At all events, if any one of the Princes of Rome will lead, help enough will follow to set the work on foot, and show the peasants, in some narrow district, what can be done. Take any arid piece of Apennine towards the sources of the Tiber; let the drainage be carried along the hill-sides away from the existing water-courses; let cisterns, as of old in Palestine, and larger reservoirs, such as we now can build, be established at every point convenient for arrest of the streams; let channels of regulated flow be established from these over the tracts that are driest in summer; let ramparts be carried, not along the river banks, but round the heads of the ravines, throwing the water aside into lateral canals; then terrace and support the looser soil on all the steeper slopes; and the entire mountain side may be made one garden of orange and vine and olive beneath; and a wide blossoming orchard above; and a green highest pasture for cattle, and flowers for bees--up to the edge of the snows of spring. I am, Sir, your faithful servant, JOHN RUSKIN. OXFORD, _Feb._ 3. FOOTNOTES: [109] See the date of the letter on a landslip near Giagnano (vol. i. p. 302). [From "The Pall Mall Gazette," December 28, 1871.] _THE STREETS OF LONDON._ _To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."_ SIR: I have been every day on the point of writing to you since your notice, on the 18th,[110] of the dirty state of the London streets, to ask whether any of your readers would care to know how such matters are managed in my neighborhood. I was obliged, a few years ago, for the benefit of my health, to take a small house in one of the country towns of Utopia; and though I was at first disappointed in the climate, which indeed is no better than our own (except that there is no foul marsh air), I found my cheerfulness and ability for work greatly increased by the mere power of getting exercise pleasantly close to my door, even in the worst of the winter, when, though I have a little garden at the back of my house, I dislike going into it, because the things look all so dead; and find my walk on the whole pleasanter in the streets, these being always perfectly clean, and the wood-carving of the houses prettier than much of our indoor furniture. But it was about the streets I wanted to tell you. The Utopians have the oddest way of carrying out things, when once they begin, as far as they can go; and it occurred to them one dirty December long since, when they, like us, had only crossing-sweepers, that they might just as well sweep the whole of the street as the crossings of it, so that they might cross anywhere. Of course that meant more work for the sweepers; but the Utopians have always hands enough for whatever work is to be done in the open air;--they appointed a due number of brooms-men to every quarter of the town; and since then, at any time of the year, it is in