pageant of beauty pass by. We have all of us
that pet portfolio, that ideal gallery, in nubibus,
of portraits by the good old master, Fancy,
into which we withdraw privately and feast our
eyes. And in this retreat we are pretty sure
to find the noble Roman lady according to
pattern, with eyes "flashing" or "lustrous," or at
least large, round, and devouring; with hair
"rich" and black, according to pattern; with
the usual amount of "exquisite chiselling;" with
expression haughty, or contemptuous, or fierce,
or melancholy, all according to pattern and the
portrait of the pet portfolio. So, standing
cautiously to one side, holding strictly by such
scant accommodation as a bare three feet of
flagway affords on which we must balance
ourselves from all jostling influences and step
delicately as though walking the plank, we will wait
for the noble company—the ladies Volumnia, and
Æmilia, and Cecilia Metella—to break from their
cloud of phantasy, and magnificently trundle by.

They are at this present moment busy
completing that previous function which their stern
and cruel Moloch god, Fashion, has fixed for
portion of his inflexible ritual. They have been
doing their part in feeble reproduction of famous
Hyde Park Ring and Bois de Boulogne raree-
show, and for the last hour or so have gyrated
decently on Monte Pincio. Round and round
have the sad family quadrupeds—heavy shapeless
animals, useful for ploughing purposes—
drawn the family barouche. The noble ladies
have played out their daily little comedy business
of simpering and small-talk with the tightened
sallow-cheeked dandyism which lolls
affectedly upon their carriage-doors. Elegant
Materfamilias has descended, too, avec toute
la boutique—showy nurse, that is, and child—
and takes the constitutional saunter round and
round, showy nurse following behind, with
Masters Giacomo and Luigi, offspring without
vice or precocious rebellion, being, in fact,
Principini, only too well behaved. And now
this passage in her fashion's ritual being got
through scrupulously, it is time to reascend and
bid cocchiere (who looks as though he were
hired for the day, and is out-speaking of "job"
associations) trundle away to that long spine of
the city called "il Corso."

Now, at many a deep-mouthed archway, over
which topple aslant the great escutcheoned
shields—gaudy once, and still proclaiming a
sort of faded grandeur—the bulky Swiss, who
lets out his proportions for hire, brings his
drum-major's bâton handsomely to the present,
as the carriage of his noble mistress rolls past
him. A great palatial Newgate may look peeled
and mildewed, may gape in cracks, may have
been stranger to the refreshment of paint for
years, may betray other no less certain symptoms
of running to decay in company with its
proprietor; but the bulky Swiss will lean upon
his instrument of office unto the end. Si fractus
illabatur orbis—that is, until the final crash
comes—that fattened official will look out upon
the street and the lively incidents of street life,
in undiminished splendour.

See, they come at last! And we, who have
again fallen into scrutiny of Giacomo Antonelli's
rough-lined drawings (again is all allusion
disclaimed to a most eminent personage), turn
hastily and with rapture as the paved street,
overburdened, shakes and quivers, and the sound
of noisy clatter draws near. Now surely we,
who have Fornarina faces dancing before us,
and divinest Madonnas whom Raphael, divine
himself, fetched from street corners, and placed
sitting before his easel, shall see such counterfeit
presentments in fairest flesh flitting by in
a sort of Beauty's Progress! Instead, some
rough fingers pluck the scales with unnecessary
violence from my eyes, and I, to use the happy
idiom of the place, "remain in stucco."

Most rude disenchantment! With a little
gentleness in the breaking of it, it might have
been borne; though, for all that, a heavy
tribulation. Where you have reckoned on a
diamond of many carats, to be presented with a
slate; where you had hoped for peaches, to
find only jaundiced pears! I groan over this
spilled pail of romance, and, in a general way,
mourn the hopes that leave me. I measure
despondingly the heavy vehicle so ill swung, built
with a revolting degree of strength, without a
graceful line or sinuous curve, and which,
shining with new varnish, clatters by, as
springless as an artillery tumbril. And for
Fornarinas, Cencis, and such ravings, where
shall I look? Not surely to this faded white-
cheeked lady, who lolls back in a fashionable
inanition and is sole tenant of her cumbrous
vehicle, and whose complexion is of chalk
chalky, whose eyes are lacklustre, and whose
hair is drawn away with violence from her
forehead after that well-known manner which the
Empress Eugénie does not affect. No apple
glow upon the cheeks, no coral upon the lips,
noble Lady Latona or Cecilia Metella! She
sets me thinking uncomfortably, of dyspepsia, of
nausea after that unseasonably early repast of
hers (for the noble lady has been "served" as
the nursery chimes rang out two o'clock, and
has had to huddle through that banquet to be in
time for these later "spiritual exercises"), and
of laces drawn to fearful tightness by muscular
waiting women. I see many more of her sisters
of quality, the Ladies Fulvia and Æmilia, the
Duchess Agrippina, the Princess Tiberia, all
following, fulfilling the silent and solitary
system in their cells of barouches, all, with a
few variations and accidental trespassings on the
debatable land of beauty, sad and sickly replicas
of that white-cheeked type.

Most free and ungallant criticism this, but
most truthful. Albeit, an informant at my ear
tells them off as they go by, and makes me start
by the roll and heraldic ring of great sounds.
"Hush! no irreverence here!—a princess of
princesses! Crowd in with the world to the
new ambassador's reception next Thursday
night, and you will see that noble dame, so
wonderfully yet so fearfully made, literally
coiled and roped with jewels; her stomacher
will glitter like a steel coat of mail!"