[Illustration:  ROMAN FORUM.]

“The Water Witch,” now nearly finished, required printing, which some kind Italian friends nearly brought about in Rome; but the book contained this sentence:  “Rome itself is only to be traced by fallen temples and buried columns,” which gave offense where none was intended and barred the work’s issue there.  The story was finished and laid aside until spring, when, after five delightful months in Rome and a few days at Tivoli, Cooper and his family reluctantly drove through the Porto del Popolo.  In their own carriage, with four white horses, and their servitors in another with four brown ones, they passed up the Adriatic coast to Venice.

[Illustration:  PORTA DEL POPOLO.]

Miss Cooper’s “Pages and Pictures” gives her father’s graphic account of this interesting journey,—­how, in a wild mountain-road they fell in with pilgrims neither way-worn nor solemn, but most willing to talk.  They seemed moving pictures with their staffs, scrip, and scallop-shell capes, returning from Rome.  Then came Terni and its famous waterfall—­a mile away, they knew, for they walked there.  Man-made were those falls, by the turning of a pretty stream many hundred years ago.

[Illustration:  FALLS OF MARMORA AT TERNI.]

High bridges and hermit nooks were passed, and then a long aqueduct with Gothic arches, called Roman in the guide-books; an old temple turned into a church, and but a trifle larger than a Yankee corn-crib.  Then over the fine road beyond Foligno, and the hill Fiorito, and they rolled easily down into the Ancona country, where they found the shrine of Loreto.

[Illustration:  ANCONA.]

[Illustration:  LORETO.]

Ancona gave them their first sight of the Adriatic—­less beautiful in hue than the Mediterranean blue, it seemed to our travelers.  But with a sailor’s joy in rope, pitch, and tar, Cooper hurried with his usual boyish eagerness to the port, and with a lively interest examined its several rusty-looking craft.  The next day found them again on the way, of which he writes:  “Walking ahead of the carriage this morning, we amused ourselves on the beach, the children gathering shells on the shores of the Adriatic.”  Short stops were made in Bologna and Ferrara, then northward to the coast.  Afloat and a pull for an hour brought them to Venice.  Through the Grand Canal and under the Rialto they glided to the opening port beyond.  They left their craft at the Leone Bianco, or white lion.  Entering, they found “a large paved hall” a few steps above the water.  From their windows they could see the gliding gondolas; beyond the splashing of an oar no sound came from their movement.  “Everything was strange,” wrote Cooper.  “Though a sailor and accustomed to water, I had never seen a city a-float.  It was now evening; but a fine moon shedding its light on the scene rendered it fairy-like.”  That night a friend showed him the other ways than the water-ways of Venice.  Through lane-like, shop-lined ways, over bridges, and through the Giant’s Clock-tower he passed into the great square of St. Mark, with “much surprise and pleasure.”  By its glittering lamps, and over it all the moonlight, he felt as if “transported to a scene in the Arabian Nights.”