Rome in 1860

Within the space of a few days, some three weeks in all, it was my fortune to be present at two demonstrations forming two pictures of Italian story, or rather two aspects of on...

Straws show which way the wind blows, and so, though the straws themselves are valueless, yet as indications of what is coming, their motions are worth noting. It is thus that I...

If it has ever been the fortune of my readers to mix in tract-distributing circles, they will, doubtless, have become acquainted with a peculiar style of literature which, for l...

"Senatus Populusque Romanus." The phrase sounds strangely, in my ears, like the accents of an unknown language or the burden of a half-forgotten melody. In those four initial le...

My first recollections of Rome date from too long ago, and from too early an age, for me to be able to recall with ease the impression caused by its first aspect. It is hard ind...

Some three years ago, then, there lived in the hamlet of Cannara, near Perugia, a family called Bonci. They belonged to the peasant class, and were poor, even among the Papal pe...

If ever anybody had cause to regret the suppression of lotteries, it is the whole tribe of play-writers and authors. Never will there be found again a "Deus ex Machina," so serv...

Far away among the Sabine hills, right up the valley of the Teverone, as the Romans now-a-days call the stream which once bore the name of Anio, hard by the mountain frontier-la...

The Papacy is too old and too feeble even to die with dignity. Of itself the sight of a falling power, of a dynasy _in extremis_, commands something of respect if not of regret;...

The feast of San Giuseppe is the only _festa_ day in Lent, when the Romans eat fried fish in honour of the occasion,--St Joseph alone knows why. Henceforth the day will have oth...

In foreign discussions on the Papal question it is always assumed, as an undisputed fact, that the maintenance of the Papal court at Rome is, in a material point of view, an imm...

About half a century ago the Papal question was the order of the day. Another Napoleon was seated on the throne of France, in the full tide of success and triumph of victory; an...

There are things in the world which allow of no description, and of such things a true Roman carnival is one. You might as well seek to analyze champagne, or expound the mystery...

There is, I think, no city in the world where Pilate's question, "What is truth?" would be so hard to answer as in Rome. In addition to the ordinary difficulties which everywher...

There is no University properly speaking in Rome. The constant and minute interference of the priests in the course of study; the rigid censorship extended over all books of lea...

The _nil admirari_ school are out of favour. In our earnest working age, it is the fashion to treat everything seriously, to find in every thing a deep hidden meaning, in fact,...

We all know the story of "Boccaccio's" Jew, who went to Rome an unbeliever, and came back a Christian. There is no need for alarm; it is not my intention to repeat the story. In...

At Rome there is no public life. There are no public events to narrate, no party politics to comment on. Events indeed will occur, and politics will exist even in this best regu...

Some months after I had written the question which closes the last chapter, I was fortunate enough to obtain a partial answer to it. During the present year the Cavaliere Gennar...

Of late years, round and about Viterbo, there was a well-known character, Giovanni Ugolini by name, a sort of itinerant "Jack-of-all-trades," who wandered about from place to pl...

In July, 1859, there were in the Bagnio of Civita Vecchia two galley slaves, Antonio Simonetti and Domenico Avanzi. Simonetti was a man of thirty, whose life, short as it was, s...

The idler about the streets of Rome may, from time to time, catch sight, on blank walls and dead corners, of long white strips of paper, covered with close-printed lines of most...