of the Presepio opposite.  Sometimes two of them are engaged in alternate question and answer about the mysteries of the Incarnation and the Redemption.  Sometimes the recitation is a piteous description of the agony of the Saviour and the sufferings of the Madonna,—­the greatest stress being, however, always laid upon the latter.  All these little speeches have been written for them by their priest or some religious friend, been committed to memory, and practised with the appropriate gestures over and over again at home.  Their little piping voices are sometimes guilty of such comic breaks and changes, that the crowd about them rustles into a murmurous laughter.  Sometimes also one of the very little preachers has a dispitto, pouts, shakes her shoulders, and refuses to go on with her part;—­another, however, always stands ready on the platform to supply the vacancy, until friends have coaxed, reasoned, or threatened the little pouter into obedience.  These children are often very beautiful and graceful, and their comical little gestures and intonations, their clasping of hands and rolling up of eyes, have a very amusing and interesting effect.  The last time I was there, I was sorry to see that the French costume had begun to make its appearance.  Instead of the handsome Roman head, with its dark, shining, braided hair, which is so elegant when uncovered, I saw on two of the children the deforming bonnet, which could have been invented only to conceal a defect, and which is never endurable, unless it be perfectly fresh, delicate, and costly.  Nothing is so vulgar as a shabby bonnet.  Yet the Romans, despite their dislike of the French, are beginning to wear it.  Ten years ago it did not exist here among the common people.  I know not why it is that the three ugliest pieces of costume ever invented, the dress-coat, the trousers, and the bonnet, all of which we owe to the French, have been accepted all over Europe, to the exclusion of every national costume.  Certainly it is not because they are either useful, elegant, or commodious.[B]

[Footnote B:  That cultivated gentleman, John Evelyn, two centuries ago wrote some amusing words on this subject.  After quoting the witty saying of Malvezzi,—­“I vestimenti negli animali sono molto securi segni della loro natura, negli nomini del lor cervello,”—­he goes on to say, “Be it excusable in the French to alter and impose the mode on others, ’tis no less a weakness and a shame in the rest of the world, who have no dependence on them, to admit them, at least to that degree of levity as to turn into all their shapes without discrimination; so as when the freak takes our Monsieurs to appear like so many farces or Jack Puddings on the stage, all the world should alter shape and play the pantomimes with them.  Methinks a French tailor, with an ell in his hand, looks like the enchantress Circe over the companions of Ulysses, and changes them into as many forms....  Something I would indulge to youth; something to age and humor.  But what have we to do with these foreign butterflies?  In God’s name, let the change be our own, not borrowed of others; for why should I dance after a Monsieur’s flageolet, that have a set of English viols for my concert?  We need no French inventions for the stage or for the back.”—­From a pamphlet entitled Tyrannus, or the Mode.