The vegetables here are of immense growth. The fennel root (and there is no better test of your whereabouts in Italy) is nearly twice as large as at Naples, and weighs, accordingly, nearly double. The cauliflowers are quite colossal; and they have a blue cabbage so big that your arms will scarcely embrace it. We question, however, whether this hypertrophy of fruit or vegetables improves their flavour; give us _English vegetables_--ay, and _English fruit_. Though Smyrna's _fig_ is eaten throughout Europe, and Roman _brocoli_ be without a rival; though the _cherry_ and the Japan _medlar_ flourish only at Palermo, and the _cactus_ of Catania can be eaten nowhere else; what country town in England is not better off on the whole, if quality alone be considered? But we have one terrible drawback; for _whom_ are these fruits of the earth produced? Our _prices_ are enormous, and our supply scanty; could we _forget this_, and the artichoke, the asparagus, the peas and beans of London and Paris, are rarely elsewhere so fine. To our palates the _gooseberry_ and the _black currant_ are a sufficient indemnity to Britain for the _grape_, merely regarded as a fruit to _eat. Pine-apples_, those "illustrious foreigners," are so successfully _petted_ at home, that they will scarcely condescend now to flourish out of England. _Nectarines_ refuse to ripen, and _apricots_ to have any taste elsewhere. Our _pears_ and _apples_ are better, and of more various excellence, than any in the world. And we really prefer our very figs, grown on a fine _prebendal_ wall in the close of _Winchester_, or under _Pococke's_ window in a canon's garden at _chilly Oxford_. Thus has the kitchen-garden refreshed our patriotism, and made us half ashamed of our long forgetfulness of home. But there are good things abroad too for poor men; the rich may live any where. An enormous salad, crisp, cold, white, and of delicious flavour, for a halfpenny; olive oil, for fourpence a pound, to dress it with; and wine for fourpence a gallon to make it disagree with you;[15] fuel for almost nothing, and bread for little, are not small advantages to frugal housekeepers; but, when dispensed by a despotic government, where one must read those revolting words _motu proprio_ at the head of every edict, let us go back to our carrots and potatoes, our Peels and our income-tax, our fogs and our frost. The country mouse came to a right conclusion, and did not like the fragments of the feast with the cat in the cupboard-- Give me again my hollow tree, My crust of bread, and liberty." [Footnote 15: ----_Lactuca_ innatat acri Post vinum stomacho.--HOR.]