in no wise stinted in the quantity of material, they are wonderfully strong and enduring.  The most remarkable thing about them, however, is the unerring instinct with which these uneducated manufacturers harmonize the most audaciously violent contrasts of brilliant color.  It is not too much to assert that they are never at fault in this respect.  So much is this the case, and so truly artistic is this homely peasant manufacture, that there is hardly a painter’s studio in Rome in which two or three of these richly colored apron-cloths may not be seen covering a sofa or thrown over the back of a chair.  A great part of the singularly picturesque and striking appearance of the group of figures we are speaking of is due to the universal use of these aprons by the women.  The men also affect an unusually large amount of bright color in their costume.  The waistcoat is almost always scarlet; the velveteen jacket or short coat generally blue; the breeches sometimes the same, but often of bright yellow leather, and the stockings a lighter blue.  The men often wear a long cloak reaching to the heels, always hanging open in front, and generally lined with bright green baize.  They generally, too, have some bright-colored ribbons around their high-peaked, conical felt hats.  But I must not forget to mention the costume of the children.  It consists of an exact copy in miniature of that of their elders; and the inconceivable quaintness and queer old-world look produced is not to be imagined by those who have never witnessed it.  Fancy a little imp of six or seven years old dressed in little blue jacket, bright-yellow leather breeches, blue stockings, sheepskin sandals on his little bits of feet, and long bright flaxen curls streaming down from under a gayly-ribboned brigand’s hat!

But if the first glance is given to this singularity of costume, the second will not fail to take cognizance of the remarkable beauty of feature to be observed in almost every individual of this race of models.  The men are well grown, almost invariably wear their black hair streaming over their shoulders, and have generally fine eyes and picturesquely colored, swarthy red faces.  But the beauty of the girls is in almost every case something quite extraordinary; and the same may be said of the children.  The next thing which the closeness of observation this unusual degree of beauty is calculated to attract will reveal to the observer is that all these singularly lovely faces are remarkably like each other, and at the same time remarkably unlike any of the faces around them.  There is often much beauty among the Roman women of the lower classes, but it is of an essentially different type.  The Roman beauty is generally large in stature and ample in development, with features whose tendency to heaviness needs the majestic and Juno-like style of beauty which the Roman women so frequently have to redeem them.  But the countenances of the women of whom we have been speaking have nothing