On Sundays and “Festas” in the mountain districts you can still find real peasants with real peasants’ dresses; but even there Manchester stuffs and cottons are making their way fast, and every year the old-fashioned costumes grow rarer and rarer.  A grey serge jacket, coarse nondescript-coloured cloth trousers, and a brown felt hat, all more or less ragged and dusty, compose the ordinary dress of the Roman working man.  Female dress, in any part of the world, is one of those mysteries which a wise man will avoid any attempt to explain; I can only say, therefore, that the dress of the common Roman women is much like that of other European countries, except that the colours used are somewhat gayer and gaudier than is common in the north.

Provisions are dear in Rome.  Bread of the coarsest and mouldiest quality costs, according to the Government tariff, by which its price is regulated, from a penny to three halfpence for the English pound.  Meat is about a third dearer than in London, and clothing, even of the poorest sort, is very high in price.  On the other hand, lodgings, of the class used by the poor, are cheap enough.  There is no outlay for firing, as even in the coldest weather (and I have known the temperature in Rome as low as eight degrees below freezing-point), even well-to-do Romans never think of lighting a fire; and then, in this climate, the actual quantity of victuals required by an able-bodied labourer is far smaller than in our northern countries, while, from the same cause, the use of strong liquors is almost unknown.  Tobacco too, which is all made up in the Papal factories and chiefly grown in the country, is reasonable in price, though poor in quality.  In the country and the poorer parts of the city, the dearest cigar you can buy is only a baioccho, or under one halfpenny; and from this fact you may conclude what the price of the common cheap cigars is to a native.  From all these causes, I feel no doubt that the cost of living for the poor is comparatively small, though of course the rate of wages is small in proportion.  For ordinary unskilled labour, the day-wages, at the winter season, are about three pauls to three pauls and a half; in summer about five pauls; and in the height of the vintage as much as six or seven pauls, though this is only for a very few weeks.  I should suppose, therefore, that from 1_s_. 6_d_. to 1_s_. 9_d_. a day, taking the paul at 5_d_., were the average wages of a good workman at Rome.  From these wages, small as they are, there are several deductions to be made.

In the first place, the immense number of “festas” tells heavily on the workman’s receipts.  On the more solemn feast-days all work is strictly forbidden by the priests; and either employer or labourer, who was detected in an infraction of the law, would be subject to heavy fines.  Even on the minor festivals, about the observance of which the Church is not so strict, labour is almost equally out of