On Malaria. 321 



ber of Tartar looking horsemen, arnied 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 

 m 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 its effectual resistance is withdrawn, while the remains of civilization 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 those of almost any other country, 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 reeds, and the hoary water-willow, might 

 be restored to cultivation, that the pestilential influences might be erad- 

 icated, and a healdiful population be made to rise near 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 



Vol. XVII.— No. 2. 14 



