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POPULATION AND CULTIVATION.

Zimmermann states the population of all Italy at 16,000,000 of persons, upon an extent of 90,000 square miles.-But it ought to be observed that a very considerable part of this population consists of the inhabitants of cities. The thinly peopled territories of several of the Italian powers, particularly those of the pope, are a reproach to their sovereigns. Mr. Addison is of opinion that the Campania of Rome, or what was anciently called Latium, contained more inhabitants than are at present throughout all Italy.—He may have erred by overrating the population of ancient Rome. But it is a notorious fact that not a quarter part of the Campania is at present cultivated; and that there is not a tenth part of the people in the open country which would be required for the proper cultivation of it. The causes of this want of cultivation and population having been already shewn in the history of the year 1779, we need not dwell on so mournful a subject.-We may hope that the present pope will adopt a system of policy better suited to an enlightened age.

REVENUE OF THE SEE OF ROME.

The pontiff's revenue has been so much affected by the late revolutions in Italy that it would be difficult to speak with any precision upon the subject.

MILITARY FORCE OF THE POPE.

The pope's ordinary force before the revolution, according to the abbé Richard, consisted of a company of light horse of the guard, and the cuirassiers of the guard; each consisting of sixty men.-A body of Swiss guards attendant on the pontiff's person. A company of Avignonese and another of Corsican guards.—Beside these, there were some other troops stationed in the principal cities and frontier towns in the ecclesiastical states; but they were of small account, whether we respect their number or character. d PUBLIC a Memoires d'Italie. 5. 27.

< That of Rome is computed to be 157,458 persons.

PUBLIC WORKS.

The draining of the Pontine Marshes being the most memorable undertaking of the late pope, and one which, if successful, would have done signal honour to his pontificate, it may not be improper to add to the account already given of it, the following from the writer of his life. "Two rivers, the Amasenus and the Ufens," says he, 66. appear to have "been, by their overflowing, the first cause of the desolation to which "this country has been condemned whenever the carelessness of the government has ceased to call the guardian hand of industry to its "assistance."-" It is," says that writer, "the country of the Volsci, "who made so great a figure during the robust infancy of the Roman republic; and it was for a long time one of its principal granaries. "But towards the time when Rome was in its greatest splendour, this district, desolated by inundations, was indiscriminately denominated "the Pontine country, and the Pontine marshes (ager Pontinus, palus Pontinus;) the three and twenty cities, which formerly embellished its "surface, no longer existing but in the remembrance of the Romans. "The principal families of Rome, however, established in such cantons, as "the elevation of the ground, and the efforts of industry, preserved from "the ravages of the stagnant water, those country seats, the beauty and fertility of which were celebrated by the Roman poets.

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About three centuries before the christian era, Appius Claudius, the censor, surnamed the Blind, stood forward as the first restorer of this country. He carried across the morass the road which bears his name, "and of which the magnificence was never equalled. Among other "monuments, it offered to the eye those tombs which suggested to the "mind of the pensive traveller this philosophical thought: Those who 66 repose here once lived, and, like thee, were mortal."

Attempts were made to drain this country by the consul, Cornelius Cethegus; after him by Augustus Cæsar, and lastly by Trajan; but they all proved ineffectual. After the irruption of the. Goths, cultivation was neglected; the mud again accumulated; and the marshes soon assumed their

their former frightful appearance.-Pius the Sixth must be honoured for his perseverance in this very useful undertaking. But he, too, was destined to be foiled in it.-After he had spent a vast sum of money, it appeared that the water of the sea was higher than the morass, and that the difficulty of excluding it was insuperable to a potentate circumstanced as the pontiff was.'-Had the Dutch republicans occupied that spot, they would, probably, have succeeded in making a barrier against the Mediterranean, as they did against the German sea.

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY.

The most memorable events of ecclesiastical history during this period are the persecution and final ruin of the jesuits.-The origin, progress, and abolition of that celebrated order are all equally extraordinary.-Founded in 1534 by Ignatius Loyola, a man bred to the army, without any apparent adequate means, its progress was so rapid, that before his death, in 1556, they had twelve large provinces. And in 1679, when the last catalogue of their foundations was printed, they had thirty-five provinces, two vice-provinces, thirty-three professed houses, five hundred and seventyeight colleges, forty-eight houses of probation, eighty-eight seminaries, one hundred and sixty residences, one hundred and six missions, and, in all, 17,655 brethren, of whom 7,870 were priests.

So successful were they in recommending themselves to public notice by their learning and political accomplishments, and by their attention to the education of youth, that there was scarcely a court in Europe where they were not employed as agents, and but few wherein they had not an influence in the national councils. They had missionaries in every part of the world: and their universal dispersion enabled them to become the centre of intrigue, and the channel for every machination.

It is remarkable that the same circumstances which were the foundation of their power and prosperity were also the cause of their fall.-Their intrigues in Paraguay incensed the courts of Madrid and Lisbon against them; which were apprehensive that the light which they were diffusing in America, and the good effects of their excellent regulations in their

provinces in that quarter of the world, would eventually prove ruinous to their own oppressive governments there. This occasioned their expulsion from Portugal and Spain. And their embarking too deeply in trade, and their malepractices in consequence of distress, afforded Choiseul, their inveterate enemy, an opportunity to accomplish their expulsion from France. i

The prevailing parties in France, Spain, and Portugal had now incensed them so much that they did not think it safe to suffer their existence. Therefore they employed all their influence at the court of Rome to effect their abolition; and accomplished their purpose, as we have already seen in the history of the ecclesiastical state.*

The affairs of the dissidents in Poland,' the measures adopted by the emperor relative to the suppression of the monasteries in his dominions and other matters of ecclesiastical reform," the efforts of the French republicans to root out all religious belief from the minds of men, that they might free themselves from the embarrassments which they apprehended from it in the prosecution of their revolutionary schemes, and the final settlement of a religious establishment in France, are transactions which properly belong to ecclesiastical history: but as they have been interwoven with civil and political occurrences, the reader, to avoid repetition, is referred to the respective histories for an account of them.

MALTA.

THE late occurrences relative to the isle of Malta and the Maltese knights of St. John of Jerusalem, interest us in their history: and, to such as have not leisure to read a regular history of the order, the following particulars respecting their origin, and the most memorable vicissitudes of fortune which they have experienced, may, perhaps, be satisfactory.

Their history is particularly interesting, as it makes us acquainted with the character of the age in which they were established; which was marked with savage ferocity on the one hand, and religious zeal and fervent piety on the other.-When Palestine had fallen into the hands of the Saracens, some merchants of Amalfi in Italy recommended themselves to the friendship of the reigning caliph in the course of their commercial intercourse with his dominions. Actuated by the pious chivalry of the age, they, in pity to the numerous pilgrims who daily risked their lives in pilgrimages to the Holy Land, availed themselves of his good graces to procure for them an asylum at Jerusalem; and, with his permission, towards the close of the eleventh century, they built a house of hospitality, near the holy sepulchre, for their reception, and a church, where worship might be performed with their own rites and ceremonies.-With the caliph's consent, whose favour they secured by an annual tribute, they afterwards built two chapels, one dedicated to the virgin Mary, and the other to St. John the Almoner, or Hospitable, from whom they assumed the name of KNIGHTS OF ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM, OR KNIGHTS HOSPITALLERS.

By this name they were afterwards sanctioned, as a religious order, by pope PASCAL THE SECOND, at the entreaty of Gerard, their founder and first master; and they were soon supplied with the means of practising the hospitality