MISERIA "What do people do here ?" I once asked at a little town between Rome and Naples; and the man with whom I talked, shrugging his shoulders, answered curtly, "_C'e miseria_"-- there's nothing but poverty.

The same reply would be given in towns and villages without number throughout the length of Italy.

I had seen poverty enough, and squalid conditions of life, but the most ugly and repulsive collection of houses I ever came upon was the town of Squillace.

I admit the depressing effect of rain and cloud, and of hunger worse than unsatisfied; these things count emphatically in my case; but under no conditions could inhabited Squillace be other than an offence to eye and nostril.

The houses are, with one or two exceptions, ground-floor hovels; scarce a weather-tight dwelling is discoverable; the general impression is that of dilapidated squalor.