ern Rome,--still ecclesiastical, still darkened and damp in
the shadow of the Vatican, but where bright hopes gleam now amid the
ashes! Never was a people who have had more to corrupt them,--bloody
tyranny, and incubus of priestcraft, the invasions, first of
Goths, then of trampling emperors and kings, then of sight-seeing
foreigners,--everything to turn them from a sincere, hopeful, fruitful
life; and they are much corrupted, but still a fine race. I cannot
look merely with a pictorial eye on the lounge of the Roman dandy, the
bold, Juno gait of the Roman Contadina. I love them,--dandies and all?
I believe the natural expression of these fine forms will animate them
yet. Certainly there never was a people that showed a better heart
than they do in this day of love, of purely moral influence. It makes
me very happy to be for once in a place ruled by a father's love, and
where the pervasive glow of one good, generous heart is felt in every
pulse of every day.

I have seen the Pope several times since my return, and it is a real
pleasure to see him in the thoroughfares, where his passage is always
greeted as that of _the_ living soul.

The first week of November there is much praying for the dead here in
the chapels of the cemeteries. I went to Santo Spirito. This cemetery
stands high, and all the way up the slope was lined with beggars
petitioning for alms, in every attitude find tone, (I mean tone that
belongs to the professional beggar's gamut, for that is peculiar,)
and under every pretext imaginable, from the quite legless elderly
gentleman to the ragged ruffian with the roguish twinkle in his eye,
who has merely a slight stiffness in one arm and one leg. I could
not help laughing, it was such a show,--greatly to the alarm of my
attendant, who declared they would kill me, if ever they caught me
alone; but I was not afraid. I am sure the endless falsehood in which
such creatures live must make them very cowardly. We entered the
cemetery; it was a sweet, tranquil place, lined with cypresses, and
soft sunshine lying on the stone coverings where repose the houses of
clay in which once dwelt joyous Roman hearts,--for the hearts here do
take pleasure in life. There were several chapels; in one boys were
chanting, in others people on their knees silently praying for the
dead. In another was one of the groups in wax exhibited in such
chapels through the first week of November. It represented St. Carlo
Borromeo as a beautif