Italian Days and Ways

na, Rome,

perfunctory guide-book fashion. He and Angela are already good friends, and chatter away like two magpies about everything upon the earth and beneath it as well,

he climb up the long flight of steps leading to it from the street. We thus missed the first view from below of the noble statue of Marcus Aurelius, which was once gilded over, like some of our modern

adrian in armor, and sarcophagi strangely decorated with bacchanalian representations, until we suddenly found

of the life he

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so strongly resembled the statue that Miriam begged him to shake aside his thick curls and allow her to see whether he had the Faun's leaf-shaped pointed ears. This he declined t

too-could have first dreamed of a faun in this guise, and then have succeeded in imprisoning the sportive and frisky thing in marble," surely none but a novelist and a poet too

erfection to which the mosaic art had attained, Pliny described a wonderful mosaic in which one dove is drinking and casting her shadow in the water while others are pluming themselves on the edge of the vase. While in the room of the Doves we paid our respects

nd refused to grasp anything more. We usually find that this is quite time enough to spend in any picture-g

quite forgot her fatigue when she read in her guide-book that it was in this church that Edward Gibbon first conceived the idea of writing his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," while Ludovico, by way of giving us something cheerful to think of, told us that at the foot of the steps Tiberius Gracchus and Cola di Rienzi were both slain by their nobles. There is a statue of Rienzi in the piazza below, and above is that wonderful group of the horse-taming Dioscuri, your copies of which have always interested me so much. A curious and mos

ly guarded, not on account of its rich clothing and jewels, but because a woman once formed the design of appropriating to herself the baby image and its benefits. "She had another bambino prepared, of the same size and general appearance as this," said Ludovico, looking at the fresh-colored, richly dressed doll. "She pretended to be ill, and so got possession of the Santissimo. She dressed the false image in the garments of the true Bambino, and sent it back to Ara C?li. That night the m

There are several by Donatello and the Cosmati so exquisitely sculptured that they alone repay a visit to the church. From the terrace outside we looked down on the Forum

d; the many steps of the Ara C?li seemed to have brought positive refreshment to Zelphine, who announced herself ready for a new start, and s

ailing that it would be quite impossible in these days for any one to leap from the rock, or for Donatello to push the monk over into the street below, as in Hawthorne's tale. Mr. Julian Hawthorne says that it was to a moonlight visit to the Tarpeian Rock in the good company of Miss Bremer that we owe this scene in "The Marble Faun," the "most visibly tragic of my father's writings." A pleasant-faced young woman who unlocked the gate of the garden for us was evidently bewitched by Angela's charms, as she did not take her eyes of

dreaming of a wedding; but Zelphine was the bride, not Angela, despite her orange-blossoms, and the groom was a certain widower who pays intermittent a

tired, Angela says that remorse is preying upon her because of the motherless condition of those hapless children. I did not tell Zelphine about my dream, because it is bad luck to dream about a marriage. You scorn all such fancies, I know, but she is really superstitious, and I might injure Mr. Leonard's chances if I should talk just now. Angela and I have our own fun out of the situation. She predicts that he

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r two! Yet, with the idea that there is no fixed price in Italy, travellers are always to be seen at the stalls outdoing the Romans themselves in their efforts to cheapen the flowers, while the merchant volubly protests that his house will be desolated and his children in rags if he sell

thers to do to-day, and we found an accommodat

n fountains send up their spires of feathery spray. Small wonder that the practical and thrifty German Emperor advised them to turn off the water. "Turn them off now," he said, after admiring the beauty of the fountains. "It's a pity to waste so much water!" But these fountains of Maderno's have played untiringly, in sunlight and shade, by moonlight and starlight, for nearly three hundred years. Every

ous mosaics in Michael Angelo's dome and from the rich and elaborate tombs of many popes we turned almost with relief to the strong and simple Rezzonico monument, upon which Canova has placed two great lions at the feet of Pope Clement XIII., while in sharp contrast is a graceful, youthful figure, the Genius of Death,

bit at the high-sounding titles engraved upon the monument to Maria Clementina Sobieski, the wife of

princes: "George IV., fidèle à sa réputation du gentleman le plus accompli des trois royaumes, a voulu honorer la c

monument of Innocent III. The permanent resting-place of Leo XIII. is to be i

ci was imprisoned. We had already seen her lovely, sad picture at the Barberini Palace. The exquisite, haunting beauty of the Cenci portrait is quite indescribable. As C

erican Church in the Via Nazionale, which naturally looked somewhat cold and plain after the gorgeous color and decoratio

ng combination of art and religion. I entirely agree with her, having often felt that in a service in Westminster Abbey an element of adventure was added to the act of devotion. I think it was you who told me of a Scotchwoma

and bringing out the color of the anemones which grow here in such profusion. We could readily fancy Miriam and Donatello dancing in this sylvan shade, although no vagrant musicians were waking t