busy buying them, and there is a deafening roar all up and down the
steps of "_Mezzo baiocco, bello colorito, mezzo baiocco, la
Santissima Concezione Incoronata,"--"Diario Romano, Lunario Romano
Nuovo,"--"Ritratto colorito, medaglia e quadruccio, un baiocco tutti,
un baiocco tutti,"--"Bambinelli di cera, un baiocco_."[C] None of
the prices are higher than one _baiocco_, except to strangers,--and
generally several articles are held up together, enumerated, and
proffered with a loud voice for this sum. Meanwhile men, women,
children, priests, beggars, soldiers, and _villani_ are crowding up and
down, and we crowd with them.

[Footnote C: "A half-_baiocco_, beautifully colored,--a half-_baiocco_,
the Holy Conception Crowned." "Roman Diary,--New Roman Almanac."
"Colored portrait, medal, and little picture, one _baiocco_, all."
"Little children in wax, one _baiocco_."]

At last, ascending, we reach the door which faces towards the west.
We lift the great leathern curtain and push into the church. A faint
perfume of incense salutes the nostrils. The golden sunset bursts in as
the curtain sways forward, illuminates the mosaic floor, catches on the
rich golden ceiling, and flashes here and there over the crowd on some
brilliant costume or shaven head. All sorts of people are thronging
there,--some kneeling before the shrine of the Madonna, which gleams
with its hundreds of silver votive hearts, legs, and arms,--some
listening to the preaching,--some crowding round the chapel of the
_Presepio_,--old women, haggard and wrinkled, come tottering along with
their _scaldini_ of coals, drop down on their knees to pray, and, as you
pass, interpolate in their prayers a parenthesis of begging. The church
is not architecturally handsome; but it is eminently picturesque, with
its relics of centuries, its mosaic pulpits and floor, its frescoes of
Pinturicchio and Pesaro, its antique columns, its rich golden ceiling,
its Gothic mausoleum to the Savelli, and its medieval tombs. A dim,
dingy look is over all,--but it is the dimness of faded splendor; and
one cannot stand there, knowing the history of the church, its exceeding
antiquity, and the changes it has undergone since it was a Roman temple,
without a peculiar sense of interest and pleasure.

It was here that Romulus, in the gray dawning of Rome, built the temple
of Jupiter Feretrius. Here the _spolia opima_ were deposited. Here the
triumphal processions of the Emperors and generals