n in the Agro Romano but at a loss. It of course ceased
altogether; and the land, as in ancient times, has been entirely devoted
to pasturage, to the extinction of the rural population, and the
infinite injury of the state.

And this explains how it has happened, that in other parts of the Papal
states, particularly in the marches on the other side of the Apennines,
between Bologna and Ancona, agriculture is not only noways depressed,
but flourishing; and the same is the case with the slopes of the Alban
Mount, even in the Agro Romano. In the first situation, the necessity of
bending to the cry for cheap bread in the urban population was not felt,
as the marches contained no great towns, and the weight of influence was
in the rural inhabitants. There was no _Casa Annonaria_, or fixed price
of bread there; and therefore agriculture flourished as it did in
Lombardy, the Campagna Felice of Naples, the plain of Pisa, or any other
prosperous part of Italy. In the latter, it was in _garden cultivation_
that the little proprietors, as in nearly the whole slopes of the
Apennines, were engaged. The enchanting shores of the lakes of Gandolfo
and Nemi, the hills around L'Aricia and Marino, are all laid out in the
cultivation of grapes, olives, fruits, vegetables, and chestnuts. No
competition from without was to be dreaded by them, as at least, until
the introduction of steam, it was impossible to bring such productions
by distant sea voyages, so as to compete with those raised in equally
favourable situations within a few miles of the market at home. In these
places, therefore, the peculiar evil which blasted all attempts at grain
cultivation in the Campagna was not felt; and hence, though in the Roman
states, and subject, in other respects, to precisely the same government
as the Agro Romano, they exhibit not merely a good, but the most
admirable cultivation.

If any doubt could exist on the subject, it would be removed by two
other facts connected with agriculture on the shores of the
Mediterranean; one in ancient and one in modern times.

The first of these is that while agriculture declined _in Italy_, as has
been shown from the time of Tiberius, until at length nearly the whole
plains of that peninsula were turned into grass, it, from the same date,
took an extraordinary start in Spain and Lybia. And to such a length had
the improvement of Africa, under the fostering influence of the market
of Rome and Italy gone, that it