at all of this.  The features are small, delicately cut, the form of face generally short, rather than tending to oval, being in this respect also in marked contrast with the ordinary Roman type.  There is a type of face well known to most English eyes, though less so, I take it, to those on the western side of the Atlantic, which is strangely recalled to the memory by these model-girls; and that is the gypsy type.  There is the same Oriental look about them, the same brilliancy of dark eyes under dark low brows, the same delicately-cut noses and full yet finely-chiseled lips.  They have also almost invariably the same wondrous wealth of long raven black tresses, glossy but not fine.  The complexions are fresher, more delicate, and with more of bloom, than is often seen among the gypsies; and this is the principal difference between the two types.  There is also another point of similarity, which, if the accounts of Eastern travelers may be accepted, seems also to point to an Oriental origin.  I allude to the singular gracefulness of “pose” which is observable in these people, among the men and women alike.  There they stand and lounge, or sit propped, half recumbent, against a balustrade in the sun, in all sorts of attitudes, but in all they are graceful.  There is that indefinable simplicity and ease in the natural movement and disposition of their limbs which tuition can never, and birth in the purple can so rarely, enable a European to assume.  It may perhaps be supposed that the exigencies of their profession have not been without influence in producing the effect I am speaking of.  But I do not think that such is the case.  In the young and the old, in the children even, the same thing is observable; and the exceeding difficulty of teaching it may be accepted, I think, as a guarantee that it has not been taught in the case of creatures so unteachable as these half-wild sons and daughters of Nature.

Now, if these people, who for generations past have exercised the profession of artists’ models in Rome, do really belong to a race apart from the inhabitants of the district around Rome, as I think cannot be doubted by any one who has carefully observed them, the question suggests itself, Who and what are they, and whence do they come?  Fortunately, we are not unprovided with an answer, and the answer is rather a curious one.  If the excursionist from Rome to Tivoli will extend his ramble a little way among the Sabine Mountains which lie behind it, up the valley through which the Teverone—­the praeceps Anio of Horace—­runs down into the Campagna, he will see on his right hand, when he has left Tivoli about ten miles behind him, a most romantically situated little town on the summit of a conically shaped mountain.  The name of it is Saracinesco, and its story is as curious as its situation.  It is said—­and the tradition has every appearance of truth—­that the town was founded by a body of Saracens after their defeat by Berengarius in the ninth century.  The