English by education and habit as to have tried
to settle in the land of his fathers, and to have
been unable to carry out his project. A thoroughbred
Englishman would have perhaps turned out
more cosmopolitan in nature and disposition.
He has brought back, however, a lively and
instructive picture of his peninsular cousins, which,
both they themselves, and their future rulers will
do well to meditate. A government is really,
as is expressed in popular language, a form; the
people at large, with all their moral, mental, and
physical attributes, are the solid material which
gives substance and fixity to the form. If the
people are merely sand or water, whatever
government may be modelled and raised, it will
prove no better than an image of brass with feet
of clay. It is true that it is exceedingly difficult
to get at the real facts of Italian life. To the
Englishman, they often appear contradictory and
puzzling. Mr. Gallenga has principally studied
them, not in the worn types of a populous town,
but in the more primitive forms of a rural
district. On the good or bad features of the
national character rest all hopes for the new
scheme of a free constitution in Piedmont; on
the success of self-government in Piedmont lie
the best chances of a mitigation of the fate of
the rest of Italy. With all their short-comings,
as a people it is still believed there is enough
soundness in the basis to give us the best
assurance of the solidity of the rising structure.

So astonishingly great is the hospitality of
the people who inhabit the Subalpine valleys of
Upper Piedmont, that by virtue of two letters
of introduction only, the author was able to
travel for two weeks and some days without
ever, except on one occasion, seeing the inside
of an inn. The inns of the country are generally
of the most wretched description; hence the
eagerness of the people to save the travellers
from the miseries of their accommodation; hence
the readiness of the tourist to waive ceremony,
and accept kindly what is kindly offered.
Hospitality is proverbially the virtue of half-civilised
races; it is hard to have to pay in thanks the
debt you would and could rather discharge in
good solid coin; but the Piedmontese are to a
great extent the untravelled inhabitants of an
untravelled country. Curiosity mingles with
kindness in their eagerness to see strangers
within their doors, and any wayfarer who chooses
to make himself agreeable, or who by his
manners and habits can break the monotony of their
sequestered existence, repays them amply for
any comfort it may be their good luck to have
in store for him.

Unbounded, generous hospitality is, you will
say, characteristic of all thriving agricultural
countries. Those who gather from a plentiful
land the fruits of the earth most immediately
contributing to man's sustenance, are always,
especially if their means of export do not keep
pace with their production, glad to share with
friends and guests those bounties of Providence
which would otherwise be wasted; and every
one is acquainted with the outburst of
generosity of the peasant-girl, who pressed a king
to partake of some apples, assuring him, that
what he did not take "would be given to the
pigs." In the same spirit, a group of rustics,
busy gathering in their walnuts, cried out
joyously, holding up their baskets and their aprons:
"Have some! have some! There is enough
for cats and dogs this year." That plenteousness
makes bounteousness, we know from the
contrast between Lombard lavishness and Tuscan
or Genoese niggardliness. The inhabitant of
the fat plains of Upper Italy goes by the name
of "lupo Lombardo," Lombard wolf. His
openhandedness keeps pace with his appetite; he is
ever ready to "eat and let eat."

With all the late destruction and scarcity
caused by unpropitious seasons, and by the
wreck and havoc of the whirlwind and storm,
the land of the sun bears yet a cheering look,
and every peasant greets you with a merry face.
You can scarcely enter a dwelling in all
Piedmont where the good man or the good woman
will not beg you to be seated, and forthwith
produce the noted cobwebbed flask, and not
ask you whether you will drink, but first fill
the glasses all round, then bid and expect you
to empty yours as a matter of course; morning,
noon, or night, it makes no difference. Nor are
the manners of the upper classes on this point
at variance with those of the lower, nor does it
matter whether you are familiar in the house or
an utter stranger. "Any friend of a friend is a
friend," and in less than two minutes you find
yourself hob-nobbing and glass-jingling with a
man you never saw before, and never in all
probability will see again, but who, if he cannot
drink for the sake of "auld lang syne," earnestly
solicits, glass in hand, "your better acquaintance."
Women and young girls, with eyes as
sparkling and lips as red as the ruby liquor
before you, give you the encouragement of their
smile and example; for no one shuns wine, nor
need any one dread the honest, genuine,
harmless, though generous liquid. With all the
disease and the scarcity and dearth, there is
wine still in the country, and you may still have,
at any inn by the wayside, a bottle, chiefly of
Montferrat, for twenty-four sous (one shilling)
—a very high price here; but in most private
houses you have the relics of old vintages, from
seventeen hundred and forty-nine upwards,
chiefly those of eighteen hundred and eleven and
eighteen hundred and forty-six, which were
famous years; and although the Piedmontese
in these hard times stints himself in the beverage
which is as necessary to him as the air he
breathes, still, no sooner does a friend or
stranger's figure darken his door, than the old
wine must be forthcoming, as if the mere fact
that any man met with a "dry" welcome on the
threshold of a Subalpine dwelling were likely to
endanger the honour of the country. A drop
left in the glass, or a glass left in the bottle, is
considered a sign of ill manners in Piedmont;
and the rustic who is invited to drink, invariably
turns his glass downwards when he has
done, to show his entertainer how thoroughly
he has acquitted himself of his task. Ten to