Being here in Italy for the last five months, I reproach myself for not offering, as far as my abilities go, a few remarks of interest to your readers concerning this country, in return for the many hours of instruction and interest which I have received from the Gardeners' Monthly for the last twenty years. I shall begin with a comparison of our country with Italy, and will state at once that the main point of similarity is the warm summer, and the main point of dissimilarity is the winter, which is harsh to severe from Delaware to Maine, and is, here, without frost or ice, except among the Alps. Nature has indeed lavished on our country her treasures of fertile soils and of minerals, but she has given us also a hard winter, limiting our productions, and giving us the task to provide for innumerable wants unknown in milder climates.

Hence we cannot grow the lemon and the orange except in parts of Florida and California, and even there get them destroyed by frosts that will happen, say once in a decennium. It is true our oranges are of a good kind, but the best of our trees will not yield anything like the Italian trees. In Sicily a good orange tree in bearing yields on the average five thousand oranges a year, a good lemon tree ten thousand lemons a year, the fruit coming along mostly all the year through, and, of course, equally so the blossoms. Competition is therefore out of the question, just as little as we shall ever be able to compete for sugar with the West Indies, where the cane is perennial, while it has to be replanted every three years in Louisiana.

Now the lemon, the orange and the olive are rich sources of income in Italy, and none of them require any particular care - the olive hardly any. The olive tree grows freely all over the country, except on the Alps; the lemon and orange trees grow freely and abundantly in the southern half, and with nursing and in sheltered positions, also in some portions of the northern half of this country. Next in point of importance here is the vine, and, in one sense, the whole country may be called one vast vineyard, for the rocks and the hills and the mountains are terraced and walled and cultivated by the hand of man to produce the grape. At a distance, you would think those heights were inaccessible, except to goats, and worthless, except for timber. You get near them, and you find that wherever a man could find a place to put his foot down and not fall off, there he has planted a vine.

The wine is of a quality which cannot compare with French wine as to flavor or taste, and hence is not exported. There has been for the last two years, a good demand for it from France, but that was owing to the failure there, and only for the manufacture of and mixing with French wine. Otherwise it is all drunk on the premises, that is, consumed in Italy. Your readers must know that water is considered here a blessing of heaven as an article to wash with, or for navigation, or for driving a mill, but nobody thinks it is made for drinking. The same notion prevails in France. This explains the enormous quantities of wine required. On the other hand there is never - " hardly ever " - any drunkenness or intemperance. During five months' stay in Italy I have seen but two individuals the worse for drink.

Now we in America can certainly raise grapes which will make good drinkable wine. The grapes though, which we have raised heretofore, do not make a desirable kind. Those of Ohio are unreliable, and one year's wine does not in the least resemble last year's or next year's, nor is it drinkable, except the quality happens to be unusually good. Again, the California wines are much too heavy and heady to be fit for daily use. But then we have such variety of soil, that, with care and study, we would surely produce the right article. But would it be wanted, when produced? Who can and will give our people the taste for it, and thus redeem them from the curse of whisky and from the stupefying beer?

Pardon the digression, and I proceed.

Some other fruits are grown here which we have not, at least not in perceptible quantities. There are, for instance, figs enough raised here to exclude any importation of them, and to make them a common fruit for dessert, both fresh and dry. Likewise the Japan medlar, and the apricot, and divers kinds of plums, none of which, I believe grow with us at all, but are here quite common. Nor have we the fruit of the stone pine, which, however, to my taste, is nothing to deplore. I could go without them all the rest of my days, as well as without the artichoke, which is served up here the greater part of the year.

But whilst we have not a good many of the Italian fruits and vegetables, Italy has most of ours, and of tolerable quality, too, and in abundance. She likewise grows all our cereals, Indian corn included, which goes here by the name of Turkish grain; also hemp, flax, rice sufficient for her own consumption, and, on her mountains raises a great many head of cattle - enough to enable her to export a good many millions of dollars' worth of them, every year, to her neighbors, France and Switzerland.

Coming, however, down to the lowlands and plains, the absence of good grass is very striking. It does not seem, though, to affect agriculture, since cattle, sheep and horses look, as a general thing, in good enough condition. But the horticultural eye, and the eye for beauty, miss the grass sorely. And this brings me right into your particular department. The Italian taste for gardening is not ours, nor that of the English or Germans. Theirs is the architectonic style, handed down to them from their predecessors of the land, the Romans. And proof positive it is, that, spite of Virgil's charming Georgics, spite 'of Horace's coquetting with the country, the Romans had no taste for it. Nor have the present Italians. Their gardens and villas are for show, not for that enjoyment which our gardens give us in the way of peaceful emotion, of pleasant occupation, of communing with our " Mother Earth," of greater nearness to God the Creator. Now trees and grass, the alternation, in other words, of light and shade, and also the mixing and blending thereof, promote these pure feelings, and are the delight of our Northern eyes and hearts.

Moreover, the Americans have the high privilege over the nations of Europe, that we still have nature about us in untutored woods. Such are hard to find in Europe. Forestry is an art there, and means the cultivation, conservation and general management of trees. They get all that, it is true, and, like a well-dressed, respectable gentleman, they are a virtuous sight. But the originality of nature, the individuality, the poetry are mostly gone or out of sight. As yet, I say, as yet we have the woods, the forests, the native growth, the underbrush and all in our American country, but it won't take another hundred years, and we may be worse off than Europe. We may not have their forests, swept and trimmed and well ordered though they be; we may possibly have next to none at all, if we continue going on the principle of not caring who takes the hindmost.

Root out of your mind, American stranger in Europe, your sweet memories of woods and grass, and let us look round in Italy where so much is to be enjoyed nevertheless.

Small as this country is, we can enjoy the greatest diversity of climate, consequently also of productions, mode of life, etc. First, as to the northern half, all north of Rome. Hill, dale, valley, pasture land, ice-clad mountains, rivers, lakes, swamps and plains alternate. The most remarkable feature is, that from the cold mountains you can descend into the subtropical " Riviera," or the north shore of the Mediterranean where, although you have right behind you the relatively cool districts of Piedmont and France, as far as the coast itself is concerned, you enjoy a climate similar to that of Naples. There you see in the month of March hedges, garden hedges, of roses, of fine kinds of roses, such as we are proud of having in beds and pots, rank of growth; ditto of oleander, lemon and orange trees in the open; fuchsias, geraniums and many similar things of a height, strength, nay, robustness, that make you look twice at them before you will believe it. In the same way, you see other acquaintances and old friends in a new condition.

Very many of the plants and small trees of our green and warmhouses, reared and kept there like fine ladies in their parlors, here appear, like everyday folk, in the gardens of Nizza, San Carlo, Genoa, etc., and, like everyday folk, are all the stronger for it.

Magnolias also abound on this "riviera" and here, as well as throughout Italy, keep their leaves all the year round. Palms will also flourish in a good many spots, but the date palm will not ripen its fruit, and, on the whole, the palms do not look "to the manor born" with the exception of one spot.

That spot is the garden of the gaming-house of San Carlo. Partly the favorable situation, but mostly the immense care and lavish expenditure of Monsieur Blanc, the lessee, have produced this spot and made it an ideal one. People call it Paradise for short. Here the flowers, plants and trees of all zones are made to look at home. By the way " Paradise " is no inapt name. The gambling saloon is in the centre of this garden. Here is the fall of man, and penitent is he driven hence by remorse.

But we must not linger on the seashore, however attractive, both as to color of the water, which is sparkling, and alternating from blue to green, or as to picturesqueness of bold, rocky scenery all along, and remarkable vegetation. Let us dive inland.

I said we miss grass. I now say we also miss trees in Italy. There are alpine pastures, some few meadows, and there are also royal forests; otherwise the northern half of Italy is bare of trees. Population has crowded them out; the soil got to be precious. Hills and mountains, by means of walling and terracing, are cultivated to their very tops. The rains wash constantly down the soil and the walls will only retain some small portion of it. Nevertheless the hills and the mountains, as well as the plains, teem in Italy, and, were it not for this kindness of soil and climate, so many millions of men could not live on this relatively small peninsula.

One system of cultivation seems to prevail all over Italy. I would call it the bedstead system. The land is laid out in regular uniform plots, resembling bedsteads. Round its edges grow sometimes olive trees, but mostly mulberry trees, whose fresh leaves during the months of May and June, feed the silkworms. To produce a great variety of these leaves, and of fullest nourishment, the trees are regularly trimmed every winter so as to have only four branches from the top of the trunk, at the height of about fifteen feet from the ground, from which four branches the new twigs start. Where silk is not made, maple, willow or some other tree gets trimmed the same way. They all serve the purpose of props to vines, which are trained from tree to tree, and thus form a live trellis round the field. The field itself is parcelled off into small plots of wheat, oats, Indian corn, inter-planted with potatoes, vegetables, melons and what not. It is incredible, in fact, the diversity of things grown within that bedstead shape, and that such happy family will peaceably grow tegether, without jostling and without killing one another, is the wonder. The soil is precious, the most must be made of it, and the untiring industry of the Italian farmer and the favoring elements do the rest.

Neat as it looks, it looks unpleasant to us liberal Americans, who have so much ground and to spare.

Allow me now to come back to gardening proper. It does not compare in one sense with our own gardening or with English gardening; it is neither such trim and careful work nor as thorough. The difficulties here are too few. Our best productions, no matter in what line, are but the triumphs over ourselves, and man is not called out in Italy as much as in Pennsylvania to show his mettle. Of course this sentiment must not be carried to extremes. Both at the equator and at the poles man must knock under to nature, he can tame her but little there; he can never make her his servant, and his victories there won't show much. But if in Italy one-half of the trouble were bestowed, say on roses, or peaches, or anything else, I say one-half only of your or your neighbor's endeavors in Pennsylvania, what results there might follow !

Once in a while, but at very wide intervals, you meet with a lawn here or an English garden. Otherwise the architectural is the Italian style. Parterres, ribbon beds, geometrical figures, circles, walls of evergreens, mostly of evergreen oak, marble steps, a fountain, ever so many busts and statues, grottoes, pieces of water with Neptune, the naiads, dolphins, swans, boys in the middle or round about, a sun dial, or a mosaic floor, arbored walks, with stone flooring, ruins of antique temples, or of an ancient castle, summer houses built of solid thick stone, and very cool inside, these are the features of an Italian garden, whether in the city or in the country, far too stiff and too stony for my taste, but often very perfect of their kind.

I may in future give you details of a few of the Italian show places.