On Malar. 319 
Sometime in the sixteenth century, a sweeping pestilence* cut off 
from this whole region a great part of the population; after which 
the price of property declined, and the lands fell into the possession 
of the great capitalists. ‘ From this time all productive activity was 
banished,” and although Leopold, Duke of Tuscany, made several 
attempts to plant colonies in the maremma, they were each unsuccess- 
ful, because the colonists died of the fever before a settlement could be 
established. Thus the remnants of a people, who were distinguished 
among the Volsci and Arretinii as warriors, and who improved upon 
the science and taste of Greece and Tyre in the arts of peace, have 
gradually wasted away, before the ravages of the pestilence. The 
genial climate allows the progress of vegetation through the winter, 
when multitudes of shepherds and herdsmen descend from the Ap- 
penines with their flocks and cattle, to pasture on the spontaneous 
herbage : but during the summer, companies of wild horses, and 
herds of black cattle, sweep over these immense pastures, revelling 
at will in the produce of the fields. The voices or the footsteps of 
men never interrupt these solitudes except in the ruined cities, and 
an occasional hamlet in the valleys, which shelter a few manufactur- 
ers of alabaster and alum. Even these employments are not fol- 
lowed from March to November ; all is resigned to the dominion of 
malaria, which “increases in proportion as the resistance of civiliza- 
tion diminishes.” SSE OU 8 
But it is in the States of the Church that this pestilence exercises 
its most hideous sway, and spreads the darkest ruin. The lands are 
more fertile than the maremma of Tuscany ; fig trees and aloes grow 
amongst the ruins; vegetation is too luxuriant to be employed m 
pasturage ; “the eye cannot penetrate the depth _of the’ majestic 
woods, and the imagination peoples their gloom with the Manes of 
that ancient people who formerly rendered these’ solitudes -illus~ 
trious.” . 
When the papal throne: was established at Avignon. i the begin- 
ning of the fourteenth century, Rome was given up to the most des- 
perate factions. Nothing can surpass the misery oceasioned by 
those civil wars. One ambitious family sueceeded to another ; one 
demagogue displaced another in such rapid succession, that when 
Gregory XI. returned to Rome in 1377, he found that the country 
was laid waste; that’ the suburbs had disappeared; that the walls, 
in many places, were broken down, and that the diminished-and dis- 
te ete eee eee 
* I believe it was the plague, but am not certain. 
