Last night I strolled down the Corso to see the guard pass.  The street was very full, at least full for Rome, where the streets seem empty at their fullest, and numerous groups of men were standing on the door-steps and at the shop windows.  Mounted patrols passed up and down the street, and wherever there seemed the nucleus of a crowd forming, knots of the Papal sbirri, with their long cloaks and cocked hats pressed over their eyes, and furtive hang-dog looking countenances, elbowed their way unopposed and apparently unnoticed.  In the square itself there were a hundred men or so, chiefly, I should judge, strangers or artists, a group of young ragamuffins, who had climbed upon the pedestals of the columns, and seemed actuated only by the curiosity natural to the boy genus, and a very large number of French soldiers, who, at first sight, looked merely loiterers.  The patrol, of perhaps four hundred men, stood drawn up under arms, waiting for the word to march.  Gradually one perceived that the crowds of soldiers who loitered about without muskets were not mere spectators.  Almost imperceptibly they closed round the patrol, pushed back by the bystanders not in uniform, and then retreated, forming a clear ring for the guard to move in.  There was no pushing, no hustling, no cries of any kind.  After a few minutes the drums and fifes struck up, the drum-major whirled his staff round in the air, the ring of soldier-spectators parted, driving the crowd back on either side, and through the clear space thus formed the patrol marched up the square, divided into two columns, one going to the right, and the other to the left, and so passed down the length of the Corso.  The crowd made no sign, and raised no shout as the troops went by, and only looked on in sullen silence.  In fact, the sole opinion I heard uttered was that of a French private, who formed one of the ring, and who remarked to his comrade that this duty of theirs was sacre nom de chien de metier, a remark in which I could not but coincide.  As soon as the patrol had passed, the crowd retreated into the cafes or the back-streets, and in half-an-hour the Corso was as empty as usual, and was left to the sbirri, who passed up and down slowly and silently.  Even in the small side-streets, which lead from the Corso to the English quarters, I met knots of the Papal police accompanied by French soldiers, and the suspicious scrutinizing glance they cast upon you as you passed showed clearly enough they were out on business.

18 February.

The present has been a week of demonstrations, both Papal and anti-Papal.  Last Thursday was the Giovedi Grasso, the great people’s day of the carnival.  In other years, from an early hour in the afternoon, there is a constant stream of carriages and foot-passengers setting from all parts of Rome towards the Corso.  The back-streets and the ordinary promenades are almost deserted.  The delight of the Romans in