All flat countries--Belgium, Holland, Egypt--are deficient in men of genius; so also with those, like Switzerland and Savoy, which, being enclosed between very high mountains, are endemically afflicted with cretinism and _goître_; marshy countries are still poorer in genius. The few men of genius possessed by Switzerland were born when the race had conquered the goitrous influence through admixture of French and Italian immigrants--Bonnet, Rousseau, Tronchin, Tissot, De Candolle, Burlamagni, Pestalozzi, Sismondi. Urbino Pesaro, Forlì, Como, Parma, have produced men of genius in greater number and of greater fame than Pisa, Padua, and Pavia, three of the most ancient and important university towns of Italy; it is enough to name Raphael, Bramante, Rossini, Morgagni, Spallanzani, Muratori, Falloppio, Volta. But, to come to more definite examples, we find that Florence, enjoying a mild temperature and in special degree a city of the hills, has furnished Italy with her most splendid cohort of great men: Dante, Giotto, Machiavelli, Lulli, Leonardo, Brunellesco, Guicciardini, Cellini, Fra Angelico, Andrea del Sarto, Nicolini, Capponi, Vespucci, Viviani, Lippi, Boccaccio, Alberti, Dati, Alamanni, Rucellai, Ghirlandajo, Donati; Pisa, on the other hand, with scientific conditions at least as favourable as Florence, being the seat of a flourishing university, only offers us--if we except a few soldiers and statesmen of no great number and worth who were unable, even with powerful allies, to prevent her fall--Pisa only offers us Nicola Pisano, Giunta, and Galileo who, although born there, was of Florentine parentage. Now Pisa only differs from Florence by being situated on a plain. In Lombardy, the regions of mountain and lake, like Bergamo, Brescia, and Como, have produced more great men than the flat regions. I will mention Bernardo Tasso, Mascheroni, Donizetti, Tartaglia, Ugoni, Volta, Parini, Appiani, Mai, Cagnola; while Lower Lombardy can only bring forward Alciato, Beccaria, Oriani, Cavalleri, Aselli, and Bocaccini. Verona, a town of the hills, has produced Maffei, Paolo Veronese, Catullus, Pliny, Fracastoro, Bianchini, Sammicheli, Cagnola, Tiraboschi, Brusasorsi, Lorgna, Pindemonte; and not to speak of artists, economists, and thinkers of the first order (it is enough to name Trezza), I note that, in a very accurate document,[236] it appears that in 1881, there were 160 poets at Verona, many rising considerably above mediocrity. On the other hand, the wealthy and learned Padua has only given to Italy Livy, Cesarotti, Pietro d’Abano, and a few others. Genoa and Naples, which unite the advantages of a climate at once warm, maritime, and hilly, have produced men of genius at least as remarkable as those yielded by Florence, if not in such great number; such are Columbus, Doria, Mazzini, Paganini, Vico, Caracciolo, Pergolese, Genovesi, Cirillo, Filangeri.