e most cordial hospitality.

Through the kind aid of General Tevis we were enabled to see all the
principal ceremonies of the Holy Week and Easter. This year, owing to
the Council, everything was on a scale of unusual magnificence. I can
say with Panurge that I have seen three Popes, but will not add with him,
"and little good did it ever do me," for Mrs. Leland at least was much
gratified with a full sight and quasi-interview with His Holiness.

There was a joyous sight for a cynic to be seen in Rome in those days--in
fact, it was only last year (1891) that it was done away with. This was
the drawing of the lottery by a priest. There was on a holy platform a
holy wheel and a holy little boy to draw the holy numbers, and a holy old
priest to oversee and _bless_ the whole precious business. The blessing
of the devil would have been more appropriate, for the lotteries are the
curse of Italy. What the Anglo-American mechanic puts into a savings
bank, the Italian invests in lotteries. In Naples there are now fourteen
tickets sold per annum for the gross amount of the population, and in
Florence twelve.

One day I took a walk out into the country with Briton Riviere and some
other artists. I had a cake or two of colour, and Riviere, with wine for
water, at a _trattoria_ where we lunched, made a picture of the attendant
maid. He pointed out to me on the road a string of peasants carrying
great loaves of coarse bread. They had walked perhaps twenty miles to
buy it, because in those days people were not allowed to bake their own
bread, but must buy it at the public _forno_, which paid a tax for the
privilege. So long as Rome was under Papal control, its every municipal
institution, such as hospitals, prisons, and the police, were in a state
of absolutely incredible inhuman vileness, while under everything ran
corruption and dishonesty. The lower orders were severely disciplined as
to their sexual morals, because it was made a rich source of infamous
taxes, as it now is in other cities of Europe; but cardinals and the
wealthier priests kept mistresses, almost openly, since these women were
pointed out to every one as they flaunted about proudly in their
carriages.

From Rome we passed into Pisa, Genoa, Spezzia, and Nice, over the old
Cornici road, and so again to Paris, where we remained six weeks, and
then left in June, 1870, just before the war broke out. While in the
city we saw at different times in public th