I have said that the plebeians of the city of Rome despise the plebeians of the country.  Be assured, however, the latter are not deserving of scorn, even in the Mediterranean provinces.  In this unhappy half of the Pontifical States, the influence of the Vatican has not yet quite morally destroyed the population.  The country people are poor, ignorant, superstitious, rather wild, but kind, hospitable, and generally honest.  If you wish to study them more closely, go to one of the villages in the province of Frosinone, towards the Neapolitan frontier.  Cross the plains which malaria has made dreary solitudes, take the stony path which winds painfully up the side of the mountain.  You will come to a town of five or ten thousand souls, which is little more than a dormitory for five or ten thousand peasants.  Viewed from a distance, this country town has an almost grand appearance.  The dome of a church, a range of monastic buildings, the tower of a feudal castle, invest it with a certain air of importance.  A troop of women are coming down to the fountain with copper vessels on their heads.  You smile instinctively.  Here is movement and life.  Enter!  You are struck with a sensation of coldness, dampness, and darkness.  The streets are narrow flights of steps, which every now and then plunge beneath low arches.  The houses are closed, and seem to have been deserted for a century.  Not a human being at the doors, or at the windows.  The streets, silent and solitary.

You would imagine that the curse of heaven had fallen on the country, but for the large placards on the house-fronts, which prove that missionary fathers have passed through the place. “Viva Gesu!  Viva Maria!  Viva il sangue di Gesu!  Viva il cor di Maria!  Bestemmiatori, tacetevi per l’amor di Maria!”

These devotional sentences are like so many signboards of the public simplicity.

A quarter of an hour’s walk brings you to the principal square.  Half-a-dozen civil officials are seated in a circle before a cafe, gaping at one another.  You join them.  They ask you for news of something that happened a dozen years ago.  You ask them in turn, what epidemic has depopulated the country?

Presently some thirty market-men and women begin to display on the pavement an assortment of fruit and vegetables.  Where are the buyers of these products of the earth?  Here they come!  Night is approaching.  The entire population begins to return at once from their labour in the fields; a stalwart and sturdy population; the thew and sinew of some fine regiments.  Every one of these half-clad men, armed with pickaxe and shovel, rose two hours before the sun this morning, and went forth to weed a little field, or to dig round a few olive-trees.  Many of them have their little domains several miles off, and thither they go daily, accompanied by a child and a pig.  The pig is not very fat, and the man and his child are very lean.  Still they seem light-hearted and merry.  They