But stay! I have not yet completed the catalogue of possessions. To
the present munificence of nature must be added the inheritance of the
past. The poor Pagans of great Rome left all their property to the
Pope who damns them.

They left him gigantic aqueducts, prodigious sewers, and roads which
we find still in use, after twenty centuries of traffic. They left him
the Coliseum, for his Capuchins to preach in. They left him an example
of an administration without an equal in history. But the heritage was
accepted without the responsibilities attached to it.

I will no longer conceal from you that this magnificent territory
appeared to me in the first place most unworthily cultivated. From
Civita Vecchia to Rome, a distance of some sixteen leagues,
cultivation struck me in the light of a very rare accident, to which
the soil was but little accustomed. Some pasture fields, some land in
fallow, plenty of brambles, and, at long intervals, a field with oxen
at plough, this is what the traveller will see in April. He will not
even meet with the occasional forest which he finds in the most desert
regions of Turkey. It seems as if man had swept across the land to
destroy everything, and the soil had been then taken possession of by
flocks and herds.

The country round Rome resembles the road from Civita Vecchia. The
capital is girt by a belt of uncultivated, but not unfertile land. I
used to walk in every direction, and sometimes for a long distance;
the belt seemed very wide. However, in proportion as I receded from
the city, I found the fields better cultivated. One would suppose that
at a certain distance from St. Peter's the peasants worked with
greater relish. The roads, which near Rome are detestable, became