I have seen the Pope several times since my return, and it is a real pleasure to see him in the thoroughfares, where his passage is always greeted as that of the living soul.

The first week of November there is much praying for the dead here in the chapels of the cemeteries.  I went to Santo Spirito.  This cemetery stands high, and all the way up the slope was lined with beggars petitioning for alms, in every attitude find tone, (I mean tone that belongs to the professional beggar’s gamut, for that is peculiar,) and under every pretext imaginable, from the quite legless elderly gentleman to the ragged ruffian with the roguish twinkle in his eye, who has merely a slight stiffness in one arm and one leg.  I could not help laughing, it was such a show,—­greatly to the alarm of my attendant, who declared they would kill me, if ever they caught me alone; but I was not afraid.  I am sure the endless falsehood in which such creatures live must make them very cowardly.  We entered the cemetery; it was a sweet, tranquil place, lined with cypresses, and soft sunshine lying on the stone coverings where repose the houses of clay in which once dwelt joyous Roman hearts,—­for the hearts here do take pleasure in life.  There were several chapels; in one boys were chanting, in others people on their knees silently praying for the dead.  In another was one of the groups in wax exhibited in such chapels through the first week of November.  It represented St. Carlo Borromeo as a beautiful young man in a long scarlet robe, pure and brilliant as was the blood of the martyrs, relieving the poor who were grouped around him,—­old people and children, the halt, the maimed, the blind; he had called them all into the feast of love.  The chapel was lighted and draped so as to give very good effect to this group; the spectators were mainly children and young girls, listening with ardent eyes, while their parents or the nuns explained to them the group, or told some story of the saint.  It was a pretty scene, only marred by the presence of a villanous-looking man, who ever and anon shook the poor’s box.  I cannot understand the bad taste of choosing him, when there were frati and priests enough of expression less unprepossessing.

I next entered a court-yard, where the stations, or different periods in the Passion of Jesus, are painted on the wall.  Kneeling before these were many persons:  here a Franciscan, in his brown robe and cord; there a pregnant woman, uttering, doubtless, some tender aspiration for the welfare of the yet unborn dear one; there some boys, with gay yet reverent air; while all the while these fresh young voices were heard chanting.  It was a beautiful moment, and despite the wax saint, the ill-favored friar, the professional mendicants, and my own removal, wide as pole from pole, from the positron of mind indicated by these forms, their spirit touched me, and.  I prayed too; prayed for the distant, every way distant,—­for those who seem to have forgotten me, and with me all we had in common; prayed for the dead in spirit, if not in body; prayed for myself, that I might never walk the earth