one, too, the man who has been plying you with
wine till he can force no more down your throat,
will take you to his neighbour's house, and this
latter to another neighbour's, and as every visit
is merely a repetition of the same libations, the
ushering in of a stranger into a Piedmontese
circle becomes tolerably irksome, and may prove
somewhat dangerous in the long run.

Although Piedmont is essentially an agricultural
country, and the calamities of the last
eight years have greatly impoverished it, yet the
mountain provinces are comparatively wealthy,
and can scarcely be made absolutely poor. The
whole of the male population, especially of the
upper valleys, emigrate yearly. All the Biellese
are masons. The Canaresans are carpenters
and woodmen; the people of Val Sesia are
house-painters, those of Val Gressoney and
other glens of the Val d'Aosta and Val Sesia,
who are half-Germans, travel to Germany and
engage in trade, sometimes even in banking
business, and attain ultimately very considerable
wealth. All of them, however, come back for
the winter to their native homes, and there is
hardly an instance of a Piedmontese mountaineer
settling permanently abroad. Anything more
striking than the calmness, soberness, and
earnestness of these kind, good, generous people,
is difficult to be met with anywhere. They have a
serious, silent, modest, docile, and somewhat shy
look, which seems akin to the English character.
They are only gentler and meeker, less self-
confident than the fortunate builders of "the
empire on whose boundaries the sun never sets."
They are by no means loud, but thoughtful, and
at any rate no talkers or gesticulators, like the
rest of the Italians. No French swagger, no
Lombard or Tuscan chattiness and frivolity
about them. They have a dignified, firm,
resigned, patient air,—the air of men fit to govern
themselves, as well as to "rule over the stars."

It will hardly be believed that, although
dwelling in such a glorious country, the Italians
have no eye for the beauties of nature, and
seldom affect any love for them. There is not
a single landscape description in the whole
range of Italian literature, unless we take, as
such, the stiff and formal gardens of Alcina and
Armida, by Ariosto and Tasso, which are no
more landscapes than the Tuileries garden is a
park; no landscape picture from Dante to
Manzoni, and this latter had all the models of
Germany and England before him. The Italian
is no lover of rural life. He dreads of all
things an isolated dwelling. If he cannot live in
the capital, he lives in a provincial city; if not,
in a country town; then in a village; only not in
a country-house. They huddle together in their
squalid boroughs and hamlets, and the happiest
man is he whose forefathers have built their
home in the narrowest, closest court or alley
hard by the market-place. Every man owns a
vineyard, and every vineyard has a hut; but
that hut is no man's abode, or only the luckless
hind's, who digs and prunes it. A lady, with
fair complexion, melting blue eyes, and a great
display of tender sentiment, was asked, in the
witching month of May, if she would not, at that
season, rather be in the country. "In the country!"
she ejaculated; "what on earth should one
go to the country for now? Surely there is no
fruit to eat." In their dingy provincial towns
they huddle together, landowners, farmers, and
most of the labourers; and every town gives
itself the airs, and revels in the light gossip, of
the capital; every town has a café, or a score of
cafés, to idle away time in, with their tawdry,
smoky, gilt and mirrored rooms.

The Italians have a saying that, during the
heat of the day, nobody but dogs and Englishmen
are to be seen in the streets. After
discussing various causes to which may be
assigned this degenerate want of energy, Mr.
Gallenga suggests that, after all, perhaps it
is the meat purveyor who is to blame. Do we
not hear that the great secret of the astonishing
success of the Anglo-Saxon race by land and
sea, by which it has "conquered one-half of the
world and bullied the other," is mainly to be
ascribed to the good, sound, honest "Roast
Beef of Old England?" And have not the
Germans their own favourite assertion to the same
effect, that the extraordinary vigour which
enables them to crush the Celto-Latins on the
Po, and the Magyaro-Slavonians on the Danube,
is simply due to the tough "Schinken and
Wurst" (ham and sausage) on which they feast
so plentifully? Do not we know the different
results attendant upon the mere fact of feeding
a dog rather on meat and bones than on
oatmeal and garbage? Can there be any doubt that
man, an omnivorous animal, must be in a great
measure amenable to dietetic rules and
principles? And if so, what can we expect from the
paste and rice messes of the Italians, from the
overdone meats, the all-pervading softness, and
thinness, and sweetness of their daily food?

An Italian takes, by way of breakfast, a cup
of pure black coffee in bed, or as soon as he is
out of bed; some have their déjeûner à la
fourchette towards noon; many content
themselves with a cup of stiff and thick chocolate,
washed down with a glass of cold water; and
many take not a morsel of food till late in the
evening—in Turin, generally not till six o'clock,
which is the hour of their monster dinner. No
one is so extravagant as to exceed his two
meals in the day. It is very clear that a
stomach exhausted by a twenty-four hours' fast
will not easily manage a tough beefsteak or a
rich plum-pudding. Hence the necessity for the
Italians to pamper their taste with platefuls of
minestra, maccaroni, risotto; anything that will
stifle rather than satisfy the cravings of hunger;
any substance that will cram and baffle the
stomach, and which yet, after the stupor and
torpor of half an hour's unnatural strain and
tension, will leave it emptier and hungrier than
before.

With all the money and thought that is
expended in Italy on mere eating—and your dinner
in Turin costs you more than in London—the
people, even of the better classes, are an ill-fed
race; and it is, under all circumstances, only a