258 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



St. Annunciata and St. Maria Carignano are magnificent 

 churcliGs. The liilly suburbs of Genoa are crowded with many 

 splendid villas, long ranges of fortifications, richly cultivated 

 orchards and gardens, and the view of the Mediterranean is 

 full of grandeur and beauty. 



A day or two is sufficient to see Genoa, and the same may 

 be said of Leghorn, especially for a party of four, when it is a 

 matter of economy, both of time and money, to keep a hack 

 at command and to keep it at work. Still it may be said that 

 it is a luxury to linger longer and give one's self up to the 

 enjoyment of an Italian landscape. That was not our object. 

 We were not there for pleasure, and I think we made as much 

 of the time as any other four travellers that had preceded us, 

 and that our powers of endurance and capacity for work 

 astonished the luxurious Italians quite as much. 



We cannot say very much for the agriculture of Italy as a 

 whole, though we may place that of Lombardy and in the 

 neighborhood of Genoa, where agriculture still maintains a 

 high degree of perfection, judging from the results produced, 

 in the front rank. In many other parts it languishes to such 

 an extent as to make it difficult to appreciate the fact that it is 

 only three or four hundred years since the agriculture of Italy 

 was the first in Europe. The ancient splendor of this country, 

 so far as represented in its agriculture, is gone. Either it has 

 positively deteriorated, or else other nations have so far out- 

 stripped it in progress as to leave it far behind. 



And yet there are locations, as already intimated, where 

 nature and art combine to produce the most astonishing 

 results. The climate is favorable in the highest degree for the 

 growth and perfection of many kinds of fruits. 



The life of the people seems to be devoted much to the 

 pursuit of pleasure, though not so much as in more southern 

 Italy, where pleasure appears to be the only business of all 

 who can manage to live without doing any thing. The Corso, 

 or grand promenade, is the place for courting, where anxious 

 mammas send their pretty, dark-eyed daughters, in their 

 splendid silk dresses, their white gauze vails, called pezottos, 

 fluttering around their slender, fascinating figures, to grace 

 and embellish the person, without even casting a shadow upon 

 their sweot faces. Social life would aj)pear to be at a low ebb, 



