Shepherds armed with long lances, as on the steppes of the Don,
and mounted on small and hardy horses, alone are occasionally seen
following, or searching in the wilds for the herds of savage buffaloes
and cattle which pasture the district. The few living beings to be met
with at the post-houses, have the squalid melancholy look which attests
permanent wretchedness, and the ravages of an unhealthy atmosphere.

But though the curse of Providence seems to have fallen on the land, so
far as the human race is concerned, it is otherwise with the power of
physical nature. Vegetation yearly springs up with undiminished vigour.
It is undecayed since the days of Cincinnatus and the Sabine farm. Every
spring the expanse is covered with a carpet of flowers, which enamel the
turf and conceal the earth with a profusion of varied beauty. So rich is
the herbage which springs up with the alternate heats and rains of
summer, that it becomes in most places rank, and the enormous herds
which wander over the expanse are unable to keep it down. In autumn this
rich grass becomes russet-brown, and a melancholy hue clothes the slopes
which environ the Eternal City. The Alban Mount, when seen from a
distance, clothed as it is with forests, vineyards, and villas,
resembles a green island rising out of a sombre waste of waters. In the
Pontine marshes, where the air is so poisonous in the warm months that
it is dangerous, and felt as oppressive even by the passing traveller,
the prolific powers of nature are still more remarkable. Vegetation
there springs up with the rapidity, and flourishes with the luxuriance,
of tropical climates. Tall reeds, in which the buffaloes are hid, in
which a rhinoceros might lie concealed, spring up in the numerous pools
or deep ditches with which the dreary flat surface is sprinkled. Wild
grapes of extraordinary fecundity grow in the woods, and ascend in
luxuriant clusters to the tops of the tallest trees. Nearer the sea, a
band of noble chestnuts and evergreen oaks attests the riches of the
soil, which is capable of producing such magnificent specimens of
vegetable life; and over the whole plain the extraordinary richness of
the herbage, and luxuriance of the aquatic plants, bespeaks a region
which, if subjected to a proper culture and improvement, would, like the
Delta of Egypt, reward eighty and an hundred fold the labours of the
husbandman.

It was not thus in former times. The Campagna now so desolate, the
Pont