Market-Gardens at Rome. 267 



Market-Gardens. — These are not numerous without the 

 gate of Rome leading to Naples ; indeed, by far the larger 

 portion of the market gardens of Rome are within the walls, 

 which are twelve or fourteen miles in circuit, without having 

 more than one third of the enclosed space covered with 

 houses. On the Naples road, as within the gates, they pre- 

 sent the same general features : industrious though not very 

 neat cultivation, and the soil kept constantly cropped under 

 great breadths of lettuces, endive, leeks, broccoli, superb cau- 

 liflowers ; and especially two articles which occupy more space 

 than all the rest, viz., gobbo and fennel. Gobbo (hunchback) 

 is the appellation which the Italians, in their well-known love 

 of nicknames, have given to the gibbous footstalks of the first 

 set of leaves, just as they branch from the ground, of a 

 variety of artichoke ; which are blanched by hoeing up the 

 earth against them, and of which a far larger quantity is 

 consumed than of the heads of the plants. Fennel is cul- 

 tivated to a great extent for precisely the same part of the 

 plant, namely, the blanched footstalks (and roots) of the first 

 set of leaves; and both it and gobbo, when stewed in the 

 Italian method, form excellent dishes. These fennel roots 

 and footstalks are eaten also raw, as a salad, with oil and 

 vinegar. What most distinguish Roman (and, indeed, Ita- 

 lian) gardens from those of Northern Europe are the shed, 

 and wheel which it covers, for drawing up water, by means of 

 an ass or ox, from the adjoining well, for the purpose of irri- 

 gation; and the clump of fine reeds (^4rundo 7)onax), each 

 15 ft. or 20 ft. high, and 1 in. in diameter, and as strong as a 

 bamboo of similar thickness (which they resemble), which 

 are employed as props and trellises for vines, and for fences, 

 garden-sticks, and various other uses. 



Albano. — Viewed the lake here, and that of Nemi near 

 Gensano, which occupy the craters of two extinct volcanoes : 

 pretty, but too exactly circular to be very picturesque ; and 

 the want of bays and indentations of margin not compensated 

 (at least, as far as could be judged at this season) by any 

 striking masses of large trees ; the wood which clothes the 

 surrounding hills seeming chiefly coppice. Indeed, the ab- 

 sence of fine full-grown trees is the great defect of landscape 

 scenes in Italy, where you sometimes travel a hundred miles 

 (as in Lombardy) without setting eyes on a tree that has not 

 been pollarded or lopped; and though, on the hills, the 

 chestnut is allowed to expand at will, it seldom attains there 

 that luxuriance of growth which adorns the natives of the 

 moister mountains of Switzerland. Great part of the apples 



