at midday.  At night, save in a few main thoroughfares, there is no light of any kind; but then, after dark at Rome, nobody cares much about walking in out-of-the-way places.  The streets are paved with the most angular and slippery of stones, placed herringbone fashion, with ups and downs in every direction.  Foot-pavement there is none; and the ricketty carriages drawn by the tottering horses come swaying round the endless corners with an utter disregard for the limbs and lives of the foot-folk.  You are out of luck if you come to Rome on a “Festa” day, for then all the shops are shut, and the town looks drearier than ever.  However, even here the chances are two to one, or somewhat more, in favour of the day of your arrival being a working-day.  When the shops are open there is at any rate life enough of one kind or other.  In most parts the shops have no window-fronts.  Glass, indeed, there is little of anywhere, and the very name of plate-glass is unknown.  The dark, gloomy shops varying in size between a coach-house and a wine-vault, have their wide shutter-doors flung open to the streets.  A feeble lamp hung at the back of every shop you pass, before a painted Madonna shrine, makes the darkness of their interiors visible.  The trades of Rome are primitive and few in number.  Those dismembered, disembowelled carcases, suspended in every variety of posture, denote the butchers’ shops; not the pleasantest of sights at any time, least of all in Rome, where the custom of washing the meat after killing it seems never to have been introduced.  Next door too is an open stable, crowded with mules and horses.  Those black, mouldy loaves, exposed in a wire-work cage, to protect them from the clutches of the hungry street vagabonds, stand in front of the bakers, where the price of bread is regulated by the pontifical tariff.  Then comes the “Spaccio di Vino,” that gloomiest among the shrines of Bacchus, where the sour red wine is drunk at dirty tables by the grimiest of tipplers.  Hard by is the “Stannaro,” or hardware tinker, who is always re-bottoming dilapidated pans, and drives a brisk trade in those clumsy, murderous-looking knives.  Further on is the greengrocer, with the long strings of greens, and sausages, and flabby balls of cheese, and straw-covered oil-flasks dangling in festoons before his door.  Over the way is the Government depot, where the coarsest of salt and the rankest of tobacco are sold at monopoly prices.  Those gay, parti-coloured stripes of paper, inscribed with the cabalistic figures, flaunting at the street corner, proclaim the “Prenditoria di Lotti,” or office of the Papal lottery, where gambling receives the sanction of the Church, and prospers under clerical auspices to such an extent that in the city of Rome alone, with a population under two hundred thousand, fifty-five millions of lottery tickets are said to be taken annually.  Cobblers and carpenters, barbers and old clothes-men, seem to me to carry on