that nothing remains to be done after them. Everybody has an
herbarium of dried flowers from all the celebrated sites, and a
table made from bits of marble collected in the ruined villas. Every
Englishman carries a Murray for information and a Byron for sentiment,
and finds out by them what he is to know and feel at every step.
Pictures and statues have been staled by copy and description, until
everything is stereotyped, from the Dying Gladiator, with his "young
barbarians all at play," and all that, down to the Beatrice Cenci, the
Madame Tonson of the shops, that haunts one everywhere with her white
turban and red eyes. All the public and private life and history of the
ancient Romans, from Romulus to Constantine and Julian the Apostle, (as
he is sometimes called,) is properly well known. But the common life
of the modern Romans, the games, customs, habits of the people,
the everyday of To-day, has been only touched upon here and
there,--sometimes with spirit and accuracy, as by Charles McFarlane,
sometimes with great grace, as by Hans Christian Andersen, and sometimes
with great ignorance, as by Miss Waldie. This is the subject, however,
which has specially interested me, and a life of several years in Rome
has enabled me to observe many things which do not strike the hurried
traveller, and to correct many false notions in regard to the people
and place. To a stranger, a first impression is apt to be a false
impression; and it constantly happens to me to hear my own countrymen
work out the falsest conclusions from the slightest premises, and
settle the character and deserts of the Italians, all of whom they mass
together in a lump, after they have been just long enough on the soil to
travel from Civita Vecchia to Rome under the charge of a courier, when
they know just enough of the language to ask for a coachman when they
want a spoon, and when they have made the respectable acquaintance,
beside their courier, of a few porters, a few beggars, a few
shopkeepers, and the _padrone_ of the apartment they hire.

No one lives long in Rome without loving it; and I must, in the
beginning, confess myself to be in the same category. Those who shall
read these slender papers, without agreeing to the kindly opinions
often expressed, must account for it by remembering that "Love lends a
precious seeing to the eye." My aim is far from ambitious. I shall not
be erudite, but I hope I shall not be dull. These little sketches may
rem