The limits of the Italian peninsula have been most distinctly traced by nature. The Alps, which bound it in the north, from the promontories of Liguria to the mountainous peninsula of Istria, present themselves like a huge wall, the only breaches in which are formed by passes situated high up in the zones of pines, pastures, or eternal snows. Italy, like its two sister peninsulas of Southern Europe, thus constitutes a world of its own, destined by nature to become the theatre of a special evolution of humanity. Its delightful climate, beauteous skies, and fertile fields distinguish it in a marked manner from the countries lying beyond the Alps; and an inhabitant of the latter who descends the sunny southern slope of this dividing range cannot fail to perceive that everything around him has changed, and that he has entered a “new world.” The protecting barrier of the Alps and the sea which bounds it have imparted to Italy a distinct individuality. All its countries, from the plains of Lombardy to the shores of Sicily, resemble each other in certain respects. There is a sort of family likeness about them; but still what delightful contrasts, what {184} picturesque variety, do we not meet with ! Most of these contrasts are due to the Apennines, which branch off from the southern extremity of the French Alps. At first they run close to the seashore, like a huge wall supported at intervals by powerful buttresses; subsequently they traverse the whole of the peninsula. At times they are reduced to a narrow ridge, at others they spread out into vast masses, rising in plateaux or ramifying into chains and promontories. River valleys and plains intersect them in all directions; lakes and filled-up lake basins are spread out at the foot of their cliffs; and numerous volcanoes, rising above the general level, contrast, by their regular form, with the rugged declivities of the Apennines. The sea, following these sinuosities in the relief of the ground, forms a series of bays, arranged with a certain degree of symmetry. In the north these bays do not much encroach upon the land, but in the south they penetrate deeply, and almost form veritable gulfs. There once existed an Italy of granitic rocks, but it exists no longer, for the rocks of the Apennines and of the plains teach us that the Italy of the present is of recent origin, and that the many islands of which it consisted formerly were united into a single peninsula as recently as the Eocene epoch. Italy, compared with Greece, exhibits much sobriety in its configuration. Its mountains are arranged in more regular ridges, its coasts are less indented, its small archipelagos bear no comparison with the Cyclades, and its three great dependent islands, Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica, are regular in their contours. Indeed, its contours mark its intermediate position between joyous Greece and severe Iberia. Thus there exists a correspondence between geographical position and contours.