The exertions of this people were truly wonderful. No nation in any age of the world has ever raised up in its cities, and even in its villages, so many magnificent temples,--which even now attract the stranger from every country and clime to the classic soil of Italy. We find throughout this land, whether on the extensive plains of Lombardy, or on the fertile hills of Tuscany and Romagna, or on the now deserted _campania_ of the Patrimony of St. Peter, towns of the most splendid character, reared during the palmy days of modern Italy; and in those cities we find long lines of once stately palaces now tumbling into ruins. Their gates, their columns, their architraves, says the eloquent historian of Italy, remain, but the wood is worm-eaten and decayed, the crystal glasses have been broken, the lead has been taken from the roofs, and the stranger from one end to the {275} other of this _monumental_ land, asks in mournful sadness in each town through which he passes,--Where now is the population which could have required so many habitations? Where is the commerce which could have filled so many magazines? Where are those opulent citizens who could have lived in so many palaces? Where now are those numerous crowds that bowed in reverential awe and devotion before the altars of Christ, of the Virgin and the Saints? Where now are the grandeur and magnificence of the living, which should have replaced that grandeur and magnificence of the dead, of which their monuments so eloquently tell? All are gone. While other nations have been growing in importance and multiplying the materials of their history as they approach the age in which we live, how different has been the mournful destiny of Italy! The present has well been called the epoch of death in that lovely land. When we observe, says the historian, the whole of Italy, whether we examine the physiognomy of the soil, or the works of man, or man himself, we always regard ourselves as being in the land of the dead; every where we are struck by the feebleness and degeneracy of the race that now is, compared with that which has been. The sun of Italy now sheds as warm and vivifying rays over the land as before--the earth remains as fertile--the Appenines present to our view the same varient smiling aspect--the fields are as abundantly watered by the genial showers of heaven, and all the lower animals of nature preserve here their pristine beauty and habits. Man too, at birth, seems in this delightful climate, to be endowed still with the same quick creative imagination, with the same susceptibility of deep, passionate feeling--with the same wonderful aptitude of mind--and yet man alone has changed here! In contrast with his fathers-- "As the slime, The dull green ooze of the receding deep, Is with the dashing of the spring-tide foam, That drives the sailor shipless to his home."