ns, affecting the very springs
of life, dulling or extinguishing, with the energies of the body, all
energy of mind, and often exhibiting itself in the most appalling forms
of disease. From year to year the pestilential atmosphere creeps
forward, narrowing the circles within which it is possible to sustain
human life. With disease and misery, industry still more rapidly decays,
and if the process goes on, it seems that Italy too will soon be ready
for another experiment in colonization.

Yet once it was not so, when Italy was possessed by the masters of
slaves; when Rome contained her millions, and Italy was a garden; when
their iron energies of body corresponded with the energies of mind which
made them conquerors in every climate and on every soil; rolled the tide
of conquest, not as in later times, from the South to the North;
extended their laws and their civilization, and created them lords of
the earth.

"What conflux issuing forth or entering in;
Praetors, pro-consuls to their provinces,
Hasting, or on return in robes of state.
Lictors and rods, the ensigns of their power,
Legions and cohorts, turms of horse and wings:
Or embassies from regions far remote,
In various habits, on the Appian road,
Or on th' Emilian; some from furthest South,
Syene, and where the shadow both way falls,
Meroe, Nilotic isle, and more to West,
The realms of Bocchus to the Blackmoor sea;
From th' Asian kings, and Parthian among these;
From India and the golden Chersonese,
And utmost India's isle, Taprobona,
Dusk faces, with white silken turbans wreathed;
From Gallia, Gades, and the British West;
Germans, and Scythians, and Sarmatians, North
Beyond Danubius to the Tauric Pool!
All nations now to Rome obedience pay."

Such was, and such is, the picture of Italy. Greece presents a contrast
not less striking. What is the cause of the great change? Many causes,
no doubt, have occurred; but though

"War, famine, pestilence, and flood and fire,
Have dealt upon the seven-hilled city's pride,"

I will venture to say that nothing has dealt upon it more heavily than
the loss of domestic slavery. Is not this evident? If they had slaves,
with an energetic civil government, would the deadly miasma be permitted
to overspread the Campagn