full-gallop.  The road grew more and more populated as we approached the city.  Carriages were out for a drive, or to meet friends on their way from Civita Vecchia; and on foot was many a little company of Romans, laughing and talking.  At the osterias were groups seated under frasche, or before the door, drinking fogliette of wine and watching the passers-by.  At last, toward sundown, we stopped at the Porta Cavalleggieri, where, thanks to our lascia passare, we were detained but a minute,—­and then we were in Rome.  Over us hung the great bulging dome of St. Peter’s, golden with the last rays of sunset.  The pillars of the gigantic colonnade of Bernini, as we jolted along, “seemed to be marching by,” in broad platoons.  The fountains piled their flexile columns of spray and waved them to and fro.  The great bell clanged from the belfry.  Groups wandered forth in the great Piazza.  The old Egyptian obelisk in the centre pointed its lean finger to the sky.  We were in Rome!  This one moment of surprised sensation is worth the journey from Civita Vecchia.  Entered by no other gate, is Rome so suddenly and completely possessed.  Nowhere is the contrast so instantaneous and vivid as here, between the silent, desolate Campagna and the splendor of St. Peter’s, between the burrows of primitive Christianity and the gorgeousness of ecclesiastical Rome.

After leaving the Piazza, we get a glimpse of Hadrian’s Mole, and of the rusty Tiber, as it hurries, “retortis littore Etrusco violenter undis” as of old, under the statued bridge of St. Angelo,—­and then we plunge into long, damp, narrow, dirty streets.  Yet—­shall I confess it?—­they had a charm for me.  Twilight was deepening into dark as we passed through them.  Confused cries and loud Italian voices sounded about me.  Children were screaming,—­men howling their wares for sale.  Bells were ringing everywhere.  Priests, soldiers, contadini, and beggars thronged along.  The Trasteverini were going home, with their jackets hanging over one shoulder.  Women, in their rough woollen gowns, stood in the doorways bare-headed, or looked out from windows and balconies, their black hair shining under the lanterns.  Lights were twinkling in the little cavernous shops, and under the Madonna-shrines far within them.  A funeral procession, with its black banners, gilt with a death’s-head and cross-bones, was passing by, its wavering candles borne by the confraternita, who marched carelessly along, shrouded from head to foot in white, with only two holes for the eyes to glare through.

It was dirty, but it was Rome; and to any one who has long lived in Rome even its very dirt has a charm which the neatness of no other place ever had.  All depends, of course, on what we call dirt.  No one would defend the condition of some of the streets or some of the habits of the people.  But the soil and stain which many call dirt I call color, and the cleanliness of Amsterdam would ruin Rome for the