This is a tiresome theme, and let us change it. Like all home-grown people, I see you expect me to send you a full account of Italy and the Italians within a month after my crossing the Alps. It is, after all, a pardonable blunder on your part, since the very titles we read to books of travels in the newspapers show that for sketchy books there are always to be found "skipping" readers. Hence that host of surface-description that finds its way into print from men who have the impudence to introduce themselves as writers of "Jottings from my Note-Book," "Loose Leaves from my Log," "Smoke Puffs from Germany," and "A Canter over the Caucasus." Cannot these worthy folk see that the very names of their books are exactly the apologies they should offer for not having written them, had any kind but indiscreet friend urged them into letterpress? "I was only three weeks in Sweden, and therefore I wrote about it," seems to me as ugly a _non sequitur_ as need be. And now, Tom, that I have inveighed against the custom, I am quite ready to follow the example, and if you could only find me a publisher, I am open to an offer for a tight little octavo, to be called "Italy from my Bedroom Window." Most writers set out by bespeaking your attention on the ground of their greater opportunities, their influential acquaintances, position, and so forth. To this end, therefore, must I tell you that my bedroom window, besides a half-view of the lake, has a full look-out over a very picturesque landscape of undulating surface, dotted with villas and cottages, and backed by a high mountain, which forms the frontier towards Switzerland. At the first glance it seems to be a dense wood, with foliage of various shades of green, but gradually you detect little patches of maize and rice, and occasionally, too, a green crop of wurzel or turnips, which would be creditable even in England; but the vine and the olive surround these so completely, or the great mulberry-trees enshadow them so thoroughly, that at a distance they quite escape view. The soil is intersected everywhere by canals for irrigation, and water is treasured up in tanks, and conveyed in wooden troughs for miles and miles of distance, with a care that shows the just value they ascribe to it. Their husbandry is all spade work, and I must say neatly and efficiently done. Of course, I am here speaking of what falls under my own observation; and it is, besides, a little pet spot of rich proprietors, with tasteful villas, and handsomely laid-out gardens on every side; but as the system is the same generally, I conclude that the results are tolerably alike also. The system is this: that the landlord contributes the soil, and the peasant the labor, the produce being fairly divided afterwards in equal portions between them. It reads simple enough, and it does not sound unreasonable either; while, with certain drawbacks, it unquestionably contains some great advantages. To