pictures, and pass the world over for Roman peasants (and beautiful many of them are), can’t sit on the Spanish Stairs in indolent pose when it rains; the streets are slimy and horrible; the carriages try to run over you, and stand a very good chance of succeeding, where there are no sidewalks, and you are limping along on the slippery round cobble-stones; you can’t get into the country, which is the best part of Rome:  but when the sun shines all this is changed; the dear old dirty town exercises, its fascinations on you then, and you speedily forget your recent misery.

Holy Week is a vexation to most people.  All the world crowds here to see its exhibitions and theatrical shows, and works hard to catch a glimpse of them, and is tired out, if not disgusted, at the end.  The things to see and hear are Palm Sunday in St. Peter’s; singing of the Miserere by the pope’s choir on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday in the Sistine Chapel; washing of the pilgrims’ feet in a chapel of St. Peter’s, and serving the apostles at table by the pope on Thursday, with a papal benediction from the balcony afterwards; Easter Sunday, with the illumination of St. Peter’s in the evening; and fireworks (this year in front of St. Peter’s in Montorio) Monday evening.  Raised seats are built up about the high altar under the dome in St. Peter’s, which will accommodate a thousand, and perhaps more, ladies; and for these tickets are issued without numbers, and for twice as many as they will seat.  Gentlemen who are in evening dress are admitted to stand in the reserved places inside the lines of soldiers.  For the Miserere in the Sistine Chapel tickets are also issued.  As there is only room for about four hundred ladies, and a thousand and more tickets are given out, you may imagine the scramble.  Ladies go for hours before the singing begins, and make a grand rush when the doors are open.  I do not know any sight so unseemly and cruel as a crowd of women intent on getting in to such a ceremony:  they are perfectly rude and unmerciful to each other.  They push and trample one another under foot; veils and dresses are torn; ladies faint away in the scrimmage, and only the strongest and most unscrupulous get in.  I have heard some say, who have been in the pellmell, that, not content with elbowing and pushing and pounding, some women even stick pins into those who are in the way.  I hope this latter is not true; but it is certain that the conduct of most of the women is brutal.  A weak or modest or timid woman stands no more chance than she would in a herd of infuriated Campagna cattle.  The same scenes are enacted in the efforts to see the pope wash feet, and serve at the table.  For the possession of the seats under the dome on Palm Sunday and Easter there is a like crush.  The ceremonies do not begin until half-past nine; but ladies go between five and six o’clock in the morning, and when the passages are open they make a grand rush.  The seats, except those saved for the nobility, are