should be devoted to the city, and to the nearer Campagna drives, so as to leave spring days for the excursions, which will then have a charm none who have not felt them here can ever realise.

About your feet the myrtles will be set,

Grey rosemary, and thyme, and tender blue
Of love-pale labyrinthine violet;

Flame-born anemones will glitter through
Dark aisles of roofing pine-trees; and for you
The golden jonquil and starred asphodel
And hyacinth their speechless tales will tell.
The nightingales for you their tremulous song
Shall pour amid the snowy scented bloom
Of wild acacia bowers, and all night long
Through starlight-flooded spheres of purple gloom
Still lemon-boughs shall spread their faint perfume,
Soothing your sense with odours sweet as sleep,
While wind-stirred cypresses low music keep.'
-J. A. Symonds.

The Campagna glowed under the midday sun, like a Persian carpet-one wilderness of poppies and harebells, buttercups, daisies, wild convolvuli, and purple hyacinths. Every crumbling ruin burst into blossom, like a garden. Every cultivated patch within the city walls ran over, as it were, spontaneously, with the delicious products of the spring. Every stall at the shady corner of every quiet piazza was piled high with early fruits: and the flowergirls sat all day long on the steps of the Trinità de' Monti. Even the sullen pulses of the Tiber seemed stirred by a more genial current, as they eddied round the broken piers of the Poute Rotto. Even the solemn sepulchres of the Appian Way put forth long feathery grasses from each mouldering cranny, and the wild eglantine struck root among the shattered urns of the roadside columbarium; and the nightingales sang as if inspired, among the cypresses of the Protestant burial-ground.'-Miss Edwards, Barbara's History?'

The spring in Italy is the time for active, the summer for passive, enjoyment.

In the mountain-towns, living is exceedingly economical. Even at the hotels there are few places where the charges for pension including everything would be more than 41, or at most 5 lire a day, while in lodgings one may live quite handsomely for 25 lire a week. All prices are proportionately small. For instance, in the Abruzzi a whole day's journey by diligence seldom costs more than 6 or 8 lire. Of course this tariff does not apply to Albano, where the price of everything has been raised by fashion, but rather to places which are not much frequented, or which are resorted to by Italians of the lower-upper or mezzo-ceto classes, who simply laugh down any overcharge. In some of these places there are charming, happy summer colonies, which migrate to the fresher air like the swallows, as regularly as the hot months come round. To L'Ariccia especially artists flock forth, and there and at Olevano they make their summer societies, leading an innocent, merry enough life, and, though rivals in their art, are filled with kindnesses for one another; the companionship and good-fellowship of the Via Margutta being carried on equally in these country villages.

He who remains for a time in one of these country places will have an experience of Italian character which no town residence will give; and will be astonished at the amount of quaint folk-lore

and historical tradition which is handed down orally among a population that can seldom read, and is ignorant of the most ordinary principles of modern information. They rarely go beyond the limits of their own castelli, except that in former days all probably paid one visit to Rome in their lifetime, to receive the Easter Benediction from the Holy Father. Their animals are generally like friends to them, and are trained in a wonderfully human way especially their pigs, which often live in the houses, and are the companions of their daily life. A pig at Subiaco danced the tarantella like a human being. If an Italian peasant were told that there was no future state for his domestic animals he would be very incredulous. 'S. Antonio abbia pietà dell' anima sua,' cried Madame de Staël's Italian coachman, as his horse fell down dead; and the Intendente of the Duke of Sermoneta, writing to announce that a number of his pigs had died in the country, said simply, 'Sono andati in Paradiso."

The men are generally far more instructed than the women, whose ideas are for the most part confined to what they hear in the churches, and to the stories of their own village or of the saints.

Among us, and in many places, the contadina is neither more nor less than the wife, the female of the contadino, as the hen is the female of the cock; with which, except in sex, it has life, nourishment, habits, all in common. This equality, on the contrary, in certain places becomes destruction and loss to the poor woman. Here, for example, if a faggot of wood and a bunch of chickens have to be carried down to the shore from one of the villages halfway up the mountain, the labour is thus distributed in the family: the wife loads herself with the faggot of wood which weighs half a hundredweight, and the husband will take the chickens which weigh a mere nothing. In mountainous places it is generally thus. It is curious to hear the contadini, when they are trying to lift a weight, if they find it heavy, say, as they quickly put it down again, "It is woman's work! "'—Massimo d'Azeglio.

'From a people so original and so ignorant we may expect many quaint superstitions. Accordingly besides ghosts and haunted houses we hear of the lupo-manaro, a kind of were-wolf, most dangerous on rainy nights; of witches whom you may keep out of the house by hanging a broom at the window. The Roman witch seizes eagerly on her favourite steed, and with the muttered charm,

"Sopr' acqua e sopra vento Portami alla noce di Benevento,"

she is off in a trice to join her Samnite sisters. If a Roman housewife has lost anything, she will repeat Psalm xci., "Qui habitat," quite sure that at the words "from the snare of the hunter" (" de laqueo venantium "-she reads it "acqua di Venanzio") the truant will re-appear. Then she has her famous "Rimedii Simpatici." To cure a wart you must tie the finger round with crimson silk ribbon; for a sty, pretend to sew it up with needle and thread; for a boil, get a poor neighbour to beat a frying pan at your door. Their faith in the lottery and the libro dell' arte is too well known for comment; a similar reverence is paid to the weather-prophecies of the almanac. The book must be true, they argue, for it has the Imprimatur.'-Claude Delaval Cobham, Essay on Belli.'

'Can we believe that amid the abundant produce of the land the peasants are poor? Looking at the region, it appears to be an Eldorado of happy inhabitants; but living with them in the paradise of Nature we meet too often with starvation. All these fruits (twenty figs or twenty walnuts may be bought here for one bajocco, and in good years a bottle of wine for the same price) do not feed the peasant; he would starve if he had not the meal of the

Turkish corn, which is his only food. The fault of this incongruity lies in the agrarian condition. To begin with, you must know that the possessor of land here owes the fourth part of the produce as rent to the lord of the soil. It is the old curse of the latifundia to sink the people in poverty. There are, indeed, few peasants who do not possess a small vineyard, but it is not sufficient to maintain the family. Usury is unlimited; even from the poorest ten per cent. is taken. The smallest misfortune, or a bad harvest, brings him into debt. If he borrows money or grain the interest burdens him; the avaricious rich man watches for the time of want to wrest the land from the small proprietor for a nominal price. Barons and monasteries grow rich, the peasant-farmer becomes their vassal and vine-dresser. As a rule the transaction takes place thus, the debtor only sells the soil; the trees (gli alberi, which includes the vines) remain his, he continues to cultivate the vineyard, and retains for himself half or three-quarters of the produce. Scarcely a year passes, and the same vine-owner appears before the purchaser of his land and offers him the trees for sale. Now he becomes farmer for his master, inhabits the vineyard with his family, and continues to cultivate it, receiving a portion of the produce. This may equal or even exceed that of the present proprietor, but yet he will find himself more and more in debt, and have to make over to his master no small proportion of his gains in advance.'Gregorovius.

The simple religious faith which exists among the mountain peasantry is most touching and instructive. The sound of the Angelus bell will collect the whole population of one of the small Abruzzi towns in its churches, and the priests, unlike the spectres which haunt ultra-Protestant story-books, are more frequently simple gentle fathers of their people, consulted by them in every anxiety, and trusted in every difficulty. The open-air life in many of these villages, where all the spinning, lace-making, and other avocations are carried on in the street, brings the people wonderfully together, and unites their interests and associations as those of one great family, and if a poor person dies, it is not unusual to see the whole town attend the funeral, while orphans who have been born in the place become regarded as universal property, and receive a share of the attentions and care of all. On a summer evening, when crowds of the inhabitants of a mountain-town are sitting out in the shady street at their work, it is not unusual for one of them to take up one of the long melancholy never-ending songs which are handed down here for generations, and for the whole people to join in the choruses. These songs are inexhaustible, varying from the short lively catches in two lines called stornelli, to long ballads which sometimes succeed one another in more than a hundred verses. A curious collection of the latter, giving their variations according to the different towns and patois in which they are sung, is being published, under the name of Canti e Racconti del Popolo Italiano, collected by D. Comparetti and A. d' Ancona.

Riding or cycling is the best means of seeing the Campagna immediately around Rome; indeed, there are many interesting places, such as Rustica on the Anio, which cannot be reached in a carriage. On the other hand, for walkers the most interesting thing to do is to take a train, or tramway, to some interesting spot, and thence make a definite walk across country, so as to spend the day and catch an afternoon train back to Rome on another line. But for the longer excursions it is far best to adopt the cycle,

1

or whatever is the usual means of locomotion in the district,
generally some high-slung Baroccino. In the Abruzzi, diligences
are universally used, and, where the distances are so great between
one town and another, they are quite a necessity. In some places
these are of the most primitive construction, and in mountainous
districts are always drawn by oxen placed in front of the horses,
while the harness of the latter, thickly adorned with bells, feathers,
and little brass figures of saints, is quite an artistic study. Diligence
life is a phase of Italian existence which no one should omit trying
at least once-or rather that of the public carriages which ply slowly
between the different surrounding towns and the capital.
In a
vehicle of this kind one cannot fail to be thrown into the closest
juxtaposition with one's neighbours, and nowhere is the universal
national bonhomie and good-fellowship more conspicuous. Suppose
you are at Tivoli and wish to go to Rome. The diligence starts in
the middle of the day. You walk to it from your inn, with a
porter carrying your portmanteau. You find it under a dark arch-
way; a lumbering vehicle, something like a heavy though very
dilapidated fly, with three lean unkempt horses attached to it by
ropes. The company already assembled greets you as if you
were an old acquaintance. There is a fat monk in a brown habit
which does not smell very good, a woman in panno and large
gold earrings, a young office clerk, a girl of sixteen, and a little
child of two. The young man sits by the driver; all the rest go
inside. There is endless delay in starting, for when you are just
going off, the rope-harness gives way and has to be mended.
begin to feel impatient, but find nobody cares in the least, so
you think it is not worth while. You get in, and find the interior
very mouldy, with tattered sides, and dirty straw on the floor.
The most unimaginable baggage is being packed on the roof.
gossipy conduttore leans against the portico smoking cigarettes,
and regaling Tivoli with the scandal of Rome. An important
stalliere in rags stands by and demands his fee of one soldo.
the company are desired to mount. The diligence is moving: it is
an immense excitement there is quite a rush of children down the
street to see it. The vehicle creaks and groans. Surely the ropes
are going to break again; but no, they actually hold firm this time
and the carriage starts, rocking from side to side of the rugged
pavement, amid the remonstrances of the woman in the earrings,
whose daughter has not been able to embrace her, and who shrieks
out of the window, 'Ma, Nino, Nino, non ho baciato la figlia mia.'

You

The

At last

You do not get far before a universal scratching begins. The child squeals. Then the monk gives it a lollypop and begins a long story about an image in his convent which winked twiceringraziamo Dio-actually twice, on the eve of Ascension Day. You can hardly hear, for you are going down a hill and the carriage creaks so, and the bells make such a noise. Suddenly there is a regular outcry, 'Oh, Madonna Santissima!' the young girl is taken 'Oh, povera piccina !' You stop for a little while, and are glad to escape even for a minute from the overwhelming smell of

worse.

cheese and garlic which rises from a precious basket your next neighbour has placed at your feet. All is perfect good humour, the invalid recovers, you mount once more, the driver sings stornelli in a loud ringing voice: the monk hands round his snuff-box: you sneeze, and all the company say Felicità'—and so on, till when you reach the walls of Rome, you are all the greatest friends in the world, and you shake hands all round when you part, amid a chorus of 'A rivederla, Signore!'

With regard to the best seasons for the excursions from Rome, those who reach Central Italy in October will find that month far the best for a tour in the Abruzzi, before the winter snows have set in. Avezzano, Carseoli, and Subiaco are beautiful in November, and their beauty is greatly enhanced by the tints of the vegetation, absence of which is much felt in spring, when the grand valley between Subiaco and Tivoli looks almost bare and colourless.

But during the winter months the shorter excursions may be pleasantly made from Rome in a carriage or on horseback, motor, or far better, on foot from one railway to another. The railways to Frascati, Tivoli, and Viterbo offer many delightful short excursions, and may always give a perfect country change of a few hours. In March, Alatri, Anagni, Cori, and Segni may be visited, with many other places in that district, but March is an uncertain month because 'Marzo è pazzo,' for it is the time, say Italians, when men did kill God.' For this reason every traveller should provide himself with an 'Indicatore,' containing the train-tables for going and returning. By this means, and arming himself with a map of the environs, or sectional maps of the district he purposes to visit, he can go whither he wills, at ease.

'A reverend meteorologist accounted for the cold in Lent, by saying that it was a mortification peculiar to the holy season, and would continue till Easter, because it was cold when Peter sate at the High Priest's fire on the eve of the Crucifixion.'-Forsyth.

In many parts of the Campagna the contadino will not so much as name March: it is always for him il mese accanto Aprile': an unnamable one. Has it anything to do with the death of Cæsar ?

But April is the pleasantest month of all, and then should be made the enchanting excursions to Soracte, Caprarola, and the Ciminian Hills-which may be extended, via Montefiascone, to Orvieto, whence those who do not wish to return to Rome may continue their journey northward.