is all, and at this point all traffic on the Tiber ceases.  Though the river is navigable for a long distance above Rome, yet beyond the bridge, now in sight, not a boat is to be seen except at rare intervals.  It is the Tiber surely,

and not the Thames, which should be called the “silent highway.”

A few steps more and the walls on either side are replaced by houses, and the city has begun.  The houses do not improve on a closer acquaintance; one and all look as if commenced on too grand a scale, they had ruined their builders before their completion, had been left standing empty for years, and were now occupied by tenants too poor to keep them from decay.  There are holes in the wall where the scaffolding was fixed, large blotches where the plaster has peeled away; stones and cornices which have been left unused lie in the mud before the doors.  From the window-sills and from ropes fastened across the streets flutter half-washed rags and strange apparel.  The height of the houses makes the narrow streets gloomy even at midday.  At night, save in a few main thoroughfares, there is no light of any kind; but then, after dark at Rome, nobody cares much about walking in out-of-the-way places.  The streets are paved with the most angular and slippery of stones, placed herringbone fashion, with ups and downs in every direction.  Foot-pavement there is none; and the ricketty carriages drawn by the tottering horses

come swaying round the endless corners with an utter disregard for the limbs and lives of the foot-folk.  You are out of luck if you come to Rome on a “Festa” day, for then all the shops are shut, and the town looks drearier than ever.  However, even here the chances are two to one, or somewhat more, in favour of the day of your arrival being a working-day.  When the shops are open there is at any rate life enough of one kind or other.  In most parts the shops have no window-fronts.  Glass, indeed, there is little of anywhere, and the very name of plate-glass is unknown.  The dark, gloomy shops varying in size between a coach-house and a wine-vault, have their wide shutter-doors flung open to the streets.  A feeble lamp hung at the back of every shop you pass, before a painted Madonna shrine, makes the darkness of their interiors visible.  The trades of Rome are primitive and few in number.  Those dismembered, disembowelled carcases, suspended in every variety of posture, denote the butchers’ shops; not the pleasantest of sights at any time, least of all in Rome, where the custom of washing the meat after killing it seems never to have been introduced.  Next door too is an open stable, crowded with mules and horses.  Those black,

mouldy loaves, exposed in a wire-work cage, to protect them from the clutches of the hungry street vagabonds, stand in front of the bakers, where the price of bread is regulated by the pontifical tariff.  Then comes the “Spaccio di Vino,” that gloomiest among the shrines of Bacchus, where the sour red wine is drunk at dirty tables by the grimiest of tipplers.  Hard by is the “Stannaro,” or hardware tinker, who is always re-bottoming dilapidated pans, and drives a brisk trade in those clumsy, murderous-looking knives.  Further on is the greengrocer, with the long strings of greens, and sausages, and flabby balls of cheese, and straw-covered oil-flasks dangling in festoons before his door.  Over the way is the Government depôt, where the coarsest of salt and the rankest of tobacco are sold at monopoly prices.  Those gay, parti-coloured stripes of paper, inscribed with the cabalistic figures, flaunting at the street corner, proclaim the “Prenditoria di Lotti,” or office of the Papal lottery, where gambling receives the sanction of the Church, and prospers under clerical auspices to such an extent that in the city of Rome alone, with a population under two hundred thousand, fifty-five millions of lottery tickets are said to be taken annually. 

Cobblers and carpenters, barbers and old clothes-men, seem to me to carry on their trades much in the same way all the world over.  The peculiarity about Rome is, that all these trades seem stunted in their development.  The cobbler never emerges as the shoemaker, and the carpenter fails to rise into the upholstery line of business.  Bookselling too is a trade which does not thrive on Roman soil.  Altogether there is a wonderful sameness about the streets.  Time after time, turn after turn, the same scene is reproduced.  So having got used to the first strangeness of the sight you move on more quickly.

There is no lack of life about you now, at the shop-doors whole families sit working at their trades, or carrying on the most private occupations of domestic life; at every corner groups of men stand loitering about, with hungry looks and ragged garments, reminding one only too forcibly of the “Seven Dials” on a summer Sunday; French soldiers and beggars, women and children and priests swarm around you.  Indeed, there are priests everywhere.  There with their long black coats and broad-brimmed shovel hats, come a score of young priests, walking two and two together, with downcast eyes.  How, without

looking up, they manage to wend their way among the crowd, is a constant miracle; the carriages, however, stop to let them pass, for a Roman driver would sooner run over a dozen children than knock down a priest.  A sturdy, bare-headed, bare-footed monk, not over clean, nor over savoury, hustles along with his brown robe fastened round his waist by the knotted scourge of cord; a ghastly-looking figure, covered in a grey shroud from head to foot, with slits for his mouth and eyes, shakes a money-box in your face, with scowling importunity; a fat sleek abbé comes sauntering along, peeping into the open shops or (so scandal whispers) at the faces of the shop-girls.  If you look right or left, behind or in front, you see priests on every side,—Franciscan friars and Dominicans, Carmelites and Capuchins, priests in brown cloth and priests in serge, priests in red and white and grey, priests in purple and priests in rags, standing on the church-steps, stopping at the doorways, coming down the bye-streets, looking out of the windows—you see priests everywhere and always.  Their faces are, as a rule, not pleasant to look upon; and I think, at first, with something of the “old bogey” belief of childhood, you feel more comfortable

when they are not too close to you; but, ere long, this feeling wears away, and you gaze at the priests and at the beggars with the same stolid indifference.

You are getting, by this time, into the heart of the city, ever and anon the streets pass through some square or piazza, each like the other.  In the centre stands a broken fountain, moss-grown and weedy, whence the water spouts languidly; on the one side is a church, on the other some grim old palace, which from its general aspect, and the iron bars before its windows, bears a striking resemblance to Newgate gone to ruin.  Grass grows between the flag-stones, and the piazza is emptier, quieter, and cleaner than the street, but that is all.  You stop and enter the first church or two, but your curiosity is soon satisfied.  Dull and bare outside, the churches are gaudy and dull within.  When you have seen one, you have seen all.  A crippled beggar crouching at the door, a few common people kneeling before the candle-lighted shrines, a priest or two mumbling at a side-altar, half-a-dozen indifferent pictures and a great deal of gilt and marble everywhere, an odour of stale incense and mouldy cloth, and, over all,