the carnival is so notorious, that persons long resident in Rome possessed the strongest conviction beforehand, that no human power could ever keep the natives from the Corso upon Thursday.  The day, unlike its predecessors, was brilliantly bright.  The Corso was decked out as gaily as hangings and awnings could make it.  The sellers of bouquets and “confetti” were at their posts.  A number of carriages were sent down filled with adherents of the Government, dressed in carnival attire, to act as decoy-ducks.  All officials were required to take part in the festivities.  The influence of the priests was exerted to beat up carnival recruits amongst their flocks, and yet the people obstinately declined coming.  The revel was ready, but the revellers were wanting.  The stiff-necked Romans were not content with stopping away, but insisted on going elsewhere.  By one of those tacit understandings, which are always the characteristic of a country without public life or liberty, a place of rendezvous was fixed upon.  Without notice or proclamation of any kind, everybody knew somehow, though how, nobody could tell, that the road beyond the Porta Pia was the place where people were to meet on the day in question.  The spot was appropriate on various grounds.  Along the Via Nomentana, which leaves Rome through this gate, lies the Mons Sacer, whither the Plebs of old seceded from the city, to escape from the tyranny of their rulers.  The gate too, which was commenced by Michael Angelo, was completed by the present Pontiff, and there is an irony dear to an Italian’s mind in the idea of choosing the Porta Pia for the egress of a demonstration against the Pope Pius.  Perhaps, after all, the fact that the road is one of the sunniest and pleasantest near Rome may have had more to do with its selection than any abstract considerations.  Be the cause what it may, one fact is certain, that from the time when the Corso ought to have been filling, a multitude of carriages and holiday-dressed people set out towards the Porta Pia.  The Giovedi Grasso is a feast-day in Rome, and all the shops are shut, and their owners at liberty.  All Rome, in consequence, seemed to be wending towards the Porta Pia.  From the gate to the convent of St Agnese, a distance of about a mile, there was a long string of carriages, chiefly hired vehicles, but filled with well-dressed persons.  As far as I could judge, the number of private and aristocratic conveyances was small.  The prince of Piombino, who is married to one of the half-English Borghese princesses, was the only Roman nobleman I heard of, as being amongst the crowd.  But if the nobility were not present on the Via Nomentana, they were equally absent from the Corso.  The footpaths were thronged with a dense file of orderly respectable people.  There were, perhaps, half-a-dozen carriages, the owners of which had some sort of carnival-dress on, but that was all.  There were no cries, no throwing of confetti, no demonstration of feeling,