IV.

In all other parts of Italy one hears constant talk among travellers of the malaria at Rome, and having seen a case of Roman fever, I know it is a thing not to be trifled with.  But in Rome itself the malaria is laughed at by the foreign residents,—­who, nevertheless, go out of the city in midsummer.  The Romans, to the number of a hundred thousand or so, remain there the whole year round, and I am bound to say I never saw a healthier, robuster-looking population.  The cheeks of the French soldiers, too, whom we met at every turn, were red as their trousers, and they seemed to flourish on the imputed unwholesomeness of the atmosphere.  All at Rome are united in declaring that the fever exists at Naples, and that sometimes those who have taken it there come and die in Rome, in order to give the city a bad name; and I think this very likely.

Rome is certainly dirty, however, though there is a fountain in every square, and you are never out of the sound of falling water.  The Corso and some of the principal streets do not so much impress you with their filth as with their dullness; but that part of the city where some of the most memorable relics of antiquity are to be found is unimaginably vile.  The least said of the state of the archways of the Coliseum the soonest mended; and I have already spoken of the Forum.  The streets near the Theatre of Pompey are almost impassable, and the so-called House of Rienzi is a stable, fortified against approach by a fosse of excrement.  A noisome smell seems to be esteemed the most appropriate offering to the memory of ancient Rome, and I am not sure that the moderns are mistaken in this.  In the rascal streets in the neighborhood of the most august ruins, the people turn round to stare at the stranger as he passes them; they are all dirty, and his decency must be no less a surprise to them than the neatness of the French soldiers amid all the filth is a puzzle to him.  We wandered about a long time in such places one day, looking for the Tarpeian Rock, less for Tarpeia’s sake than for the sake of Miriam and Donatello and the Model.  There are two Tarpeian rocks, between which the stranger takes his choice; and we must have chosen the wrong one, for it seemed but a shallow gulf compared to that in our fancy.  We were somewhat disappointed; but then Niagara disappoints one; and as for Mont Blanc....

V.

It is worth while for every one who goes to Rome to visit the Church of St. Peter’s; but it is scarcely worth while for me to describe it, or for every one to go up into the bronze globe on the top of the cupola.  In fact, this is a great labor, and there is nothing to be seen from the crevices in the ball which cannot be far more comfortably seen from the roof of the church below.