wall, miles upon miles of it, crowned with a complicated apparatus of
alarm-bells and patrolled night and day by a horde of _doganieri_ armed
to the teeth--lest some peasant should throw a bundle of onions into the
sacred precincts of the town without paying the duty of half a farthing?
No nation with any sense of humour would endure this sort of thing.
Every one resents the airs of this army of official loafers who infest
the land, and would be far better employed themselves in planting onions
upon the many miles of Italy which now lie fallow; the results of the
system have been shown to be inadequate, "but," as my friend the Roman
deputy once asked me, "if we dismiss these fellows from their job, how
are we to employ them?"

"Nothing is simpler," I replied. "Enrol them into the Town Council of
Naples. It already contains more _employes_ than all the government
offices of London put together; a few more will surely make no difference?"

"By Bacchus," he cried, "you foreigners have ideas! We could dispose of
ten or fifteen thousand of them, at least, in the way you suggest. I'll
make a note of that, for our next session."

And so he did.

But the _Municipio_ of Naples, though extensive, is a purely local
charity, and I question whether its inmates will hear of any one save
their own cousins and brothers-in-law figuring as colleagues in office.

Every attempt at innovation in agriculture, as in industry, is forthwith
discouraged by new and subtle impositions, which lie in wait for the
enterprising Italian and punish him for his ideas. There is, of course,
a prohibitive duty on every article or implement manufactured abroad;