Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1871-02-15
Father TibeT.

R.ls5ig 0u Iuadations arld 5rdat he Proposes
10 lD for Rome.
The distinguished art critic, John Ruskin,
has been attracting attention lately hy his
views in relation To the Inuntati0n OF the
Tlhcr Ru-kin wrote as follows
e. The King OF Italy has expressed. il is
said. an earnest desire to 90 some thing, as
far rs science and industry could fleet it, TO
prevent orimi gate Inundatons for the future.
Now science ana industry can do, not some
thing. lut everything. and not merely to
mitigate inuudatiOus hut doadhCst Of IuUn-
datIous. because perpetual marcmmas -
hut u change them into national banks IN
stead of debts The first thing the king Of
any country has to d is TO mangae the streams
of il. It he can manage the streams, he can
also the people for the people also form al
tcrnatclv torrent and maremma, in pestIlen-
tial fury or ucstilentiul idicness They also
viii change into living streams Of men, If
their kings literally lead them forth beside
the waters of comfort. Half the money lost
bv tins nundatiou of Tiher, spent rightly on
the hills.dcs last summer would have changed
every wave Of IL into -1 much fruit and toli-
age IN spring, where TOW there viii be only
burning rock.
Byron, says the Pal MAJ Gazette, took
different view from Mr. RuskIn Of the anal
0gv between the course Of streams and tlat
Of human passions
" Better, though each mans likelihood were riyer,
Than 70 sh"utd now anu ever & now than creep
iu thousand lazy channels thr"uEh our VeInS' .
Damned like the duh canal with locks ami chains" "
But we conline ourselves to the literal.
" That can the King of Italy do to regulate
the waters or the Tibcr? If any poteutate
can he so successful it is he for Italian sci
ence ranks first in the world-beiore even
Dutch tie variety and difficulty of the sub
fer 10 al pf Ii iutr
running water subseryient to human safety
and industry. Yet SO 1t is that from time
whereof memory Of man runneth not to the
contrary, next To nothing has been done to-
wards regulating the eXtravugances of the
Tiber: while mans dealings with the greater
Italian river, the Po, have on the whole
rather aggravated than corrected the mis-
chiefs produced by It's alterations. The
plain truth is that the problem is one of cx-
IRENE difficulty Rome has been liable to
inundations, chroniced in writing, for some
three thousand years, and it does not appear
that these viz itations are materially severer
or mllder, more or less frequent, than they
were when history began
SOURCES OF THE lIBER.
1t is believed that in very early times part
of the streams, which now feed the Arno
flowed into the upper portion OF the Iiber
il So a certain tendency to inundatiOn must
have been diminished: but the Chronicles show
no such result Certainly no other change
than this has been effected by human indus
try in one of the most civilized districts of
the world. Nor is there any substantial
reason for supposing that change of climate
has had anything to do with increasing or
diminishing the abundance of the river wa
ters or altering their distribution through
the seasons of the year. DR.. Arnold, in one
of those careless statements which are so un-
fortunate when hazarded by men of genius
whose authority greater subjects gives
currency to their crude notions respecting
minor matters, says in his history that
- even In the Appenines and IN Etruria and
Latium, the forests occupied iu the earlier
ages of Rome n far greater space than in
modern times this would increase the guam
tity of rain, and consequently the volume of
wafer in the rivers. Here are two very
arbitrary assertions, the one of fact, the
other Of theory. Etruria with its twelve
cities, Latium with its thirty, were certainly 1
far more populous and cultivated in the early
days to which he alludes than they were
under the empire in the dark ages-more
perhaps, than they are now; consequently
the extent of waste, and probably of forest
or brushwood, which is the same thing for
this purpose, was less instead of greater
And, in the next place, notwithstanding a
good deal of loose talk, no scientific reason
has ever been given to show that forests (at (
all events in temperate latitudes) ought to
attract rain, nor any serious evidence to show .
that they do So We believe. therefore, that
Father Tiber is little altered by age. The
great flood of 1892, at Rome, the most severe /
on record, measured nearly twenty meters,
between sixty and seventy feet, above the .
bottom of the river opposite the Rpetta. \
That of last month reached seventeen metres /
And the classical inundation which fright
ened Horace and his city could not have been
much in excess of these.