e, but quickly issued screaming, having made
the discovery, that they had only got out of the fire into a
frying-pan. On issuing from the Portico, we pass a large fountain, in
which the gold fish keep studiously at the bottom of the water, while
the restless dragon-fly (who finds the glittering shell-work too hot
to hold him) is as studiously skimming backwards and forwards over the
surface, to cool and refresh himself; and the frogs, in a neighboring
tank, while conjugal duties keep them also on the top, feebly croak as
they float with their wives among the green feculence, and make love
behind the bulrushes. On leaving the garden, we mount our green
spectacles, hoist our umbrella, and resolutely set our face homeward
and Romeward. Half an hour's broiling walk brings us up under the
friendly covert of the city walls; following the _giro_ of which, we
arrive in about as much time as it has taken us to reach them, at the
Popolo Gate, and enter the Piazza, which no mortal wight would now
care to traverse, who could avoid it. The owls--how cruel to place
owls upon an obelisk dedicated to the _sun_--never blinked to a
brighter flood of light in the streets of Thebes, than that which here
streams on every object to-day. The Tazza's fountain, at its base, is
a perfect cauldron, in which the glowing water bubbles up against, the
sides, as if it were actually about to _boil over_; the domes of the
two churches, opposite the city gate, will soon warm their capacious
interiors, from the large, supply of caloric they are now rapidly
absorbing; a stand of bayonets before the Dogana, sparkles as if it
were on fire; and when we have arrived at the foot of the wide white
Scalinata of the Trinita di Monti, the whole expanse from top to
bottom shines with unmitigated and unsupportable splendour. No
importunate beggar can stand and rattle his tin box on the summit, and
if he could, there is no passenger to heed or hear him; the Sabine
model belle is not there to offer herself to the first artist who
wants a madonna or a saint, nor amateur bandits, nor faun-like
children playing on the steps; even the patient goats, long since
milked, lie panting under the convent wall; not a dog is visible on
the large _immondezaro_ in front of it; and had we not had already
painful experience of the heat of the day, the donkey who lives below,
in the court of the Palazzo Mignanelli, exhibits it most strikingly;
there he stands, a fine subject for Pinelli