jumble of ancient and modern Rome. In
this more understanding and familiar view, she says:--

"The old kings, the consuls and tribunes, the emperors, drunk with blood
and gold, return for us. The seven hills tower, the innumerable temples
glitter, and the Via Sacra swarms with triumphal life once more."

In the later Papal Rome she discerns, through the confusion of rite and
legend, a sense which to her marks the growth "of the human spirit
struggling to develop its life." And the Rome of that day was dear to
her in spite of its manifold corruptions; dear for the splendor of the
race, surviving every enslaving and deforming influence; dear for the
new-born hope of freedom which she considered safe in the nursing of
Pope Pius.

Most of the occasions chronicled by Margaret in her letters of this
period are of the sort familiarly known to travellers, and even to
readers of books of travel.

The prayers for the dead, early in November, the festival of San Carlo
Borromeo, the veiling of a nun, the worship of the wooden image called
"the most Holy Child," idolatrous, Margaret thinks, as that of the
Capitoline Jove, the blessing of the animals, the festival of the Magi
at the Propaganda,--these events are all described by her with much
good thought and suggestion.

She saw the Pope occasionally at the grand ceremonies of the Church, and
saw the first shadow fall upon his popularity, partly in consequence of
some public utterances of his which seemed to Margaret "deplorably weak
in thought and absolute in manner," and which she could not but
interpret as implying that wherever reform might in future militate
against sacerdotal traditions, it would go to the wall, in order that
the priest might triumph.

The glorious weather had departed almost as soon as she had sung its
praises, namely, on the 18th of December; after which time her patience
was sorely tried by forty days of rain, accompanied by "abominable
reeking odors, such as blessed cities swept by the sea-breeze never
know." We copy from one of her letters a graphic picture of this time of
trial:--

"It has been dark all day, though the lamp has only been lit half an
hour. The music of the day has been, first, the atrocious _arias_ which
last in the Corso till near noon. Then came the wicked organ-grinder,
who, apart from the horror of the noise, grinds exactly the same
obsolete abominations as at home or in England, the 'Copenhagen Waltz,'
'Home, Sweet Home,' an