whether of those who have been at Rome or not, knows the Temple of Vesta, for it is the prettiest, if not the grandest, of the legacies to us of old pagan Rome, and it has been reproduced in little drawing-room models by the thousand in every conceivable material.  Close to it, at one corner of the piazza, is the ancient and half-ruinous house which is pointed out as the habitation of Cola di Rienzi.  It is altogether a strange-looking spot, that Piazza della Bocca della Verita, standing as it does on the confines of what may be called the inhabited part of Rome and that portion of the huge space within the walls which still remains sacred to the past and its memories and remains.  But not the least strange thing about it is its name—­the Piazza of the Mouth of Truth!  There is a story of some one of the great doctors of the early ages of Christianity having taught in the very ancient church which stands on the side of the piazza farthest from the Tiber.  Ay, to be sure, the name must come very evidently thence.  The “mouth of truth” was the mouth of that seraphic or angelic or golden-tongued or other “doctor gentium,” and the old church and the piazza still preserve the memory of his eloquence.  Not a bit of it!  Under the venerable-looking portico of this church there is a huge colossal marble mask, with a gaping mouth in the middle of it.  There it lies, totally unconnected in any way with the various other relics of the past around it—­tombs and frescoes and mosaics—­and the stranger wonders what it is, and how it came there.  To the last question there is no reply.  But in answer to the former, tradition says that the Roman populace when affirming anything on oath were wont to place their hands in the mouth of this mask as a form of swearing, and hence the stone was called the “Bocca della Verita,” and has given its name to the piazza.

Well, it was while traversing this piazza a few days since with a stranger friend, whom I was taking to visit the curious old church above mentioned, that I received and returned the salutation of an acquaintance whose appearance induced my companion to ask with some little surprise who my friend was.  The individual whose courteous salutation had provoked the question was a horseman mounted on a remarkably fine black mare.  Whether, in consequence of some little touch with the spur, or whether merely from high condition and high spirits, the animal was curvetting and rearing and dancing about a little as she crossed the piazza, and the perfect ease—­and one may say, indeed, elegance—­of the rider’s seat, and his consummate mastery of the animal he bestrode, must have attracted the attention and excited the admiration of any lover of horses and horsemanship.  It was abundantly evident that he was neither one of the “gentlemen riders” who figure in the somewhat mild Roman steeple-chase races, nor of those Nimrods from beyond the Alps who, mounted on such steeds as Jarrett or Rannucci can supply them