world and
man, of the Fall and the Flood, and at the end wall an immense picture
of the Last Judgment. To the west of the palace stands the Pope's
gardens and park, and to the south the Church of St. Peter, the largest
temple in Christendom. The whole forms a small town of itself; and this
town is one of the greatest in the world, a seat of art and learning,
and, above all, the focus of a great religion. For from here the Pope
sends forth his bulls of excommunication against heretics and sinners,
and here he watches over his flock, the Catholics, in accordance with
the Saviour's thrice repeated injunction to Peter: "Feed my sheep."

A drive through Rome is intensely interesting. The streets are mostly
narrow and crooked, and we are always turning corners, driving across
small triangular open places and in lanes where it is ticklish work to
pass a vehicle coming in the opposite direction. Yet no boulevards, no
great streets in the world, can rival in beauty the streets of Rome.
They are skirted by old grey palaces built thousands of years ago rather
than centuries, decorated with the most splendid window frames, friezes,
and colonnades. Every portal is a work of art; round every corner comes
a new surprise, a fountain with sea-horses and deities, a mediaeval
well, a moss-grown ruin of Imperial times, or a church with a tower
whence bells have rung for centuries over Rome.

And what a commotion there is in all these narrow streets! Here comes a
peasant driving his asses weighed down with baskets of melons and
grapes. There a boy draws a handcart piled up with apricots, oranges,
and nuts. Here we see men and women from the Campagna outside Rome, clad
in their national costume, in which dirty white and red predominate, the
men with black slouched hats, the women with white kerchiefs over their
hair. They are of dark complexion, but on the cheeks of the younger ones
the roses appear through the bronze. The patricians, the noble Romans
who roll by lazily in fine carriages, are much fairer, and indeed the
ladies are often as pale as if they had just left the cloister or were
ready for the bier. Boys run begging after the carriage, and poor
mothers with small infants in their arms beseech only a small coin.
There are many in Rome who live from hand to mouth. But all are
cheerful, all are comely.

Now we reach the bridge of St. Angelo over the muddy Tiber, and before
us stands the massive round tower of the castle of St. Ange