ned cloaks and looking like stage bandits;
even saddle horses are led sometimes that way to save time; and on each
side flow two streams of human beings of every type to be found between
Porta Angelica and Porta San Giovanni. A prince of the Holy Roman Empire
pushes past a troop of dirty school children, and is almost driven into
an open barrel of salt codfish, in the door of a poor shop, by a
black-faced charcoal man carrying a sack on his head more than half as
high as himself. A party of jolly young German tourists in loose
clothes, with red books in their hands, and their field-glasses hanging
by straps across their shoulders, try to rid themselves of the
flower-girls dressed in sham Sabine costumes, and utter exclamations of
astonishment and admiration when they themselves are almost run down by
a couple of the giant Royal Grenadiers, each six feet five or
thereabouts, besides nine inches, or so, of crested helmet aloft,
gorgeous, gigantic and spotless. Clerks by the dozen and liveried
messengers of the ministries struggle in the press; ladies gather their
skirts closely, and try to pick a dainty way where, indeed, there is
nothing 'dain' (a word which Doctor Johnson confesses that he could not
find in any dictionary, but which he thinks might be very useful);
servant girls, smart children with nurses and hoops going up to the
Pincio, black-browed washerwomen with big baskets of clothes on their
heads, stumpy little infantry soldiers in grey uniforms, priests,
friars, venders of boot-laces and thread, vegetable sellers pushing
hand-carts of green things in and out among the horses and vehicles with
amazing dexterity, and yelling their cries in super-humanly high
voices--there is no end to the multitude. If the day is showery, it is a
sight to see the confusion in the Tritone when umbrellas of every age,
material and colour are all opened at once, while the people who have
none crowd into the codfish shop and the liquor seller's and the
tobacconist's, with traditional 'con permesso' of excuse for entering
when they do not mean to buy anything; for the Romans are mostly civil
people and fairly good-natured. But rain or shine, at the busy hours,
the place is always crowded to overflowing with every description of
vehicle and every type of humanity.

Out of Babel--a horizontal Babel--you may turn into the little church,
dedicated to the 'Holy Guardian Angel.' It stands on the south side of
the Tritone, in that part whi