to call Lombardy, including Istria, Italy; what was then the name of the southern countries, I know not; hence the Lombard kings call themselves _reges Italiae_, and this Italy is termed by Gregorius Turonensis _parva Italia_. We shall use the name Italy in the sense in which it is now generally done, excluding Savoy, which, like the French parts of Switzerland and Belgium, belongs to France. The country about the Adige, however, from Roveredo as far as Botzen, ought to be regarded as part of Italy. When you arrive there from Germany by way of Meran, you feel that you are quite in the south, the air and everything else reminds you of it; some of the people indeed speak German, but they are not Germans, and their countenances are ugly; the country, on the other hand, is very beautiful, and in the neighbourhood of Botzen it is like a Paradise. You feel that you are in the south and in Italy, whereas in Savoy you are in France, for it has none of the peculiarities of Italy. If you pay attention to everything, the physiognomy and the dialects, you will be astonished to find how clearly the different tribes of antiquity can still be distinguished. My friend Arndt first directed my attention to this. “When you go to Italy,” said he, “notice the difference of the tribes on the borders of Tuscany.” That was the boundary between the Etruscans and Ligurians. I was quite surprised still to find among the Tuscans the same fat, round faces, which are seen in ancient works of art. The Etruscans can still be distinguished from the Umbrians, and the latter again from the Cisalpine Gauls, at least in masses. In Lombardy you may, notwithstanding the strong mixture, still distinguish the dialects, and through them the parts which were inhabited by Gauls from those of the Veneti. It is a mistake to believe that the Italians are very unlike their ancestors; the actual difference arises from the strong admixture of Slavonians, and not from the immigrations, though the Goths were very numerous; but the Lombards were not; the former came with their women and children, and amounted, according to Procopius, to nearly a million of souls. The three islands which are now considered as parts of Italy, and in which Italian is spoken, do not belong to it, and must be treated of separately.