scripts, may be computed
either at twenty or two hundred thousand English acres. If
such a mass of landed property were now accumulated on the
head of an Italian nobleman, the annual revenue might
satisfy the largest demands of private luxury or avarice,
and the fortunate owner would be rich in the improvement of
agriculture, the manufactures of industry, the refinement of
taste, and the extent of commerce. But the barbarism of the
eleventh century diminished the income and aggravated the
expense of the Marquis of Este. In a long series of war and
anarchy, man and the works of man had been swept away, and
the introduction of each ferocious and idle stranger had
been overbalanced by the loss of five or six perhaps of the
peaceful industrious natives. The mischievous growth of
vegetation, the frequent inundations of the rivers were no
longer checked by the vigilance of labour; the face of the
country was again covered with forests and morasses; of the
vast domains which acknowledged Azo for their lord, the far
greater part was abandoned to the beasts of the field, and a
much smaller portion was reduced to the state of constant
and productive husbandry. An adequate rent may be obtained
from the skill and substance of a free tenant who fertilizes
a grateful soil, and enjoys the security and benefit of a
long lease. But faint is the hope and scanty is the produce
of those harvests which are raised by the reluctant toil of
peasants and slaves condemned to a bare subsistance and
careless of the interests of a rapacious master. If his
granaries are full, his purse is empty, and the want of
cities or commerce, the difficulty of finding or reaching a
market, obliges him to consume on the spot a part of his
useless stock, which cannot be exchanged for merchandise or
money.... The entertainment of his vassals and soldiers,
their pay and rewards, their arms and horses, surpassed the
measure of the most oppressive tribute, and the destruction
which he inflicted on his neighbours was often retaliated on
his own lands. The costly elegance of palaces and gardens
was superseded by the laborious and expensive construction
of strong castles on the summits of the most inaccessible
rocks, and some of these, like the fortress of Canossa in
the Apenn