recollect it now, and he comes back upon me
photographically. He has been a notability in that
walk of art, and an effective study. I grow
distrustful of the reduced nobleman, and of his
picturesque offspring. I look coldly at this
outdoor group of Laocoon mendicancy, though
Laocoon himself at this moment is pathetically
feeding his young from a sort of theatrical gourd
or bottle slung round him. And presently it
all comes out: that the reduced nobleman is a
gentleman in large practice at his profession;
that he has made moneys, now out at
interest in bank, "Consolidati," or other places
of safe investment; that he rides down to
his place of business on a special donkey of his
own, returning in the same luxurious fashion;
that he dresses his little auxiliary mendicants
at a costumier's; that he lives on the fat (and
lean) of the land; that he lets out his noble
features, including his beard and almost divine
expression of resignation, to be modelled,
photographed, painted, frescoed, rubbed in with chalk,
and otherwise artistically dealt with—in short,
that he is a sleek and adroit impostor, who has
deservedly attained to the highest walk in his
profession. The dejected mournful fashion in
which the model head droops to one side, together
with the hand extended after the Date Obolum
pattern of the unhappy Belisarius, and the
little innocent lips murmuring plaintively,
"Sign-or! Signori-no! Signorino mio!" make
up a composition worthy of a better cause.

Later on, when the stranger's face has grown
familiar, the little woman becomes insolent and
rampant; and, on the least encouragement,
thrusts violet bunches on you with importunity,
clinging to your hand. Turning impish and a
perfect object of hate, she is at last only to be bought
off. Yet there is something novel in this
mendicancy, on principles of the sublime and
beautiful; something stimulating in a poetic beggary
which tenders a bunch of violets with one hand
and prays a baioccho, only a baioccho, with the
other; at the same time assuring you, in endearing
tones, that you are its own dearest little
signor. Alack! whispers are borne to me
already, mysterious whispers, foreshadowing dimly
the fate of the little woman with all her pretty
ways and innocent prattle. Griping Belisarius
will sell her as model first, then sell her into
a sadder captivity. O Romans! O plebs
populusque Romanus! I have no faith in your
millennium. Can I force upon myself any
utopian picture of a Noble Roman regenerated, of
that noble individual's being fitted out liberally
with parliaments, and free presses, and respectable
three per cents., and balance at banker's,
with spinning jennies, and throbbing steam-
engines; with boards of health, and metropolitan
drainage committees, and perhaps with clean
linen? Can I put faith in his bursting on us one
day, a magnificent alliteration, great, glorious,
and free, a first flower of the earth, competing
horticulturally with other old-established
produce? Can we have hope in this marvellous
transformation, when, at a touch of the fairy queen's
silver wand, the noble creature, now debased by
cruel circumstances, shall cast his skin of rags,
and be revealed at the footlights, a beatified
pastoral being; when I can barely walk a
street's length without his proving personally
to me, in a hundred ingenious ways, his utter
disinclination for such a metamorphosis? With
passionate declamation we would bid him arise
or be for ever fallen—but here he is, asleep in
the sun at noontide, and will not hear. It is to
be feared that his bosom is not responsive to the
glorious bit of blank verse which enforces the
principle that such as desire to be free must
themselves strike the blow. Our noble guild of
beggarmen would doubtless be free; but would
have the striking business transacted vicariously
by other parties.

I go forth at noonday when the sun is striking
down in the dull fierce way he does here,
and I pass by many a church, duplicate San
Andreas, San Carlos, and San Gregorios, with
their tall hulking fronts and lanky pillars
toasting and browning steadily under the oven
heat. I know them to be cool as ice-houses,
breezy and refreshing, inside; but the great
flapping mats are not lifted, nor are the
doors opened, until four o'clock. Still the
steps afford handsome accommodation, and are
converted temporarily into open air dormitories;
and here I see and do respectful homage to the
slumbering village Hampden, and to the mute
inglorious Milton, disguised temporarily in a
mendicant's garb. A score of tattered brethren
lie about him, in erratic postures—crosswise,
upside-down, diagonally—picturesque certainly
as a composition, but distasteful in a political
economy view; some have recently dined, and,
suffused with a grateful sense of repletion, are
discoursing most sweet music. One, pursues
his profession, mechanically as it were, through
uneasy dozes; and when the stranger's footstep
is heard, puts forth, with a sort of drowsy
instinct, the inverted brigand's hat, held feebly
in a tawny brick-red hand. The tawnier face
does not so much as lift itself to see what fruit
this exertion has borne. Would his mendicancy
with the glorious black beard (ex-model doubtless)
—would he condescend, for the consideration,
say of a Paul, to charge himself with this
letter for the post, not two streets away? Answer
(blinking languidly at the silver piece, with
brigand hat extended): "A baioccho, for the
love of Heaven" (chanted in the old regulation
whine). "0 sweetest signor! O eccellenza!
dear little signor! Signorino mio! A baioccho
for the love of——" Sleep is gradually sealing
up his eyelids, and the words dying off into a
murmur, the brigand's hat drops softly from
the tawny fingers, and rolls away down the steps.
O begging epicurians, waiting to be regenerated,
not even in the degraded round of your
own profession can you show some heart or
earnestness; how shall it be when the millennium
comes about?

There is another slide in the stereoscopic
series, exhibiting the Epicurean Labourer as
he appears earning his daily crust by the sweat
of his brow. Let us wait on this gentleman,