g of that shamefaced feeling which, I suppose, a man must be
conscious of the first time that he ever enters the back-door of a
pawnbroker's establishment.

The interior of these offices is the same throughout. A low, dark room,
with a long ink-stained desk at one side, behind which, pen in ear, is
seated an official, more grimy even, and more snuffy than the run of his
tribe. Opposite the desk there is sure to be a picture of the Madonna
with a small glass lamp before it, wherein a feeble wick floats and
flickers in a pool of rancid oil. On the wall you may read a list of the
virtuous maidens who are to receive marriage portions of from 5 pounds
downwards, on the occasion of the lottery being drawn at some religious
festival. Indeed, throughout, the lottery is conducted on a strictly
religious footing. The _impiegati_, or officials who keep them, are all
men of sound principles and devotional habits, fervent adherents of the
Pope, and habitual communicants. Lotteries too can be defended on
abstract religious grounds, as encouraging a simple faith in providence,
and dispelling any overwhelming confidence in your own unsanctified
exertions. When you have made these reflections, you have only got to
tell the clerk what sum of money you want to stake, and on what numbers.
The smallest contribution (from eleven baiocchi or about sixpence
upwards) will be thankfully received. A long whity-brown slip of paper
is given you, with the numbers written on it, and the sum you may win
marked opposite. No questions whatever, about name or residence or
papers, are asked, as they are whenever you want to transact any other
piece of business in Rome; and all you have to do, is to keep your slip
of paper, and come back on the Saturday to learn whether your numbers
have been drawn or not.

There is, in truth, a ludicrous side to the Papal Lotteries; but there is
also a very sad one. It is sad to see the offices on a Thursday night,
when they are kept open till midnight, hours after every other shop is
closed, and to watch the crowds of common humble people who hurry in, one
after the other; servants and cabmen and clerks and beggars, and, above
all, women of the poorer class, to stake their small savings--too often
their small pilferings--on the hoped-for numbers. When one speaks of the
disgrace and shame that this authorized system of gambling confers on the
Papal Government; of the improvidence and dishonesty and misery it
c