young’s TRAVELS IN FRANCE.

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place in the governments of the Italian cities, were little adapted to give a fecurity ofpoffeflion effentially necelfary to the eftabliflnnent of fuch manufactures and commerce,as fhall by the overflowing of their furplus, ameliorate the agriculture of a country.

It was but fifteen years after the deftrudtion of Milan , that the Navillio Grande wasmade ; and within three years after the lofs of all her conquefts, that the canal de Mar-tefano was digged : thefe great undertakings were, therefore, executed at periods whencommercial profperity could leaf! of all effedt them. There was no {lability in that pros-perity. It is alfo to be remembered, that throughout this period of Milanefe hiftory,that people, even at the height of their power, were never mafters of a commercial Sea-port. It is true that they twice took Genoa ; firft in 1353, but kept it for a very Ihorttime ; and again in 1421, when they were in poffeffion of it but fourteen years; andamongfl all the dominions of Galeazzo Vifconti, Sarzano was the only port, andthat never a commercial one ; thus the fabrics of Milan were obliged to be exportedthrough the Venetian or the Genoefe, who laid duties on the tranfport of their com-modities.

The conclufion of the whole feems fairly to be, that we are not to attribute the irri-gation of the country to u'ealth derived from foreign commerce ; the fertility and excel-lent management of the lands Supported a great population, which proved as induftri-ous as public calamities and confufions w'ould allow; but it does not appear that thisinduflry was ever continued through a longferiesof peace and happinefs.

Another idea has been flarted, that Lombardy owed her irrigations to the effedl ofthe crufades : that the mad enthufiafls who went upon thofe expeditions, brought homewith them the art of cutting canals, for this mofl beneficial purpofe ; but hiftory doesnot give Sufficient lights to allow of this conclufion. I have already remarked that theNavillio Grande was made by the people of Pavia, long before thofe of Milan made thecut to that city ; and fo long before, that no records in the archives were found of it bythat moft induftrious fearcher into antiquity, Count Guilini. This fa£l feems nearly de-cifive, for the firft crufade did not commence till 1096, nor terminate till 1100, beforewhich period there is every reafon to fuppofe the canal in queftion was cut, as the re-searches of Guilini go fo far back as 773. The crufades ended in 1291 ; and had theeffefts been as great as poffible, yet they cannot be imagined to have taken place imme-diately ; it muft be, after much confultation and long reafoning, that wffiole towns.couldbe brought to co-operate in the execution of fuch plans for the common good, frommere reports of the effedl in diftant countries and different climates. Another circum-ftance, tending to prove that irrigation in Lombardy was much more antient than thecrufades, is that Theodoric, who began to reign in Italy , anno 493, publicly rewardedan African who had come thither in order to inftrudt the Italians in the art of irrigatinglands, as Mr. Profeffor Symonds has explained, with his ufual elegance, in his mofl:agreeable paper on the eftedl of water in the agriculture of Italy *. Now if this art hadbeen thus introduced, or more properly fpeaking, revived in Italy above fix hundredyears before the crufades were thought of, there cannot be much reafon for attributingthat improvement to the obfervations of thofe frantic enthufiafls. It is remarkablethat Count Verri, in his Hiftory of Milan , fays, he had long conceived that their irriga-tions were to be afcribed to the Crufades ; but from paying more attention to the au-thorities quoted by Count Guilini, he gave up that opinion, and concurred in the idea

* Annal-s of Agriculture, vol. i. p, 421.

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