ul young man in a long scarlet robe, pure and
brilliant as was the blood of the martyrs, relieving the poor who were
grouped around him,--old people and children, the halt, the maimed,
the blind; he had called them all into the feast of love. The chapel
was lighted and draped so as to give very good effect to this group;
the spectators were mainly children and young girls, listening with
ardent eyes, while their parents or the nuns explained to them the
group, or told some story of the saint. It was a pretty scene, only
marred by the presence of a villanous-looking man, who ever and anon
shook the poor's box. I cannot understand the bad taste of choosing
him, when there were _frati_ and priests enough of expression less
unprepossessing.

I next entered a court-yard, where the stations, or different periods
in the Passion of Jesus, are painted on the wall. Kneeling before
these were many persons: here a Franciscan, in his brown robe and
cord; there a pregnant woman, uttering, doubtless, some tender
aspiration for the welfare of the yet unborn dear one; there some
boys, with gay yet reverent air; while all the while these fresh young
voices were heard chanting. It was a beautiful moment, and despite the
wax saint, the ill-favored friar, the professional mendicants, and
my own removal, wide as pole from pole, from the positron of mind
indicated by these forms, their spirit touched me, and. I prayed too;
prayed for the distant, every way distant,--for those who seem to have
forgotten me, and with me all we had in common; prayed for the dead in
spirit, if not in body; prayed for myself, that I might never walk the
earth

"The tomb of my dead self";

and prayed in general for all unspoiled and loving hearts,--no less
for all who suffer and find yet no helper.

Going out, I took my road by the cross which marks the brow of the
hill. Up the ascent still wound the crowd of devotees, and still the
beggars beset them. Amid that crowd, how many lovely, warm-hearted
women! The women of Italy are intellectually in a low place,
_but_--they are unaffected; you can see what Heaven meant them to be,
and I believe they will be yet the mothers of a great and generous
race. Before me lay Rome,--how exquisitely tranquil in the sunset!
Never was an aspect that for serene grandeur could vie with that of
Rome at sunset.

Next day was the feast of the Milanese saint, whose life has been made
known to some Americans by Manzoni, when spea