The voice of Rome is baritone, always excepting that of the Roman locomotive,—­the donkey,—­which is deep bass, and comes tearing and braying along at times when it might well be spared.  In the still night season, wandering among the moonlit ruins of the Coliseum, while you pause and gaze upon the rising tiers of crumbling stone above you, memory retraces all you have read of the old Roman days:  the forms of the world-conquerors once more people the deserted ruin; the clash of ringing steel; hot, fiery sunlight; thin, trembling veil of dust pierced by the glaring eyes of dying gladiators; red-spouting blood; screams of the mangled martyrs torn by Numidian lions; moans of the dying; fierce shouts of exultation from the living; smiles from gold-banded girls in flowing robes, with floating hair, flower-crowned, and perfumed; the hum of thrice thirty thousand voices hushed to a whisper as the combat hangs on an uplifted sword; the—­

Aw-waw-WAUN-ik!  WAW-NIK!  WAUN-KI-w-a-w-n! comes like blatant fish-horn over the silent air, and your dream of the Coliseum ends ignominiously with this nineteenth-century song of a jackass.

At night you will hear the shrill cry of the screech-owl sounding down the silent streets in the most thickly-populated parts of the city.  Or you will perhaps be aroused from sleep, as Caper often was, by the long-drawn-out cadences of some countryman singing a rondinella as he staggers along the street, fresh from a wine-house.  Nothing can be more melancholy than the concluding part of each verse in these rondinellas, the voice being allowed to drop from one note to another, as a man falling from the roof of a very high house may catch at some projection, hold on for a time, grow weak, loose his hold, fall, catch again, hold on for a minute, and at last fall flat on the pavement, used up, and down as low as he can reach.

But the street-cries of this city are countless; from the man who brings round the daily broccoli to the one who has a wild boar for sale, not one but is determined that you shall hear all about it.  Far down a narrow street you listen to a long-drawn, melancholy howl—­the voice as of one hired to cry in the most mournful tones for whole generations of old pagan Romans who died unconverted; poor devils who worshiped wine and women, and knew nothing better in this world.  And who is their mourner?  A great, brawny, tawny, steeple-crowned hat, blue-breeched, two-fisted fish-huckster; and he is trying to sell, by yelling as if his heart would break, a basket of fish not so long as your finger.  If he cries so over anchovies, what would he do if he had a whale for sale?

Another primo basso profundo trolls off a wheelbarrow and a fearful cry at the same time; not in unison with his merchandise, for he has birds—­quail, woodcock, and snipe—­for sale, besides a string of dead nightingales, which he says he will ‘sell cheap for a nice stew.’  Think of stewed nightingales!  One would as soon think of eating a boiled Cremona violin.