ctions of Paintings and Sculptures are
almost daily open to strangers without charge, save the trifle that you
choose to give the attendant who shows you through them. I looked for
hours to-day through the ten spacious apartments of the Palace of the
Orsini family devoted to the Fine Arts, as I had already done through
that of the Doria family, and shall to-morrow do through others, and
doubtless might do through hundreds of others--all hospitably open to
every stranger on the simple condition that he shall deport himself
civilly and refrain from doing any injury to the priceless treasures
which are thus made his own without the trouble even of taking care of
them. I know there are instances of like liberality elsewhere; but is it
anywhere else the rule? and is it in our country even the exception?
What American ever thought of spending half an immense fortune in the
collection of magnificent galleries of Pictures, Statues, &c., and then
quietly opening the whole to the public without expecting a word of
compliment or acknowledgment in return?--without being even personally
known to those whom he thus benefited? We have something to learn of
Rome in this respect. Some of the English nobility whom the Press has
shamed into following this munificent example have done it so grudgingly
as to deprive the concession of all practical value. By requiring all
who wish to visit their galleries to make a formal written application
for the privilege, and await a written answer, they virtually restrict
the favor to persons of leisure, position and education. But in Rome not
even a card nor a name is required; and you walk into a strange private
palace as if you belonged there, lay down your stick or umbrella, and
are shown from hall to hall by an intelligent, courteous attendant,
study at will some of the best productions of Claude, Raphael, Salvator
Rosa, Poussin, Murillo, &c., pay two shillings if you see fit, to the
attendant, and are thanked for it as if you were a patron; going thence
to another such collection, and so for weeks, if you have time. If
wealth were always thus employed, it were a pity that great fortunes are
not more numerous.

But I purpose to speak of the COLISEUM. I will assume that most
of my readers know that this was an immense amphitheater, constructed in
the days of Rome's imperial greatness, used for gladiatorial combats of
men with ferocious beasts and with each other, and calculated to afford
a view of