In the Via de’ Pontefici, not far distant from the Borghese Palace, we saw the Mausoleum of Augustus.  It is a large circular structure somewhat after the plan of that of Hadrian, but on a much smaller scale.  The interior has been cleared out, seats erected around the walls, and the whole is now a summer theatre, for the amusement of the peasantry and tradesmen.  What a commentary on greatness!  Harlequin playing his pranks in the tomb of an Emperor, and the spot which nations approached with reverence, resounding with the mirth of beggars and degraded vassals!

I visited lately the studio of a young Philadelphian, Mr. W. B. Chambers, who has been here two or three years.  In studying the legacies of art which the old masters left to their country, he has caught some of the genuine poetic inspiration which warmed them.  But he is modest as talented, and appears to undervalue his works, so long as they do not reach his own mental ideal.  He chooses principally subjects from the Italian peasant-life, which abounds with picturesque and classic beauty.  His pictures of the shepherd boy of the Albruzzi, and the brown maidens of the Campagna are fine illustrations of this class, and the fidelity with which he copies nature, is an earnest of his future success.

I was in the studio of Crawford, the sculptor; he has at present nothing finished in the marble.  There were many casts of his former works, which, judging from their appearance in plaster, must be of no common excellence—­for the sculptor can only be justly judged in marble.  I saw some fine bas-reliefs of classical subjects, and an exquisite group of Mercury and Psyche, but his masterpiece is undoubtedly the Orpheus.  There is a spirit in this figure which astonished me.  The face is full of the inspiration of the poet, softened by the lover’s tenderness, and the whole fervor of his soul is expressed in the eagerness with which he gazes forward, on stepping past the sleeping Cerberus.  Crawford is now engaged on the statue of an Indian girl, pierced by an arrow, and dying.  It is a simple and touching figure, and will, I think, be one of his best works.

We are often amused with the groups in the square of the Pantheon, which we can see from our chamber-window.  Shoemakers and tinkers carry on their business along the sunny side, while the venders of oranges and roasted chesnuts form a circle around the Egyptian obelisk and fountain.  Across the end of an opposite street we get a glimpse of the vegetable-market, and now and then the shrill voice of a pedlar makes its nasal solo audible above the confused chorus.  As the beggars choose the Corso, St. Peter’s, and the ruins for their principal haunts, we are now spared the hearing of their lamentations.  Every time we go out we are assailed with them. “Maladetta sia la vostra testa!”—­“Curses be upon your head!”—­said one whom I passed without notice.  The priests are, however, the greatest beggars.  In every church are kept