e preserved in the portals, has recently been
purchased by the Emperor of Germany, who proposes to transform it into
an Academy for the accommodation of German students in Rome. These
national academies draw their corresponding numbers of students from the
nations thus represented, and contribute to the cosmopolitan aspects of
Rome. The American Academy in Rome is now being transferred from the
Ludovisi quarter to a large and convenient building outside Porta Pia.

Perhaps the eminently social quality of Roman life may be indirectly due
to the lack of library privileges which is a conspicuous defect in Rome.
The Biblioteca Vittorio Emanuele, under the courteous administration of
Commendatore Conte Guili, has, it is true, a collection of over half a
million volumes and thousands of very rare and valuable manuscripts. It
has a large public reading room, and books are loaned on the signature
of any embassy or consulate; yet this library, while offering peculiar
advantages to theological and other special students and readers, does
not afford any extended privileges to the general reader of modern
English and American publications. It is located in a grim and
forbidding old stone palace, approached by an obscure lane from the
Corso, where, as there is no sidewalk, the pedestrian shares the narrow,
dark, cold, stone-paved little street with carts, donkeys, peasants,
and beggars.

The great monument to King Victor Emmanuel, of mingled architecture and
sculpture, a colossal structure of white marble with arches and pillars
forming beautiful colonnades, the capital of each column heavily carved,
and the sculpture, which is being done by a number of artists, will be
of the most artistic and beautiful order. This memorial will occupy an
entire block, and it is located very near the Capitol. All the old
buildings in the vicinity will be torn down to give a fine vista for
this transcendently noble and sumptuous memorial.

The directors of this work aim to have it completed and ready to be
unveiled in 1911, the jubilee year of Italy's resurrection as a united
country.

Encircled by the old Aurelian wall and near the great pyramid that marks
the tomb of Caius Cestius, who died 12 B.C., lies the Protestant
cemetery of Rome, full of bloom and fragrance and beauty, under the
dark, solemn cypress trees that stand like ever-watchful sentinels. When
Keats was buried here (in 1820), Shelley wrote of "the romantic and
lovely cemetery ...