ore, than the everlasting passport
bother began. The "apostolic consul" at Florence had certified me as
"good for Rome;" the governor of Leghorn had but the day before done the
same; but here were I know not how many officials, all assuring me that
without their signatures in addition, Rome I should never see. First
came the English consul, who graciously gave me--what Lord Palmerston
had already given--permission to travel in the Papal States, charging me
at the same time five pauls. I could not help saying, that it was all
very well for nations that made no pretensions to liberty to sell to
their subjects the right of moving over the earth, but that it appeared
to me to be somewhat inconsistent in Britain to do so. The consul looked
as if he could not bring himself to believe that he had heard aright.
The number of my visa told me that I was the 4318th Englishman who had
entered the port of Civita Vecchia that season. I next took my way to
the French consulate in the town-hall. I found the ante-chamber filled
with Etrurian antiquities, in which the district adjoining Civita
Vecchia on the north is particularly rich; and the sight of these was
more than worth the moderate charge of one paul, which was made for my
visee. At length I got this business off my hand; and, having secured my
seat in the _diligence_ for Rome, I had leisure to take a stroll through
the town.

Civita Vecchia, though the port of Rome, and raised thus above its
original insignificance, is but a poor place. A black hill leans over it
on the north, and a naked beach, dreary and silent, runs off from it on
the south. A small square, overlooked by stately mansions, emblazoned
with the arms of the consuls of the various nations, forms its nucleus,
from which numerous narrow and wriggling streets run out, much like the
claws of a crab, from its round bulby body. It smells rankly of garlic
and other garbage, and would be much the better would the Mediterranean
give it a thorough cleansing once a-week. Its population is a motley and
worshipful assemblage of priests, monks, French soldiers, facini, and
beggars; and it would be hard to say which is the idlest, or which is
the dirtiest. They seemed to be gathered promiscuously into the
caffes,--priests, facini, and all,--rattling the dice and sipping
coffee. Every one you come in contact with has some pretext or other for
demanding a paulo of you. The Arabs of the desert are not more greedy of
_backsheish_.