,
whether of those who have been at Rome or not, knows the Temple of
Vesta, for it is the prettiest, if not the grandest, of the legacies
to us of old pagan Rome, and it has been reproduced in little
drawing-room models by the thousand in every conceivable material.
Close to it, at one corner of the piazza, is the ancient and
half-ruinous house which is pointed out as the habitation of Cola di
Rienzi. It is altogether a strange-looking spot, that Piazza della
Bocca della Verita, standing as it does on the confines of what may
be called the inhabited part of Rome and that portion of the huge
space within the walls which still remains sacred to the past and its
memories and remains. But not the least strange thing about it is its
name--the _Piazza of the Mouth of Truth_! There is a story of some one
of the great doctors of the early ages of Christianity having taught
in the very ancient church which stands on the side of the piazza
farthest from the Tiber. Ay, to be sure, the name must come very
evidently thence. The "mouth of truth" was the mouth of that seraphic
or angelic or golden-tongued or other "doctor gentium," and the old
church and the piazza still preserve the memory of his eloquence. Not
a bit of it! Under the venerable-looking portico of this church there
is a huge colossal marble mask, with a gaping mouth in the middle of
it. There it lies, totally unconnected in any way with the various
other relics of the past around it--tombs and frescoes and
mosaics--and the stranger wonders what it is, and how it came there.
To the last question there is no reply. But in answer to the former,
tradition says that the Roman populace when affirming anything on oath
were wont to place their hands in the mouth of this mask as a form of
swearing, and hence the stone was called the "Bocca della Verita," and
has given its name to the piazza.

Well, it was while traversing this piazza a few days since with a
stranger friend, whom I was taking to visit the curious old church
above mentioned, that I received and returned the salutation of an
acquaintance whose appearance induced my companion to ask with some
little surprise who my friend was. The individual whose courteous
salutation had provoked the question was a horseman mounted on a
remarkably fine black mare. Whether, in consequence of some little
touch with the spur, or whether merely from high condition and high
spirits, the animal was curvetting and rearing and dancing ab