backward look, as if the enemy of man
kind had power to seize upon the luckless one of
us who should slacken or stand still; and yet,
with all our violent motion, we strove in vain to
keep ourselves warm, and for the whole journey
we hardly felt our hands, or the very feet we
stamped so briskly on the ground. Yet I was
still the same man who used to travel in England
all night on the top of a mail-coach, even in
the bitterest season, scarcely knowing what cold
was, although on my arrival at the journey's
end, I read in the morning papers melancholy

NERVES AND MUSCLES. 233
accounts of travellers, who, having equally braved
the- inclement air outside similar conveyances,
had been seized upon by the Erl King and
found dead, stiffened where they sat. So great
do I find the difference between your " bleak
Northern countries," and our "sweet Southern
lands !"
My companion, one of those subtle, scheming
minds, always on the look-out for short-cuts, made
me strike across a by-path, which led us to un
known regions, where we had to wade through
deep snows, so that we were seven long hours
on a road which I had often travelled over in
five. We reached our goal at length, and came
to anchor in the cafe of this town, where the
stove was just being lighted, and the earliest
customers (it was Sunday morning) were sipping
their matutinal beverage.
I wish you had seen us. Our whiskers were
bristling with long, thick icicles, which gave us
the appearance of two Norse gods, and hung
about us so hard and solid, that it actually took
a good hour by the fire ere they could be torn
from the hair where they stuck. The bystanders
gazed at us, and crossed themselves, and won
dered at our exploit nearly as much as if we had

234 NERVES AND MUSCLES.
been mariners returned from a successful expe
dition in quest of the North-west Passage. In
a few minutes the report of our " madness " had
run through the town, and the whole male po
pulation gathered on the spot. My friend the
engineer had quite enough of it ; he has since
been heard to say, that he "would not for the
world go again on so foolish an errand ;" and,
what is more, I believe his wife would not let
him. With all this Icelandic and Spitzbergian tem
perature, (and you may imagine it is not from
vanity, but merely by way of illustration to
my theme, that I allude to our nocturnal feat), I
would not have you judge too harshly of our cli
mate of North Italy. The climate of Northern
Italy (by which I mean the country intra montes,
between the Alps and the Apennines, for that of
Genoa and Nice on the fickle sea is quite dif
ferent, in my estimation far worse), is, however
severe, an honest climate, always in earnest. It
scarcely ever rains here but it pours. Summer
droughts and winter frosts hardly deem it worth
while to set in, unless they mean to last for at
least six weeks or two months. Of every change
in the weather you have fair, timely warning, by

NERVES AND MUSCLES. 235
a succession of unmistakeable atmospheric pheno
mena. You need not take your umbrella, unless
clouds have been gathering and storms brew-
xng over your head for three days. Winter
is winter, and summer is summer ; but we have
a spring also, a sweet, progressive spring, and a
soft, lingering autumn. Good and bad equally
stick to the land. We are shut in by a mountain-
chain on either side. The stagnant air secures
constancy and regularity to the climate. It is ge
nerally a three-days' perfect hurricane of north-
wind that ushers in such a sharp frost as we
are at the present moment enjoying. Down from
all the Russian steppes, and across all the Ger
man forests, that blustering Tramontana sweeps far
and wide : it meets with a temporary check at
the foot of the Alps ; it takes breath and gathers
strength at that frail barrier, like a mustering
horde of barbaric invaders ; it then overleaps it
at one bound ; it acquires a tremendous momen
tum, as from the bare summit it rolls down like
an avalanche upon the devoted southern land,
madly roaring and rioting, blighting and blast
ing, savagely howling about us and our dwellings,
as if it meant to blow the chimneys off our roofs
and the very ears off our heads. It thus storms

236 NERVES AND MUSCLES.
for three, may-be for nine, days ; it then suddenly
subsides, leaving earth and sky indescribably
pure and fresh, and the air unspeakably still, an
open field for the frost to do its slow and sure,
unceasing, unrelenting work in. Then, in due
time, and with the punctuality of clock-work, the
time comes for the Scirocco, and the other hot-
breathing maritime gales. Hey, presto ! solvitur
acris hiems-. down come snow and ice, all at
once, flooding streams and melting mountains. A
rapid, yet gradual transition ensues, from the fri
gid to the torrid zone, — Russia for three months,
for three months Africa, but a temperature of
paradise during the quarters between the two
extremes. Such as it is, the climate suits and agrees
with me admirably ; and if I could but keep my
self warm withindoors I should wish the ther
mometer to fall lower and lower ; for I believe I
resemble Alfieri — in his faults — and " do not like
things by halves" {poco gradisco le cose di mezzo).
The air of these mountains is to me a native
element, although I was "raised" in the plain, on
the other side of the king of rivers, the Po, and full
a hundred and twenty miles to the east of Turin.
I have found here the land of my forefathers; for

NERVES AND MUSCLES. 237
our race is as old in these parts as the hills, or
at least as the streams flowing from the hills.
Down from the top of yon huge mass of Monte
Soglio, across the Val d' Oreo, and above Cuorgne,
there runs a lawless mountain torrent along a
rugged vale, and the glen and the brook have
borne our family name, or we have borne theirs,
time out of mind.
But if by visiting the Canavese I find that I
only " came to my own," I cannot say that " my
own received me not." The interest these good
people take in the " stranger," as soon as they
find out that he is of their kith and kin, is quite
as touching as it is to me surprising. They seem
to find it singular that a man who has been
roaming and rambling about, and settling in so
many different quarters of the globe, should
choose their out-of-the-way corner for a perma
nent abode ; for their extraordinary modesty ex
tends from them to all that belongs to them,
and they seem to be the only beings in the world
unaware of the surpassing beauty of the land
they live in. Wherever I have a five minutes'
talk with any man in these environs, there I
am sure to make a friend. I expressed a wish —
only a faint passing wish — to add a few square

238 NERVES AND MUSCLES.
rods of ground to my newly-purchased little pro
perty, and forthwith the whole town took up the
business as if it had been matter of common con
cern : they all pressed round the owner of the
coveted patch of land. I have told you how fast
every human being in these mountains clings to
the few clods of earth he can call his own. They
brought him almost a prisoner before me ; they
called for the land-surveyor, the notary, the ma
gistrate ; they drew up a contract, on what they
called reasonable terms, but on terms which, in
their over-anxiety that the stranger should not
be "taken in," suited me perhaps better than
the other interested party, and made the as
tounded and bewildered countryman accept the
deed, sign and seal it, and wish me joy of my
bargain, ere he was well aware of what he was
about. Again : I came back to them, last November,
after a short absence in Turin, where I had met
with one of those rubs and crosses, some of those
awkward stumbles, by which an all-wise Provi
dence so well knows how gradually to break our
final downfall, and to wean us from this earthly
existence as the period draws near for us to
relinquish it. My townsmen here conceived that

NERVES AND MUSCLES. 239
some great wrong had been done to me in the
Capital ; they took up my cause with that zeal
and fervour which belong to their hot Canavesan
blood ; they resolved to make me amends for
other people's injustice by some open and solemn
demonstration of their regard and goodwill. It
was a measure at the time demanding no trifling
pluck and resolution on their part ; but they
carried it out with consummate tact, energy and
discretion ; and the result of their deliberation
was that, after serenading me under my bed
room windows, like any Prima Donna, on the
night of my arrival, they sent a deputation to
wait upon me at my friend and host the
Judge's house, headed by the Sindaco, or Mayor
of the town, and his Municipal Councillors, re
questing that I would " grace with my presence
a public dinner which was to be given in my
honour on the ensuing Sunday."
The banquet took place accordingly ; and we
had speeches, flowers and music, and other cere
monies such as belong to similar festivities all
over the Christian world.
And yet, although a dinner, public or private,
is but a commonplace occurrence in all commu
nities, and its means and ends are everywhere

240 NERVES AND MUSCLES.
nearly identical, you must not imagine that a
municipal feast, especially if it bear anything like
a political character, is as commonplace a thing
here as it is in England, where would-be barris
ters " eat their Terms " at the Inns of Court, and
Scholars and Fellows their " Commons " in the
College-halls, and where statesmen eat them
selves into and out of office, to say nothing of
the world-wide fame of the dinner-giving and
-eating Corporation of London. In this country,
only ten years ago it was a rule, — a rule still en
forced in other parts of Italy at the present
day, — that more than three persons could not
be entertained even at a private house, and for the
most harmless purposes of eating and drinking,
talking, dancing, or acting charades, without the
previous knowledge and consent of the all-prying,
ever-meddling police.
I have attended public dinners in Turin,
given for different purposes, in honour of great
national anniversaries ; as that of the promulga
tion of the Statuto on the first Sunday in May,
or to celebrate some important political transac
tion, such as the accession of Sardinia to the
Anglo-Gallic alliance at the time of the Crimean
War ; or with a view to welcome some distin-

NERVES AND MUSCLES. 241
guished Italian from other States, the Sardinian
Capital being now the " Mecca of Italy " and
attracting thousands of pilgrims, all eager for
a breath of free air : — I have sat down, I say, to
many of these feasts, and have arrived at the
conclusion, that the " Art of Dining " requires
time and practice, and comes not by instinct,
any more than the other habits and customs,
faculties and virtues which characterize a race of
free men.
I was never at any public dinner at Turin that
lasted two hours. The guests eat up their
viands as fast as they are handed round ; and
round they are handed with a variety and profu
sion befitting a country which boasts a cookery
[cucina Piemontese) combining the advantages of
the French and Italian culinary methods, and,
in the opinion of the Piedmontese people them
selves, excelling both; and as soon as the last
dish is cleared, up starts the whole gorged party,
as if by common accord, unaccustomed as they
always have been, unable as they are and ever
will be, to sit peacefully over their wine ; and
they are with the utmost difficulty prevailed
upon to abide a few minutes, to go through
the formal delivery of the preconcerted, usu-

242 NERVES AND MUSCLES.
ally written, pompous, dull, vapid and, hum drum
speeches. To say the truth, I never had the heart to find
fault with their impatience, as, with the excep
tion of a few impressive words by General La
Marmora, on his return from his Crimean cam
paign, — words impressive from the very plain
ness and conciseness of a straightforward, unas
suming, and at the same time self-conscious and
dignified soldier,- — I have heard nothing worth
listening to at any of these banquets ; the very
leaders of the House of Deputies, and the Senate,
for the most part proving signally unsuccessful in
their postprandial effusions.
The Italians, I say it deliberately, are not only
too mercurial, as people assert, but they are too
desperately addicted to gormandizing ; they are
too heavily crammed, too torpid after dinner, to
sit out any lengthy display of oratorical powers ;
they want air and exercise after their full and
over-hasty meals. It is only by another strange
popular fallacy, analogous to the hallucination
which describes their climate as that of Eden,
that they are represented as a sober and ab
stemious race. They may not be addicted to in
temperance in drink, as the English even of the

NERVES AND MUSCLES. 243
best classes were wont to be in former times ;
they may not require five or six meals a day
{Friihsiuck, Mittag-essen, Vter-uhr-brod, Thee, and
Abendmahl), such as the Germans indulge in ;
but I appeal to any traveller, who ever happened
to take his dinner at the table-d'hote of the
Hotel Feder at Turin, or to sup at the Cafe Cova
at Milan, to say, if anything can well be more
appalling than the amount of stuff' an Italian
— at least a North-Italian — will manage to swal
low at one sitting. Most assuredly I am not the
man to quarrel with the quantity or quality of
the devoured food, but I do feel somewhat
shocked at the awful hurry with which mess
after mess is served up and despatched; the
brisk alacrity and untiring zeal of the waiters,
in whipping off one empty plate after another,
and carrying round one full dish after another,
hardly keeping pace with the voracious eager
ness and activity of the ravenous guests ; and I
do heartily abominate the unseemly haste with
which these latter either disperse (scampering
away, heaven knows whither, the moment coffee
and liqueurs are disposed of), or else drive away
the more social part of the community by the
clouds from their odious cigars. To any man
r 2

244 NERVES AND MUSCLES.
accustomed to civilized life, nothing will appear
more striking than the unfitness of the Italians
for real convivial enjoyment.
And truly, if we consider the native gifts and
instinctive capabilities of this once so refined Ita
lian race, and view the condition to which they
are now reduced, even in this favoured corner of
Piedmont, where for the last nine years the ex
periment of rational freedom has been going on,
we cannot fail to perceive what fatal influence
long religious and political misrule exercises, not
only on public life, which it utterly destroys, not
only on private and domestic intercourse, which it
altogether taints and vitiates, but even on those
tastes and habits, on those social conventionali
ties, which are called the " minor morals" of a
people, but which have perhaps more to do with
the general tone of morality than men are apt to
imagine. I know you will hardly refrain from a smile if
I tell you that I see the symptoms of degeneracy
amongst my poor countrymen in their very man
ner of eating ; and that you will think it hardly
possible for me seriously to refer the voraciousness
of the Italians to the Austrians, the Pope, or any
of those evil influences upon which falls the blame

NERVES AND MUSCLES. 245
of all that is wrong in Italy ; I know you will point
to the " freest as well as smartest nation in crea
tion," the Yankees, as evidence that the bolting of
food may be found compatible with the energies of
a thriving and enterprising set of mortals (though,
by the way,*the Italians unfortunately cannot even
plead that " pressure of time" which converts
the guests of the Tremont House in Boston or
of the Astor House in New York into a flock of
cormorants) ; but I shall not, for all your sneers,
hesitate to assert that not a little of the sloth
and effeminacy imputed to the Italians may be
traced to their diet and general manner of living.
Few persons at the present day, I suppose,
would lay the blame on the climate. I may per
haps, in my anxiety to convey to you a strong
picture of the horrors of a Piedmontese winter,
have unwittingly allowed myself some trifling
exaggeration ; and it may be that the few rigid
seasons I have lived through here are phenomena
of rare occurrence, and afford no criterion of the
ordinary run of Italian temperature. That exces
sive mildness is not by any means the peculiar
character of this climate, however, is matter of
common, constant observation ; and it must be
universally admitted that, by its searching cold,

246 NERVES AND MUSCLES.
parching heat, and rapid though regular trans
itions, it is as admirably calculated for the deve
lopment of all mental and bodily faculties as that
of any known region : he who is not braced up
by the gusts of the Tramontana to which we are
here exposed, is not likely to benefit much even
by the sea-breezes of Old or New England ; and
the very worst excess of summer heat, at least in
a temperate zone, will be found invigorating by
any one who so far grapples with it as to bring
about by persevering exercise the reaction invari
ably attendant on the first overpowering impres
sion. For my own part, I find the keen elastic
air of these high Subalpine districts quite a com
pensation for the warmth of their broiling sun ;
and can endure in the hottest months a greater
degree of toil, than I could in the moist, heavy,
and sultry, though mild, atmosphere of the Bri
tish islands.
But a strong climate needs a strong race of
men. Any climate in the world is the slave of a
man who is not its slave, and it is perfectly ab
surd to suppose that the same temperature which
steeled the thews and sinews of Gauls and Ro
mans in ancient times, which high-mettled the
blood in the veins of Lombards and Tuscans in

NERVES AND MUSCLES. 247
the Middle Ages, should be held accountable for
the emasculation of the same people at the pre
sent day.
No, the fault lies with the people, or may
be with their political and religious instructors ;
with those who taught us by degrees to substitute
silly masquerades and sillier processions to those
gay Gualdane and Battaglie del Ponte in which
the youth of our town engaged in the Middle
Ages, or even to those less warlike and danger
ous but equally athletic games of the Pallone
and Trucco of which my earliest days witnessed
the latest exhibitions.* The fault lies with the
* The Ghialdana was a wild scratch race of the whole youth
of a town, gaily dressed, armed and mounted, parading the
streets with flags and music, whilst every balcony was
adorned with gaudy drapery, flowers and beauty. The Battle
of the Bridge was a great wrestling-match, in which one-half
of the manhood of the town unarmed met the other half on
the top of a bridge, when the hostile parties strove to drive
each other back by might and main. The custom was kept
up at Pisa on the bridge of the Arno till a very late epoch,
when the Tuscan Government thought fit to interfere with an
amusement not unfrequently attended with fracture of limb
and even loss of life. The Pallone, to which I have already
alluded, is a game played with leathern balls about the size of
English footballs thrown by the arm protected by a wooden
or iron bracelet. The Trucco, billard en terre, or Lawn-
billiard, is played with wooden balls, at least thrice the size
of a man's head, which are lifted up, wielded and launched by
a pole with an iron ring or flat cup at its end.

248 NERVES AND MUSCLES.
Austrians, who are perpetually closing fencing-
schools and shooting-galleries, in Milan and
Venice, to wean our people from exercises in
which they displayed great skill and perhaps too
much spirit, on the same principle as these rulers
now discountenance " Schiitz- und Turnier-Ver-
eine (shooting and gymnastic clubs) in Germany,
wherever their sway extends. Unquestionably
it is for their interest to enthral the rising
generation by the allurements of public ball
rooms, casinos and playhouses, and to hold out
encouragement to the worst excesses of dissipa
tion. But it is a pity the Italians should for
get that " a child can take a horse to the water,
but ten strong men cannot make him drink."
It would be folly to deny, that oppressors can
hardly hope that the germs of indolence and
effeminacy, sown by them, will spring up, unless
the ground be naturally favourable to its recep
tion. I am afraid I am preaching and prosing ; but,
you see, I am here in Piedmont, in a country
which has been trying self-government for the
tenth part of a century, and I cannot say that the
people are as eager to cast off their sloth as their
wellwishers might expect.

NERVES AND MUSCLES. 249
Perhaps it is the cook that is to blame. Do
not we hear that the great secret of the astonish
ing success of the Anglo-Saxon race by land and
sea, by which it has " conquered half the world,
and bullied the other," is mainly to be ascribed
to the good, sound, honest " Roast Beef of Old
England" ? And have not the Germans their own
favourite assertion to the same effect, that the ex
traordinary vigour which enables them to crush
the Celto-Latins on the Po and the Magyaro-
Slavonians on the Danube, is simply due to the
tough " Schinken und Wurst" (ham and sausage)
on which they feast so plentifully ? Do not we
know the different results attendant upon the
mere fact of feeding a dog rather on meat and
bones than on oatmeal and garbage ? Can there
be any doubt that man, an omnivorous animal,
must be in a great measure amenable to dietetic
rules and principles? And if so, what can we
expect from the paste and rice-messes of the Ita
lians, from the overdone meats, the all-pervading
softness and thinness and sweetness of their daily
food ? May they not have in some measure to
answer for the weakness and idleness, the mental
prostration and moral relaxation, with which they
are charged?

250 NERVES AND MUSCLES.
An Italian takes, by way of breakfast, a cup of
pure black coffee in bed, or as soon as he is out
of bed; some have their dejeuner a la fourchette
towards noon, but many take not a morsel of
food till late in the evening, — in Turin generally
till six o'clock, which is the hour of their monster
dinner. No one is so extravagant as to exceed
his two meals in the day. It is very clear that a
stomach exhausted by a twenty-four hours' fast
will not easily manage a tough beefsteak or a
rich plum-pudding ; hence the necessity for the
Italians to pamper their taste with platefuls of
mmestra, macaroni, risotto, — anything that will
stifle rather than satisfy the cravings of hunger,
any substance that will cram and baffle the
stomach, and which yet, after the stupor and
torpor of half an hour's unnatural strain and
tension, will leave it emptier and hungrier than
before. The French just taste apotage, which is little
better than hot water bewitched ; the English
either eat no soups, or they call soup huge lumps
of ox-tail or turtle swimming in gravy ; but the
Italians to a great extent actually live on mines-
tra. The Piedmontese, who are still the bravest
and stoutest race in Italy, take care not to admit

NERVES AND MUSCLES. 251
the soup till the best part of the substantial din
ner has been disposed of ; but their brethren all
over the Peninsula choke themselves with rice
at Milan, with paste at Genoa or Naples, till they
can no more taste meat than he who has gorged
himself with white-bait at, Greenwich. I remem
ber Don Mariano, my priestly host at Sorrento.
He laid macaroni on the table before me at break
fast, dinner, and supper, — always macaroni, with
the sughillo or stewed meat juice and cacio-ca-
vallo, a cheese made of ewe's or goat's milk, I
think, and not " horse-cheese " as the sound
would imply ; the good priest supplied his guests
with other eatables ; but for himself, he tasted
nothing else from year's end to year's end.
With all the money and thought that is ex
pended in Italy on mere eating (my dinner in
Turin costs me more than in London), the people
here, even of the better classes, are an ill-fed
race ; and it is, under all circumstances, only a
wonder that they should preserve as much phy
sical activity as they still exhibit.
" Andiamo a far quattro passi," or even only
" due passi," is the expression with which the
young heroes invite each other to join in " a four-
steps " or " two-steps " constitutional walk.. At

252 NERVES AND MUSCLES.
Turin the phrase is " Andiamo fino a Po" (as
far as the Po), and the promenade extends from
the Piazza Castello to the Piazza Vittorio Ema-
nuele, about half a mile in length. Then for three
months in the summer the sun is too hot, for
three months in winter the air is too keen, to be
braved otherwise than under the shelter of the
colonnades ; and in spring again the air is too
mild or the sun is too temperate, so that in their
estimation nothing can be more fatal at any time
of the year than half an hour's venture beyond
the limits of the porticoes. Under the porticoes
therefore they go, shuffling and shambling, and
falling to pieces. No town in the world can boast
such glorious public walks; fine avenues along
the Po ; a sweet shady dyke between the river and
the hill-range, emphatically called the Collina ;
winding bridle-roads and paths across the Col
lina itself ; the Pioppi della Bora, those poplars
so romantically sung by Berchet ; finally the
Piazza d'armi, with an Alpine panorama which
beggars Berne or Neuchatel. But all these are
left for my own enjoyment alone, or for that of an
English lady of my acquaintance, who rambles
about the hills till the peasants and her own coach
man think her crazy, and who astonishes the fine

NERVES AND MUSCLES. 253
Turin ladies as she lays before them huge bunches
of flowers, which they admire as hothouse exotics,
and which she is at great pains to assure them she
has been gathering wild along the hedges of their
own villas on the Collina !
The more, in short, you know the customs of
these people, the stronger grows upon you the
conviction that they are a worn-out people, either
suffering from the habitual fast to which they
doom themselves from morning to night, or else
reeling under the weight of their one daily meal,
which they have no stomach to digest and no
legs to carry. What more ! The very horses bear
evidence of the extent to which they suffer under
the same stuffing and starving system to which
their owners voluntarily subject themselves ; they
are surfeited with hay all day long, and denied
more than one scanty feed of com. The very
smartest steeds prancing under the dapper officers
of the Sardinian army, or the sleekest geldings
drawing the few carriages of the Piedmontese
nobility, have all rather the look than the sub
stance of efficient cattle. An hour's ride or drive
round the Piazza d'armi is promenade enough
for man and beast, and the latter could not in
all probability stand much more. What the poor

254 NERVES AND MUSCLES.
creature lacks in real mettle and bottom, he must
make up by show and action.
The Sardinian army is, on the whole, well
mounted, and officers and men are tolerable riders,
better at any rate than the French; but they
torture their chargers with most wanton inhu
manity : such tugging of reins and digging of
rowels into the poor brutes' sides, you never see
anywhere, at least, west of the Channel. I have
a cousin in .the Sardinian staff, a clever, dashing
young officer, who came back from the Crimea
with stars and medals on his breast. He owns
a dun, tall, somewhat bony stallion, whom he has
named Maleck Adel, a savage steed, which with
a proper allowance of English oats would become
perfectly unmanageable. His master sits on his
back, and takes hiin out for an airing of about
half an hour every other day ; and during this
short exercise urges him on, and pulls him up,
makes him curvet and plunge, and kick and rear,
so that the luckless beast is hardly ever more
than a biped for the whole time. And this is
here called riding !
Away from Turin, in these out-of-the-way
country towns, there is neither riding nor walk
ing. No outdoor exercise of any kind whatever.

NERVES AND MUSCLES. 255
Horses there are, a few, but no saddles. Those
who feed cattle think they can also afford con
veyances; and as no man who can ride likes
to walk, so no man who can drive is willing to
ride. Throughout Lombardy, and even in Pied
mont, if you except the army, whoever owns a
padovanella, carrettella, or any other trap, pre
fers lolling on the box to all the pleasures of
equestrianism. The Italians may be made, but
they are not born, riders. They have a stupid
old saying, ' Uomo a cavallo sepoltura aperta,' —
to the effect that a riding man's neck is always
in danger. I could not find a hack for hire in
all Castellamonte, nor in the country for twenty
miles around ; and if I choose to go out on a
little sorry grey nag I lately purchased, I must
be content with the company of my own thoughts.
A walking companion I have found however.
The Canavesan villagers do not walk for pleasure,
but they are altogether a more active race than
their Turin brethren, and can put their hand to
any kind of hard work likely to repay them for
the trouble. But walking " don't pay ;" and like
Eastern people, they do not love exercise for its
own sake ; without some well-defined object, no
thing seems to them so well worth doing as doing
nothing.

256 NERVES AND MUSCLES.
I have nevertheless found a young advocate,*
one of the best-informed, most amiable and soci
able men of the town, and, what was even more to
the purpose, provided with a pair of immense long
legs, and enjoying the reputation of the greatest
pedestrian in the Province. We get along to
gether very comfortably, and clamber over this
frozen wilderness of hills and dales, rather like
brothers than friends. I should like to point him
out to you as the best type of a Piedmontese :
a single-minded being, modest, confiding, some
what inquisitive, as one hemmed in by a narrow
horizon, eager to push beyond his narrow sphere
of knowledge and limited range of experience.
He took the fancy of one of my English friends
amazingly; and although they had no other means
of intercourse than French, of which they made
dreadful slaughter, each in his own peculiar way,
still they understood each other enough to part
with the greatest mutual esteem, — the Briton
* Every one is an Avvocato in this country, the title, like
that of Esquire in England, being applied to any man who
has no other distinction. Men of real rank resent it almost as
an insult ; and there is a popular anecdote of a Piedmontese
Cavalier who, being addressed " Signor Avvocato," answered
in his dialect, "Avocat Achiel !" which is tantamount to saying
in English, " You are another ! " to one who calls you a liar
or an individual.

NERVES AND MUSCLES. 257
more than ever convinced of the truth of one-half
of Alfieri's aphorism, " that in Italy nature has
always proved stronger than all the evil powers
at work to corrupt her ; " — the Italian, more than
ever willing to admit the correctness of the other
half of the great Tragedian's saying, "that in
England Art has always managed to subdue
stubborn Nature ;" or, in other words, that what
seems in ¦ Italy spontaneous production, must in
England be the result of education.
My young Advocate has a brother, a some
what rougher diamond, who looks to the farms
and the markets. They live together, the begin
ning and end of their family ; and never dreamed
either that it would be desirable to share their
father's heritage, and determine the limits of
their respective possessions, or that a wife might
be looked upon as one of the necessaries of
life for either of them. Like genuine Italians,
they have lately been enlarging a house that was
already too large for twenty like them ; and, at the
very same time, they have come to the resolution
that housekeeping was a bore, and made arrange
ments to dine at the Caffe della Buona Vedova,
where they are to be found at all hours.
With the exception of the Avvocato (the farmer

258 NERVES AND MUSCLES.
is a utilitarian, and thinks walking, idleness), I
could not hope to induce any of my young friends
in this place to quit their cards for the open air.
Indeed they would look upon me as an oddity,
were it not that some of the old people have as
sured them that I cannot help my fondness for
locomotion, that it runs in the blood, that my
grandsire was also an indefatigable day and night
rambler ; and they relate with great zest how, on
a particular occasion, he was seen to set out on
horseback for Ivrea in the morning, and come
back afoot toward noon ; how he was met at his
own door by a friend, who asked him what had
become of his beast ; whereupon he struck his
forehead, as if with sudden recollection, and forth
with turned upon his heels, and walked back all
the way to Ivrea, a distance of thirteen miles, to
fetch his forgotten steed. You must not ima
gine that I repeat this anecdote to give glory, to
the memory of my stout progenitor, but simply to
convey an idea of the lazy habits of a people,
amongst whom a walk of six-and-twenty miles is
looked upon as a feat worth remembering after
the lapse of half a century. But perhaps they
merely quote it as an instance of uncommon
absence of mind. Enough that for a man who

NERVES AND MUSCLES. 259
owns, or can afford to hire, a carriage, walking
is here deemed the height of folly.
It may appear that I am entertaining you with
trivial remarks or irrelevant matters, but I am
firmly convinced that these subjects are of vital
importance to this country. A general cry of
astonishment was raised all over Europe by the
publication of the last Census in France. It
seemed hardly credible that, in the midst of a
profound peace, and with all appearance of the
most flourishing condition, the population of one
of the greatest empires in the world should be
for several years steadily declining. There was
no lack of theorists anxious to trace the evil to a
variety of political, economical, moral, and domes
tic sources : but few, especially in France, were
willing to notice the staring fact, that ever since
the days of the First Napoleon, the French race
has been exhibiting the marks of a general phy
sical decline ; such decline as must invariably
result from bad food, scarce fuel, impure air, and
sufferings of every description, aggravated by
lazy, indolent, self-indulgent habits, and all the
loathsome vices of a decrepit civilization. It is a
truth in animal no less than in political economy,
that " the wages of sin is death." To me, when
s 2

260 NERVES AND MUSCLES.
I look upon the dwarfish, puny, chetive rabble of
Paris or Lyons, the symptoms not only of decline,
but of actual rapid decay, ending in very sterility,
seem but too glaringly apparent. It is not such
men or such women that Providence intends for
the propagation of the species, and it is well it
should be so. An English writer of sound judg
ment has said it : " The unchaste are not fruit
ful." I am afraid, if I look at home, in this
country I shall see no great cause for rejoicing.
The same fatal agencies, — so complicate as to be
hardly traceable, so hideous as to be unmeet for
the light of day, and to puzzle the moralist, at a.
loss for words to convey his meaning, in his
attempts to deal with them — are equally at work
in Italy, and the Semi-Celtic race of Piedmont
is also fast dwindling under their baneful influ
ence. A few weeks ago the whole population
of Piedmont were startled by the announcement,
grounded on accurate statistical inquiries, that
the mortality of Turin as far exceeded that of
Paris, as this latter surpasses that of London.
It was anything but a pleasant revelation for the
Sardinian Capital, — a town which, notwithstand
ing the severity of its climate, and with all allow
ance made for ill-swept streets, and even more

NERVES AND MUSCLES. 261
outrageously dirty and filthy staircases, for im
perfect sewerage and abominable smells of every
description, ought to be one of the healthiest
spots in the world, by reason of its site, and on
account of its regular modern structure, of its
wide, straight thoroughfares at right angles open
to all winds, and of the three rivers (the Po, the
Dora, and the Stura), meeting close under its
walls, and bringing to it the fresh mountain air,
at the same time that they lay it under-water at
pleasure, so as to cleanse it of all impurities.
Many and various were, of course, the reasons
brought forward to account for the mournful phe
nomenon ; but it seemed to strike no one that
all the habits of the people were calculated to
breed disease and shorten life. Nothing is more
common, even in this high Piedmontese region,
than to find men in perfect health, and in full
possession of their faculties, and who yet may be
termed old at five-and-thirty or forty years of age.
The great enemy of the Italians, and of all South
ern nations sunken in indolence is — fat. Melan
choly is the besetting vice of the Italian tempe
rament; that vice, aggravated by the injudici
ous, unwholesome diet, by the sedentary habits
I have described, and by that excess of sensuality

262 NERVES AND MUSCLES.
which is vainly ascribed to the evervating effects
of the climate, leads not to good, firm, brawny
stoutness, as good living does in tbe North, but to
flabby and torpid obesity. The naturally elegant
and symmetrical forms which generally character
ize the population of all classes in the Peninsula
(though perhaps not so in Piedmont) are apt to
grow out of shape and proportion, ere the men
attain their meridian of life. I could point out
not a few gentlemen below the middle age, in
Turin, actually unable to waddle from the Palazzo
Carignano, or House of Deputies, to the Railway
Station, without blowing like so many steam-
engines. Nothing can equal the laxity of the
pores of their skin. Some of them remind me of
my worthy host, the macaroni-eating priest, Don
Mariano of Sorrento, already quoted, who never
ventured out of doors, summer or winter, with
out the precaution of a shirt under his arm,
well knowing that he would hardly go a hundred
yards' distance, when, without a change of linen,
he " would be sure of pigliarsi un malanno," —
such was his expression, — equivalent to, " catching
his death of cold."
Bilious and phlegmatic as many of the Italians
are by nature or habit, they fancy they are per-

NERVES AND MUSCLES. 263
petually labouring under the inconveniences of a
sanguine temperament, and are always in bodily
fear of a colpo di sangue, (blood-stroke, whatever
that may mean,) and apprehend no ills except
such as arise from excess of blood. They are
humoured in these notions by their physicians,
who are for ever bleeding, cupping, and apply
ing leeches to them, often for the mere purpose
of ridding them of that excess of health which
troubles and alarms them. There is bleeding
in Spring, universal bleeding, — bleeding after a
fright, or any other sudden or violent emotion,
such as falling down a staircase or falling in
love: the lancet is a panacea in moral no less
than physical infirmities ; and for every pound of
good blood that thus runs waste, cold stagnant
lymph, such as may be secreted from macaroni,
over-boiled beef and cauliflowers, is gradually
substituted. In all cases of fever, inflammation
and even consumption, the veins are drained to
the last drop, the sanguinary leech contending,
at the final extremity, that the patient is being
choked by his own blood, and crying out for
" one more tumbler-full." It was thus they did
away with the King's brother, the Duke of Genoa,
a high-minded, true-hearted young Prince, who

264 NERVES AND MUSCLES.
was dying of slow decline, and who expired in
their hands as they were trying the experiment
of a last saignee, the ninth in the course of two
days. " Had he been able to go through the
tenth! ..."
That same bilio-lymphatic disposition which
so early disables the body, proves equally inju
rious to the tone of the mind. There is often,
it would seem, something morbid and mawkish,
something distempered, in the organization of an
Italian, in his excessive sensitiveness, or, I should
rather say, his demonstrativeness. He is apt to
mistake for strong feeling merely the exaggerated
display and loud utterance of feeling. Unlike
the Englishman, to whom the tender of compas
sion is the greatest insult, the Italian is perpetu
ally craving and crying for sympathy. He is
too fain to lean on his fellow-beings ; he lacks
that stout self-reliance which ought to be the
basis of all manly virtues; he is especially deficient
in dignity. By the side of one Dante or one Al-
fieri, characters stern even to stiffness and stub
bornness, we have crowds of men like Petrarch,
Tasso, Metastasio, and Pellico, — soft creatures
who are always blubbering, and yet bemoaning
their hard lot, which turns their hearts to stone,

NERVES AND MUSCLES. 265
and in the very climax of sorrow deprives them
of the relief and refreshment of a good flood of
tears.* It has been remarked, and I am afraid not
unjustly, that, although the Italians are by no
means less courageous than their neighbours,
they are yet perhaps the only people amongst
whom the open avowal of cowardice seems to
bring no shame with it. In the like manner
some of them do not shrink from the exhibition
of physical infirmities or moral weaknesses no
man would plead guilty to in other countries.
The very sense of manhood appears to be ex
tinct in men of that temper. They will no more
scruple to confess their impotence for even the
most trivial physical exertion, or their inability
to bear the least mental or bodily pain, than they
would object to tell you they have had a gran
* " La sventura di non poter piangere e somma nei sommi
dolori, edoh! quante volte l'ho provata !" And elsewhere:
" lo scoppiava in singhiozzi e non potea versar lagrima."
And again : " Ed invano ancora invocai il sollievo del pianto.''
— Pellico, ' Le Mie Prigioni,' passim. Unquestionably the
liistory of a ten years' imprisonment at Spielberg must be
a -tearful narrative: but when we see every page of poor
Pellico's book so moist with grief, we only wonder he did not
defeat and baffle the cruel vengeance of Austria by being
drowned in his own tears.

266 NERVES AND MUSCLES.
paura (terrible fright) as they had to " run across
fields and jump over stiles to save their lives from
a mad cow tearing and raging at their heels."
It is matter of "nerves," they tell you; and
it is incredible what a development is given to
nerves in Italy at the expense of the muscles.
The whole system of education is wrong from
beginning to end, and the mischief is at work
in the very cradles, where infants are still all
but smothered in their old-fashioned swaddling-
clothes, — a fatal, barbarous custom which peoples
the streets of Turin and other Italian cities with
crippled and bandy-legged persons, to an extent
unknown north of the Alps. Children are for
the most part sent out to nurse in the country ;
but unfortunately, from the rude and scanty, yet
on the whole wholesome, food and the free air of
their first rustic dwellings, they too early come
back to the pampering luxury and indulgence of
their parents' homes. They are hardly able to
sit or stand, when they begin to keep the late
hours, and partake even to surfeit of the fare
of grown-up people. They are humoured in all
their whims and fancies, glutted with sweets,
wines, liqueurs, and every variety of stimulants ;
the ruin of their constitution keeps pace with the

NERVES AND MUSCLES. 267
spoiling of their temper. Fine men and hand
some women are to be met with in Italy, but
hardly ever a beautiful child, — nothing at least of
the chubby, rosy loveliness that prompted the
famous pun of old Pope Gregory about " Angles
and Angels." You see hardly any but yellow
and green, puny, peevish, " knowing " creatures,
too small in size, too old in face, for their age.
School-time brings no relief, for the unreasoning,
animal adhesiveness of the mother will not brook
separation, and boarding-establishments are not
usually resorted to. Town-life enables most pa
rents to have their children taught as day-scho
lars, from the earliest rudiments to the highest
branches of university lore. The best institutions
in Italy are ultra-democratic, inasmuch as they
are freely open to all classes ; and the well-born
and well-bred must either shun all contact with
his schoolfellows, and so grow up without those
college intimacies which last through life, or
else make friends and acquaintances to be disa
vowed in after life. There are in this country
but few real colleges ; for I cannot so call mere
school- and lecture-rooms, where the students
have but little intercourse and exercise no influ
ence upon each other. Instruction it may be,

268 NERVES AND MUSCLES.
but not education, and least of all physical edu
cation. .A yard or playground was never deemed
necessary in the university palaces at Turin or
Genoa. The same boy was, in fact, at the same
time a student at college and a youth about
town, — a tyro, conning over supines and partici
ples at school, a member of the conversazione
at his mother's house, and a frequenter of cafes
and Opera-houses. There is hardly any child
hood or boyhood for an Italian, and hardly even
the look or manners and tastes of either period
of life. That precocity of growth and develop
ment which is too commonly supposed to be the
effect of climate, is in reality the result of impro
vident, unwholesome training. Placed, from the
outset, in contact with the world of the school
and the world of the town, an Italian student
becomes at ten or twelve years of age familiar
with thoughts and feelings to which an Eton
or Harrow boy, busy with his " land-rat " and
" water-rat " hardy sports, remains a stranger
long after he has a beard on his chin. It is
in his schoolboy days that the Italian often con
tracts those habits of listlessness, sloth, and sen
suality which beset him through life ; as he never
was a real boy, so he can hardly ever ripen into

NERVES AND MUSCLES. 269
a true man. The relaxation of the muscle leaves
too much room for the spread of the nerve. The
intellect may, in some instances, derive some ap
parent benefit from this unnatural development
of the sensitive organs; but even the loftiest
genius must suffer from too great a disproportion
between the mental and the physical powers ;
and we have not our climate, but our mode of
education, to blame, if " a sound mind in a
sound body" is a phenomenon of rare occurrence
in our country.
These old deep-rooted evils are in a fair way
of being cured in Piedmont; good, wholesome
exercises are gradually introduced in the schools,
and public and private gymnastic establishments
begin to flourish in the large towns. Last autumn,
as I was coming down the Valley of Aosta, my
eyes were gladdened by the sight of a troop of
brave boys, with flushed complexion and springy
steps, (the pupils of the Collegio Carlo Alberto,
I believe,) out on a pedestrian expedition to the
Great St. Bernard. The Alps have been too long
open to all but the people born and brought
up at the foot of them. With the exception of
the hired Chamouny guides, no native of the
Sardinian States, especially on the southern side

270 NERVES AND MUSCLES.
of the mountains, ever aspired to an ascent of
Mont Blanc, Monte Rosa, or any of the glorious
summits which encircle like a diadem the brow
of our queenly Italy. Our men look upon the
Alpine feats of English, German, or Russian
tourists, just as they listen to the recital of noble
yachtsmen sailing to the North Pole for a "lark,"
or of young Indian officers bearding the lion at
the Cape or the tiger in Bengal ; they look and
listen with wonder and curiositv, but at the same
time with awe and humility, as if those were the
exploits of a different race of beings belonging
to heroic, half-fabulous times. Is there no good
spirit of emulation left among the long-depressed,
leisure-loving Italians ? The late Duke of Genoa,
a generous soul in a frail body, was the only man
of our nation who ever attempted Mont Blanc,
and he was beaten back by stormy weather. His
brother the King, God bless him ! is as intrepid
a mountaineer as ever was. Indeed the whole
dynasty of these Savoy Princes inherit the bold
spirit of the iron-headed Emanuel Philibert, and
of the sledge-hammer-fisted Victor Amadeus II. ,
men born with a rickety constitution, but who,
by " strong meats and strong wines," and con
stant exercise, so inured their frames to the

NERVES AND MUSCLES. 271
greatest hardships as to become the keenest
sportsmen, no less than the noblest warriors of
their times. Victor Emanuel, the present Mo
narch, however, never climbs the hills unless it
be in pursuit of game. I saw him last Septem
ber riding up the Valley of the Oreo, where for
a fortnight he pitched his tent above Ceresole,
at the very head of the valley, near our Lady of
the Snow. Hence he made daily excursions on
foot over rocks and precipices, by the side of
which the vaunted horrors of an ascent of Mont
Blanc are mere child's-play. He was rewarded
for his pains by killing a stambecco* a gigantic
chamois or wild-goat, of a species now extinct
throughout all the rest of the Alpine region, and
which is rarely found, and not without infinite
toil and danger, even in our highest mountains.
The good King was so delighted with his success,
that he wished to rent the wildest part of the
Alpine crest in this Province, with a view to
preserve the hard-to-be-got-at game from final
destruction; but the independent Highlanders,
who possess some rights of common over those
thin pastures, would not hear of selling or letting
* Perhaps from an old. Teutonic word, Stamm-Boch, a
primitive goat or deer.

272 NERVES AND MUSCLES.
bare rocks and glaciers. They showed the great
est loyalty towards their sovereign ; they evinced
all their gratitude for his bounties, (" gold Napo
leons," one of these rustics told me, " flew about
like feathers,") but they intimated to the King
that he would be always welcome to kill as
many of their stambecchi as he could manage,
but should not deprive them or other men of the
like privilege.
With the exception of an occasional onset from
the King himself and the stoutest mountaineers,
those wild-goats are not likely to suffer any se
rious disturbance. The Italians are no sportsmen.
Their game is quails, migratory birds which
are wafted over to us from Africa, at the be
ginning of summer, and are so utterly exhausted
by their flight over the Mediterranean, that on
their first arrival they can easily be knocked
down with sticks or stones. They then lay eggs,
and their young spread over the plains, and lie
by thousands on our cornfields, where, at har
vest-time, in July and August, they may be shot
by dainty citizens walking over the dry stubble
in their dancing-pumps. To render this sport
even easier and lazier, rich landowners keep
a " muta," a flock — literally a " pack" — of caged

NERVES AND MUSCLES. 273
quails (which, by the way, must, with a cruelty
no true sportsman should be guilty of, be blinded
for the purpose) : these are put out at night to
decoy by their singing their free brethren, so as
to gather them all together in one spot within
convenient gun-shot distance. Later, in the
autumn, and winter, the birds of passage are
snipes and other water-fowl ; the lovers of this
game must wade through deep water and mud in
the rice-grounds in quest of them : some of our
most ardent youths will dabble in those marshy
grounds till they catch more fevers than birds,
and others expose themselves to the damp till
they fall into a consumption. Partridges and
woodcocks, hares and rabbits, are becoming rare ;
pheasants are only found either in the royal pre
serves, or in those preserves of nature, the unfre
quented Alpine gorges, where the rascally moun
taineers lay gins for them. I took great delight
last summer, as I crossed the Pass of Boscarola,
from Trivero in Val Sessera to Scopello in Val
Sesia, in destroying as many of these traps as I
found in my path. Hardly any man but the King
thinks of preserving game in this democratized
country nowadays. The whole town and coun
try poaching rabble are out with rusty firelocks,

274 NERVES AND MUSCLES.
even at breeding-time, and after a fall of snow,
in defiance of all game-laws, destroying the little
that yet remains. No quarter is given; no
greater mercy is shown to larks, nightingales,
blackbirds, or thrushes, than to foxes or martens,
kites or buzzards. All is fish that comes to the
net ; and, by the way, the net and the snare carry
on a far more awful havoc than the gun. Even
as a sportsman, the Italian is true to his seden-^
tary habits. And yet, though inert and sluggish,
he is not even patient : I hardly ever heard of
an angler amongst my Piedmontese acquaintance.
The boors of this neighbourhood, and I believe
all over the Alps and Apennines, have a barba
rous way of catching the fine trout with which
their torrents abound : they throw lime into the
water at the fountain-head, by which the choked
and asphyxied fish are brought senseless and
helpless to the surface, and caught in shoals as
they come down the stream.
You will agree with me that the regeneration
of a people so deeply sunk into these unsports
manlike habits, and so generally addicted to
ungenerous practices, must, even under the most
favourable circumstances, be the work of many
years.

NERVES AND MUSCLES. 275
Some of our most hopeful patriots are apt to
fancy that the " antico valore," the ancient virtue
of the Italian nation, is only slumbering, and will
not fail to be stirred into action upon the least
chance of its being turned to worthy objects:
they descant upon the prodigies performed at all
times by the sheer instinct of southern natures,
whenever suddenly aroused from their habitual
lethargy by a well-timed appeal to their enthu
siasm. " Let only the signal be given," they say,
" let the hour of deliverance strike, and you will
see the worst of these cafe dawdlers turned into
heroes, equal not only to the greatest feats of
moral bravery, but also to the most strenuous
physical exertions." It may be as they say; but
I praise the bear who sharpens claws and fangs
in time of rest and peace, to have them ready
against the hour of strife. I know La Marmora's
soldiers, those Bersaglieri (sharpshooters) and ar
tillerymen, who won the admiration both of
English and French combatants in the Crimea,
were, like Rome, not "made in a day;" yet they
are picked out of the ranks of the whole army,
and the battalions of Bersaglieri especially are
recruited amongst the hard-working population
of the mountains on either side of the Alps; none

276 NERVES AND MUSCLES.
of the towns-people, or of the bumpkins of the
plain, having sufficient hardihood to bear the toil
to which the Reformer of the Sardinian army
subjects his chosen troops. I also have faith in
the hard lessons of necessity, and believe that a
ten years' war might be a bloody baptism likely
to work out the redemption of our people ; but
I see no harm in a pacific preparation, and think
no time should be lost in Piedmont in forward
ing the interests of true education, — physical
education especially, — so as to establish some
thing like harmony and equilibrium between the
over-wrought nerves of our youths and their
prostrate muscles.
No doubt there is, in this and in all else,
very perceptible improvement in Piedmont. Our
youth at Turin, if they walk slowly, at least have
a tolerably straight manly bearing ; and although
the number of dwarfs and cripples is still some
thing appalling, yet the young men seem to shoot
up taller, and the young women to bloom forth
lovelier, since the air of freedom is swelling the
lungs of the former and fanning the cheeks of
the latter. It may be mere fancy, but I really
believe I see better features, healthier colours,
rounder forms, better " blood," as the Italians say,

NERVES AND MUSCLES. 277
among the rising generation than I can conjure
up from my reminiscences of Piedmont a quarter
of a century ago. What a contrast, my friend,
between this bustling, thinking, out- speaking,
self-conscious people of Turin — with all the
faults I have been finding — and the heavy popu
lation of that dreary Milan, which the Austrians
are stupifying, brutifying, by main force ! No
doubt the contrast assures me that there is in
Piedmont astonishing progress, and if we go on
at this rate, with faith and courage, we cannot
fail to work out our thorough regeneration.
Ay, but it will be a work of time and patience,
and my time is short and my patience all but
exhausted. Nothing, my friend, is more painful
than to see how much could and should be done
in this country, and to find oneself powerless
to act ; but, for my part, in spite of your kind
words of encouragement, and even of upbraid
ing, I feel that I must give up the game. Not
one of my friends here allows me credit for
practical capacity. They have lost all faith in
us, old Fuorusciti (or exiles), and think that by
long residence abroad we have imbibed odd
notions and prejudices, which counsel them to'
set us aside as worse than useless in the ma-

278 NERVES AND MUSCLES.
nagement of public affairs. They call us, and
me especially, Paradossai (paradox-mongers),
and contend that there is something eccentric
or crotchety in all we say or do. I printed a
series of articles in a Turin journal, the ' Di-
ritto,' recommending manly exercise, by all the
arguments strong conviction could inspire, and
wound up by an offer of a yearly prize of one
thousand francs, to be awarded to the conque
ror in a foot-race or walking match, which I pro
posed to institute. Would you believe it? the
editor, Valerio, after praising my liberality, sug
gested a more rational employment of my money;
and in an editorial note to his readers endea
voured to make light of my project, describing
it as a very good joke on my part. Privately
afterwards he expressed his regret that absence
had prevented him from reading over the last
article, which made me ridiculous, and gravely
reminded me that we were not in England, but
in Italy. They are all right, I dare say, and I
alone must be wrong; therefore it is but right
I should leave matters in the hands of xthose who
know better. They have thus far proceeded
with admirable tact and discretion, firmness
and resolution : and I am now more fullv con-

NERVES AND MUSCLES. 279
vinced than ever, that the moral as well as civil
government of a country must be left in the
hands of its own people at home. Twenty-five
years' absence has made me a stranger in my
own country ; and as I ceased to hope to be of
any use, I am at liberty to follow my own in
clination, which draws me to the home of my
adoption. I threw out some hints in the last letter of my
intention to give up the idea I had entertained of
settling in Piedmont, either in town or country,
and shortly to go back to my old quarters in
England. That intention has now ripened into
a fixed resolution, and you may be on the look
out for me within a fortnight or a month at the
utmost.

THE END.

printed by
john edwaed taylob, little queen steeet,
Lincoln's inn fields.

% (ftatalope erf

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Contents :-

1. The World— Western Hemisphere. 28.
2. The World — Eastern Hemisphere. 29
3. The World— Mercator's Projection. 30.
4. Europe, with the Mediterranean.
5. Great Britain and Ireland. 31.
6. England and Wales — Railway Map, 32.
North.
7. England and Wales— Railway Map, 33
South. 34.
S. Scotland. 35.
9. Ireland. 36.
10. France — Belgium — Switzerland. 37.
11. Belgium and Holland. 38.
12. Prussia, Holland; and German States. 39.
13. Switzerland. 40.
14. Austrian Empire. 41,
15. Turkey and Greece. 42.
16. Greece. *3-
17. Italy. «.
18. Spain and Portugal. 45.
.19. Northern Sweden, and Frontier of 46.
Russia. il-
20. Denmark, Sweden, and Russia on 48.
the Baltic. 49.
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the-Euxine 50.
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23. Russia on the Caucasus. 52.
24. Russia in Em-ope.
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26. South- West. Asia— Overland to India. 54.
27. South-Easteru Asia— Birmah, China,
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The Carnatic.
Bengal, &c.
India — General Map.
North Africa.
South Africa.
British North America.
Central America.
United States — General Map.
United States -North-East.
United States— South-East.
United States— South- West.
Jamaica, and Leeward and Windward
Islands.
Mexico and Guatemala.
South America.
Columbian and Peruvian Republics,
and Western Brazil.
La Plata, Chili, and Southern Brazil.
Eastern Brazil.

Coloured, 6c<\

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No. XII. of
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Price Five Shillings.

CONTENTS.
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X. BOOKS OF THE QUARTER SUITABLE FOR READING SOCIETIES.

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS, No. X.
" The first comprehensive suggestion on the subject (of a Draft Plan for the
Government of India) comes, not from the Cabinet Council, nor from a Royal
Commission, but from a Quarterly Periodical, tbe ' National Review,' which in
its current number contributes a thoughtful paper on India, with the heads of
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Spectator of October 31.
"The most striking articles in the last number of the 'National Review' are those
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17, 1S57.
"The October number of this quarterly opens with an elaborate article on 'The Reform
of the Army,' written by one who is evidently well versed in that subject. Lighter and
more entertaining reading follows in the shape of a clever synopsis of that very amusing
work, 'The Autobiography of a Mohammedan Gentleman,' and a candid and rather
humorous review of the works of Mr. Charles Waterfcon, the enterprising, original, and
somewhat dogmatic, but experienced naturalist. .... The concluding article —
' The Military Revolt in India ' — extends to considerable length, and exhausts every branch
of that now fearfully interesting subject. The author has dealt with the question in a
masterly manner. His views appear to be, so far as present information enables one to
judge, accurate and just, and his recommendations and suggestions as to the futm-e
conduct of the English Government in India arc supported by strong facts and cogent
reasons." — Morning Post, October 22, 1S57.
"The review of Waterton's Essays is uncommonly good, — kindly, humorous, and
sympathetic."— The Press, October 24. /
" ' The National ' is strong in poetic criticism. Two very dissimilar authors are treated
this time — Alexander Smith and Beranger. The former is handled severely but justly.
.... • The Reform of the Army, 'and 'The Indian Revolt,' have their fitting places,
as the Alpha and Omega of the volume. The first is a thoughtful, well-written paper ; the
second, a careful and suggestive review." — The Globe, October Sth, 1S57.

32

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