ey might have begged it, and saved
an infinity of needless slaughter. These people have no proper pride, no
manly shame, because they have no hope. Untaught, unskilled in industry,
owning nothing, their government an absolute despotism, their labor only
required at certain seasons, and deemed amply rewarded with a York
shilling or eighteen pence per day, and themselves the virtual serfs of
great landholders who live in Rome or Bologna and whom they rarely or
never see--is it a wonder that they stoop to plead and whine for coppers
around every carriage that traverses their country? That they fare
miserably, their scanty rags and pinched faces sufficiently attest; that
they are indolent and improvident I can very well believe: for when were
uneducated, unskilled, hopeless vassals anything else? Italy, beautiful,
bounteous land! is everywhere haggard with want and wretchedness, but
these seem nowhere so general and chronic as in the Papal territories.
Every political division of Italy but this has at least some section of
Railroad in operation; Rome, though in the heart of all and the great
focus of attraction for travelers, has not the first mile and no
prospect of any, though it would seem a good speculation to build one if
it were to be used only in transporting hither the Foreign troops
absolutely essential here to keep the people quiet in their chains. "And
this, too, shall pass away!"

XXVIII.

EASTERN ITALY--THE PO.

VENICE, Tuesday, July 8.

I never saw and cannot hope to see hereafter a region more blessed by
Nature than the great plain of Upper Italy, whereof the Po is the
life-blood. It is very fertile and beautiful where I first traversed it
near its head, from the foot of Mount Cenis by Turin to Alessandria and
Novi, on my way down to Genoa; yet it is richer and lovelier still where
I have just recrossed it from the foot of the Apennines by Bologna,
Ferrara, Rovigo and Padua on my way from Florence to Venice. Irrigation,
which might easily be almost universal in Piedmont, seems there but an
occasional expedient, while here it is the breath of life. From Bologna
to Rovigo (and I presume on to Padua, though there night and drowsiness
prevented my observing clearly), the whole country seems completely
intersected by Canals constructed in the palmier days of Italy on
purpose to distribute the fertilizing waters of the Po and the Adige
over the entire face of the country and dispense them to every