view, enjoyable.

Again, we went down a long flight of steps somewhere near the Forum,
till we reached a pitch-black place, where we waited till a guide came
up from still lower depths, down into which we followed him--each with
a moccolo--till we felt level earth or stone beneath our feet, and stood
in what I suppose is as lightless a hole as can exist in nature. It was
wet, too, and the smell of it was deadly and dismal. This, however, was
the prison in which the old Romans used to confine important prisoners,
such as Jugurtha and the Apostle Peter; and here they were strangled to
death or left to starve. It was the Mamertine Prison. I did not like it.
I also recall the opening of an oubliette in the castle of San Angelo,
which affected me like a nightmare. Before leaving Concord, in 1853, I
had once tumbled through a rotten board into a well, dug by the side of
the road ages before, and had barely saved myself from dropping to the
bottom, sixty feet below, by grabbing the weeds which grew on the margin
of the hole. I was not much scared at the moment; but the next day,
taking my father to the scene of the accident, he remarked that had I
fallen in I never could have got out again; upon which I conceived a
horror of the well which haunts me in my dreams even to this day. Only
a tuft of grass between me and such a fate! I was, therefore, far from
comfortable beside the oubliette, and was glad to emerge again into the
Roman sunshine.

One night we climbed the Pincian Hill, and saw, far out across Rome,
the outlines of St. Peter's dome in silver light. While we were thinking
that nothing could be more beautiful, all of a sudden the delicate
silver bloomed out into a golden glory, which made everybody say,
"Oh!" Was it more beautiful or not? Theoretically, I prefer the silver
illumination; but, as a matter of fact, I must confess that I liked the
golden illumination better. We were told that the wonder was performed
by convicts, who lay along the dome and applied their matches to the
lamps at the word of command, and that, inasmuch as the service was apt
to prove fatal to the operators, these convicts were allowed certain
alleviations of their condition for doing it. I suppose it is done by
electricity now, and the convicts neither are killed nor obtain any
concessions. Such are the helps and hindrances of civilization!

Shortly after this, on a cool and cloudy night, I was down in the
Piazza, del Popolo and saw the fir