Comparing the domestic economy of the poorer classes of our countrymen with that of the corresponding classes in France and Italy (with both of which I am well acquainted), I find that the raw material of the dietary of the French and Italians is inferior to that of the English, but a far better result is obtained by better cookery. The Italian peasantry are better fed than the French. In the poor osterias above referred to, not only the Friday salt fish, but all the other viands, were incomparably better cooked than in corresponding places in England, and the variety was greater than is common in many middle-class houses. The ordinary supper of the ‘roughs’ above-named was of three courses: first, a ‘_minestra_,’ _i.e._ a soup of some kind, continually varied, or a savoury dish of macaroni; then a ragoût or savoury stew of vegetables and meat, followed by an excellent salad; the beverage, a flask of thin but genuine wine. When I come to the subject of cheese, I will describe their mode of cooking and using it. My first walk through Italy extended from the Alps to Naples, and from Messina to Syracuse. I thus spent nearly a year in Italy during a season of great abundance, and never saw a drunken Italian. A few years after this I walked through a part of Lombardy, and found the little osterias as bad as English beershops or low public-houses. It was a period of scarcity and trouble, ‘the three plagues,’ as they called them—the potato disease, the silkworm fungus, and the grape disease—had brought about general privation. There was no wine at all; potato spirit and coarse beer had taken its place. Monotonous ‘polenta,’ a sort of paste or porridge made from Indian corn meal, to which they give the contemptuous name of ‘miserabile,’ was then the general food, and much drunkenness was the natural consequence. CHAPTER VI. COUNT RUMFORD’S ROASTER. IN the third volume of his ‘Essays, Political, Economical, and Philosophical,’ page 129, Count Rumford introduces this subject, with the following apology, which I repeat and adopt. He says: ‘I shall, no doubt, be criticised by many for dwelling so long on a subject which to them will appear low, vulgar, and trifling; but I must not be deterred by fastidious criticisms from doing all I can do to succeed in what I have undertaken. Were I to treat my subject superficially, my writing would be of no use to anybody, and my labour would be lost; but by investigating it thoroughly, I may, perhaps, engage others to pay that attention to it which, from its importance, it deserves.’