PASSING NOTES ON THE RIRDS OF ITALY. 249 
two of them; one leans nine feet, the other five. They are 
said to have been built by ancient noblemen, in the days 
when a nobleman was not considered a nobleman without a 
tower. 
In the afternoon, having nothing better to do, I took a 
guide to the Cemetery, said to be the best in Italy. It is 
very costly and elaborate, many of the beaitiful sculptures 
being by noted artists. The best are those of pure white 
Carara marble. Others of the second and third quality are 
veined with grey. The place has received the name of the 
Catacombs—spacious galleries, having three rows of vaults 
on either side. For the smallest a man pays five pounds; 
for a larger one much more. These galleries are built in 
the form of squares, and the plot of ground within is about 
two acres. This is called “common ground,” and the poor 
are buried here (gratis).in trenches; the males by them- 
selves, the females by themselves, and the children by 
themselves. After a lapse of not many years, their bones 
are dug up and committed to great cave-like vaults, and 
the ground is trenched and sown again, until a fresh crop of 
these ghastly remains is ready to be harvested. In working. 
some excavations it was discovered that on this very site 
there was, hundreds and hundreds of years ago, a necropolis, 
or Etruscan city of the dead. 
From Bologna by Ancona to Brindisi is the well-known 
route of all travellers for and from Egypt and India. 
The cultivated land was no longer divided into fields. 
Rows of mulberry trees took the place of trim fences, gar- 
nished with drooping vines, and these further south gave 
way to the olive. What a different aspect the country 
presented when I returned in the last week of June. Then 
it was all waving fields of yellow corn, and scores and scores 
of Italian: husbandmen were coming down by train te put 
the sickle to it. 
For miles the iron road skirts the shore of the Adriatic 
