f
churches. It was the boast of the Romans that the Pope could say mass in
a different church every day of the year. This, we believe, is true,
there being more than three hundred and sixty churches in that city, but
not one copy of the Bible that is accessible by the people.

The second street,--that on the right,--is the Via Ripetta, which leads
off in the direction of St Peter's and the Vatican. It takes one nigh
the tomb of Augustus, now converted into a hippodrome; the Pantheon,
whose pristine beauty remains undefaced after twenty centuries; the
Collegio Romano; and, towards the foot of the Capitol, the Ghetto,--a
series of mean streets, occupied by the Jews. The third street,--that on
the left,--is the Via Babuino. It traverses the more aristocratic
quarter of Rome,--if we can use such a phrase in reference to a city
whose nobles are lodging-house keepers, and live--

"Garreted
In their ancestral palace,"--

running on by the Piazza di Spagna, which the English so much frequent,
to the Quirinal, the Pope's summer palace, and the form of Trajan, whose
column, after the many copies which have been made of it, still stands
unrivalled and unapproached in beauty.

"And though the passions of man's fretful race
Have never ceased to eddy round its base,
Not injured more by touch of meddling hands
Than a lone obelisk 'mid Nubian sands."

On the Corso there is considerable bustle. The little buying and selling
that is done in Rome is transacted here. Half the population that one
sees in the Corso are priests and French soldiers. The population of
Rome is not much above an hundred thousand; its ecclesiastical persons,
however, are close on six thousand. Let us imagine, if we can, the state
of things were the ecclesiastics of all denominations in Scotland to be
doubled, and the whole body to be collected into one city of the size of
Edinburgh! Such is the state of Rome. The great majority of these men
have no duty to do, beyond the dreary and monotonous task of the daily
lesson in the breviary. They have no sermons to write and preach; they
do not visit the sick; they have no books or newspapers; they have no
family duties to perform. With the exception of the Jesuits, who are
much employed in the confessional, the whole fraternity of regulars and
seculars, white, black, brown, and gray, live on the best, and literally
do nothing. But, of course, six thousand heads cannot be idle. The
amo