malaria to its doors, while Papal advocates, on the contrary, always treat the malaria as a mysterious scourge which can never be removed or even palliated; a view almost as unphilosophical as the other.  For my own part, I have only been able to arrive at three isolated conclusions on the subject.  First, that mere cultivation of the Campagna, as shown by Prince Borghese’s unsuccessful experiments, does not at any rate immediately affect the virulence of the miasma,

or whatever the malaria may be.  Secondly, that the malaria can actually be built out, or, in other words, if the Campagna was covered with a stone pavement, the disease would disappear—a remedy obviously impracticable; and lastly, that though the existence of the malaria cannot be removed, as far I can see, yet that its evil effects might be immensely lessened by warm clothing, good food, and prompt medical aid at the commencement of the malady.  Whatever tends to improve the general condition of the Roman peasantry will put these remedies more and more within their reach, and will therefore tend to check the ravages of the malaria.  Thus, the inefficient and obstructive Government of the Vatican, which checks all material as well as all moral progress, increases indirectly the virulence of the fever-plague; but this, I think, is the most that can fairly be stated.

I trust that, considering the importance of the subject, this digression, unsatisfactory as it is, may be pardoned; and I now turn to the third curse, which eats up the wages of the working man at Rome—a curse even greater, I think, than the “festas” or the malaria—I mean, the universality of the middle-man system.  If you

require any work done, from stone carving to digging, you seldom or never deal with the actual workman.  If you are a farmer and want your harvest got in, you contract months beforehand with an agent, who agrees to supply you with harvest-men in certain numbers, at a certain price, out of which price he pockets as large a percentage as he can, and has probably commissions to pay himself to some sub-contractor.  If you are a sculptor and wish a block of marble chiselled in the rough, the man you contract with to hew the block at certain day-wages brings a boy to do the work at half the above amount or less, and only looks in from time to time to see how the work is proceeding.  It is the same in every branch of trade or business.  If you wish to make a purchase, or effect a sale, or hire a servant, you have a whole series of commissions or brokerages to pay before you come into contact with the principal.

If you inquire why this system is not broken through, why the employer does not deal directly with his workmen, you are told that the custom of the country is against any other method; that amongst the workmen themselves there is so much terrorism and intimidation and espionnage, that

any single employer or labourer, who contracted for work independently, would run a risk of annoyance or actual injury; of having, for example, his block of marble split “by a slip of the hand,” or his tools destroyed, or a knife stuck into him as he went home at night, and, more than all, that, without the supervision of the actual overseer, your workmen would cheat you right and left, no matter what wages you paid.  After all it is better to be cheated by one man than by a dozen, and being at Rome you must do as the Romans do.

It may possibly have been observed that, in the foregoing paragraph, I have spoken of the “workmen at Rome,” not of the Roman workmen.  The difference, though slight verbally, is an all-important one.  The workmen in Rome are not Romans, for the Romans proper never work.  The Campagna is tilled in winter by groups of peasants, who come from the Marches, in long straggling files, headed by the “Pifferari,” those most inharmonious of pipers.  In summer-time the harvest is reaped and the vintage gathered in by labourers, whose homes lie far away in the Abruzzi mountains.  In many ways these mountaineers bear a decided resemblance to the swarms

of Irish labourers who come across to England in harvest-time.  They are frugal, good-humoured, and, compared to the native Romans, honest and hard-working.  A very small proportion too of the working-men in Rome itself are Romans.  Certain trades, as that of the cooks for instance, are almost confined to the inhabitants of particular outlying districts.  The masons, carpenters, carvers, and other mechanical trades, are filled by men who do not belong to the city, and who are called and considered foreigners.  Of course the rule is not without exceptions, and you will find genuine Romans amongst the common workmen, but amongst the skilled workmen hardly ever.  There is a very large, poor, I might almost say, pauper population in Rome, and in some form or other these poor must work for their living, but their principle is to do as little work as possible.  There still exists amongst the Romans a sort of debased, imperial pride, a belief that a Roman is per se superior to all other Italians.  For manual work, or labour under others, they have an equal contempt and dislike.  All the semi-independent trades, like those of cab-drivers, street-vendors, petty shopkeepers, &c. are eagerly sought after and monopolized by Romans.  The

extent to which small trades are carried on by persons utterly without capital and inevitably embarrassed with debt, is one of the chief evils in the social system which prevails here.  If the Romans also, like the unjust steward, are too proud to dig, unlike that worthy, to beg they are not ashamed.  Begging is a recognized and a respected profession, and if other trades fail there is always this left.  The cardinal principle of Papal rule is to teach its subjects to rely on charity rather than industry.  In order to relieve in some measure the fearful distress that existed among the poor of Rome in the early spring, the Government took some thousand persons into their employment, and set them to work on excavating the Forum.  The sight of these men working, or, more correctly speaking, idling at work, used to be reckoned one of the stock jokes of the season.  Six men were regularly employed in conveying a wheelbarrow filled with two spadefuls of soil.  There was one man to each handle, two in front to pull when the road rose, and one on each side to give a helping hand and keep the barrow steady.  You could see any day long files of such barrows, so escorted, creeping to and from the Forum.  It is hardly necessary to say

that little progress was ever made in the excavations, or, for that matter, intended to be made.  Yet the majority of these workmen were able-bodied fellows, who received tenpence a day for doing nothing.  Much less injury would have been inflicted on their self-respect by giving them the money outright than in return for this mockery of labour.  Moreover the poor in Rome, as I have mentioned elsewhere, are not afraid of actual starvation.  “Well-disposed” persons, with a good word from the priests, can obtain food at the convents of the mendicant friars.  I am not saying there is no good in this custom; in fact, it is almost the one good feature I know of connected with the priestly system of government; but still, on an indolent and demoralised population like that of Rome, the benefit of this sort of charity, which destroys the last and the strongest motive for exertion, is by no means an unmixed one.

The amusements of the people are much what might be expected from their occupations.  To do them justice, they drink but