graven images throughout the length and
breadth of the land.

Among the most horrible of the
superstitions of the peasantry, is the belief in the
advocacy of little children—babies, who
die as soon as they are baptised, or as soon
after baptism as is consistent with a belief
in their entire innocence and purity.
Children who die young are called
"advocates," or avvocati, because they are said to
go to heaven without passing into purgatory,
and plead for their parents and
relations at the right hand of God. Many old
women (chiefly grandmothers), and not a
few fathers and mothers, have been
convicted of compassing the deaths of children,
not wickedly or maliciously, but in a pious,
God-fearing sort of way, in order to have
"friends in heaven " when their time
comes. Do not suppose that they murder
the children. Nothing of the sort. They
simply let them alone and keep the doctor
at a distance. If they are ill they say the
hand of God is upon them. If friends
interpose, and insist on something being
done, they mutter a Latin prayer, and
resign themselves to what they are pleased
to call the "wishes of the Almighty." I
have known cases where mothers have
prayed that their innocent little children
might die during illness, and cried bitterly
when the coffin was being carried out of
doors. But such cases are not frequent.

The peasantry of Lombardy and
Venetia are more prosperous than those of
Central Italy. At any rate, they eat and
drink more copiously, and are able to afford
themselves greater luxuries. They earn
more, and they spend more than their
southern brothers, and their food is not
always coarse and unpalatable. Thus, in
the central districts, among the hills of
Tuscany, Lucca, and Modena, the contadini
eat nothing but necce and polenta, which
are the Italian names for chestnut bread
and chestnut porridge. A little salt, a
great deal of water, and a few handfuls of
chestnut flour thrown into a large caldron
(suspended from the inside of the chimney
by a chain with a hook to it), form the
ingredients of their morning meal. The
same mixture, cooked in a different way—
baked between two bricks, or rolled up
(and boiled) in a towel, like a plum-
pudding—serves for a dinner, and provides (in
the shape of leavings) for a supper later in
the day. The peasantry of the Tuscan
Alps rarely, if ever, eat meat, except on
Sundays and the holidays of the Church.
Eggs and milk are luxuries, because the
poor like to sell them to the rich, and a loaf
is considered quite a treat by the children
of the peasantry; nay, it is one about which
many hard-working people know nothing at
all except by hearsay. This state of things
would be simply intolerable to the peasantry
of the North of Italy. The northern
contadino is accustomed to butcher's meat on
six days in the week. On Friday, as in
duty bound, he fasts; that is to say, he
eats fish, and as much miscellaneous food
as he likes, taking Friday's allowance of
meat on Sundays between mass and
vespers. The breakfast of the Lombard
peasantry consists of porridge made of Indian
corn, baker's bread, with cheese or butter,
and other simple viands, which, in some
cases, are accompanied by wine (home
made, or bought from some neighbouring
farm), to enable them to endure the fatigues
of the field. The air is keener than in the
South, and the men and women of
Lombardy and Venetia, being hardier and
more industrious than the Italians of a
softer clime, require more food to keep
them alive.

In certain parts of Italy, principally in
the midland provinces, the young men of
the peasant classes "emigrate" for a few
weeks or months in the beginning of
winter, and repair to Corsica and Sardinia,
and certain marsh lands on the Italian
coast of the Mediterranean called Maremme,
where there is work to be done in the shape
of draining fields, cutting down trees,
making and transporting charcoal in the
forest lands, and mayhap building bridges
and roads. These "emigrants"—if they
can be called by such a name—generally
take their departure in the month of
November, after the gathering of the chestnuts.
The women and old men, and the well-to-do
young men of the peasant classes, stay at
home to superintend the smoking of the
autumn fruit—the chestnuts being placed in
a kind of loft, with holes in the floor, above
the metato, or kitchen fire, which has no
chimney or outlet of any kind except the
window and door—and a kind of lull takes
place in the active life of the peasants.
The old women take to their distaffs; the
younger women sew and knit, or resume
their studies in embroidery and straw
plaiting; while the young men aforesaid
make a pretence of looking after the
fields and forests, where a stray nymph or
two is generally to be met with drying
clothes, or picking up sticks for the kitchen
fire. Winter is a season of comparative
security for these young women, who in