between a coach-house and a wine-vault, have their
wide shutter-doors flung open to the streets. A feeble lamp hung at the
back of every shop you pass, before a painted Madonna shrine, makes the
darkness of their interiors visible. The trades of Rome are primitive
and few in number. Those dismembered, disembowelled carcases, suspended
in every variety of posture, denote the butchers' shops; not the
pleasantest of sights at any time, least of all in Rome, where the custom
of washing the meat after killing it seems never to have been introduced.
Next door too is an open stable, crowded with mules and horses. Those
black, mouldy loaves, exposed in a wire-work cage, to protect them from
the clutches of the hungry street vagabonds, stand in front of the
bakers, where the price of bread is regulated by the pontifical tariff.
Then comes the "Spaccio di Vino," that gloomiest among the shrines of
Bacchus, where the sour red wine is drunk at dirty tables by the grimiest
of tipplers. Hard by is the "Stannaro," or hardware tinker, who is
always re-bottoming dilapidated pans, and drives a brisk trade in those
clumsy, murderous-looking knives. Further on is the greengrocer, with
the long strings of greens, and sausages, and flabby balls of cheese, and
straw-covered oil-flasks dangling in festoons before his door. Over the
way is the Government depot, where the coarsest of salt and the rankest
of tobacco are sold at monopoly prices. Those gay, parti-coloured
stripes of paper, inscribed with the cabalistic figures, flaunting at the
street corner, proclaim the "Prenditoria di Lotti," or office of the
Papal lottery, where gambling receives the sanction of the Church, and
prospers under clerical auspices to such an extent that in the city of
Rome alone, with a population under two hundred thousand, fifty-five
millions of lottery tickets are said to be taken annually. Cobblers and
carpenters, barbers and old clothes-men, seem to me to carry on their
trades much in the same way all the world over. The peculiarity about
Rome is, that all these trades seem stunted in their development. The
cobbler never emerges as the shoemaker, and the carpenter fails to rise
into the upholstery line of business. Bookselling too is a trade which
does not thrive on Roman soil. Altogether there is a wonderful sameness
about the streets. Time after time, turn after turn, the same scene is
reproduced. So having got used to the first strangeness of th