On Malaria. 321 
ber of Tartar looking horsemen, armed with lances, and wrapped in 
cloaks, were driving before them. ‘These seek an asylum within the 
walls of Rome, from the fate which awaits them in the fields.” 
The population of the city has diminished more than sixty thousand 
in twenty years; and of the one hundred thousand who remain, ten 
thousand are vine dressers and herdsmen, who have fled before the 
pestilence from their habitations in the country. The deadly influ- 
ence advances every year, invading some new section or square, 
and every year its terrible effects are augmented; for as it “increases 
in the inverse ratio of the resistance occasioned by the population, 
the fewer inhabitants, the more victims.” Some parts of the: city 
contain more dwellings than inhabitants, consequently, no repairs are 
made; stairs, doors, roofs and windows fall, but are not replaced ; the 
Occupants remove to other dwellings; abandoned palaces frown in 
gloomy grandeur, and multitudes of convents are uninhabitable, and 
left without even a porter to take care of them. It is here seen, that 
the pestilence walks in the footsteps of receding industry, wherever 
its effectual resistance is withdrawn, while the remains of civilization 
and culture, furnish aliment and stimulus to the insalubrious ex- 
halations. 'The deep weedy dells, and the rank herbage around the 
mouldering ruins, supply those pestilential materials, from which the 
suns and airs of Italy extract swift poisons, and from. which every 
breeze comes freighted with the messengers of death. 
These obviously proximate causes are in full operation over the 
Pontine marsh. ‘The attempt to reclaim it does honor to the pontifi- 
cate of Pius Sixth; but although twenty miles have been restored on 
the Appian way, where three feet of alluvial marsh had formed above 
the pavements; and although the reclaimed lands are more produc- 
tive than th f almost any oth try, yet so immense a tract (more 
than one hundred miles,) remains, that the enterprise will probably 
- fail under the present nerveless government; especially as the disease 
is fatal to the workmen, except for a short time in the winter. So suc- 
cessful however were the efforts of the French engineers under the 
protection of Pius, that not a doubt remains, that the whole spongy 
morass; now covered with teeds, and the hoary water-willow, ‘might 
be restored to cultivation, that the pestilential inf hignTpe-qres 
i¢ated, and a healthful population be made to rise pear its fertile val- 
leys, like that which distinguished the days‘of the Republic. Those 
parts which have been but partially drained, are represented as more 
Vor, XVII.—No. 2. 14 
