Chapter X (1)

Frank Trevelyan, one morning on opening his eyes, was surprised to discover his friend, Mr Vernon Wycherley, (whose lameness was by this time sufficiently amended to permit him to move about with the aid of a stick,) sitting half dressed by his bedside--a very cool attire for so chill a morning, and looking very cold and miserable.

"Hallo! old fellow, what on earth brought you here at this time of day?" asked Frank. "The first morning visit, I believe, you've honoured me with since we took up our quarters in this neighbourhood."

"I'm very wretched," said the poet in a faltering tone--"very unhappy."

"Unhappy!" reiterated Frank; "why, what on earth have you to make you so, unless it be the apprehension that you may jump out of your skin for joy at your splendid prospects! Unhappy indeed!--the notion's too absurd to obtain a moment's credit."

"Can a man suffering under a hopeless attachment for an object too pure almost to tread the earth--can a man, whose affections are set upon an unattainable object, be otherwise than unhappy?" asked Vernon in a solemn tone, no bad imitation of Macready; indeed the speaker, whilst uttering these sentiments, thought it sounded very like it; for he had often seen that eminent tragedian, and greatly admired his style of acting.

"But how have you ascertained that the object is so unattainable?" demanded Frank. "Come now--have you ever yet asked the young lady the question?"

"Asked her!" repeated Vernon, perfectly amazed that his friend could have supposed such a thing possible--"How could I presume that so angelic a creature would love such a fellow as me--or, even supposing such a thing were possible, what would our good friend the squire say to my ingratitude for his great kindness; and to my presumption--a mere younger son without a profession, and scarcely a hundred pounds a-year to call his own, to think of proposing to one of his daughters, who would be an honour to the noblest and richest peer of the realm?"

"Well, well, Vernon--one thing first--and you shall have my answers to all. First, then, as to the fair lady liking you--that I must say, judging from your looks, is what no one would have thought a very probable circumstance; but then your poetical talents must be taken into calculation."

"Oh, don't mention them!" said Vernon. "Worse than good-for-nothing. _She_ esteems such talents very lightly, and I shall even lose the small solace to my sorrows I had hoped they would have afforded me. Even this sad consolation is denied me. My Mary is indifferent to poetry--she holds sonnets upon hopeless love in utter contempt--entertains no higher opinion of the writers of them--and considers publishing any thing of the kind as a downright ungentlemanly act; bringing, as she says it does, a lady's name before the public in the most indelicate and unwarrantable manner."

"But is she really serious in these sentiments?" asked Frank. Oh, Frank, Frank, you're a sad fellow to pump and roast your friend in this way!

"Serious," repeated Vernon, and looking very so himself, "serious--ah! indeed she is--and expressed herself with more warmth upon the subject than I could have supposed a being so mild and amiable was capable of."

"But how came all this?" asked Frank--"what were you talking about that could have caused her to make these remarks?" and this he said in a very grave and quiet tone of voice, trying to entrap his poetic friend into telling him much more than the latter was inclined to do, who, therefore, declined entering more fully into the subject.

"Then, if you won't tell me, I have still the privilege of guessing," rejoined Frank; "and now I've found you out, Master Vernon; you've been attempting acrostics after the Petrarch style[15]--a style in which she didn't approve of being held forth to the admiring notice of the present and future generations. Vernon blushed to the very tips of his fingers, and averted his head that his friend might not perceive how very foolish he was looking, whilst the latter continued--"Very pretty stanzas, I've no doubt. How nice they would have come out in a neat little 12mo, price 2s. 6d., boards. Let me see--M--O--L, Mol--that's three; L--Y, ly--two more, makes Molly; and three and two make five. P--O double T--S, Potts--that's five more, and five and five make ten. But then that's a couple of letters too many. Petrarch's Lauretta, you know, only made eight. Yet, after all, if you liked it, you might leave out the Y and the S at the end of each name, without at all exceeding the usual poetical license. Let me see, M--O double L, Moll; P--O double T, Pott--Moll Pott; or you might retain the Y and leave out the last T--S--or you might"--

Vernon could bear no more; and having risen abruptly with the intention of making a bolt of it, was in the act of hobbling out of the room as fast as his lameness would allow him, when Frank entreated him to stay but one minute; promising to spare his jokes, for that he really wished to speak seriously with him; and, having succeeded in pacifying the enraged poet, proceeded to ask him what he actually intended doing.

"To leave this either to-day or to-morrow," replied Vernon in a tremulous voice, and with a quivering lip.

"But not without breaking your mind to your lady love?"

"Why, alas! should I do so--why pain her by confessing to her my unhappy attachment, which I know it is hopeless to expect her to return."

"I'll be hanged," said Frank, "if I think you know any thing at all about the matter."

"Not know, indeed! How, alas! could any one suppose that an angelic creature like her could love me?"

"Not many, I grant; but then, as old Captain Growler used to say--never be astonished at any thing a woman does in that way--

'Pan may win where Phoebus woos in vain.'

And so the lovely Miss Moll--I beg your pardon, Mary, I mean--may in like manner, do so differently from what any one could have suspected, as to be induced at last to listen to her Vernon's tale of love."

The lover here alluded to hardly knew whether to treat the matter as a joke or to get very angry; and so he did neither, whilst Frank went on--"I'm sure you needn't despair either, as far as looks go. There's pretty, smiling, little Bessie--in my opinion the prettiest girl of the two"--Vernon shook his head with mournful impatience--"Well, you think yours prettiest, and I'll think mine," continued Frank; "that's just as it should be; and as I was about to say, if the lovely Bessie can smile upon your humble servant when he talked of love, I don't see why her sister might not be induced to smile upon his companion if he did the like."

"How! what? Why, you surely don't mean to say that you've told Miss Bessie that you love her?"

"Yes, I do," replied Frank. "I told her so yesterday afternoon as we walked home from church, behind the rest of the party, across the fields. Thought I wouldn't do it then either, as there were so many people about--never said a word about the matter over two fields--helped her over the stiles, too, and talked--no, I be hanged if I think we said a word, either of us--till as I was helping her to jump down the third, out it bounced, all of a sudden."

"And what did you say?" asked Wycherley.

"Catch a weasel asleep, Mr Vernon," was Frank's reply.

"But the squire, how will you manage with him, do you suppose?"

"Managed with him already," replied Frank; "settled every thing last night over a glass of port, after you'd bundled your lazy carcass off to bed. That is, one glass didn't quite complete the business, for it took two or three to get my courage up to concert pitch. Then another or two to discuss the matter--and then a bumper to drink success--and then another glass"--

"Another!" interrupted Vernon; "why, you little drunken rascal, what pretext could you have for that?"

"I've a great mind not to tell you for your rude question," resumed Frank laughing; "but never mind, old fellow, you've borne a great deal from me before now, and there's probably more in store for you yet; so without further preamble I'll at once answer your question, by informing you that the pretext for my last glass was to wet a dry discourse about the affairs of one Mr Vernon Wycherley. Now, hold your tongue, and don't interrupt me, or swallow me either, which you appear to be meditating. And so the squire asked me if I had known him long, and about his principles, religious and moral; his worldly prospects, and so forth. To all of which I replied by stating, that, with the exception of being addicted to flirting a little with the Muses, which old women might consider as only one step removed from absolute profligacy, he was a well-disposed young man, and would doubtless grow wiser as he increased in years; but that his fortune was very limited, and that all his expectations in that way wouldn't fill a nutshell."

"Ah, there's the rub!" interposed Vernon; "how can a poor fellow with my small pittance pretend to aspire to the hand of one with such splendid expectations? My poverty, as I've long foreseen, must mar my every hope, even if every other obstacle could be removed."

"I don't see that exactly," rejoined Frank; "for, when I told the squire what your circumstances actually were, and that you had managed to live creditably upon your small income without getting into debt, he said, if your head wasn't crammed so confoundedly full of poetical nonsense, which set you always hunting after shadows, instead of grasping substances, he should be exceedingly rejoiced to have you for a son-in-law. So, if you could make up your mind to relinquish your love for writing poetry"--

"The poetry be hanged!" interrupted Vernon with considerable vehemence. "I'll cast it to the dogs--the winds--send it to Halifax, Jericho, any where. Oh! my dear Frank, what a happy fellow you've made me!"

"Which just finished the bottle," continued Frank; "and I find that somehow or other I've got a precious headach this morning. I wonder how the squire feels to-day. Will you Vernon, that's a good fellow, give me a glass of water?"

"There's nothing on earth I wouldn't give you now, my dear Frank, except my dear Mary; but do you think she will ever consent?"

"Yes, to be sure she will," answered Frank. "I know she will, and that she is by no means best pleased at your hanging fire so long. I know this to be the fact, though I mustn't tell you how, why, or wherefore; but if you don't propose soon she'll consider you are acting neither fairly nor honourably to her."

"I'll do the deed to-day," said Vernon resolutely.

And so he did.

* * * * *

A very few months more had passed away, before our two heroes were on the same day united to the fair objects of their choice; and the generous old squire settled a handsome sum upon them both, sufficient to supply them with all the essential comforts of life.

"And now, friend Frank," said Vernon Wycherley, "I believe, after all, you will make a convert of me; for I find that the attachment I had indulged in, until despair of obtaining the loved object made me fancy myself the most miserable wretch alive, and that I had incurred the worst evil that could have befallen me, has made me the happiest of mankind, and has indeed turned out to be ALL FOR THE BEST; nor can I think of my blundering fall into the lead shaft in any other light; as, but for that accident, I should probably never have formed the acquaintance to which I owe all my good fortune."

"Then, for the future," said the worthy squire, "let us put all our trust in Heaven, and rest assured that whatever may be the will of Providence, IT'S ALL FOR THE BEST."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 12: _Cornice_--"him."]

[Footnote 13: "Put"--_Cornice_--to take or carry.]

[Footnote 14: Cleverly.]

[Footnote 15: Commencing each line with a letter of the loved one's name.]

THE ROMAN CAMPAGNA.

There is no district in Europe which is more remarkable, or has more strongly impressed the minds of men in modern times, than the ROMAN CAMPAGNA. Independent of the indelible associations with which it is connected, and the glorious deeds of which it has been the theatre, its appearance produces an extraordinary impression on the mind of the beholder. All is silent; the earth seems struck with sterility--desolation reigns in every direction. A space extending from Otricoli to Terracina, above sixty miles in length, and on an average twenty in breadth, between the Apennines and the sea, containing nearly four thousand square miles, in the finest part of Italy, does not maintain a single peasant.[16] A few tombs lining the great roads which issued from the forum of Rome to penetrate to the remotest parts of their immense empire; the gigantic remains of aqueducts striding across the plain, which once brought, and some of which still bring, the pellucid fountains of the Apennines to the Eternal City, alone attest the former presence of man. Nothing bespeaks his present existence. Not a field is ploughed, not a blade of corn grows, hardly a house is to be seen, in this immense and dreary expanse. On entering it, you feel as if you were suddenly transported from the garden of Europe to the wilds of Tartary. 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 Pontine marshes now so lonely, were then covered with inhabitants. Veiæ, long the rival of Rome, and which was only taken after a siege as protracted as that of Troy by Camillus at the head of fifty thousand men, stood only ten miles from the Capitol. The Pontine marshes were inhabited by thirty nations. The freehold of Cincinnatus, the Sabine farm, stood in the now desolate plain at the foot of the Alban Mount. So rich were the harvests, so great the agricultural booty to be gathered in the plains around Rome, that for two hundred years after the foundation of the city, it was the great object of their foreign wars to gain possession of it, and on that account they were generally begun in autumn. Montesquieu has observed, that it was the long and desperate wars which the Romans carried on for three centuries with the Sabines, Latines, Veientes, and other people in their neighbourhood, which by slow degrees gave them the hardihood and discipline which enabled them afterwards to subdue the world. The East was an easy conquest, the Gauls themselves could be repelled, Hannibal in the end overcome, after the tribes of Latium had been vanquished. But the district in which the hardy races dwelt, who so long repelled, and maintained a doubtful conflict with the future masters of the world, is now a desert. It could not in its whole extent furnish men to fill a Roman cohort. Rome has emerged from its long decay after the fall of the Western Empire; the terrors of the Vatican, the shrine of St Peter, have again attracted the world to the Eternal City; and the most august edifice ever raised by the hands of man to the purposes of religion, has been reared within its walls. But the desolate Campagna is still unchanged.

Novelists and romance-writers have for centuries exhausted their imaginative and descriptive powers in developing the feelings which this extraordinary phenomenon, in the midst of the classic land of Italy, awakens. They have spoken of desolation as the fitting shroud of departed greatness; of the mournful feelings which arise on approaching the seat of lost empire; of the shades of the dead alone tenanting the scene of so much glory. Such reflections arise unbidden in the mind; the most unlettered traveller is struck with the melancholy impression. An eloquent Italian has described this striking spectacle:--"A vast solitude, stretching for miles, as far as the eye can reach. No shelter, no resting-place, no defence for the wearied traveller; a dead silence, interrupted only by the sound of the wind which sweeps over the plain, or the trickling of a natural fountain by the wayside; not a cottage nor the curling of smoke to be seen; only here and there a cross on a projecting eminence to mark the spot of a murder; and all this in gentle slopes, dry and fertile plains, and up to the gates of great city."[17] The sight of the long lines of ruined aqueducts traversing the deserted Campagna, of the tombs scattered along the lines of the ancient _chaussées_ across its dreary expanse, of the dome of St Peter's alone rising in solitary majesty over its lonely hills, forcibly impress the mind, and produce an impression which no subsequent events or lapse of time are able to efface. At this moment the features of the scene, the impression it produces, are as present to the mind of the writer as when they were first seen thirty years ago.

But striking as these impressions are, the Roman Campagna is fraught with instruction of a more valuable kind. It stands there, not only a monument of the past, but a beacon for the future. It is fraught with instruction, not only to the ancient but the modern world. The most valuable lessons of political wisdom which antiquity has bequeathed to modern times, are to be gathered amidst its solitary ruins.

In investigating the causes of this extraordinary desolation of a district, in ancient times the theatre of such busy industry, and which, for centuries, maintained so great and flourishing a rural population, there are several observations to be made on the principle, as logicians call it, of _exclusion_, in order to clear the ground before the real cause is arrived at.

The first of these is, that the causes, whatever they are, which produced the desolation of the Campagna, had begun to operate, and their blasting effect was felt, in _ancient_ times, and long before a single squadron of the barbarians had crossed the Alps. In fact, the Campagna was a scene of active agricultural industry only so long as Rome was contending with its redoubtable Italian neighbours--the Latins, the Etruscans, the Samnites, and the Cisalpine Gauls. From the time that, by the conquest of Carthage, they obtained the mastery of the shore of the Mediterranean, _agriculture_ in the neighbourhood of Rome began to decline. Pasturage was found to be a more profitable employment of estates; and the vast supplies of grain, required for the support of the citizens of Rome, were obtained by importation from Lybia and Egypt, where they could be raised at a less expense. "At, Hercule," says Tacitus, "olim ex Italia legionibus longinquas in provincias commeatus portabantur; _nec nunc infecunditate laboratur: sed Africam potius et Egyptum exercemus, navibusque et casibus vita populi Romani permissa est_."[18] The expense of cultivating grain in a district where provisions and wages were high because money was plentiful, speedily led to the abandonment of tillage in the central parts of Italy, when the unrestrained importation of grain from Egypt and Lybia, where it could be raised at less expense in consequence of the extension of the Roman dominions over those regions, took place. "More lately," says Sismondi, "the gratuitous distributions of grain made to the Roman people, rendered the cultivation of grain in Italy still more unprofitable: it then became absolutely impossible for the little proprietors to maintain themselves in the neighbourhood of Rome; they became insolvent, and their patrimonies were sold to the rich. Gradually the abandonment of agriculture extended from one district to another. The true country of the Romans--central Italy--_had scarcely achieved the conquest of the globe, when it found itself without an agricultural population_. In the provinces peasants were no longer to be found to recruit the legions; as few corn-fields to nourish them. Vast tracts of pasturage, where a few slave shepherds conducted herds of thousands of horned cattle, had supplanted the nations who had brought their greatest triumphs to the Roman people."[19] These great herds of cattle were then, as now, in the hands of a few great proprietors. This was loudly complained of, and signalized as the cancer which would ruin the Roman empire, even so early as the time of Pliny. "Verumque confitentibus," says he, "_latifunda perdidêre Italiam; imo ac provincias_."[20]

All the historians of the decline and fall of the Roman empire, have concurred in ascribing to these two causes--viz. the decay of agriculture and ruin of the agricultural population in Italy, and consequent engrossing of estates in the hands of the rich--the ruin of its mighty dominion. But it is not generally known how wide-spread had been the desolation thus produced; how deep and incurable the wounds inflicted on the vitals of the state--by the simple consequences of its extension, which enabled the grain growers of the distant provinces of the empire to supplant the cultivators of its heart by the unrestricted admission of foreign corn, before the invasion of the northern nations commenced. In fact, however, the evil was done before they appeared on the passes of the Alps; it was the weakness thus brought on the central provinces which rendered them unable to contend with enemies whom they had often, in former times, repelled and subdued. A few quotations from historians of authority, will at once establish this important proposition.

"_Since the age of Tiberius_," says Gibbon, "the decay of agriculture had been felt in Italy; and it was a just subject of complaint, that the laws of the Roman people depended on the accidents of the winds and the waves. In the division and decline of the empire, _the tributary harvests of Egypt and Africa_ were withdrawn; the numbers of the inhabitants continually diminished with the means of subsistence; and the country was exhausted by the irretrievable losses of war, pestilence and famine. Pope Gelasius was a subject of Odoacer, and he affirms, with strong exaggeration, that in Emilia, Tuscany, and the adjacent provinces, the human species was almost extirpated."[21] Again the same accurate author observes in another place--"Under the emperors the agriculture of the Roman provinces was _insensibly ruined_; and the government was obliged to make a merit of remitting tributes which _their subjects were utterly unable to pay_. Within sixty years of the death of Constantine, and on the evidence of an actual survey, an exemption was granted in favour of three hundred and thirty thousand English acres of desert and uncultivated land _in the fertile and happy Campania_, which amounted to an eighth of the whole province. As the footsteps of the barbarians had not yet been seen in Italy, the cause of _this amazing desolation, which is recorded in the laws_,[22] can be ascribed only to the administration of the Roman emperors."[23]

The two things which, beyond all question, occasioned this extraordinary decline of domestic agriculture in Italy before the invasion of the barbarians commenced, were the weight of _direct taxation_, and the _decreasing value of agricultural produce_, owing to the constant importation of grain from Egypt and Lybia, where, owing to the cheapness of labour and the fertility of the soil in those remote provinces, so burdensome did the first become, that Gibbon tells us that, in the time of Constantine, in Gaul it amounted to _nine pounds sterling of gold_ on every freeman.[24] The periodical distribution of grain to the populace of Rome, all of which, from its greater cheapness, was brought by the government from Egypt and Africa, utterly extinguished the market for corn to the Italian farmers, though Rome, at its capture by Alaric, still contained 1,200,000 inhabitants. "All the efforts of the Christian emperors," says Michelet, "to arrest the depopulation of the country, were as nugatory as those of their heathen predecessors had been. Sometimes alarmed at the depopulation, they tried to mitigate the lot of the farmer, to shield him against the landlord; upon this the proprietor exclaimed, _he could no longer pay the taxes_. At other times they strove to chain the cultivators to the soil; but they became bankrupts or fled, and the land became deserted. Pertinax granted an immunity of taxes to such _cultivators from distant provinces_ as would occupy the deserted lands of Italy. Aurelian did the same. Probus, Maximian, and Constantine, were obliged to transport men and oxen from Germany to cultivate Gaul. But all was in vain. _The desert extended daily._ The people in the fields surrendered themselves in despair, as a beast of burden lies down beneath his load and refuses to rise."[25]

Gibbon has told us what it was which occasioned this constant depopulation of the country, and ruin of agriculture in the Italian provinces. "The Campagna of Rome," says he, "about the close of the sixth century, was reduced to a state of _dreary wilderness_, in which the air was infectious, the land barren, and the waters impure. Yet the number of citizens still exceeded the measure of subsistence; _their precarious food was supplied from the harvests of Lybia and Egypt_; and the frequent recurrence of famine, betrayed the inattention of the emperor at Constantinople to the wants of a distant province."[26] Nor was Italy the only province in the heart of the empire which was ruined by those foreign importations. Greece suffered not less severely under it. "In the latter stages of the empire," says Michelet, "_Greece was supported almost entirely by corn raised in the plains of Poland_."[27]

These passages, to which, did our limits permit, innumerable others to the same purpose might be added, explain the causes of the decay and ultimate ruin of agriculture in the central provinces of the Roman empire, as clearly as if one had arisen from the dead to unfold it. It was the weight of _direct taxation_, and the want of remunerating prices to the _grain cultivators_, which occasioned the evil. The first arose from the experienced impossibility of raising additional taxes on industry by indirect taxation: the unavoidable consequence of the contraction of the currency, owing to the habits of hoarding which the frequent incursions of the barbarians produced; and of the free importation of African grain, which the extension of the empire over its northern provinces, and the clamours of the Roman populace for cheap bread, occasioned. The second arose directly from that importation itself. The Italian cultivator, oppressed with direct taxes, and tilling a comparatively churlish soil, found himself utterly unable to compete with the African cultivators, with whom the process of production was so much cheaper owing to the superior fertility of the soil under the sun of Lybia, or the fertilizing floods of the Nile. Thence the increasing weight of direct taxation, the augmented importation of foreign grain, the disappearance of free cultivators in the central provinces, the impossibility of recruiting the legions with freemen, and the ruin of the empire.

And that it was something pressing upon the cultivation of _grain_, not of agriculture generally, which occasioned these disastrous results, is decisively proved by the fact, that, down to the fall of the empire, the cultivation of land _in pasturage_ continued to be a _highly profitable_ employment in Italy. It is recorded by Ammianus Marcellinus, that when Rome was taken by Alaric, it was inhabited by 1,200,000 persons, who were maintained almost entirely by the expenditure of 1780 patrician families holding estates in Italy and Africa, many of whom had above £160,000 yearly of rent from land. Their estates were almost entirely managed in pasturage, and conducted by slaves.[28] Here, then, is decisive evidence, that down to the very close of the empire, the managing of estates _in pasturage_ was not only profitable, but eminently so in Italy--though all attempts at raising grain were hopeless. It is not an unprofitable cultivation which can yield £160,000 a-year, equivalent to above £300,000 annually of our money, to a single proprietor, and maintain 1700 of them in such affluence that they maintained, in ease and luxury, a city not then the capital of the empire, containing 1,200,000 inhabitants, or considerably more than Paris at this time. It was not slavery, therefore, which ruined Italian cultivation; for the whole pasture cultivation which yielded such immense profits was conducted by slaves. It was the Lybian and Egyptian harvests, freely imported into the Tiber, which occasioned the ruin of agriculture in the Latian plains; and, with the consequent destruction of the race of rural freemen, brought on the ruin of the empire. But this importation could not injure pasturage; for cattle Africa had none, and therefore estates in grass still continued to yield great returns.

The second circumstance worthy of notice in this inquiry is, that the cause of the present desolation of the Campagna, whatever it is, is something which is _peculiar to that district_, and has continued to act with as great force in _modern_ as in ancient times. It is historically known, indeed, that the sanguinary contests of the rival houses of Orsini and Colonna, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, produced the most dreadful ravages in the Campagna, and extinguished, for the time at least, any attempts to reclaim or restore to cultivation this desolate region. But many centuries have elapsed since this desolating warfare has entirely ceased; and under the shelter of peace and tranquillity, agricultural industry in other parts of Italy has flourished to such a degree as to render it the garden of the world: witness the rich plain of Lombardy, the incomparable terrace cultivation of the Tuscan hills, the triple harvests of the Terra di Lavoro, near Naples. The desolation of the Campagna, therefore, must have been owing to some causes peculiar to the Roman States, or rather to that part of those states which adjoins the city of Rome; for in other parts of the ecclesiastical territories, particularly in the vicinity of Ancona, and the slope of the Apennines towards Bologna, agriculture is in the most flourishing state. The hills and declivities are there cut out into terraces, and cultivated with garden husbandry in as perfect style as in the mountains of Tuscany. The marches of Ancona contain 426,222 inhabitants, spread over 2111 square miles, which is about 200 to the square mile; but, considering how large a part of the territory is barren rock, the proportion on the fertile parts is about 300 to the square mile, while the average of England is only 260. The soil is cultivated to the depth of two and three feet.[29] It is in vain, therefore, to say, that it is the oppression of the Papal government, the indolence of the cardinals, and the evils of an elective monarchy, which have been the causes of the ruin of agricultural industry in the vicinity of Rome. These causes operate just as strongly in the other parts of the Papal States, where cultivation, instead of being in a languishing, is in the most flourishing condition. In truth, so far from having neglected agriculture in this blasted district, the Papal government, for the last two centuries, has made greater efforts to encourage it than all the other powers of Italy put together. Every successive Pope has laboured at the Pontine marshes, but in vain. Nothing can be more clear, than that the causes which have destroyed agriculture in the Campagna, are some which were known in the days of the Roman Republic; gradually came into operation with the extension of the empire; and have continued in modern times to press upon this particular district of the Papal States, in a much greater degree than among other provinces of a similar extent in Italy.

The last circumstance which forces itself upon the mind, in the outset of this inquiry, is, that the desolation of the Campagna is owing to moral or political, not physical causes. Naturalists and physicians have exhausted all their energies for centuries in investigating the causes of the _malaria_, which is now felt with such severity in Rome in the autumnal months, and renders health so precarious there at that period; and the soil has been analyzed by the most skillful chemists, to see whether there is any peculiarity in the earth, from its volcanic character, which either induces sterility in the crops, or proves fatal to the cultivators. But nothing has been discovered that in the slightest degree explains the phenomena. There is no doubt that the Campagna is extremely unhealthy in the autumnal months, and the Pontine marshes still more so; but that is no more than is the case with every low plain on the shores of the Mediterranean: it obtains in Lombardy, Greece, Sicily, Asia Minor, and Spain, as well as in the Agro Romano. If any one doubt it, let him lie down to sleep in his cloak in any of these places in a night of September, and see what state he is in in the morning. Clarke relates, that intermittent fevers are universal in the Grecian plains in the autumnal months: in Estremadura, in September 1811, on the banks of the Guadiana, nine thousand men fell sick in Wellington's army in three days. The savannas of America, where "death bestrides the evening gale," when first ploughed up, produce intermittent fevers far more deadly than the malaria of the Roman Campagna. But the energy of man overcomes the difficulty, and, ere a few years have passed away, health and salubrity prevail in the regions of former pestilence. It was the same with the Roman Campagna in the early days of the Republic; it is the same now with the Campagna of Naples, and the marshy plains around Parma and Lodi, to the full as unhealthy in a desert state as the environs of Rome. It would be the same with the Agro Romano, if moral causes did not step in to prevent the efforts and industry of man, from here, as elsewhere, correcting the insalubrity of uncultivated nature.

And for decisive evidence that this desolation of the Campagna is owing to moral or political, not physical causes, and that, under a different system of administration, it might be rendered as salubrious and populous as it was in the early days of the Roman Republic, reference may be made to the fact, that in many parts of Italy, equally unhealthy and in this desert state, cultivation has taken place, a dense population has arisen, and the dangerous qualities of the atmosphere have disappeared. Within the last twenty years, the district called Grosseté has been reclaimed, in the most pestilential part of the Maremma of Tuscany, by an industrious population, which has succeeded in introducing agriculture and banishing the malaria; and the ruins of the Roman villas on the banks of the Tiber, near the sea, prove that the Romans went to seek salubrity and the healthful breezes of the sea, where now they could meet with nothing but pestilence and death. The rocky and dry slopes of the Campagna are admirably adapted for raising olives and vines; while the difference of the soil and exposure in different places, promises a similar variety in their wines. The Pontine marshes themselves, and the vast plain which extends from them to the foot of the cluster of hills called the Alban Mount, are not more oppressed by water, or lower in point of level, than the plains of Pisa; and yet there the earth yields magnificent crops of grain and succulent herbs, while the poplars, by which the fields are intersected, support to their very summits the most luxuriant vines. The Campagna of Naples is more volcanic and level than that of Rome; the hills and valleys of Baiæ are nothing but the cones and craters of extinguished volcanoes; and if we would see what such a district becomes when left in a desert state, we have only to go to the Maremma of Pestum, now as desolate and unhealthy as the Pontine marshes themselves. But in the Campagna of Naples an industrious population has overcome all these obstacles, and rendered the land, tenanted only by wild boars and buffaloes in the fourth century, the garden of Europe, known over all the world, from its riches, by the name of the Campagna Felice.

Nay, the Agro Romano itself affords equally decisive proof, that where circumstances will permit the work of cultivation to be commenced so as to be carried on at a profit, the malaria and desolation speedily disappear before the persevering efforts of human industry. In many parts of the district, the custom of granting perpetual leases at a fixed rate prevails, the _Emphyteutis_ of the Roman law, the sources of the prosperity of the cultivators in Upper and Lower Austria, and well known in Scotland under the name of feus. Sismondi has given the following account of the effect of the establishment of a permanent interest in the soil in arresting the effects of the malaria, and spreading cultivation over the land:--"The Emphyteutic cultivator has a permanent interest in the soil: he labours, therefore, unceasingly for the good of his family. He cuts out his slope into terraces, covers it with trees, fruits, and garden-stuffs: he takes advantage of every leisure moment, either in himself, his wife, or children, to advance the common cultivation. Industry and abundance reign around. Whenever you ascend the volcanic hills of Latium, or visit those ravishing slopes which so many painters have illustrated, around the lakes of Castel Gandolfo or Nemi, at L'Aricia, Rocca di Papa, Marino, and Frescati; whenever you meet with a smiling cultivation, healthy air, and the marks of general abundance, you may rest assured the cultivator is proprietor of the fruits of the soil. The bare right of property, or superiority, as the lawyers term it, belongs to some neighbouring lord; but the real property, "il miglioramento," belongs to the cultivator. In this way, in these happy districts, the great estates, the _latifundia_ of Pliny, have been practically distributed among the peasantry; and, whenever this is the case, you hear no more of the malaria. Agriculture has caused to arise in those localities a numerous population, which multiplies with singular rapidity, and for ages has furnished cultivators not only for the mountains where it has arisen, but bands of adventurers, who in every age have filled the ranks of the Italian armies."[30]

But while those examples, to which, did our limits permit, many others might be added, decisively demonstrate that human industry can effectually overcome the physical difficulties or dangers of the Roman Campagna; yet it is clear that some great and overwhelming cause is at work, which prevents agriculture flourishing, by means of tenants or _métayers_, in the plains of the Campagna. The plains, it is true, are in the hands of a few great proprietors, but their tenants are extremely rich, often more so, Sismondi tells us, than their landlords. What is it, then, which for so long a period has chained the Campagna to pasturage, and rendered all attempts to restore it to the plough abortive? The answer is plain: It is the same cause now which binds it to pasturage, which did so under the Romans from the time of Tiberius--_it is more profitable to devote the land to grass than to raise grain._ And it is so, not because the land will not bear grain crops, for it would do now even better than it did in the days of the Etruscans and the Sabines; since so many centuries of intervening pasturage have added so much to its fertility. It is so, because the weakness of the Papal government, yielding, like the Imperial in ancient days, to the cry for cheap bread among the Roman populace, has fed the people, from time immemorial, with foreign grain, instead of that of its own territory. The evidence on this subject is as clear and more detailed in modern, than it was in ancient times; and both throw a broad and steady light on the final results of that system of policy, which purchases the present support of the inhabitants of cities, by sacrificing the only lasting and perennial sources of strength derived from the industry and population of the country.

During the confusion and disasters consequent on the fall of the Empire, after the capture of Rome by the Goths, the Campagna remained entirely a desert; but it continued in the hands of the successors of the great senatorial families who held it in the last days of the Empire. "The Agro Romano," says Sismondi, "almost a desert, had been long exposed to the ravages of the barbarians, who in 846 pillaged the Vatican, which led Pope Leo IV., in the following year, to enclose that building within the walls of Rome. For an hundred years almost all the hills which border the horizon from Rome were crowned with forts; the ancient walls of the Etruscans were restored, or rebuilt from their ruins; the old hill strengths, where the Sabines, the Hernici, the Volscians, the Coriolani, had formerly defended their independence, again offered asylums to the inhabitants of the plains. But the great estates, the bequest of ancient Rome, remained undivided. With the first dawn of history in the middle ages, we see the great house of the Colonna master of the towns of Palestrina, Genazzano, Zagorole; that of Orsini, of the territories of the republics of Veiæ and Ceres, and holding the fortresses of Bracciano, Anguetta, and Ceri. The Monte-Savili, near Albano, still indicates the possessions of the Savili, which comprehended the whole ancient kingdom of Turnus; the Frangipani were masters of Antium, Astura, and the sea-coast; the Gaetani, the Annibaldeschi of the Castles which overlook the Pontine marshes; while Latium was in the hands of a smaller number of feudal families than it had formerly numbered republics within its bounds."[31]

But while divided among these great proprietors, the Roman Campagna was still visited, as in the days of the emperor, with the curse of cheap grain, imported from the other states bordering on the Mediterranean, and was in consequence exclusively devoted to the purposes of pasturage. An authentic document proves that this was the case so far down as the fifteenth century. In the year 1471, Pope Sextus IV. issued a bull, which was again enforced by Clement VII. in 1523, and which bore these remarkable words:--"Considering the frequent famines to which Rome has been exposed in late years, _arising chiefly from the small amount of lands which have been sown or laid down in tillage_, and that their owners _prefer allowing them to remain uncultivated, and pastured only by cattle_, than to cultivate for the use of men, on the ground _that the latter mode of management is more profitable than the former_."[32] The decree ordered the cultivation of a large portion of the Campagna in grain under heavy penalties.

And that this superior profit of pasturage to tillage has continued to the present time, and is the real cause of the long-continued and otherwise inexplicable desolation of this noble region, has been clearly demonstrated by a series of important and highly interesting official decrees and investigations, which, within this half century, have taken place by order of the Papal government. Struck with the continued desolation of so large and important a portion of their territory, the popes have both issued innumerable edicts to enforce tillage, and set on foot the most minute inquiries to ascertain the causes of their failure. It is only necessary to mention one. Pius VI., in 1783, took a new and most accurate survey or _cadastre_ of the Agro Romano, and ordained the proprietors to sow annually 17,000 _rubbi_ (85,000 acres) with grain.[33] This decree, however, like those which had preceded it, was not carried into execution. "The proprietors and farmers," says Nicolai, "equally opposed themselves to its execution; the former declaring that they must have a higher rent for the land if laid down in tillage, than the latter professed themselves able to pay."[34]

To ascertain the cause of this universal and insurmountable resistance of all concerned to the cultivation of the Campagna, the Papal government in 1790 issued a commission to inquire into the matter, and the proprietors prescribe to two memoirs on the subject, which at once explained the whole difficulty. The one set forth the cost and returns of 100 rubbi (500 acres) in grain tillage in the Roman Campagna; the other, the cost and returns of a flock of 2500 sheep in the same circumstances. The result of the whole was, that while the grain cultivation would with difficulty, on an expenditure of 8000 crowns (£2000,) bring in a clear profit _of thirty crowns_ (£7, 10s.) to the farmer, and nothing at all to the landlord, the other would yield between them a profit _of 1972 crowns_, (£496.)[35] Well may Sismondi exclaim:--"These two reports are of the very highest importance. They explain the constant invincible resistance which the proprietors and farmers of the Roman Campagna have opposed to the extension of grain cultivation; they put in a clear light the opposite interest of great capitalists and the interest of the state; they give in authentic details, which I have personally verified, and found to be still entirely applicable and correct, on the causes which have reduced the noble district of the Roman Campagna to its desolate state, and still retain it in that condition. Incredible as the statements may appear, they are amply borne out by everyday experience. In effect, all the farmers whom I have consulted, affirm, that they invariably lose by grain cultivation, and that they never resort to it, but to prevent the land from being overgrown by brushwood or forests, and rendered unfit for profitable pasturage."[36]

Extraordinary as these facts are, as to the difference between the profits of pasturage and tillage in the Agro Romano, it is only by the most rigid economy, and reducing the shepherds to the lowest amount of subsistence consistent with the support of life, that the former yields any profits at all. The wages of the shepherds are only fifty-three francs (£2) for the winter season, and as much for the summer; the proprietors, in addition, furnishing them with twenty ounces of bread a-day, a half-pound of salt meat, a little oil and salt a-week. As to wine, vinegar, or fermented liquors, they never taste any of them from one year's end to another. Such as it is, their food is all brought to them from Rome; for in the whole Campagna there is not an oven, a kitchen, or a kitchen-garden, to furnish an ounce of vegetables or fruits. The clothing of these shepherds is as wretched as their fare. It consists of sheep-skin, with the wool outside; a few rags on their legs and thighs, complete their vesture. Lodging or houses they have none; they sleep in the open air, or nestle into some sheltered nook among the ruined tombs or aqueducts which are to be met with in the wilderness, in some of the caverns, which are so common in that volcanic region, or beneath the arches of the ancient catacombs. A few spoons and coarse jars form their whole furniture; the cost of that belonging to twenty-nine shepherds, required for the 2500 sheep, is only 159 francs (£7.) The sum total of the expense of the whole twenty-nine persons, including wages, food, and every thing, is only 1038 crowns, or £250 a-year; being about £8, 10s. a-head annually. The produce of the flock is estimated at 7122 crowns (£1780) annually, and the annual profit 1972 crowns, or £493.[37]

The other table given by Nicolai, exhibits, on a similar expenditure of capital, the profit of tillage; and it is so inconsiderable, as rarely, and that only in the most favourable situations, to cover the expense of cultivation. The labourers, who almost all come from the neighbouring hills, above the level of the malaria, are obliged to be brought from a distance at high wages for the time of their employment; sometimes in harvest wages are as high as five francs, or four shillings a-day. The wages paid to the labourers on a grain farm on which £2000 has been expended on 500 acres, amount to no less than 4320 crowns, or £1080 sterling, annually; being above four times the cost of the shepherds for a similar expenditure of capital, though they wander over ten times the surface of ground. The labourers never remain in the fields; they set off to the hills when their grain is sown, and only return in autumn to cut it down. They do not work above twenty or thirty days in the year; and therefore, though their wages for that period are so high, they are in misery all the rest of the season. But though so little is done for the land, the price received for the produce is so low, that cultivation in grain brings no profit, and is usually carried on at a loss. The peasants who conduct it never go to Rome--have often never seen it; they make no purchases there; and _the most profitable of all trades in a nation, that between the town and the country, is unknown in the Roman States_.[38]

Here, then, the real cause of the desolation of the Campagna stands revealed in the clearest light, and on the most irrefragable evidence. It is not cultivated for grain crops, because remunerating prices for that species of produce cannot be obtained. It is exclusively kept in pasturage, because it is in that way only that a profit can be obtained from the land. And that it is this cause, and not any deficiency of capital or skill on the part of the tenantry, which occasions the phenomenon, is further rendered apparent by the wealth, enterprize, and information on agricultural subjects, of the great farmers in whose lands the land is vested. "The conductors," says Sismondi, "of rural labour in the Roman States, called _Mercanti di Tenute_ or _di Campagne_, are men possessed of great capital, and who have received the very best education. Such, indeed, is their opulence, that it is probable they will, erelong, acquire the property of the land of which at present they are tenants. Their number, however, does not exceed eighty. They are acquainted with the most approved methods of agriculture in Italy and other countries; they have at their disposal all the resources of science, art, and immense capital; have availed themselves of all the boasted advantages of centralization, of a thorough division of labour, of a most accurate system of accounts, and checking of inferior functionaries. The system of great farms has been carried to perfection in their hands. But, with all these advantages, they cannot in the Agro Romano, _once so populous, still so fertile, raise grain to a profit_. The labourers cost more than they are worth, more than their produce is worth; while on a soil not richer, and under the same climate and government, in the marches of Ancona, agriculture maintains two hundred souls the square mile, in comfort and opulence."[39]