s is well known,
the marble steps which once belonged to Pilate's house, and which the
Saviour is said to have ascended when he went to trial before Pilate.
The steps are protected against the wear and tear of devotion by a
stout casing of wood, and they are constantly covered with penitents,
who ascend and descend them upon their knees. Most of the pious people
whom I saw in this act were children, and the boys enjoyed it with a
good deal of giggling, as a very amusing feat. Some old and haggard
women gave the scene all the dignity which it possessed; but certain
well-dressed ladies and gentlemen were undeniably awkward and absurd,
and I was led to doubt if there were not an incompatibility between
the abandon of simple faith and the respectability of good clothes.

IV.

In all other parts of Italy one hears constant talk among travellers
of the malaria at Rome, and having seen a case of Roman fever, I know
it is a thing not to be trifled with. But in Rome itself the malaria
is laughed at by the foreign residents,--who, nevertheless, go out of
the city in midsummer. The Romans, to the number of a hundred thousand
or so, remain there the whole year round, and I am bound to say I
never saw a healthier, robuster-looking population. The cheeks of the
French soldiers, too, whom we met at every turn, were red as their
trousers, and they seemed to flourish on the imputed unwholesomeness
of the atmosphere. All at Rome are united in declaring that the fever
exists at Naples, and that sometimes those who have taken it there
come and die in Rome, in order to give the city a bad name; and I
think this very likely.

Rome is certainly dirty, however, though there is a fountain in every
square, and you are never out of the sound of falling water. The Corso
and some of the principal streets do not so much impress you with
their filth as with their dullness; but that part of the city where
some of the most memorable relics of antiquity are to be found is
unimaginably vile. The least said of the state of the archways of the
Coliseum the soonest mended; and I have already spoken of the Forum.
The streets near the Theatre of Pompey are almost impassable, and the
so-called House of Rienzi is a stable, fortified against approach by
a _fosse_ of excrement. A noisome smell seems to be esteemed the most
appropriate offering to the memory of ancient Rome, and I am not sure
that the moderns are mistaken in this. In the rascal streets in the