“The tomb of my dead self”;

and prayed in general for all unspoiled and loving hearts,—­no less for all who suffer and find yet no helper.

Going out, I took my road by the cross which marks the brow of the hill.  Up the ascent still wound the crowd of devotees, and still the beggars beset them.  Amid that crowd, how many lovely, warm-hearted women!  The women of Italy are intellectually in a low place, but—­they are unaffected; you can see what Heaven meant them to be, and I believe they will be yet the mothers of a great and generous race.  Before me lay Rome,—­how exquisitely tranquil in the sunset!  Never was an aspect that for serene grandeur could vie with that of Rome at sunset.

Next day was the feast of the Milanese saint, whose life has been made known to some Americans by Manzoni, when speaking in his popular novel of the cousin of St. Carlo, Federigo Borromeo.  The Pope came in state to the church of St. Carlo, in the Corso.  The show was magnificent; the church is not very large, and was almost filled with Papal court and guards, in all their splendid harmonies of color.  An Italian child was next me, a little girl of four or five years, whom her mother had brought to see the Pope.  As in the intervals of gazing the child smiled and made signs to me, I nodded in return, and asked her name.  “Virginia,” said she; “and how is the Signora named?” “Margherita,” “My name,” she rejoined, “is Virginia Gentili.”  I laughed, but did not follow up the cunning, graceful lead,—­still I chatted and played with her now and then.  At last, she said to her mother, “La Signora e molto cara,” ("The Signora is very dear,” or, to use the English equivalent, a darling,) “show her my two sisters.”  So the mother, herself a fine-looking woman, introduced two handsome young ladies, and with the family I was in a moment pleasantly intimate for the hour.

Before me sat three young English ladies, the pretty daughters of a noble Earl; their manners were a strange contrast to this Italian graciousness, best expressed by their constant use of the pronoun that. “See that man!” (i.e. some high dignitary of the Church,) “Look at that dress!” dropped constantly from their lips.  Ah! without being a Catholic, one may well wish Rome was not dependent on English sight-seers, who violate her ceremonies with acts that bespeak their thoughts full of wooden shoes and warming-pans.  Can anything be more sadly expressive of times out of joint than the fact that Mrs. Trollope is a resident in Italy?  Yes! she is fixed permanently in Florence, as I am told, pensioned at the rate of two thousand pounds a year to trail her slime over the fruit of Italy.  She is here in Rome this winter, and, after having violated the virgin beauty of America, will have for many a year her chance to sully the imperial matron of the civilized world.  What must the English public be, if it wishes to pay two thousand pounds a year to get Italy Trollopified?