Morning journal and courier., 1890-05-17

Florence at the Cascine, Rome ln the Corso, and Naples along the Chiaja, never see or produce the magnifcence of which they are a part. Bus even if it be vulgar and com mon, my heart turns to these in every land; and I confess that contemplation of the dumbness, patience and sunniness of the white slaves of southern Italy, from which the entire Italian kingdom draws its greatest food as well as military supply, fill me with feeling of the deepest and most pathetic tenderness.
 So far as have been able to ascertain by the most painstaking inquiry, there are no peasant farmers in all Italy. doubt if there are one thousand small land holders in the entire kingdom. refer, of course, to land titled ss farms, olive and orange groves, and vineyards. Whatever may be the for tune of the ambitious lowly in the larger Italian cities, the feudal aristocracy, feudal noblemen, the feudal ecclesiastic benefoes, and the still almost feuda1 government, own, and are determined never to reiinquish, every square inch of Italian soil the sun of heaven shines on. No land would be sold to the peasantry on any terms. This is an unwritten but memorable law. Were 1t pos- sible for any single peasant, or any combina- tion of peasants, to ever secure sufficient means to purchase tract of land, score of combinations on the part of titled aristocrat- ic or ecclesiastic landholders would be ready to purchase at any price, to keep 1t out Of the lowly mans hands. Why, there is even no equivalent in the Italian language for the word farm. The dictionaries define farm as
 "affitto," 'allogamento," ''villa," etc. The
 very essence of the first two of these words ia something fixed, fastened, retained, but
 hired out. A score of times have endeav- ored to make Italian peasants understand that there were portions of Gods green
 earth, including America, where even such as they could absolutely own, solely possess, irrevocably hold, the home above them and the soil on which it stood. Their lips part ed; drawn, sad smile came into their parchment like faces; and their eyes rolled upward expressive of the hopelessness of their effort at comprehension. The black men of the south, twenty-five years before the war, were clearer on sociology than these. The serfs of Hannibal, the helots of the old en Celtic septs, had quicker, keener spirit of men, and more of the virile blood which de mands and commands possession.
 Again, were not these absolutely renorse- less combinations of landed capital an insur- mountable bar to the requirement. of any portion of the soil by the lowly Italian rus tico, his condition would still be equally as | hopeless No human being who labors in the fields of Italy could, by any manner of ! deprivation approaching starvation, save sufficient money in the course of his entire natural life to purchase enough land in l which to decently lay the bones of his own 1 family. The government, or the church, provides in the Campo Santo of every vile l lage, town and city hole for the bones and 1 quicklime to consume them; because, pre- l sume, the government, the church and all
 manner of lsndholding task masters have
 kept him in such an equsble and constantly
 consuming condition of poverty that this sort of an equivalent is regarded as kindly as we'll ss hygenic, measure of final jus | tice. One Italian soldo is equal to one-hfth of an American cent. Throughout all
 southern Italy the wages of shepherds, cart men, vine dressers, grape gatherers, plough men, and every manner of laboring country. man, average eighty soldi, or sixteen cents per day Out of this sixteen cents per day
 which Is not seourable for moro than half tht days of the year, the Italian rustico pays tho l rent of his capaIna or hovel, feeds ane
 clothes his family. pays all manner of out
 rageous petty imposizione or taxation, and
 aggregativsly, muni6cently supports hi
 church with an unsurpassed devotion ant loyalty. The difference between the peas
 antry of Ireland and of Italy is this: The
 Irish are a superior race despoiled of glori' ous originally possessed hereditaments
 writhing under sodden. implacable, unre'
 dressed wrong. Italian peasantry were nev CT else than serfs, and whatever exceptiona individual heart burnings may be, as g. clasf .
 tions and heritage of which they have never
 been deprived. A Masaniello or a Garibaldi fired by glsamings of the outer worlds re-
 Hexive intelligence may, every two or three
 centuries, rise from among fishermen, sail.
 ors, or city lazzaroni, and cavort about for 6
 time as "iberator;" but these poor cattle
 upon two legs, have come to know, have ever stood and will ever stand still iu theil
 Italian fields and hovel managers, and witt
 radiant, grateful eyes lick the hands whicl
 dole them husks-the only fruit of their la
 bors they were ever allowed to know.
 All southern Italy is extraordinarily paste
 ral in landscape and character of husbandry
 and outside few of tue coast cities the en
 tire population are practically peasant labor
 CTS, shepherds, vineyard laborers and work
 CTS in the fields. The olive, orange, grap'
 and date palm are cultivated everywhere a the edges of villages and on sunny mountain
 slopes; but the larger portion of the land
 employed in the growing of small grains ant
 corn. I have yet to discover, save in tn
 north where the landscape partakes of Al
 pine diversity and ruggedness, those splen
 did and poetical combinations with which s
 many word painting enthusiasts seem i'm
 pressed. In detail it is nowhere go enjoya ! ble as that of old England, New England, O
 any of thousand localities we know in ou own loved land. Here and there, as il 1 Spain, are little spots of surpassing lowell ness; but still, as in Spain, the general fac . of the country hints of sadness and dreari
 ness: impe!s feeling that it is worn out ] burned out, lived out; forces conscious ness that the sun has eaten it's heart away and one is pursued by breeding, ominous | fudeinable conviction that, with the eterna fires beneath and the ever blazing sun above
 that the arid crust must shortly give out , and with it the vacuous life of the insensatt humans who scratch and prod at it as primi lively as was done two thousand years ago The rivers are far apart and are all turbid oeherish wash of scorie and mountain mud There are no meadows; no shaded lanes; n' cooling covert and copse. The endless ave
 nues of short cropped vineyards are neve beautiful, but are cropped and gashed ant , clipped like a pugilist's head. The forma ] rows of expresses are damp, dank, funereal , sad. There are no forests; few trees ar larger than the squstty olive; and all tree look shriveled, knotted, dusty, worn. Ita ly's mountains are too bare. All her out , lines are insufficient, acute, unsatisfyinQ , All told, as one writer has aptly put 1t, d Italian landscape has "a certain hard taste i , the mouth"
 , Ths utter absence of homes, and especiall ] of farm homes, in all Apulia, intensi6ss th sadness of the landscape. There is not farm house, as we know it, in Italy. The1 | are, miles apart, huge, low, prison like ston l structures called ''masserie," where the Ian 3 owners superintendent, an ignorant, ill , paid, bestial fellow himself, cares for nun s Der of the animals needed in the fields an ] where the "massara" Literally field hou ,. CONTINUED ON FOURTH PAGE.l