marshes, fasten his damp fangs in you, go home
with you, and stretch you on your bed for
weeks. He is popularly known as Malaria Fever.
By-and-by another reflection occurs to me-  that,
though the shade is of a modest description,
there would not be a tree here but for the
Napoleonic dictators, who fiercely prescribed
that trees should be planted for the citizens'
good. And trees were forthwith planted under
a decree. And a third reflection occurs to me,
namely, how it was that the Romans should
have set themselves against this pastoral recreation,
trees and all, as they did: not coming in
to the thing until some thirty or forty years
back, when they flung themselves into it with
a strange enthusiasm.

See the Noble Roman, the faded sickly youth
with the yellow cheeks, leaning back so languidly
in his open carriage, being driven round slowly;
and in this feeble, dried-up aristocrat, recognise
a hope of Italy and possible pillar of the state.
This solitary progress and exclusive monopoly
is essential to his state. It is imperative and
according to the canons of fashion that he should
go forth, the lonely occupant of his vehicle.
See his noble peers following slowly, each taking
his exercise on the solitary and silent, but at
the same time eminently patrician, system.
Presently the carriage halting and the Noble
Roman descending, room is given for admiring the
proportions and general aspect of the distinguished
youth. Presently another Noble Roman
of sporting tastes, who has been driving
a sort of mail phaeton round and round in the
contracted ring, with an unaccountable fury,
brings his chafed steeds to a stand, and joins his
brother noble, the Prince Cornuto, to the right;
the fiery charioteer being, indeed, no other than
the Marquis Babuino. So arm in arm they
loiter round, some three or four times, and
presently, growing fatigued, ascend each to his
solitary cell, and are driven round slowly once more.
Another brother Noble Roman presents himself,
borne aloft on a light car, fearfully embarrassed
by the two horses which he has presumptuously
had harnessed to it tandem-wise. I wonder to
myself how it comes to pass that these noble
youths have all so sallow and smoke-dried an
aspect. Such yellow parchment faces, shaven
close, even to discomfort, have been seen
gathering under the Haymarket Colonnade in
London as the hour for the opera drew on; and
in the Noble Roman, and all of his degree, you
are sure to detect the foot-light air and stagey
look which clings to the person of even the
first tenor. The Noble Roman seems to me to
be fragrant of the theatre, reeking of the
coulisses, and to have newly come from washing
away the rouge from off his cheeks.

I meet occasionally long trains of little men,
white-faced delicate creatures, marching in
school procession, and equipped to a nicety in
the costume of elders grown up. They have
little hats with little volutes, little tailed coats,
and little uncomfortable white ties. These
poor little miniatures, marching by with a
comic dignity, I take to be derelict orphans of
some kind, upon a Foundation, and to be
commiserated accordingly; but am told that these
are Young Nobility, in training sub ferulâ, and
that the little sickly men will at some future
date burst into sicklier dukes and princes. No
fresh rosy cheeks shining like pippins-- no
boisterous insubordination and rampant breaking of
ranks—no exasperation and continued fretting
of solemn usher—but a line of vacant sickly
faces; a string of model Lilliputian Mutes and
small Dissenting ministers. I have a glimpse
of this possibly nobleman in the still earlier grub
stage; for, with a flash, a handsome family
carriage swings round the corner, and I see
a dark- haired, dark- eyed woman sitting up
stiff and straight with the possible nobleman
on her lap. She wears a wreath of flaming
satin ribbon, and has a heavy golden arrow
stuck in a savage kind of fashion through
her hair. She has earrings, and a fiery
coloured fichu, and has altogether a gipsy look.
The noble mistress sits back with an anxious
weary gaze, which I have seen on other noble
mistresses taking out their offspring for an airing.

Entering into the fashionable Fotografista's,
where the sun is kept hard and fast at work all
day long, we shall see the noble Roman hung
round in many postures. Most specially does
he delight to be glorified in the costume of a
noble Guardsman, simpering on us from the
walls in all the dandyism of heavy jack-boots,
kerseymere breeches, and baldric overladen with
embroidery. Into that crack corps—that choice
Household Brigade, where the privates are Ducas,
Principes, or Marcheses—he has enlisted at an
earlv age, prematurely taking on himself the
duties of that arduous service. In those long
Vatican corridors where the walls are outspeaking
with voices from the dead, encrusted so
thickly with the strange catacomb inscriptions,
and where the stranger passes between the two
ranks of cold statues, sitting, standing, maimed,
corroded, that look upon him sadly as he goes
by- into this solemn presence I have seen rude
intrusions of these military gallants, tramping it
down this sacred gallery some three or four
abreast, smoking cigars. They had come from off
duty in the Vatican ante-chambers, and as they
clinked by defiantly, with " guardians" rising
humbly to do them homage and party-coloured
Swiss saluting, held themselves privileged for this
piece of saucy irreverence. A roving Briton,
measuring them with cold eye as they pass, yearns to
stay their triumphant progress and whisper some
salutary but distasteful memento. Was there
not a period, O warriors of the Guard Noble!
some twelve years ago, when the people, being
angry and in ferment, were howling about the
Palazzo, with no gentle designs towards the
sovereign, and were with difficulty kept at bay
by a handful of sad-eyed Swiss? And was it
not at such a critical season that the deserted
pontiff cast his eyes around wistfully and found
not one of this bedizened body-guard at hand
to help him? The Principe and the Duca, who
claim it as of right to walk beside their king