Such is the general state of health of the inhabitants of many parts of the world; but it is chiefly in some parts of “fair Italy,” whose celebrated blue skies invite, whose luxuriant vegetation delights, whose gay and extensive prospects ravish, and whose classic associations charm the ecstatic spectator,—where humanity acquires that degenerate character, and that hideous aspect, which it assumes as if on purpose to mark the contrast between the gay revelry of vegetation, and the revolting degeneracy of mortality. The resident in Italy can scarcely escape entirely the action of malaria; if he survive or escape the more immediate and more violent effects, those just described are, in the course of time, almost sure to manifest themselves. Many of our countrymen make their residence in Italy, invited by its sky, its sun, its fertility, its ancient monuments, and stirring associations, and they not unfrequently prolong their stay so much as to imbibe the seeds of general bad health, which, though it may not develope itself at the time, will manifest itself at some future day. The malaria of Italy, like that of some other countries, sometimes acts slowly, and does not produce its effects, until the sufferer is again resident in his native country. Assailed with general decay, he is at a loss to know its cause, happening, too, at a time, when he had expected that his general health would have been more than ever established by his residence in a warmer climate, and under a clearer sky. It is a remarkable feature in the general bad health thus produced, that it is marked with periodical alternations of activity and repose, or with aggravations and remissions. CRETINISM. Cretinism, by which is meant a degenerate state of body, and an imbecile state of mind, which occurs for the most part in the valleys of Switzerland, and among the hollows of the Alps and the Pyrenees, and that is in a great measure the product of vitiated air, emanating from the swampy valleys and basins, which contain animal and vegetable materials, powerfully acted upon by the direct and reflected rays of a burning sun. From the mountains there pour many streams into the valleys or troughs beneath, and, as the water is seldom completely carried off, it there forms an excellent or very favourable nidus for the putrefaction of animal and vegetable remains. It is said, by those who have attentively observed the miserable population in these regions, that they form the most humiliating picture of humanity. The body presents the most loathsome condition, and the mind is removed only a step from idiocy itself. The unwholesome tendency of these terrestrial vapours is materially increased by the almost incredible filth in which the inhabitants keep their persons, clothes, houses, and streets, the effluvia of which alone are almost intolerable and most offensive.