istic background. Sometimes a _contadino_,
mounted on the crupper of his donkey, would pause in the sun to chat
awhile with the women. The children, meanwhile, sprawled and played upon
the grass, and the song and chat at the fountain would not unfrequently
be interrupted by a shrill scream from one of the mothers, to stop a
quarrel, or to silence a cry which showed the stoutness of their little
lungs.

The cobblers of Rome are also a gay and singing set. They do not
imprison themselves in a dark cage of a shop, but sit _"sub Jove"_ where
they may enjoy the life of the street and all the "skyey influences."
Their benches are generally placed near the _portone_ of some palace, so
that they may draw them under shelter when it rains. Here all day they
sit and draw their waxed-ends and sing,--a row of battered-looking boots
and shoes ranged along on the ground beside them, and waiting for their
turn, being their only stock in trade.

They commonly have enough to do, and, as they pay nothing for shop-rent,
every _baiocco_ they get is nearly clear profit. They are generally as
poor as Job's cat; but they are far happier than the proprietor of that
interesting animal. Figaro is a high ideal of this class, and about as
much like them as Raffaello's angels are like Jeames Yellowplush. What
the cobblers and Figaro have in common is song and a love of scandal.
One admirable specimen of this class sits at the corner of the Via
Felice and Capo le Case, with his bench backed against the gray wall. He
is an oldish man, with a long, gray beard and a quizzical face,--a sort
of Hans Sachs, who turns all his life into verse and song. When he comes
out in the morning, he chants a domestic idyl, in which he narrates in
verse the events of his household, and the differences and agreements of
himself and his wife, whom I take to be a pure invention. This over, he
changes into song everything and every person that passes before him.
Nothing that is odd, fantastic, or absurd escapes him, or fails to be
chronicled and sarcastically commented on in his verse. So he sits all
day long, his mind like a kaleidoscope, changing all the odd bits of
character which chance may show him into rhythmic forms, and chirps and
sings as perpetually as the cricket. Friends he has without number, who
stop before his bench, from which he administers poetical justice to
all persons, to have a long chat, or sometimes to bring him a friendly
token; and from the dark i