prospect is luxuriantly verdant and smiling.  The Lucca bastions are beyond all in a peculiar style of miniature beauty; and even the Florentines, though lazy enough, creep out to Porto St. Gallo.  But here at Roma la Santa, the street is all our Corso; a fine one doubtless, and called the Strada del Popolo, with infinite propriety, for except in that strada there is little populousness enough God knows.  Twelve men to a woman even there, and as many ecclesiastics to a lay-man:  all this however is fair, when celibacy is once enjoined as a duty in one profession, encouraged as a virtue in all.  Where females are superfluous, and half prohibited, it were as foolish to complain of the decay of population, as it was comical in Omai the South American savage, when he lamented that no cattle bred upon their island; and one of our people replying, That they left some beasts on purpose to furnish them; he answered, “Yes, but the idol worshipped at Bola-bola, another of the islands, insisted on the males and females living separate:  so they had sent him the cows, and kept only the bulls at home.”

Au reste, as the French say, we must not be too sure that all who dress like Abates are such.  Many gentlemen wear black as the court garb; many because it is not costly, and many for reasons of mere convenience and dislike of change.

I see not here the attractive beauty which caught my eye at Venice; but the women at Rome have a most Juno-like carriage, and fill up one’s idea of Livia and Agrippina well enough.  The men have rounder faces than one sees in other towns I think; bright, black, and somewhat prominent eyes, with the finest teeth in Europe.  A story told me this morning struck my fancy much; of an herb-woman, who kept a stall here in the market, and who, when the people ran out flocking to see the Queen of Naples as she passed, began exclaiming to her neighbours—­“Ah, povera Roma! tempo fu quando passo qui prigioniera la regina Zenobia; altra cosa amica, robba tutta diversa di questa reginuccia[AH]!”

[Footnote AH:  “Ah, poor degraded Rome! time was, my dear, when the great Zenobia passed through these streets in chains; anotherguess figure from this little Queeney, in good time!”]

A characteristic speech enough; but in this town, unlike to every other, the things take my attention all away from the people; while, in every other, the people have had much more of my mind employed upon them, than the things.

The arch of Constantine, however, must be spoken of; the sooner, because there is a contrivance at the top of it to conceal musicians, which added, as it passed, to the noise and gaiety of the triumph.  Lord Scarsdale’s back front at Keddlestone exhibits an imitation of this structure; a motto, expressive of hospitality, filling up the part which, in the original, is adorned with the siege of Verona, that to me seems well done; but Michael Angelo carried