rch, you are
directed to ask its beggar, as here you would the beadle. Every square,
every column, every obelisk, every fountain, has its little colony of
beggars, who have a prescriptive right to levy alms of all who come to
see these objects. We shall afterwards advert to the proof thence
arising as to the influence of the system of which this city is the
seat.

Rome, though it surpasses all the cities of the earth in the number,
beauty, and splendour of its public monuments, is imposing only in
parts. It presents no effective _tout ensemble_. Some of its noblest
edifices are huddled into corners, and lost amid a crowd of mean
buildings. The Pantheon rises in the fish-market. The Navonna Mercato,
which has the finest fountain in Italy, is a rag-fair. The church of
the Lateran is approached through narrow rural lanes. The splendid
edifice of St Paul's stands outside the walls, in the midst of swamps
and marshes so unwholesome, that there is not a house near it. The
meanest streets of Rome are those that lie around St Peter's and the
Vatican. The Corso is in good part a line of noble palaces; but in other
parts of the city you pass through whole streets, consisting of large
massive structures, once comfortable mansions, but now squalid, filthy,
and unfurnished hovels, resembling the worst dens of our great cities.
It cannot fail to strike one, too, as somewhat anomalous, that there
should be such a vast deal of ruins and rubbish in the _Eternal_ City.
And as regards its sanitary condition, there may be a great deal of
holiness in Rome, but there is very little cleanliness in it. When a
shower falls, and the odour of the garbage with which the streets are
littered is exhaled, the smell is insufferable. One had better not
describe the spectacles that one sees every day on the marble stairs of
the churches. The words of Archenholtz in the end of last century are
still applicable:--"Filth," says he, "infects all the great places of
Rome except that of St. Peter's; nor would this be excepted from the
general rule, but that it lies at greater distance from the dwellings.
It is incredible to what a pitch filthiness is carried in Rome. As
palaces and houses are mostly open, their entrance is usually rendered
unsufferable, being made the receptacle of the most disgustful wants."
In fine, Rome is the most extraordinary combination of grandeur and
ruin, magnificence and dirt, glory and decay, which the world ever saw.
We must dis