you gasp; and yet his sire made entry into the
Eternal City in the rumble of a chaise. He was
a simple courier, and begat the traitor. Very
seducing are his counters, strewn with all
shapes of Italian confectionary, confounding by
their variety. Fatal those sweets to the enjoyment
of the greater banquet now not very remote:
and yet how seducing!

Hark to the music swelling down old Veer
Condotty, drawing yet near and nearer! Running
to the door, pâté in hand, we look out
at the bright red-limbed little Frenchmen tripping
by in the march they so love. How very
clean they are, and how their arms glitter, and
their cheerful colouring radiates! The fringe
of ragamuffin, or St. Giles's element, which by
the law of bands, unfailing in every clime and
capital, hangs on the flanks of these musical
warriors, is here present in full flavour and
abundance.

Now we go round curiosity shops, and hunt
out curious pictures, and amber-coloured goblets
of Venetian glass, and quaint cinque cento
cabinets, and gold inlaid knives with which
noble families made their pens three centuries
ago, and coins and medals and gems and
carvings, and have a chatter, besides, with the
old curiosity man himself, who is learned in his
craft, and not too greedy for pelf. Or there is
that lecture by the erudite English consul, the
antiquarian Newton, who has been delving at
Halicarnassus, and lighted on the Patagonian
temple described by Herodotus, and has sent
home treasures and marbles more exquisite in
their delineation of the human figure than those
called Elgin. He waits his company now, in
the Barberini Palace, where an accomplished
American gentleman has gathered all his friends,
as it might be to a soirée. Or it may be that
we are expected at the Collegio Romano, where
a skilful Jesuit, the most able numismatist of his
age, will take us over the famed Etruscan museum,
and illustrate it with a running commentary;
or will introduce us to the observatory of
Padre Secchi; or where another skilful Jesuit is
restoring a gigantic bit of Pompeian mosaic pavement
with most marvellous cunning. Or it may
be that we have to journey out far upon the
Appian Way, and have to descend into tombs
gloomier than those of all the Capulets; but
attended by some pundit learned in the lore of
catacombs, who has all the scenery and accessories
at his fingers' ends.

But at times, when the flood-gates of Heaven
are burst open, and the rains descend with a fierce
shock unequalled in any other city, we are fast
imprisoned in the scarlet chambers of our
hostelry, from the windows of whose apartments
we see the wretched wayfarers flying for their
lives, and for shelter, to the generous Spillman's.
And when it is past noon, and the deluge
only increases, a rickety covered ark clatters to
the door, sent for in desperation; and having
looked out a profitable church in rubicund Murray,
and a vein as yet unworked, we go forth into
the storm. There are immortal imperishable
frescoes in the unworked church, rubicund Murray
tells us, painted by Domenichino, and another
gentleman whose name I cannot recal, in a generous
rivalry. Never to be forgotten are the waste
of the Forum, the Arches of Constantine and company,
as seen from the ark window, dripping and
soaking under the universal shower-bath. Cheerless
and dispiriting are the old church and convent
where the painters painted " in a generous
rivalry," and on whose steps the rain patters
and patters again. Not to be forgotten are
the cold yellow cloisters, and the lone open
square where the rain came down drip, drip,
as into a domestic pond, while the shivering sacristan
was fetched out with his keys, to show the
paintings, done " in a generous rivalry." Such
poor washed-out things, faded, indistinct, colourless,
as if the drip outside had got to them also,
and had been washing them down for years! I
cannot recal so dismal an exhibition of art.

TRANSPLANTED.

WHEN last I saw her, all cold and white,
   On her maiden bed extended,
It seemed to me that with the light
   Of her life my own was ended.

It seemed to me that I could not bear
   The burden of life without her;
To see the sunshine, to feel the air
   That could never more play about her—

Lovingly play round her lovely head,
   Giving fond and playful kisses,
Making the rose on her cheek more red,
    Stirring her sun-gilt tresses.

I felt as though I could never bear
   The ceaseless pain and pressure
Of endless days, when she might not share
   One sorrow of mine, or pleasure.

Stark and pallid and cold she lay,
   Not she—the soul-warmed woman—
But the dreadful frigid image of clay
   That with her had nothing in common.

Among the flowers about the bier
   I noted a large-eyed blossom,
That looked at me through a dewy tear
   As it lay on her lifeless bosom.

A large white daisy. I kissed its face,
   In her cold dead hand I laid it,
And I bid it nevermore leave that place,
   Though the breath of the grave should fade it.

I fancied that she would feel it there,
   And that when she was in heaven,
She would send me a sign that the bond which here
   So bound us should not be riven.

Perhaps a childish and wild belief;
   But when in some hopeless sorrow
That rejects all thought of a common relief,
   The heart is fain to borrow

From the realms of fancy some hope, some dream,
   It may be some superstition,
That, however childish or wild, will seem
   Like a real Heaven-sent vision.