growing in the greatest profusion, which the Neapolitans were
regularly in the habit of importing from other countries, as no
one suspected their existence within their own kingdom. Hence
arises the romantic character of Italian scenery: the constant
combination of a mountain outline and all the wild features of
a mountain country, with the rich vegetation of a southern
climate in the valleys. Hence too the rudeness, the pastoral
simplicity, and the occasional robber habits, to be found in
the population; so that to this day you may travel in many
places for miles together in the plains and valleys without
passing through a single town or village; for the towns still
cluster on the mountain sides, the houses nestling together on
some scanty ledge, with cliffs rising above them and sinking
down abruptly below them, the very 'congesta manu præruptis
oppida saxis' of Virgil's description, which he even then
called 'antique walls,' because they had been the strongholds
of the primæval inhabitants of the country, and which are still
inhabited after a lapse of so many centuries, nothing of the
stir and movement of other parts of Europe having penetrated
into these lonely valleys, and tempted the people to quit their
mountain fastnesses for a more accessible dwelling in the
plain.

"I have been led on further than I intended, but I wished to
give an example of what I meant by a real and lively knowledge
of geography, which brings the whole character of a country
before our eyes, and enables us to understand its influence
upon the social and political condition of its inhabitants. And
this knowledge, as I said before, is very important to enable
us to follow clearly the external revolutions of different