emerging from the Salara Gate, as a detachment of the
"red-coats" was turning in. "Cazzo! how well they ride, and what a
number too!" "Yes," said his friend at our elbow; "to whom do they
belong--_a chi appartengono_?" "'Tis the livery of a Russian prince who
came last week to Rome, and has put up at Serny's," said the other,
affecting to know all about it. "Well, to my mind, they beat Prince
Torlonia's postilions out-and-out." "_Altro_--I agree with you there;
_ma abbia pazienza_--wait a bit, and depend on it our Prince, when he
has seen them, will not be long in taking the hint!" We hope he will;
for, however we may elsewhere admire a mounted field, _here_ it shocks
every notion of propriety. That fox-hunters should have their _meeting_
where the Fabii met; Gell's map of Rome's classic topography be studied,
with no other reference than to _runs_; and Veii be scared in her lofty
citadel by the cry of hounds and harum-scarum fellows sweeping along her
ravines, are evident improprieties; while the having all one's senses
assailed and offended together by the scent of highly-ammoniated
bandy-legged fellows in fustian or corduroy, (their necessary
satellites,) who inundate street and piazza with the slang of the London
mews, is something still worse.

"Quoi! Venue d'un peuple roi,
Toi, reine encore du monde!"

Thou who hast taken the lead by turns, in legislature, literature, and
the fine arts, doomed at last to become the sovereign seat for
hunting--the Melton Mowbray of the South! May thy _genius loci_ forbid
it; may thy goddess of fever visit the hounds in one of her ugliest
types; loimos or limos destroy them; old Tiber rise with his yellow
waves to drown, catacombs yawn to ingulf, and aqueducts fall to crush
them! Or, should inanimate nature disregard our row, two other hopes
remain: the one, that the foxes, made aware by this time of the love
with which the Roman princes contemplate _il loro brush_, will send them
a yearly tribute of a certain number of these appendages, on condition
that they forthwith dismiss the dogs; the other, that the Dominicans,
who are well known to be jealous of our movements, will come to regard
hunting as an heretical sport, especially as here practised by
Protestant dogs and riders--and in Lent, too, against orthodox
foxes--and persuade the Pope to abolish it!

THE STEEPLE-CHASE.

In that grassy month of the Campagna, ere the sun has seared the
standing herbage into hay