tem, soon forced itself on the heads of the establishment, and Newton's Principia has since been exclusively used. The author then gives a brief and interesting account of Newton's subsequent pursuits, after which, he forms an estimate of the philosophical character of that illustrious man. A section occupied with the details of the discoveries of Newton's successors, follows those which are appropriated to Newton himself, and amongst those whom Mr. Powell particularly selects for eulogy is Laplace, the justly celebrated astronomer of France. The remaining subjects treated by the author, are, Plane Astronomy, Optics, and General Physics.

ART. IV.-Lettre Sur Les Maremmes Toscanes. Par CHARLES DIDIER. Paris. Bertrand. 1834.

THE particulars which are here disclosed, of a large and well known district of Italy, cannot be said to be uninteresting in a country which sends so many of its children to that region in search of the health which their own inclement country is incapable of affording them. The account is written by an intelligent Frenchman, whose only object was to state the truth, and to enable his countrymen to appreciate the nature of the climate to which many of them proceed in the expectation of improving the vigour of their constitution.

The word Maremmes, by which the district is called, does not originate in that of marshes, but in the Italian word mare, the sea.

The Maremmes, in fact, constitute the whole of the extent of the coast of Tuscany, from the Arno to Fiorua, and also the whole of the coast on the Mediterranean belonging to the Roman States. The Maremmes, then, or, in English, the marshes, extend along the Tyrrhenian Sea, by a line of nearly one hundred leagues.

In common with the plains of Rome, these Maremmes are infested with the Mal'aria, throughout their whole extent, a source of disease which is supposed to consist of mephitic vapour generated by the peculiar constitution of the soil. It has been generally supposed, that these marshes were sterile lands, and many travellers have described them as such. But this, according to our author, is a mistake. It is true that the Marshes form a sort of desert for six months in the year; but still it is by no means the fact, that they are not carefully cultivated, and as to their asserted sterility, there is not a soil in Europe richer and more productive. In fact, the Marshes are remarkable for the extent of their cultivation, for, after the fashion of the Jews, the inhabitants are in the habit of leaving their lands fallow for several years. And this is the grand source of the errors into which casual visitors fall, for in the mere bird's-eye view which VOL. I. (1834) No. III.

most of them are able to take, they generally see just enough to authorise them in concluding, that the fallow-land which is presented to them in the prospect, is altogether an untilled or neglected waste. Hence these tourists run about Europe, all with the story in their mouths, that the Maremmes yields nothing in the shape of a useful production, and that, too, at the very moment when it absolutely gives half Italy its food. The system of ploughing in this district, is entirely effected by wild oxen, and the farms are considerable: the land is extremely fertile, and at the time of harvest, reapers flock in immense numbers from the mountains, so as almost to inundate the plains; the appearance of the men looks like the sudden operation of some spell or enchantment. One of the most remarkable features of this celebrated territory, is the suddenness with which every operation is effected. There is no slow, gradual transition from one state of things to another; all changes are accomplished, as it were, on the instant. Thus, that which was a fallow in the morning, becomes a cultivated field in the evening: to-day, we behold a field yellow with the ripe grain, tomorrow, the surface is changed into a dry fallow. The harvest tide of the Maremmes, is described in a highly interesting manner by Mr. Didier.

It was at the close of the month of June that the author, leaving at an early hour, one of those lowly inns, the only asylum in which the wearied pilgrims find rest in the Marshes, he sallied forth into the country, and had not proceeded a great way when he reached a spot where a vast number of harvest labourers were collected. He was struck exceedingly by the brilliant rays which proceeded from something that the meu carried in their hands. They seemed to be an army of soldiers, but with scythes and sickles, instead of weapons. He declares that the spectacle earried him back to the patriarchal days of Israel, and of the times of Ruth and the strong man of Bethlem but a near approach soon disenchanted his imagination. What particularly called forth his attention, was the general silence of the body of harvest labourers, instead of that jollity, that commixture of voices, the song, or chorus, which are, in almost all other countries, the accompaniments of the labours of the harvest. "How different," he exclaims, "is the case in Switzerland!" In fact, so melancholy, and so sad was the scene, that Mr. Didier fancied for a moment, that he was surveying a group of slaves in the service of some Appius or Lucullus, proceeding on the instigation of the lash to do the bidding of their master. The crowd might have amounted to nine hundred, women and men, and yet not a single voice, not a single breath, almost, was heard from this multitude, whilst engaged in their labours. The only sounds that could be distinguished were those of the sickles, as they were heard to cut the stems of the corn, The workmen were arranged in a line, and several Alguazils or overseers on horseback, and

with cudgel in hand, stimulated them to work. If some young girl, and there were many of them at work, but all faded and looking old, if any one of those persons was caught pausing for a moment, the voice of the overseer soon called her to her senses. Sometimes a general murmur would run through the whole body on these occasions, but though a threat from the overseer was enough in most instances, yet the cudgel was not always idle. Mr. Didier ascended a neighbouring hill, and in contemplating the prospect before him, thus characterizes it. "How solemn in its sadness is this scene! how mournful its stillness! two thousand arms moving in one uniform order, resembling in the harmony of their movements, some mighty machine. There was a pleasing melancholy, almost amounting to a fascination, which rivetted my eyes in the moving mass before me."

Whilst thus lost in meditation, Mr. Didier was roused by shouts from a distance. Turning round he beheld a fresh body of reapers coming on in a sort of irregular procession to the sound of the bag-pipe. This group had evidently been after concluding some labour, so joyously were they returning to their mountains. The Marshes in fact, do not contain many labourers, and the ear would rot on the stalk every year, if the mountaineers from Sabina, the Luccas, and the Abruzzi, did not come down to reap the harvest. It is therefore, to hired strangers that the people of the Marshes are under the necessity of giving up the care of their agriculture, the only part of the inhabitants who undertakes particular duties, being a small part of the herdsmen. In the same way we find, that the labourers at harvest time engaged in the farms of Sicily, are all from Calabria.

The body of labourers who presented themselves with such a merry aspect, and by which they were so favourably contrasted with the labourers at work, turned out to be Abruzzi, who were returning to their huts amid their native rocks. They went on in the pleasantest disorder possible, dancing and singing to the sound of bagpipes. The rustic cortege was headed by some shepherds dressed in skins, like their ancestors the Cimmerians. The sharp, shrill sound of music was heard at a considerable distance, and the procession was altogether such a spectacle, as was most gratifying to witness. When they came near a small chapel in the neighbourhood, they uncovered and bowed respectfully to a Madona in plaster. It was remarkable that these Abruzzi passed their brethren in the fields without any sort of recognition whatever, the labourers at work being observed to look, during the time, like school-boys frightened by the pedagogue. Mr. Didier, saw amongst some of the stragglers, the appearance of the effects of the summer fever the wan, and almost yellowish countenance, the deep and dull eye, told of the ravages of consumption, and proved that the poison of the Marshes was flowing in their veins, Mr Didier saw many of them obliged to sit down in a helpless

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state on the threshold of the chapel, and with wistful eyes looking after their companions, their brothers perchance, and sisters, who proceeded on their route, careless and jocund. "Poor souls!" says the author, " Impelled to descend from their rocks, to seek bread for themselves and families in the Marshes, where they find only fever and death-I pity them from my heart! So fertile in mortality do the Marshes appear to be, and at the same time so fertile in useful productions, that it is a common saying," that in the Marshes, one may get rich in a year and die in six months." The labourers who were working, paid no attention to their dying companions; their notion is, that these excursions are a sort of lottery, in which one draws a white, another a black lot: those who escape evil, go home singing and dancing, the others halt on the roads and die there. Such a thing as this, is calculated to corrupt the heart; depravity is the inevitable consequence in such a state of misery, the instinct of self-preservation is urged to its maximum as it were, every individual being too hard set on his own account, to afford any sympathy with others in a similar predicament. The lives of these labourers are perfect misery. Born amongst the rocks of the Abruzzi, they vainly strive to extort from the barren surface, a few blades of corn, and even when they do, half the produce is robbed in taxes. They have no resource therefore, but emigration. At certain fixed periods, they pour down in clouds upon the Marshes, facing fever and even death undauntedly for a few crowns, which, after all, does not come back to the family.

"I have passed through," writes Mr. Didier," several of the villages of the Abruzzi during the emigration season; there is nothing under heaven to be compared to the state of desolation in which they appear. Perched most commonly on the point of a rock like an eagle's nest, and driven about, like those by every wind, you would take them for some accursed spot over which a plague had swept. If, however, there be not the plague, there certainly is famine amongst them. The only inhabitants which we found in these huts, were old men on the bed of death, and infants in the cradle; the sight of a man does not animate these feeble creatures, nor does the arm of a man defend them. Ploughs turned up, are seen scattered in the streets, which are themselves no more than filthy sewers, and here are seen crawling, children and pigs in one indiscriminate community. The females are seen spinning at their doors, and singing with a most lugubrious voice, airs of a still more melancholy character. The dying old men generally seek one ray of the light of the sun before they leave the world; the pastor is generally some aged priest just as poor as themselves: he can offer no other consolation to the afflicted, than that of the next world. Some deprived of their sons, others of their husbands, who have gone to look for bread at the hazard of their lives, are in constant expectation

of their return; these women eagerly count the days and hours of absence, they are constantly praying to the Madona, and when the time comes for the return of the men from the Marshes, then the old people in the houses are abandoned, the women scale the rocks to descry them scrambling up the winding paths, carrying their babes in their arms. When the women find that the fever have made them either widows or childless mothers, they become inconsolable, and it almost always happens that the pleasure of the return of the reapers is thus neutralised."

Mr. Didier goes on to say, that this general description applies, not only to the inhabitants of the Abruzzi, but to Sabina, and, indeed, to all those districts of the Appenines, from which the strong part of the population descend to the distant plains. This state of things is well known, he declares, to the Italian princes, and be says even, that they hold the clue to them, charging them with brutality in not endeavouring to remedy such calamities. He condemns the church, also, for its indifference, and all that it does for the poor labourers is to bury them when they die. A confraternity of monks is established at Rome for this purpose; its chapel is on the banks of the Tiber, behind the magnificent palace Farnese, and is called by the lugubrious name of the "Death Company!" These monks are in the habit of wandering in the solitudes of the Appenines to take up the bodies which they find, and bringing them in black bags, bury them in consecrated ground. More than one pilgrim from a remote part of the world, who had come to kiss the toe of St. Peter, has met with the fate of the mountaineers, and having died within sight of the capital, has been gathered up by the fathers. It is a frightful consideration to think, that not only is it from poisonous air that death is produced; it also results from famine, and that, too, not merely in the campagna itself, but in the very capital of Christendom.

To return, however, to the Abruzzi, whom Mr. Didier left labouring in the field. He declares, that though the party of labourers who returned to their homes, left many dead or dying on the roads, still the labourers who remained at work in the Marshes, proceeded with their task without taken notice of their acquaintances. The heat at this time was suffocating, and even the grasshoppers gave proof of its influence. But the reapers still went on. It was a scene, observes the author, that reminded him of the patriarchal scenes of the Old Testament; there was Boaz, and the pretty gleaner, Ruth, in all the grace of modest beauty; but workers and overseer's, as they were, all were hired, all were strangers and no masters eye surveyed the proceedings. Mr. Didier, indeed, says, that in the memory of man there is no instance of a Roman holder of land to any extent, who has ever condescended to put a foot upon his lands. The state of the case is this. A prince, suppose, or duke, is in possession of ten,