arble?--plaster?--wood?--paper? No. Red porphyry
--verde antique--jasper--oriental agate--alabaster--mother-of-pearl
--chalcedony--red coral--lapis lazuli! All the vast walls are made wholly
of these precious stones, worked in, and in and in together in elaborate
pattern s and figures, and polished till they glow like great mirrors
with the pictured splendors reflected from the dome overhead. And before
a statue of one of those dead Medicis reposes a crown that blazes with
diamonds and emeralds enough to buy a ship-of-the-line, almost. These
are the things the Government has its evil eye upon, and a happy thing it
will be for Italy when they melt away in the public treasury.

And now----. However, another beggar approaches. I will go out and
destroy him, and then come back and write another chapter of
vituperation.

Having eaten the friendless orphan--having driven away his comrades
--having grown calm and reflective at length--I now feel in a kindlier
mood. I feel that after talking so freely about the priests and the
churches, justice demands that if I know any thing good about either I
ought to say it. I have heard of many things that redound to the credit
of the priesthood, but the most notable matter that occurs to me now is
the devotion one of the mendicant orders showed during the prevalence of
the cholera last year. I speak of the Dominican friars--men who wear a
coarse, heavy brown robe and a cowl, in this hot climate, and go
barefoot. They live on alms altogether, I believe. They must
unquestionably love their religion, to suffer so much for it. When the
cholera was raging in Naples; when the people were dying by hundreds and
hundreds every day; when every concern for the public welfare was
swallowed up in selfish private interest, and every citizen made the
taking care of himself his sole object, these men banded themselves
together and went about nursing the sick and burying the dead. Their
noble efforts cost many of them their lives. They laid them down
cheerfully, and well they might. Creeds mathematically precise, and
hair-splitting niceties of doctrine, are absolutely necessary for the
salvation of some kinds of souls, but surely the charity, the purity, the
unselfishness that are in the hearts of men like these would save their
souls though they were bankrupt in the true religion--which is ours.

One of these fat bare-footed rascals came here to Civita Vecchia with us
in the little Fre