here and there with flitches of bacon; a scant fire of fagots is struggling into blaze upon an open hearth; and on a low table bare of either cloth or cleanliness, there waits him his supper of _polenta_, which is nothing more or less than our plain boiled Indian-pudding. Add to this a red-eyed dog, that seems to be a savage representative of a Scotch colley,--a lean, wrinkled, dark-faced woman, who is unwinding the bandages from a squalling _Bambino_,--a mixed odor of garlic and of goats, that is quickened with an ammoniacal pungency,--and you may form some idea of the home of a small Roman farmer in our day. It falls away from the standard of Cato; and so does the man. He takes his twenty or thirty acres, upon shares, from some wealthy proprietor of Rome, whose estate may possibly cover a square mile or two of territory. He sells vegetables, poultry, a little grain, a few curds, and possibly a butt or two of sour wine. He is a type of a great many who lived within the limits of the old Papal territory; whether he and they have dropped their musty sheepskins and shaken off their unthrift under the new government, I cannot say. Around Bologna, indeed, there was a better race of farmers: the intervening thrift of Tuscany had always its influence. The meadows of Terni, too, which are watered by the Velino, bear three full crops of grass in the season; the valley of the Clitumnus is like a miniature of the Genesee; and around Perugia the crimson-tasselled clovers, in the season of their bloom, give to the fields the beauty of a garden. The old Duke of Tuscany, before he became soured by his political mishaps, was a great patron of agricultural improvements. He had princely farms in the neighborhood both of his capital and of Pisa. Of the latter I cannot speak from personal observation; but the dairy-farm, _Cascina_, near to Florence, can hardly have been much inferior to the Cajano property of the great Lorenzo. The stables were admirably arranged, and of permanent character; the neatness was equal to that of the dairies of Holland. The Swiss cows, of a pretty dun-color, were kept stalled, and luxuriously fed upon freshly cut ray-grass, clover, or vetches, with an occasional sprinkling of meal; the calves were invariably reared by hand; and the average _per diem_ of milk, throughout the season, was stated at fourteen quarts; and I think Madonna Clarice never strained more than this into the cheese-tubs of Ambra. I trust the burghers of Florence, and the new _Gonfaloniere_, whoever he may be, will not forget the dun cows of the Cascina, or their baitings with the tender vetches. The redemption of the waste marshlands in the Val di Chiana by the engineering skill of Fossombroni, and the consequent restoration of many thousands of acres which seemed hopelessly lost to fertility, is a result of which the Medici would hardly have dreamed, and which would do credit to any age or country.