scope, consume themselves in self-consciousness, and duties easily degenerate into routine. We are not all in all to ourselves; the world has claims upon us, which it is cowardice to shrink from, and folly to deny. Self-forgetfulness is a great virtue, and selfishness a great vice. After all, the best religious service is honest labour. Large interests keep the heart sound; and the best of prayers is the doing of a good act with a pure purpose. "He prayeth best who loveth best All things, both great and small; He made and loveth all." HE gay confusion of Carnival is over, with its mad tossing of flowers and bonbons, its showering of confetti, its brilliantly-draped balconies running over with happy faces, its barbaric races, its rows of joyous contadine, its quaint masquerading, and all the glad folly of its Saturnalia. For Saturnalia it is, in most respects just like the festa of the Ancient Romans, with its Saturni septem dies, its uproar of "Io Saturnalia !" in the streets, and all its mad frolic. In one point it materially differs, however; for on the ancient festa no criminal could be punished; but in modern times it is this gay occasion that the government selects to execute (giustiziare!) any poor wretch who may have been condemned to death, so as to strike a wholesome terror into the crowd! But all is over now. The last moccoletti are extinguished, that flashed and danced like myriads of fire-flies from window and balcony and over the heads of the roaring tide of people that ebbed and flowed in hurrying eddies of wild laughter through the streets. The Corso has become sober and staid, and taken in its draperies. The fun is finished. The masked balls, with their belle maschere, are over. The theatres are all closed. Lent has come, bringing its season of sadness; and the gay world of strangers is flocking down to Naples. 66 Eh, Signore! Finito il nostro carnevale. Adesso è il carnevale dei preti :-"Our carnival is over, and that of the priests has come." All the frati are going round to every Roman family, high and low, from the prince in his palace to the boy in the caffè, demanding una santa elemosina,-un abbondante santa elemosina,-ma abbondante," and willingly pocketing any sum, from a half-baiocco upwards. The parish priest is now making his visits in every ward of the city, to register the names of the Catholics in all the houses, so as to insure a confession from each during this season of penance. And woe to any wight who fails to do his duty!-he will soon be brought to his marrow-bones. His name will be placarded in the church, and he will be punished according to circumstances,— perhaps by a mortification to the pocket, perhaps by the penance of the convent; and perhaps his fate will be worse, if he be obstinate. So nobody is obstinate, and all go to confession like good Christians, and confess what they please, for the sake of peace, if not of absolution. The Francescani march more solemnly up and down the alleys of their cabbage-garden, studiously, with books in their hands, which they pretend to read; now and then taking out their snuffstained bandanna and measuring it from corner to corner, in search of a feasible spot for its appropriate function: they are, however, really only feeling by the hem for the inside, for an Italian looks upon a handkerchief as a bag the outside of which is never to be used, so that he may safely roll it up again into a little round ball, and polish off his nose with it, before returning it to his pocket. Whatever penance they do is not to Father Tiber or Santa Acquedotto, excepting by internal ablutions,—the exterior things of this world being ignored. There is no meat-eating now, save on certain festivals, when a supply is laid in for the week. But opposites cure opposites, (contrary to the homœopathic rule,) and their magro makes them grasso. Two days of festival, however, there are in the little church of San Patrizio and Isidoro, when the streets are covered with sand, and sprigs of box and red and yellow hangings flaunt before the portico, and scores of young boy-priests invade their garden, and, tucking up their long skirts, run and scream among the cabbages; for boyhood is an irrepressible thing, even under the extinguisher of a priest's black dress. Daily you will hear the tinkle of a bell and the chant of high child-voices in the street, and, looking out, you will see two little boys clad in some refuse of the Church's wardrobes, one of whom carries a crucifix or a big black cross, while the other rings a bell and chants as he loiters along; now stopping to chaff with other boys of a similar age,―nay, even at times laying down his cross to dispute or struggle with them,—and now renewing the appeal of the bell. This is to call together the children of the parish to learn their Catechism, or to exercise them in their Latin responses-and these latter they will rattle off generally with an amazing volubility, and for the most part without an idea of what they mean. Meantime the snow is gradually disappearing from Monte Gennaro and the Sabine Mountains. Picnic parties are spreading their tables under the Pamfili Doria pines, and drawing St. Peter's from the old wall near by the ilex avenue,- -or making excursions to Frascati, Tusculum, and Albano,-or spending a day in wandering among the ruins of the Etruscan city of Véii, lost to the world so long ago that even the site of it was unknown to the Cæsars, or strolling by the shore at Ostia, or under the magnificent pineta at Castel Fusano, whose lofty trees repeat, as in a dream, the sound of the blue Mediterranean that washes the coast at half a mile distant. There is no lack of places that Time has shattered and strewn with relics, leaving Nature to festoon her ruins and heal her wounds with tenderest vines and flowers, where one may spend a charming day and dream of the old times. Spring has come. The nightingales already begin to bubble into song under the Ludovisi ilexes and in the Barberini Gardens. Daisies have snowed all over the Campagna,-periwinkles star the grass, -crocuses and anemones impurple the spaces between the rows of springing grain along the still brown slopes. At every turn in the streets basketfuls of sweet-scented Parma violets are offered you by little girls and boys; and at the corner of the Condotti and Corso is a splendid show of camellias, set into beds of double violets, and sold for a song. Now and then one meets huge baskets filled with these delicious violets, on their way to the confectioners and caffès, where they will be made into syrup; for the Italians are very fond of this bibita, and prize it not only for its flavour, but for its medicinal qualities. Violets seem to rain over the villas in the spring, acres are purple with them, and the air all around is sweet with their fragrance. Every day, scores of carriages are driving about the Borghese grounds, which are open to the public, and hundreds of children are running about, plucking flowers and playing on the lovely slopes and in the shadows of the noble trees, while their parents stroll at a distance and wait for them in the shady avenues. At the Pamfili Doria villa the English play their national game of cricket, on the flower-enamelled green, which is covered with the most wondrous anemones; and there is a matinée of friends who come to chat and look on. This game is rather "slow" at Rome, however, and does not rhyme with the Campagna. The Italians lift their hands and wonder what there is in it to fascinate the English; and the English in turn call them a lazy, stupid set, because they do not admire it. But those who have seen pallone will not, perhaps, so much wonder at the Italians, nor condemn them for not playing their own game, when they remember that the French have turned them out of their only amphitheatre adapted for it, and left them only pazienza. come. If one drives out at any of the gates he will see that spring is The hedges are putting forth their leaves, the almond-trees are in full blossom, and in the vineyards the contadini are setting cane-poles and trimming the vines to run upon them. Here and there along the slopes the rude antique plough, dragged heavily along by great gray oxen, turns up the rich loam, that needs only to be tickled to laugh out in flowers and grain. In the olive-orchards, the farmers are carefully pruning away decayed branches and loosening the soil about their old roots. Here and there, the smoke of distant bonfires, burning heaps of useless stubble, shows against the dreamy purple hills like the pillar of cloud that led the Israelites. One smells the sharp odour of these fires everywhere, and hears them crackle in the fields : 66 'Atque levem stipulam crepitantibus urere flammis." On festa-days the way-side osterias (con cucina) are crowded by parties who come out to sit under the green arbours of vines, drink wine grown on the very spot, and regale themselves with a fry of eggs and chopped sausages, or a slice of lamb, and enjoy the delicious air that breathes from the mountains. The old cardinals descend from their gilded carriages, and, accompanied by one of their household and followed by their ever-present lackeys in harlequin liveries, totter along on foot with swollen ankles, lifting their broad red hats to the passers-by who salute them, and pausing constantly in their discourse to enforce a phrase or take a pinch of snuff. Files of scholars from the Propaganda stream along, now and then, two by two, their leading-strings swinging behind them, and in their ranks all shades of physiognomy, from African and Egyptian to Irish and American. Youths from the English College, and Germans, in red, go by in companies. All the minor schools, too, will be out,-little boys, in black hats, following the lead of their priestmaster, (for all masters are priests,) orphan girls in white, convoyed by Sisters of Charity, and the deaf and dumb with their masters. Scores of ciociari, also, may be seen in faded scarlets, with their wardrobes of wretched clothes, and sometimes a basket with a baby in it, on their heads. The contadini, who have been to Rome to be hired for the week to labour on the Campagna, come tramping along, one of them often mounted on a donkey, and followed by a group carrying their implements with them; while hundreds of the middle classes, husbands and wives with their children, and paini and paine with all their jewellery on, are out to take their holiday stroll, and to see and be seen. Once in a while, the sadness of Lent is broken by a Church festival, when all the fasters eat 'prodigiously anà make up for their usual Lenten fare. One of the principal days is that of the 19th of March, dedicated to San Giuseppe, (the most ill-used of all the |