headed “Bestemmiatore orrendo nome,” but in spite of this, the amount of blasphemies that any common Roman will pour forth on the slightest provocation, is really appalling.  Beggars too are universal.  Everybody begs; if you ask a common person your way along the street, the chances are that he asks you for a “buono mano.”  Now, even if you doubt the truth of Sheridan’s dictum, that no man could be honest without being rich, it is hard to believe in a virtuous beggar.  The abundance, also, of lotteries shakes one’s faith in Roman morality.  A population amongst whom gambling and beggary are encouraged by their spiritual and temporal rulers is not likely in other respects to be a virtuous or a moral one.  The frequency of violent crimes is in itself a startling fact.

To my eyes, indeed, the very look of the city and its inhabitants, is a strong prima facie ground of suspicion.  There is vice on those worn, wretched faces—­vice in those dilapidated hovel-palaces—­vice in those streets, teeming with priests and dirt and misery.  In fact, if you only fancy to yourself a city, where there are no manufactures, no commerce, no public life of any kind; where the rich are condemned to involuntary idleness, and the poor to enforced misery; where there is a population of some ten thousand ecclesiastics in the prime of life, without adequate occupation for the most part, and all vowed to celibacy; where priests and priest-rule are omnipotent, and where every outlet for the natural desires and passions of men is carefully cut off—­if you take in fully all these conditions and their inevitable consequences, you will not be surprised if to me, as to any one who knows the truth, the outward morality of Rome seems but the saddest of its many mockeries.

CHAPTER IV.  THE ROMAN PEOPLE.

“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 letters there seems to me always to lie embodied an epitome of the world’s history—­the rise and decline and fall of Rome.  On the escutcheons of the Roman nobles, the S.P.Q.R. are still blazoned forth conspicuously, but where shall we look for the realities expressed by that world-famed symbol?  It is true, the Senate is still represented by a single Senator, nominated by the Pope, who drives in a Lord Mayor’s state coach on solemn occasions; and regularly, on the first night of the opera season, sends round ices, as a present to the favoured occupants of the second and third tiers of boxes at the “Apollo.”  This gentleman, by all the laws of senatorial succession, is the undoubted heir and representative of the old Roman Senate, who sat with their togas wrapped around them, waiting for the Gaul to strike; but alas, the “Populus Romanus” has left behind him neither heir nor descendant.