wonder that they should preserve as much
physical activity as they still exhibit. "Let us go
and set four," or even only "two steps," is the
expression with which young heroes invite each
other to join in a constitutional walk. At Turin
the phrase is, "Let us go as far as the Po;" the
promenade extends about half a mile in length.
Then for three months in summer the sun is too
hot, for three months in winter the air is too
keen, to be braved otherwise than under the
shelter of the colonnades; under the colonnades,
therefore, they go, shuffling and shambling, and
falling to pieces. No town in the world can
boast such glorious public walks; fine avenues
along the Po; a sweet shady dyke between the
river and the hill-range, emphatically called the
Collina; with an Alpine panorama which
beggars Berne or Neufchâtel. But all these are left
for the sole enjoyment of the hardy foreigner.
An English lady who rambles about the hills till
the sedentary natives think her crazy, astonishes
the fine Turin ladies as she lays before them
huge bunches of flowers which they admire as
hothouse exotics, and which she is at great pains
to assure them she has been gathering wild
along the hedges of their own villas on the
Collina!

The more, in short, you know the customs of
these people, the stronger grows upon you the
conviction that they are a worn-out people,
either suffering from the habitual fast to which
they doom themselves from morning to night, or
else reeling under the weight of their one daily
meal, which they have no stomach to digest
and no legs to carry. The very horses
bear evidence of the extent to which they
suffer under the stuffing and starving system to
which their owners voluntarily subject
themselves. They are surfeited with hay all day long,
and denied more than one scanty feed of corn.
The very smartest steeds prancing under the
dapper officers of the Sardinian army, or the
sleekest geldings drawing the few carriages of
the Piedmontese nobility, have all rather the
look than the substance of efficient cattle. An
hour's ride or drive round the Piazza d'Armi is
promenade enough for man and beast, and the
latter could not, in all probability, stand much
more. Away from Turin, in out-of-the-way
country towns, there is no out-door exercise of
any kind whatever. Horses there are, a few, but
no saddles. Those who feed cattle think they can
also afford conveyances; and as no man who can
ride likes to walk, so no man who can drive is
willing to ride. Throughout Lombardy, and even
in Piedmont, if you except the army, whoever
owns a padovanella, carrettella, or any other trap,
prefers lolling on the box to all the pleasures of
equestrianism. The Italians may be made, but
they are not born, riders. They have a stupid old
saying, to the effect that a riding man's neck is
always in danger.

Not long ago, the whole population of Piedmont
were startled by the announcement,
grounded on accurate statistical inquiries, that
the mortality of Turin as far exceeded that of
Paris, as this latter surpasses that of London.
It was anything but a pleasant revelation for
the Sardinian capital—a town which,
notwithstanding the severity of its climate, and with all
allowance made for ill-swept streets, and even
more outrageously dirty and filthy staircases, for
imperfect sewerage and abominable smells of
every description, ought to be one of the
healthiest spots in the world, by reason of its
site, and on account of its regular modern
structure, of its wide, straight thoroughfares at right
angles open to all winds, and of the three rivers
(the Po, the Dora, and the Stura) meeting close
under its walls, and bringing to it the fresh
mountain air, at the same time that they lay it under
water at pleasure, so as to cleanse it of all
impurities.

Many and various were, of course, the reasons
brought forward to account for the mournful
phenomenon; but it seemed to strike no one
that all the habits of the people were calculated
to breed disease and shorten life. Nothing is
more common, even in this high Piedmontese
region, than to find men in perfect health, who
yet may be termed old at five-and-thirty or forty
years of age.

The great enemy of the Italians, and of all
Southern nations sunken in indolence, is fat.
Melancholy is the besetting vice of the
Italian temperament; that vice, aggravated by
injudicious, unwholesome diet, by sedentary
habits, and by an excess of sensuality which is
vainly ascribed to the enervating effects of the
climate, leads not to good, firm, brawny
stoutness, as good living does in the North, but to
flabby and torpid obesity. The naturally elegant
and symmetrical forms which generally
characterise the population of all classes in the
peninsula (though perhaps not so in Piedmont), are
apt to grow out of shape and proportion ere
the men attain their meridian of life. There
are not a few gentlemen below the middle age in
Turin actually unable to waddle from the House
of Deputies to the railway station without
blowing like so many steam-engines. Nothing
can equal the laxity of the pores of their skin.
Some of them resemble Don Mariano, the
maccaroni-eating priest of Sorrento, who never
ventured out of doors, summer or winter, without
the precaution of a shirt under his arm, well
knowing that he would hardly go a hundred
yards' distance, when, without a change of linen,
he would be sure of catching his death of cold.
Bilious and phlegmatic as many of the Italians
are by nature or habit, they fancy they are
perpetually labouring under the inconvenience of a
sanguine temperament, and are always in bodily
fear of a colpo di sangue, or blood-stroke,
apprehending no ills except such as arise from
excess of blood. They are humoured in these
notions by their physicians, who are for ever
bleeding, cupping, and applying leeches to them;
and, for every pound of good blood that thus
runs waste, cold stagnant lymph, such as may be
secreted from maccaroni, over-boiled beef and
cauliflowers, is gradually substituted.

From the food of the body it is only natural
to turn attention to the food of the mind; and, of