The outburst of cholera in Italy is severe, and the
people in the South appear to have gone mad. They are worse than the French. Instead of treating the disease as a disease, they treat it as a kind of invading force, and ehnt their city gates against it. In Ancona, the local authorities refuse permission to travellers to enter without a certificate of twenty days' exemption from infection. In Orvieto, the citizens close the gates absolutely. In Perugia, all persons arriving from Leghorn must endure fifteen days' quarantine. In some places, it is affirmed, the 'Walls are guarded by armed citizens, who refuse all ingress ; and in Calabria, the people actually fire upon passing ships, lest any one should land. The Government is compelled to bow to the storm; and, though its members probably dis- believe the whole theory of infection, and the King boldly Visits infected places in which cholera has appeared, still cities are surrounded with military cordons—condemned, that is, to imprisonment and starvation for being ill. A severe rebuke, issued from the Ministry of the Interior to the muni- cipalities, is only directed against unsauctioned action. Yet these very people would probably face far more serious danger of any other kind. The author of " Erewhon," if he were in Italy just now, would find his dreams realised, and himself living in a world in which illness was the one offence that the moral sense of the community could not pardon.
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