cords (they were once called the
ciociari, or the corded) which are so essential to
the ideal bandit of the boards or the studio;
their long brown cloaks, buttoned closely round
the throat; the various colours which the sun
has faded, and the rain has washed, and the
wind has deadened, and which time and sun and
wind and rain have all mellowed into the most
harmonious and inexpressibly effective tones;
the eager eyes and tangled fell of coal-black hair
—what would Rome at Christmas-time be without
her pifferari?

Then there are the ballad-singers: generally a
blind old man who sings, accompanied by a woman
who plays the guitar or the mandolin, and
sometimes by a little girl, who collects the
baiocchi, and steals your heart out of you
with her lustrous earnest eyes. They sell you
their ballads on a printed sheet for a baiocco,
with a bright Italian smile and a flourishing
woodcut thrown into the bargain, on all manner
of subjects and themes. When the weather
is warm, too, there are serenaders without
end; the Trasteverini, specially gifted that
way, who serenade their stout-limbed
strong-hearted Blousabellas as pearls, roses, queens
of beauty, doves, exquisite gems too fragile
for earth's keeping, and all the rest of it
according to the normal insanity of lovers; and,
then there are the tradespeople and the artisans,
who sing—oh, how they sing!—always and all
day long. Cobblers, sitting on their benches,
placed under the portone of some great palace,
to the saving of rent and the sufficient shelter
of the man, sing as they thump and strain at
leather and waxed thread; the blacksmith sings
louder than his hammer or the roaring fire
within; the marble-cutter sings; the carpenter
sings; the bricklayer; the donna di facenda, at
her work in the house, or peeling onions in the
court-yard; the washerwoman at the great public
cistern, slashing and flaunting her linen with
inhuman violence—each and all sing—sing their
loudest, sing their harshest, sing their sweetest;
but the song is generally like the life, full of
power and passion, and the overflowing of
luxuriant nature, rather than sentimental in the whining
sense; and never meagrely given. Even in
the Opera-house the audience hum the airs to
accompany the performers, and you may always
know what opera has been performed, by the
powerful display of lungs and larynx giving out
the tunes in the streets by the departing
audience.

How well everything composes and
harmonises together in Rome! What would look
violent or sordid, according to its degree, in any
other place, here either simply enriches the
general tone surrounding it, or is but a lower
note in the same key. It is true that Rome is
dirty, and might well afford to lose a little of its
picturesqueness for sake of the godly gain of
soap and water; but if once the parish beadle,
with the whitewasher and his pail, gets footing
there, the Rome of our love will be ruined.
Those old brown and yellow stones covered with
golden moss and crimsoned lichen—those jagged
and broken outlines, glorious in play of light, and
so wonderful in their varied lines and shadings,
all overgrown as they are with weeds and
grasses and tufts of waving flowers—that subtle
and yet so rich interfusion of colour which
makes the joy and the despair of the artist—
would it be gain to lose all this for
cream-coloured stucco and line and plumb, let the
stucco be of the creamiest and the plumb-line of
the straightest? What would Rome be if the
greens and reds and warm greys of her ruined
walls, the golden yellow which the sun burns to
reddened orange, and the deep dark blues which
strengthen into purples—if all the harmony
of age, and richness of decay, was lost in the
hands of the clean and godly, who would whitewash
that grand old grimy face as a religious
duty?

But these are mere artistic pleasures of the
eyes, which, picturesque as they are, Rome
could well afford to lose. There are the
beggars, first of all; from that heroic torso, King
Beppo, who keeps his bank on the upper piazza
of the Trinità de' Monti, and who is the real
king of the beggars in Rome, to the toothless
and palsied hag, who pursues you with her
crutch, and sends an "apoplexy" (accidente)
after you if you refuse her importunate "Per
carità, signorino—per l'amor di dio, signorina!"
This Beppo is a remarkable man, for all that he
is only a beggar, subject to the lock-up and the
vagrancy act if he should dare to show himself
in London. There is no doubt of his being of
good provincial family; some day he is a baron
of the Scala di Spagna; but he is really by birth
a gentleman, who, finding his two withered and
undeveloped legs rather in the way of ordinary
success, set up as beggar-in-chief, having, as his
stock in trade, a magnificent torso, a good-looking
face and head, bland manners, a pleasant
smile, an agreeable way of saying, "Fa buono
tempo;" or, "Fa cattivo tempo!" according
to the weather, a dark blue cloak which he
drapes round him like a toga, and a profound
belief in the giving propensity of human nature.
Beppo has not reasoned ill. He has amassed a
good fortune, and lends money like any other
banker; he has a wife and several children, and
the other day was able to give his daughter, who
married a respectable tradesman, a handsome
dowry, according to the ideas and measurement
of a Roman shopkeeper. Every fine day he
comes to the piazza, mounted on a mule, and
draped in his toga-like cloak, escorted by his
servant—a boy on crutches. He never begs;
he only shuffles along on his hands and knees,
which are guarded by iron and leather,
sometimes, not always, takes off his hat, looks
up in your face and smiles, tells you that it
is a good day or a bad one, according to the
time, then waits and expects; and you—you
are fascinated, overpowered, and give. Your
only chance of getting rid of him, or indeed of
any other beggar, is to raise your left forefinger
and slowly wag it to and fro. There is a mute
mesmerism in this sign which satisfies the boldest.
The next best recipes against beggars in general