which formerly conducted many a mountain stream into old Rome. There is everything that can mingle purity with pleasure, and promise perfect happiness: but if you ask why this delicious spot is not inhabited, you will be told, that the _cattiva aria_, or bad air, prevents its being occupied in summer. This enemy, each year, besieges Rome more and more closely--its most charming abodes are deserted perforce. Doubtless the want of trees is one cause; and therefore did the Romans dedicate their woods to goddesses, that they might be respected by the people: yet have numberless forests been felled in our own times. What can now be so sanctified that avarice will forbear its devastation? This _malaria_ is the scourge of Rome, and often threatens its whole population; yet, perhaps, it adds to the effect produced by the lovely gardens to be found within the boundaries. Its malignant power is betrayed by no external sign: you respire an air that seems pure; the earth is fertile; a delicious freshness atones in the evening for the heat of the day; and all this is death! "I love such invisible danger," said Oswald, "veiled as it is in delight. If death, as I believe, be but a call to happier life, why should not the perfume of flowers, the shade of fine trees, and the breath of eve be charged to remind us of our fate? Of course, government ought, in every way, to watch over human life; but nature has secrets which imagination only can penetrate; and I easily conceive that neither natives nor foreigners find anything to disgust them in the perils which belong to the sweetest seasons of the year." BOOK VI. ON ITALIAN CHARACTER AND MANNERS. CHAPTER I.