“The world,” says the _Pall Mall Gazette_ in its recent review of Alfred Von Reaumont’s Work, _Geschichte der Stadt Rom_,[144] “may be divided into those who have been to Rome, and those who wish to go there, with more or less of looming hope that the wish may be gratified.” For the wishful and the hopeful there are facilities that did not exist even twelve months ago. The “Roman Railways” Company is the second, both in length and importance on Italian soil, as it consists of 1,024 miles “_en exploitation_,” and by it, not only Rome, but Naples may be approached from the north, either _viâ_ Florence or _viâ_ Ancona, and there is a net-work of lines running farther south than Naples, which will ultimately join at the Sole of the Boot, with the Calabro-Sicilian Railways. Summed up, the railway mileage of the whole Italian Peninsula now open for traffic is 3,040 miles. There will be further openings of them, to the extent of about 250 miles before the end of 1868; but as regards lines projected, or to which even the words “_en construction_” may be applied, we must wait for their realisation until the whole system of Italian finance and of Italian credit has been put upon a more solid basis than that upon which it is at present founded. But thanks to railways as they now exist towards and in Italy, the traveller, bent on tip-top speed, can leave London on any morning of the week, and even now, before the opening of the Mont Cenis Railway is accomplished, he can reach Turin before the chimes of the innumerable, and not always correctly-going public clocks in that city have struck twelve the following night. Of these clocks it is said that a person knowing them well, may start on a perambulation through the city as the first commences striking twelve and complete a circuit in which he shall never be out of public clock hearing, just as that from which he started is striking one. “When the Mont Cenis Railway is opened, the traveller in search of haste can reach Turin in time to start that night for Florence, and arrive there at eight o’clock the following morning—forty-eight hours from London to Florence—What distance? 1,122 miles. Resting in the city for thirteen hours, he can proceed at 9.10 p.m. to Rome, the distance of which from Florence, 233 miles, he can accomplish in nine hours and twenty minutes, which includes Frontier Visa, both of luggage and of passport. If he be determined not to tarry at the Eternal City more than four hours, he can proceed on his way for Naples, 163 miles farther, and be there 21 hours after he has left Florence, and (including his 13 hours pause there) 44 after he has left Turin, 70 after he has left Paris, 83 after he has left London; from which Naples is distant by railway measurement exactly 1,518 miles.