_ and _Pro-Slaveryism_. Let us hope for
better things in time to come. With their bondage, their love of bondage
will go. It has been passing from the hearts of the great, honest masses
of them ever since _Saint Sumter's Day_.

MACCARONI AND CANVAS.

VIII.

A ROMAN VETTURA.

If a man's mind and purse were in such state that he didn't care where
he went, and was able to go there; if the weather was fine, and the
aforesaid man could eat, drink, and sleep rough, and really loved
picturesqueness in all his surroundings for its own sake--that man
should travel by _vettura_. Not one of the _vetture_ advertised by a
Roman 'to go to all parts of the world;' not one of those traveling
carriages with a seat for milady's maid and milord's man, with courier
beside the driver and a vettura dog on top of the baggage, at the very
sight of which, beggars spring from the ground as if by magic, and the
customhouse officers assume airs of state. No, no, NO! What is meant by
a _vettura_ is a broken-down carriage, seats inside for four English or
six Italians, a seat outside along with the driver for one American or
three Italians, and places to hold on to, for two or three more,
Italians. The harness of the horses consists of an originally leather
harness, with rope commentaries, string emendations, twine notes, and
ragged explanations of the primary work; in plain English, it's an
edition of harness with nearly all the original leather expurgated.

Well, you enter into agreement with the compeller of horses, alias
_vetturino_, to go to a certain town a certain distance from Rome. The
vehicle he drives is popularly reported to leave regularly for that
town; you know that regularly means regularly-uncertainly. You go and
see the _vetturino_, say in that classic spot, the piazza Pollajuolo;
you find him, after endless inquiries, in a short jacket, in a
wine-shop, smoking a throat-scorcher of a short pipe, and you arrange
with him as regards the fare, for he has different prices for different
people. Little children and soldiers pay half-price, as you will read on
your railroad ticket to Frascati, and priests pay what they please,
foreigners all that can be squeezed out of them, and Italians at fixed
price.

As for the horses that drag this _vettura_. _Ola!_ I hope the crows will
spare them one day longer. The long-suffering traveler pauses here,
reader, wipes the dust from his brow, and exclaims:

'Blessed be bull-fights; fo