rises hard by to the street of the Four Fountains,
and which holds the well-known girlish
face overshadowed with the white turban, who
looks at you so sadly over her white shoulder,
does not disdain to take English gold for its
highest story, and nothing short of a very round
sum too. That graceful palace, rising in rich
and elegant details, can be reached only by the
meanest of gateways, such as would do no
honour to a coach-house; a gateway, moreover,
set awry, and at an acute angle with the main
building. One month's rent in the Saxon's gold
would do something in the way of amendment,
O noble Barberini! So too, will you seek
out the Colonna mansion (his who on Palm
Sunday comes up the altar steps in a purple
cape to exercise his family's prerogative and
wash the pontiff's fingers), and find the tricolor
of France and the escutcheon of ducal Grammont
over your head. Pass by the long slate-coloured
palace in the Corso, which you are told is the
Ruspoli Palazzo, and you will find the Ruspoli
vanished, and one half the house working a
languid business as a café. From the other half
round the corner, again flutters that tricolor
ubiquitous; and the little compact sentry carries
arms, as Goyon the magnificent descends from
his horse at the door.

But here does not the old cry fall upon our
ears? See how low an evil government can
bring a noble people: degrading the fine bold
patrician element into a mere lounging vegetable.
Yet, without straying into this debatable
ground—always thorny, and covered
with brakes and briars—there is something to
be said, which lays a fair share of his fallen
state to the account of the noble Roman himself.
Because he is interdicted from the brawl
of politics, and not suffered to run riot in
newspaper columns, is he to settle down with sunken
head and folded arms, and become hopelessly
impassive? Are there no other objects upon
which a manly nature could expend itself? He
is rich; and there is nothing to hinder his free
progress into other countries. The police have
no instructions to refuse him his passports. So
might he go forth and brace his mind with the
wholesome currents of northern nations. So
goes forth the Russian noble, semi-barbarous,
and returns a smooth and enlightened grand
seigneur. Has not the Noble Roman horses
and dogs, and the broad miles of Campagna
prairie, finest riding-grounds in the world? Has
he not whole jungles of forest, where lurks the
wild boar, ready to furnish him with sport that
shall make him manly and quick of eye, and,
above all, healthy? Does he not live and have
his being in a world of art? Is not his very
breath charged with the fragrance of pictures,
statues, columns, frescoes, and such noble
works?

Still, where are no free presses, no glut and
satiety of books, where reading is cramped and
manacled under a load of censorship, index,
inquisition, and such like, it is hard for a Noble
Roman to find proper aliment for his mind.
True. Yet here is a startling truth. With all
that censorship and index, and those Dominican
"masters of the Sacred Palace," whose awful
functions are supposed to be those of execution,
hanging, drawing, quartering, and disembowelling
volumes, still this truth stands firm and
uncontrovertible —any book is to be procured in Rome.
Never was such a bugbear put forward to frighten
children, as this one of restriction in the matter
of reading. There are booksellers' shops and
booksellers—not many, but sufficient. There is
to be found, not on their shelves merely, but
set out in flaming placards on the outside of
their houses, in conspicuous characters, such
dangerous and heretical matter as Monsieur
Guizot's History of Parliamentary Power, such
inflammatory petards as Monsieur Michielet's
History of France, together with Monsieur
Villemain's Souvenirs, Monsieur Cousin's
mischievous Philosophy, and Monsieur Mignet's
Historical Compositions. Intelligent librarian,
when I enter, shows me an army of French
privates in their limp paper covers, comprising
all that is newest and best in French literature,
with all, too, that is newest and questionable:
Memoirs of the immortal age of the Louises
newly disinterred, light and loose novels,
pamphlets and essays. And when, for the sake of
experiment, just to humour the thing, though not
without a certain diffidence, I hint at the possibility
—just the bare possibility—of procuring
the frightful and damnable heresy of one About
(here I drop my voice into a hoarse conspirator
whisper, and glance round with a fearful caution),
intelligent librarian answers cheerfully that
he has not, indeed, such a work on hand, but
will procure it in his next fortnightly parcel.
In the humbler establishments where books are
vended in an odd companionship with brass
candlesticks, holy pictures, beads, pinchbeck
jewellery, and sweetmeats, I see the works of
Silvio Pellico in a cheap form: likewise the
novels of the tabooed Massimo D'Azeglio, all
the romances of Walter Scott rendered into
Italian, and the exciting tales of lively Alexander
the Elder. I certainly did not observe
the adventures of a certain Camellia Lady;
but in a Holy City such a person would be
clearly out of place. Even the Negro pleadings
of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe are to be seen
here, with a portrait of the deserving and
god-fearing Black, the Avuncular Tom, to face the
title. Again, not a day passes but there are
some two or three book auctions, when books of
every country, clime, and degree, are "knocked
down" cheap. Moreover, there are stalls where
literature of some sort may be found, from a
halfpenny upwards. But the intelligent bookseller
before alluded to, tells me that trade is very
slack indeed, and that the Noble Roman is his
worst customer. There are here old book dens,
the most delightful and appetising in the world
—Erebus-like, and perfect catacombs—but very
bandits' caves for treasure. You, being bibliomaniac,
may come here and grub and dig for
hours, and turn up jewels at every stroke.
The proprietor of the cave, with that neat
spirit of order which reigns, has all his prizes