one perhaps ten miles away, the other twelve; but when I asked the railway officials which was Troja and which Giardinetto, they began to dispute the matter, and had not settled the question when time was up, and the train went on.

Catanzaro is not so extreme a case, and lies so high on the top of a rock, that a steep ascent from any main line is necessary. It is a large town, also with decent inns, but too large and fashionable for picturesqueness of costume. The people who go to chapel on Sundays are aping the vulgar dress of Europe, while in the villages but a few miles away, such as Tiriolo or San Geminiano, the women and girls are more splendidly attired on feast days than I ever saw them anywhere. Not even an Easter Day at Monte Cassino, and that is wonderful enough, can compare with it. So that the traveller who prefers unspoiled Nature, in man and mountain, to a comfortable inn, will abandon Catanzaro for the higher villages, and hasten to the splendid chestnut, oak, and fir forests of the Sila, with its tumbling rivers, its beautiful birds, and its primitive and interesting peasantry.

It remains to give some further details as to the manner of living and the cost. For it is needless to prescribe routes in a district not so large that its limits cannot be reached at any time in two days, and yet so large and unexplored that weeks might be spent fishing, botanizing, admiring, inquiring from village to village. I have only indicated the modes of approach, and the best centres of radiation. As to the rudeness of living, it has certainly been exaggerated. That excellent traveller, the late François Lenormant, who wandered through many parts of Calabria, not however including the Sila, was said to have ruined his weakened constitution and shortened his life by the hardships of Southern Italy.

I cannot believe anything of the kind, though I sympathize with his eloquent complaint, especially at having hare served with chocolate sauce.* But he went in late summer, when the evils of rude countries are at their height. In spring I can testify that we found no insects troublesome, that though the floors were dirty the bedclothes were always perfectly clean, and that at the inns used as restaurants by the officers stationed in each village, we were always able to find respectable food-the spring vegetables, such as salad, being often very fine indeed. Any one who can tolerate travelling in Greece need not fear Calabria. The bills charged us for this kind of living were 12 or 13 francs per day for both of us, including everything. If the cost of ponies, including one baggage animal, be included, 28 francs per day will represent the cost for two people when they are moving. While staying at any village 7 francs each

In his first vol. on "Apulia" (pp. 311 seq.), he gives a curious list of the dreadful dishes which were served to him by way of delicacies, in Apulia, Lucania, and Calabria.

would be ample, and with introductions, it would cost far less. This is considerably cheaper than even the most experienced traveller can manage Greek expeditions-I will not speak of dragomen at 50 francs per day!

As regards comparison of scenery, there is no part of Italy so like Greece as this further Calabria. From Tiriolo looking south, the mountains of Sicily are visible, all the Lipari islands, and the great mass of Aspromonte, which is the highest point of the next and extremest joint of the toe of Italy. For as the peninsula narrows and descends north of the Sila into a ridge easy of passage, so south of the Sila there is another narrowing, but this is much nearer the strait, so that as a land-route it was never so valuable. The country from Catanzaro to Reggio is no doubt full of beauties of its own, as any one can see from Mr. Lear's book, but this is matter for another expedition.* Even from the coast railroad one numbers of villages perched on the mountains away from the sea, which was long so infested with lawless pirates. But these heights from Gerace to Reggio never possessed the vast forests, because they had not the extent and seclusion of the Sila, and except Aspromonte itself, they look barren and bare.

can see

The Italian Government are making solid and steady progress in the incorporation of this outlying district into the great unity of the peninsula. Not only are there fine military roads now traversing the Sila district-the first known there since the days of the Roman Empire, but a railway along the west coast to Reggio is in progress, and the enlistment of all the youth in the Italian army is teaching the mountaineers something of geography, and of the relations of Calabria to the rest of Italy. If we may trust the experiences of Napoleon's campaign in Russia, they are the hardiest men in the peninsula, for it is well known that of all the Italians who were carried off to that frightful disaster, only some Neapolitans found their way home-a matter of wonder to those who considered the climate of Naples. But of course the Neapolitans were merely inhabitants of the kingdom, not of the city of Naples, and these Calabrians are used not only to great fatigues, but to deep snow and ice in their Alps, so that the wonder, like most wonders, can be explained quite naturally. The dress of the men is curiously sombre; many wear conical black felt hats, black gaiters, and almost all thick black cloaks, when the evening comes on; and in concert with this, there is a certain gloom

* Since this was written Lenormant's posthumous volume on the west side of this coast, about the Gulf of S. Eufemia, has appeared. He has carefully described Nicastro, Il Pizzo, Monteleone, and Mileto, where a great Norman court, that of Roger of Sicily, occupied the ground once held by the Greek towns of Terina, Temesa, and Hipponium. But alas! both Greek and Norman remains have been completely destroyed by the terrible earthquakes which have torn the country, as no other part of Europe has been ever torn, in pieces. The one relic of the Normans is the cider made from the apples grown on the mountains above Mileto.

and solemnity in their manner, which M. Lenormant compared to the traditional gloom of the Spaniard, and which may also be paralleled in the bloody and revolting character of the religious pictures and images among both peoples. But in friendliness, in honesty and in hospitality, they will compare favourably with the people in any part of Italy; to most of their compatriots they are indeed very superior. They seem a people who live a hard and laborious life. With the exception of a stray riding traveller, always with a gun swinging on his back, you meet no peasants except those in rows, I had almost said in droves, hoeing or digging fields under the eye of an overseer on horseback; or those urging on with shrill voice lean bullocks in the cart or the plough; or those curious solitary lads, whose special occupation it is to attain a sort of mental nirvana, sitting by their flocks of sheep and goats. These picturesque animals find pasture from shrubs, when the grass is eaten away or burnt up by the sun, and the tinkle of their bells in the hot midday air has a faint and sleepy rhythm. It is but rarely that the shepherd rouses himself from his silent apathy even to play on a rude pipe, like the Lacon or Comatas of Theocritus. Once, by the way, at Reggio, I found a boy playing two flageolets together, without any joint mouthpiece, and making very pretty music in two parts. I bought his flutes, or rather, a spare pair which he had with him, for a franc, and found them "male and female," as the Romans would say-one considerably deeper in range than the other. This served him to play a

simple accompaniment to his air.

But these picturesque aspects cannot hide from the traveller the care worn and oppressed look of the peasantry all through Apulia and Calabria-many pale from fever, but far more evidently weakened by want of proper diet, and lowered in spirits by the hopelessness of their situation. The metayer, or joint proprietary, system of Northern Italy, is unknown throughout those parts of the old kingdom of Naples. As the peasants do not live in scattered cottages, owing to former insecurity, they are gathered into the widely separated towns, from which they descend into the valleys to work all day for a franc or less, to climb up again every night in weariness to their homes, or else great sheds or shed-like houses have been built for them by the proprietor, when the distance from a town is very great, where they lie huddled together every night in horrible squalor, to be wakened up and driven to the fields by a factor or inspector, not very different from the slave-driver in the Southern United States of former days. He often farms for a fixed rent the whole property of the absentee landlord, who wishes to enjoy an idle and often licentious life at Naples, and expends neither money nor care on his property. So the factor becomes a land shark of the worst description, and tries to squeeze out of his bargain all the profit he can by the sweat of the

peasants' brow. There seem to be no rights for the wretched labourer. His house, if he has one, even in one of the towns, is the property of his landlord, and he can be ejected at a moment's notice. If he displeases the factor, whose demands often violate what sentiments he still has of purity and domestic affection, he is cast upon the world homeless and hopeless, with no redress left him but murder, and no support but the levying of black mail in the mountains. Thus the brigandage, for which Calabria was so notorious, was too often the outcome of shocking tyranny and injustice.

Now that good military roads and the Carabinieri have put down the possibility of living by plunder, the safety valve is emigration, which is going on much as it has done in Ireland. Whole families of poor people leave their homes for Naples, where they embark for South America, generally the La Plata country. This climate naturally suits the Italian better than that of the Northern Union. I could not learn what success they have there, but fancy they told me of some who had returned wealthy, and bought villas near the great towns, such as Naples or Reggio. Lenormant, who spent several seasons in these provinces, has an eloquent digression in his first volume on "La Grande Grèce" (pp. 172–85), about the agrarian question. He compares the people to Egyptian fellahs, and to Irish tenants-having, of course, before his eyes the traditional picture of the Irish tenant of the last century. But in the matter of absenteeism and of emigration, there are, indeed, striking resemblances; and he shows the danger there is of socialism of the wildest form spreading in the rural population of Southern Italy. This is indeed the Italia Irredenta, to which patriot politicians should turn their attention. Here, indeed, there is room for a Land Act, which will not merely give rewards for idleness and agitation, but will save splendid provinces from desolation, rescue a fine people from destruction, and exhibit to the world publicly the odious selfishness and immorality with which an absentee aristocracy can systematically violate all the dictates of humanity. There have been such cases in other countries. In Ireland there were some two or three so notorious as perhaps to produce Land Reforms in recent years. In the kingdom of Naples it seems not easy to find a single landlord who takes a proper interest in his dependents. This, at least, is the impression produced on visitors by what they see and hear. If it is unjust to some exceptional men, they will afford another example of the good and worthy being discredited by profligate neighbours.

But I have strayed into politics, when I had only intended to describe a new field for harmless travel.

J. P. MAHAFFY.

WREN'S WORK AND ITS LESSONS.

THE

HE beauty that has been thought beautiful for two hundred years is worth examining; for in matters of art time is the final judge. Fashions come and go; to have outlived many fashions, yet always to have been thought admirable, is perhaps the highest distinction that human work can attain. This distinction Wren's work, or some of it, has undoubtedly gained; if we can find out how, we shall have taken one step, not towards copying, but towards equalling, or perhaps even excelling, it.

It is quite true that, both in England and out of it, much architecture remains which has stood the test of time longer than Wren's. But his work has this great interest for us-that it was done within the modern period. It was produced under conditions like our own, and not in that "once upon a time" about which all assertions may be risked, and in which nothing, it appears, was impossible. Hapless art-prophets, dragged through rough places at the chariot-wheels of a theory, mutter ceaseless maledictions against the modern world. Our only chance, it seems, is to get back to the age of miracles, when every workman, they assure us, did as he listed, and when the fortuitous concurrence of all the bits of work produced such things as Lincoln or Salisbury Cathedral. Wren, like ourselves, had not the advantage of living in those remarkable times. He had to plan his churches himself, and not to see them slowly evolved by undesigned coincidences of doors and windows and roofs. His drawings were worked from, and his buildings built by, no society of preternaturally-gifted artists, but by such bricklayers and masons and carpenters as we still see around us. "I am as you are, so are they; all mortal"Wren might have said to us. And yet, with no living style to help him, with nobody, except an occasional carver or a smith, to desigu