in vain to say that the ghosts of history do not
haunt their ancient habitations. Places, as well as persons, have lives
and influences; and the horror of murder will not away from a spot.
Haunted by its crimes, oppressed and debilitated by the fierce excesses
of its Empire, Rome, silent, grave, and meditative, sighs over its past,
wrapped in the penitent robes of the Church.

Besides, here one feels that the modern Romans are only the children of
their ancient fathers, with the same characteristics,--softened, indeed,
and worn down by time, just as the sharp traits of the old marbles have
worn away; but still the same people,--proud, passionate, lazy, jealous,
vindictive, easy, patient, and able. The Popes are but Church
pictures of the Emperors,--a different robe, but the same nature
beneath;--Alexander the VI. was but a second Tiberius--Pius the VII.,
a modern Augustus. When I speak of the Roman people, I do not mean the
class of hangers-on upon the foreigners, but the Trasteverini and the
inhabitants of the provinces and mountains. No one can go through the
Trastevere when the people are roused, without feeling that they are the
same as those who listened to Marcus Antonius and Brutus, when the bier
of Caesar was brought into the streets,--and as those who fought with
the Colonna and stabbed Rienzi at the foot of the Capitol steps. The
Ciceruacchio of '48 was but an ancient Tribune of the People, in the
primitive sense of that title. I like, too, to parallel the anecdote of
Caius Marius, when, after his ruin, he concealed himself in the marshes,
and astonished his captors, who expected to find him weak of heart, by
the magnificent self-assertion of "I am Caius Marius," with the story
which is told of Stefano Colonna. After this great captain met with his
sad reverses, and, deprived of all his possessions, fled from Rome, an
attendant asked him,--"What fortress have you now?" He placed his hand
on his heart and answered,--"_Eccola!_" The same blood evidently ran in
the veins of both these men; and well might Petrarca call Colonna "a
phoenix risen from the ashes of the ancient Romans."

But, somehow or other, I have wandered strangely from my subject.
_Scusi_,--but what has all this to do with the Bambino?

The Santissimo Bambino is a very round-faced and expressionless doll,
carved, as the legend goes, from a tree on the Mount of Olives, by a
Franciscan pilgrim, and painted by Saint Luke while the pilgrim slept.
I