SKETCH of Italy-Entrance into the Country-Turin-Miserable Population-Recent Reforms in Sardinia-Field of Marengo-Passage of the Apennines-Genoa-Birthplace of Columbus-Curious Customs-Glorious Views-Florence-Venus de Medici-Disgusting Spectacle-Pisa-The Carnival - Leghorn-Rome -Beggars --Cicero's Monument-NaplesLazzaroni-Vailed Statuary Cemetery for the Poor-Relics from Pompeii.

ITALY is in its greatest length 695 miles, with a variable breadth of from 20 to 275 miles, and an area of 125,000 miles, including its large islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. In Northern Italy, between the Alps and the Apennines, is the great plain of Lombardy, noted for ages for its exceeding fertility; extending 250 miles east and west, with an average length of 50 miles.

The climate is various, depending upon the latitude and proximity of its different parts to the sea and the mountains. In Lombardy and the North

ern States the thermometer sometimes falls to within 10° of zero; the more tender plants cannot be cultivated, and chilling winds from the Apennines continue for nearly all the winter months. The climate of Tuscany and the Papal States, south of the Apennines, is favorable to the orange, the lemon, and the olive, although slight snows are not uncommon. The climate of Continental Naples is hot, and the winters short and mild. In Calabria Ultra and Sicily snow is never seen, nor in the former, except on the summits of mountains, and tropical fruits here attain the greatest perfection. The classification applies only to the low lands, as the Alps are clothed in perpetual snow, and the northern Apennines for months during the year. The climate of Naples is considered the most desirable, the mean temperature in winter being just below freezing, and in the summer at 67°; yet it has great inconveniences; for many months little or no rain falls, and vegetation is burnt to a russet hue; no cool breezes fan the feverish brow; the sirocco, from Africa, depresses both animal and vegetable life; volcanic heat glows continually under ground, and occasionally vomits forth noxious vapors, and threatens to destroy whole districts; swarms of noxious insects fill the air, and the Pontine marshes and similar swamps generate miasmata fatal to life. The fairest sky deceives in its beauty; and where the vegetation is most luxuriant, there lurk disease and death. The very circumstances which form the charm and the theme of praise of the Italian climate are those which render it dangerous.

The Italians are a mixed race of Greeks, Germans, Gauls, and many others intermingled with the aborigines. They have long been divided into separate tribes, with dialects so various, that the people of one province can scarcely, if at all, understand those of another. From them has been formed a language called the Tuscan, based on the Latin, which is used by all educated men, and by her celebrated writers of the middle ages.

No civilized country is so degraded as Italy-no civilized people so wretched as the Italians. The country is full of beggars, and swarms of priests, said to amount to half a million, devour the substance of the land. The cares of the present absorb all the attention of the inhabitants of the cities; in the country, the mass of the agriculturists eke out a miserable subsistence, dwelling in rude hovels, on little farms rarely of over four acres in area, the produce of half of which is claimed by the owners.

The great mass of the common people are deplorably ignorant ; seldom one is found that can either read or write. Even the learned institutions are far behind those of other European countries, and nothing is taught calculated to foster freedom and expansion of mind. Yet in spite of these difficulties many of the Italians become highly educated. All Italy is Roman Catholic, and nowhere are the ceremonies of that church performed with more pomp and ceremony. The higher clergy possess great power, and all the clergy have special privileges, and are generally free from taxation.

The government is vigorously despotic. It is divided into ten sovereign states, and the petty republic of San-Marino, which is a little State, not

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five miles square, comprising a craggy mountain, containing one town and four villages, with an aggregate population of less than 8,000 souls.

The whole population of Italy is 23,000,000-a little less than that of the United States. Of the Italian States, Lombardy and Venice, Sardinia, Naples, and Sicily (commonly called Kingdom of the Two Sicilies) are kingdoms; Tuscany is a grand duchy; Lucca, Parma, and Modena, are duchies; SanMarino is a republic, and the States of the Church, is an elective monarchy. The sovereigns of the kingdoms and duchies are hereditary. The Pope is the sovereign of the Papal States, and " Vicegerent of God on Earth;" he is elected for life, by the Cardinals, out of their own body. The kingdom of Lombardy and Venice, belong to the Austrian empire, and are ruled by a viceroy, under the Austrian government. The little republic of San-Marino is under the especial protection of the Pope, and is remarkable as being both the smallest, as well as the oldest State in Europe. Its principal town, SanMarino, grew up around a hermitage, formed here, by St. Marino, or Marinno, in the fifth century. The insignificance of the territory, more than any other cause, tended to its preservation.

"The national character, and the state of society in Italy, are marked by prominent and striking features. The people, in some respects, are, perhaps, the most polished and refined of any in the world. While the German, and many English nobles, place their enjoyment in hunting, and the pleasures of the table, music, painting, poetry, and assemblies for conversation, form the delight of the Italians.

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No pains are bestowed on the improvement of their estates, which are managed according to a mechanical routine, under the care of stewards, who often embezzle a great part of the produce. Being excluded, also, from all concern in public affairs, and from the administration of the state, they have become estranged from habits of manly and energetic exertion. They pass their lives in a listless and lounging apathy, making it their sole while away the hour in the most easy and agreeable manner. Their day is spent in a regular routine of attendance on mass, on their lady, on the theater, the Casino, and the Corso. As the title and rank of a noble descend to all his posterity, the great increase in their number, by reducing them to a miserable and proud poverty, tends still more to degrade them in the public eye. Ostentatious magnificence is combined with sordid economy; the most superb equipages and apartments are let out to foreigners, who are not even quite sure of honest dealing. Attached to many of the Florentine palaces is a little shop, where wine is retailed in the smallest quantities. But the deepest reproach of Italian manners, seems to be the established system by which every married lady must have her lover, who imposes on himself the duty, wherever she is or goes, to dangle after her as her devoted slave. This connection is said to be not decidedly, or at least certainly, criminal, as our manners would lead us to suppose, but rather to form an état into which it is necessary to enter, on pain of expulsion from the fashionable circles, and which is continued according to a routine of almost mechanical observance.

The charitable institutions of Naples, Rome, Milan, and Genoa, appear to be most extensive; and the bounty bestowed, especially at the convents, is

considered as one of the chief causes of the idleness and mendicity which prevail in the great cities. Temperance must be admitted as another virtue. of the Italians. Notwithstanding the abundance and cheapness of wine, intoxication is scarcely known, even among the lower ranks.

The lower ranks form the mass of the Italian population, with scarcely any intervening class between them and the nobles. They share, in some degree, the refined tastes and manners of the higher ranks. The common shopkeepers of Florence and Rome, possess a taste in the fine arts, and sometimes even in poetry, which is unknown in the most polished circles beyond the Alps. They delight also in conversation, which they support with peculiar animation, and with gesticulations, the most varied and expressive of any European people. The peasantry are, on the whole, a poor, quiet, contented, orderly race; spending, not very wisely, all their little savings in finery for their wives and daughters. But the populace of the great towns display a character peculiarly idle, tumultuary, and unlicensed. They seem to combine the characters of citizens, beggars, and bandits. The lazzaroni of Naples, in particular, form a numerous body, who exist almost wholly out of the pale of regular society.

In political convulsions, they have made very signal displays of energy, usually in defense of the reigning family, to whom they are strongly attached. The practice of assassination, whether for hire, or on the impulse of passion, which was long peculiarly Italian, is said to have been considerably reduced by the French. They deprived the sanctuaries of their right to protect the assassin; and that right has not since been restored to them. Another numerous class were the bandits, who, established in the recesses of the Apennines, formed a sort of separate people, and carried on their vocation on a great and regular scale. The strength of their line of mountain positions, which ran close and parallel to that of the high road through Italy, afforded them opportunities of which they knew well how to profit. The road from Rome to Naples was their favorite haunt; and even when guarded by pickets of soldiers, at the distance of every mile, it could not always be traveled with safety. They carried on their trade in a systematic manner, and not without some adherence to the principle of honor, when it was once pledged. Their grand aim was to carry off some person of distinction, and then to exact a ransom proportioned to his means and dignity. The French and the German troops, stationed in Naples, rooted out most of these dens of banditti.

The history of Italy is unrivaled in the magnitude of its events, and their influence upon the general destinies of the world. Our limits and plan can allow only a very hasty sketch of the mighty revolutions of which this country has been the center.

Of the early nations of Italy but little is known. The Etruscans, by the works of art handed down by them, especially in the form of terra-cottas, appear to have been a civilized, as well as a powerful, and free people. The south, colonized from Greece, and even denominated Magna Græcia, was the seat of the most celebrated of the early schools of science: Pythagoras taught at Crotona; and the Samnites, by their gallant resistance to Pyrrhus, and afterward to the Romans, established their name as a military nation.

Rome sprung up amid these nations, rather as a band of refugees, than as a regular state. The Romans then subjected, one after another, first the neighboring tribes, then the whole of Italy; and afterward crossed the seas, to conquer all the known world. Among their high and energetic virtues, and daring exploits, they retained still a character of rudeness: and the first influence of their conquests, was to extinguish in the subject nations the degree of civilization they already possessed. Etruria lost her early arts, and Carthage that immense commerce which embraced all the known seas of the globe. But as the hardy captains of Rome penetrated to the cities of Greece, and saw the matchless works of architecture and sculpture with which they were embellished, their rugged pride was softened, and they were smitten with the love of those beautiful arts. The orators of the Forum sought next to transfer the splendid powers of eloquence, which had given dignity and splendor to Athens. At last, Cicero undertook to transplant the Grecian philosophy. Unfortunately, at the same time, the chiefs who returned laden with the spoils of so many nations, introduced an unbounded luxury, which vitiated altogether the truth and simplicity of ancient manners.

The empire of Rome, the most extensive and. opulent ever established, was, after dreadful convulsions, erected on the mighty ruins of the senate and the republic; and the world became, as it were, the inheritance of a single man. On such a trying and perilous eminence, examples were presented of the most unbounded cruelty and dissoluteness; yet, also, of the most wise and enlightened humanity. During the Augustan age, poetry and all the fine arts were patronized and cultivated with ardor, after the Grecian model, and carried almost to an equal pitch of perfection. The oppressive sway, however, of successive tyrants, and the brutal license of the prætorian guards, soon left little more than that barbarous voluptuousness which generally characterizes a purely despotic government.

The decline of the Roman empire was attended with calamities to Italy and to mankind, still more dreadful than those with which its rise had been attended. The barbarians of the north and east of Europe, allured by the reported wealth and weakness of the empire, pressed continually closer on its frontier. They were kept in check for some time, by the Danube and the Alps, and by the remaining strength of the legions. At length, they burst all these barriers, and ravaged the beautiful plains of Italy. The transference to Constantinople of the seat of empire, left this portion with an unequal share of the common defense. Rome itself, the imperial capital of the world, became the prey of barbarians; it was successively sacked by the Goths, under Alaric, and the Vandals, under Genseric.

The scepter was snatched from the feeble hand of Augustulus, and the western empire was extinguished. The kingdom felt a gleam of reviving prosperity under Theodoric the Ostrogoth, and Theodosius the Great, but was soon overwhelmed by fresh swarms of barbarians, among whom, the Lombards were the most conspicuous, and have given their name to the northern plain, watered by the Po.

The empire of Charlemagne suspended the troubles of Italy, but formed the commencement of that long series of ultramontane dominion, to which