o sell for what it will bring. Having thus seen it made, let us
see it disposed of.

Of all the monuments to Bacchus, in Rome, the one near the pyramid of
Caius Cestius, and still nearer the Protestant burying-ground, is by far
the most noticeable. Jealous of the lofty manner in which it lifts its
head above the surrounding fields and walls of the city, the church has
seen fit to crown its head with a cross, which it seems inclined to
shake off. This small mountain of a monument is conical in shape, and is
composed entirely of broken crockery; hence its name, _Testaccio_. In
its crockery sides, they have found a certain coolness and evenness of
temperature exactly suited to the storage of wine, and to maturing it;
hence, all around the mountain are deep vaults, filled with red and
white wines, working themselves up for a fit state to enter into the joy
and the gullets of the Roman _minenti_.

If the reader of this sketch is at all of a philosophical frame of mind,
and should ever visit Rome, it is the writer's advice that, in the first
place, having learned Italian enough, and in the second place, having
his purse fairly filled--silver will do--he should, during the month of
October, on a holyday, go out to Monte Testaccio alone, or at least in
company with some one who knows enough to let him he alone when he wants
to be with somebody else, and then and there fraternizing for a few
hours with the Roman _plebs_, let him at his ease see what he shall see.
Then shall he sit him down at the door of the _Antica Osteria di
Cappanone_, at the rough wood table, on a rougher wooden bench; talk
right and left, with tailors, shoemakers, artists, soldiers, and God
knows what, drinking the cool, amber-colored wine of Monte Rotonda,
gleaming brightly in the sunlight that dashes through his glass, and so
cheerfully winning the good-will of them all--and of some of the young
women who are with them--that he shall find himself at some future time
either the sheath for a Roman knife, or the recipient of a great deal of
affection, and the purchaser of indefinite _bottiglie_ of _vino
nostrale_.

In his ardent pursuit of natural art, Caper believed it his duty to hunt
up the picturesque wherever it could be found, and it was while pursuing
this duty, in company with Rocjean, that he found himself at Monte
Testaccio, one October day, and there made his _debut_. After a luncheon
of raw ham, bread, cheese, sausage, and a _bottiglia_ of wine