the foot of the Spanish steps the
flower venders spread out their wares,--great bunches of the
flame-colored roses peculiar to Italy, the fragrant white hyacinths,
golden jonquils, baskets of violets, and masses of lilies of the valley.

On many a night of brilliant moonlit glory the artistic sojourners in
Rome lingered on the parapet of the Pincian Hill watching the moonlight
flood the Eternal City until churches and palaces seemed to swim in a
sea of silver. Or in the morning, when the rose-red of dawn was aglow,
there seemed to hover over the city that wraith of mist whose secret
Claude Lorraine surprises in his landscapes. These dawn visions of
mysterious, incredible beauty are a part of the very identity of Rome.

There were mornings when the Hawthornes with Mrs. Jameson or some other
friend would drive out to the old San Lorenzo (_fuori le mura_), the
church founded by Constantine in 330 on the site where the body of St.
Lawrence was buried. At various periods the church was enlarged and
finally, as recently as in 1864, Pio Nono had great improvements made
under the architect Vespignani. In the piazza in front was placed an
immense column of red granite, some sixty feet high, with the statue of
St. Lawrence, a standing figure, at the top. It is most impressive. The
colonnade at the entrance of the church is decorated with frescoes and
contains two immense sarcophagi, whose sides are beautifully sculptured
with reliefs. The roof is supported by six Ionic columns. Entering the
church one finds an interior of three aisles divided by colossal columns
of Oriental granite. In the middle aisle, on both sides the galleries,
are fresco paintings illustrating the martyrdom of St. Lawrence and of
St. Stephen, one series on the right and the other on the left. One of
these paintings, especially, of the life of St. Lawrence, is strangely
haunting to the imagination. It represents the youthful, slender figure,
nude, save for slight drapery, laid on the gridiron while the fire is
being kindled under it and the fagots shovelled in. The physical
shrinking of the flesh--of every nerve--from the torture, the spiritual
strength and invincible energy of the countenance, are wonderfully
depicted. The great aisle was painted by order of Pius IX by Cesare
Fracassini; in it are two pulpits of marble. A double staircase of
marble conducts to that part of the Basilica of Constantine which by
Honorius III was converted into the presbytery. I