er sunshine, and
far below us,--on the length of the Forum over which the Appian Way
stretched from the Capitoline Hill under the Arch of Septimius Severus
and the Arch of Titus to the Arch of Constantine, leaving the Coliseum
on the left, and losing itself in the foliage of the suburbs,--the
Past seemed struggling to emerge from the ruins, and to reshape and
animate itself anew. The effort was more successful than that which we
had helped the Past to make when standing on the level of the Forum;
but Antiquity must have been painfully conscious of the incongruity of
the red-legged Zouaves wandering over the grass, and of the bewildered
tourists trying to make her out with their Murrays.

In a day or two after this we returned again to our Conservatorio,
where we found that the excitement created by our first visit had been
kept fully alive by the events attending the photographing of Virginia
for her father. Not only Virginia was there to receive us, but her
grandmother also--an old, old woman, dumb through some infirmity of
age, who could only weep and smile in token of her content. I think
she had but a dim idea, after all, of what went on beyond the visible
fact of Virginia's photograph, and that she did not quite understand
how we could cause it to be taken for her son. She was deeply
compassionated by the Superior, who rendered her pity with a great
deal of gesticulation, casting up her eyes, shrugging her shoulders,
and sighing grievously. But the assistant's cheerfulness could not be
abated even by the spectacle of extreme age; and she made the most of
the whole occasion, recounting with great minuteness all the incidents
of the visit to the photographer's, and running to get the dress
Virginia sat in, that we might see how exactly it was given in the
picture. Then she gave us much discourse concerning the Conservatorio
and its usages, and seemed not to wish us to think that life there
was altogether eventless. "Here we have a little amusement also," she
said. "The girls have their relatives to visit them sometimes, and
then in the evening they dance. Oh, they enjoy themselves! I am half
old (_mezzo-vecchia_). I am done with these things. But for youth,
always kept down, something lively is wanted."

When we took leave of these simple folks, we took leave of almost the
only natural and unprepared aspect of Italian life which we were to
see in Rome; but we did not know this at the time.

II.

Indeed, it see