I met travelers that say the same thing of Nature’s children in other sunny lands—­Spain for example.  The truth seems to be, that in warm climates only, will man attain that perfect healthy and beautiful physical development which has constituted the model of the artist and the theme of the poet, in every age.  I have heard some pronounce the statue of Venus de Medici, the ideal perfection of female form and beauty.  It is probably as near as sculpture can reach it, but who would suppose that a white stone could do justice to the beauty of a pure child of nature?  The marble may present a most perfect form; but what becomes of the glow of life and flush of beauty upon the maiden’s cheek, the ruby lips and the grace and elegance of her movements and winning manners?  We may speak of ideal beauty in countries where the physical development of the inhabitants is blasted by the severities of the extreme heat and cold of an inhospitable clime, where the blasts of winter make every form shiver for many months of the year; but the superior beauty of the daughters of Northern Italy, if they were placed side by side with Venus de Medici, would laugh that frigid form to scorn!  As compared with these, I thought I had seen no others that could either talk or laugh or walk!

The Italians live upon a very simple diet.  When I first saw numbers of them make meals of dry bread and fruit, I supposed poverty impelled them to partake of so scant a diet, but by the time I came back from Egypt, I too had learned to sit down and eat dry bread and grapes together, though I could procure meat as cheap in Italy as elsewhere in Europe.  It is not advisable to partake of much meat in any warm country.  Any one may form an idea of what kind of a consumer of food cold is, when he reflects how much more flesh we consume in winter than in summer.  I did not partake of more than half the amount of food in southern Italy and Egypt that I needed in England, Germany or Switzerland, and there is little room for doubt that many Italians do with one third of the amount of food that we require in the severer climate of the Middle States.  I was always reminded of the story of “Cornaro the Italian,” related in Wilson’s Fourth Reader, whenever I saw them eat their simple meals.  It is very singular, too, that they should all look full, healthy and robust; and many of us, on the contrary, lean and sickly.  Twelve ounces of solid food and thirteen ounces of drink, seems a very spare supply to an American, but I do not believe that it is accounted very extraordinary in Italy.

Milan.