ver
hurts me, and I sleep like a hound after it."

In common with the French, the Romans have a passion for the game of
Dominos. Every _caffe_ is supplied with a number of boxes, and, in the
evening especially, it is played by young and old, with a seriousness
which strikes us Saxons with surprise. We generally have a contempt for
this game, and look upon it as childish. But I know not why. It is by no
means easy to play well, and requires a careful memory and quick powers
of combination and calculation. No _caffe_ in Rome or Marseilles would
be complete without its little black and white counters; and as it
interests at once the most mercurial and fidgety of people and the
laziest and languidest, it must have some hidden charm as yet unrevealed
to the Anglo-Saxon.

Beside Dominos, Chess (_Scacchi_) is often played in public in the
_caffes_; and there is one _caffe_ named _Dei Scacchi_, because it is
frequented by the best chess-players in Rome. Here matches are often
made, and admirable games are played.

Among the Roman boys the game of _Campana_ is also common. A
parallelogram is drawn upon the ground and subdivided into four squares,
which are numbered. At the top and bottom are two small semicircles, or
_bells_, thus:--

[Illustration]

Each of the players, having deposited his stake in the semicircle (_b_)
at the farthest end, takes his station at a short distance, and
endeavors to pitch some object, either a disk or a bit of _terracotta_,
or more generally a _baiocco_, into one of the compartments. If he lodge
it in the nearest bell, (_a_,) he pays a new stake into the pool; if
into the farthest bell, (_b_,) he takes the whole pool; if into either
of the other compartments, he takes one, two, three, or four of the
stakes, according to the number of the compartment. If he lodge on a
line, he is _abbrucciato_, as it is termed, and his play goes for
nothing. Among the boys, the pool is frequently filled with
buttons,--among the men, with _baiocchi_; but buttons or _baiocchi_ are
all the same to the players,--they are the representatives of luck or
skill.

But the game of games in Rome is the Lottery. This is under the
direction of the government, which, with a truly ecclesiastic regard for
its subjects, has organized it into a means of raising revenue. The
financial objection to this method of taxation is, that its hardest
pressure is upon the poorest classes; but the moral and political
objections are stil