• Nothing is more common than for Englishmen travelling in
Italy to ask what the tourist harvest is worth to the country which is, above all others, the land of the "sight-seer?' The Pall Mall Gazette of Tuesday tells us that the " Commendator Bodio," a noted Italian statist, has made the calculations required to answer this question. He has come to the conclusion that tourists of all kinds spend every year in Italy something like thirteen million pounds sterling, or nearly 240,000 a day. Considering the population and the comparative poverty of Italy, this is a crop well worth cultivating, and ought to make the Italians most careful to protect their ancient monuments from injury. The Italian may personally prefer a smart new boulevard to a narrow street of ruinous old palaces, but he may be quite sure that the world will not spend 240,000 a day in order to see new boulevards. The Central Government might well form a Commission for preserving the amenities of Italy, and give it an absolute veto in regard to all " improvements " contemplated in Rome and the other great towns.
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