his "young barbarians all at play," and all that, down to the Beatrice Cenci, the Madame Tonson of the shops, that haunts one everywhere with her white turban and red eyes. All the public and private life and history of the ancient Romans, from Romulus to Constantine and Julian the Apostle, (as he is sometimes called,) is perfectly well known. But the common life of the modern Romans, the games, customs, and habits of the people, the every-day of Today, has been only touched upon here and there, sometimes with spirit and accuracy, as by Charles M'Farlane, sometimes with grace, as by Hans Christian Andersen, and sometimes with great ignorance, as by Jones, Brown, and Robinson, who see through the eyes of their courier, and the spectacles of their prejudices. This is the subject, however, which has specially interested me; and a life of several years in Rome has enabled me to observe some things which do not strike the hurried traveller, and to correct many of my own false notions in regard to the people and place. To a stranger, a first impression is apt to be a false impression; and it constantly happens to me to hear my own countrymen work out the falsest conclusions from the slightest premises, and settle the character and deserts of the Italians,—all of whom they mass together in a lump,-after they have been just long enough on the soil to travel from Civita Vecchia to Rome under the charge of a courier,-when they know just enough of the language to ask for a coachman when they want a spoon, or to order a mezzo detto” at the restaurant,—and when they have made the respectable acquaintance, besides their courier, of a few porters, a few beggars, a few shopkeepers, and the padrone of the apartment they hire.

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No one lives long in Rome without loving it; and I must, in the beginning, confess myself to be in the same category. Those who shall read these slender papers, without agreeing to the kindly opinions often expressed, must account for it by remembering that "Love lends a precious seeing to the eye." My aim is far from ambitious. I shall not be erudite, but I hope I shall not be dull. These little sketches may remind some of happy days spent under the Roman sky, and by directing the attention of others to what they have overlooked, may open a door to a new pleasure. Chi sa? The plainest Ranz des Vaches may sometimes please when the fifth symphony of Beethoven would be a bore.

W

CHAPTER II.

HOEVER has passed the month of December in Rome will remember to have been awakened from his morningdreams by the gay notes of the pifferari playing in the streets below, before the shrines of the Madonna and Bambino,-and the strains of one set of performers will scarcely have ceased, before the distant notes of another set of pilgrims will be heard to continue the well-known novena. The pifferari are generally contadini of the Abruzzi Mountains, who, at the season of Advent, leave their home to make a pilgrimage to Rome, -stopping before all the way-side shrines as they journey along, to pay their glad music of welcome to the Virgin and the coming Messiah. Their song is called a novena, from its being sung for nine consecutive days,-first, for nine days previous to the Festa of the Madonna, which occurs on the 8th of December, and afterwards for the nine days preceding Christmas. The same words and music serve, however, for both celebrations. The pifferari always go in couples, one playing on the zampogna, or bagpipe, the bass and treble accompaniment, and the other on the piffero, or pastoral pipe, which carries the air; and for the month before Christmas the sound of their instruments resounds through the streets of Rome, wherever there is a shrine,-whether at the corners of the streets, in the depths of the shops, down little lanes, in the centre of the Corso, in the interior courts of the palaces, or on the stairways of private houses.

Their costume is extremely picturesque. On their heads they wear conical felt hats adorned with a frayed peacock's feather, or a faded band of red cords and tassels,-their bodies are clad in red waistcoats, blue jackets, and small-clothes of skin or yellowish homespun cloth,-skin sandals are bound to their feet with cords that interlace each other up the leg as far as the knee,-and over all

is worn a long brown or blue cloak with a short cape, buckled closely round the neck. Sometimes, but rarely, this cloak is of a deep red with a scalloped cape. As they stand before the pictures of the Madonna, their hats placed on the ground before them, and their thick, black, dishevelled hair covering their sunburnt brows, blowing away on their instruments or pausing to sing their novena, they form a picture which every artist desires to paint. Their dress is common to nearly all the peasantry of the Abruzzi, and, worn and tattered as it often is, it has a richness and harmony of tint which no new clothes could ever have, and for which the costumes of the shops and regular models offer a poor substitute. It is the old story again. The new and clean is not so paintable, not so picturesque, as the tarnished and soiled. The worn blue of the cloak is softened by the dull gray of the threads beneath,-patches of various colours are often let into the jacket or breeches,—the hat is lustreless from age, and rusty as an old wall,—and the first vivid red of the waistcoat is toned by constant use to a purely pictorial hue. Besides, the true pifferaro wears his costume as if it belonged to him and had always been worn by him,-so that it has none of that got-up look which spoils everything. From the sandals and corded leggings, which, in the Neapolitan dialect, are termed cioce, the pifferari are often called ciociari.

Their Christmas pilgrimages are by no means prompted by purely religious motives, though, undoubtedly, such considerations have some weight with them, the common peasantry being religiously inclined, and often making pilgrimages simply from a sense of duty and propriety. But in these wanderings to Rome, their principal object is to earn a little money to support them during the winter months, when their "occupation is gone." As they are hired in Rome by the owners of the various houses adorned with a Madonna shrine (of which there are over fifteen hundred in the city) to play before them at the rate of a paul or so for each full novena, and as they can easily play before thirty or forty a day, they often return, if their luck be good, with a tolerable little sum in their pockets. Besides this, they often stand as models, if they are goodlooking fellows, and thus add to their store; and then again, the forestieri (for, as the ancient Romans called strangers barbari, so their descendants call them foresters, wood-men, wild-men) occasionally drop baiocchi and pauls into their hats still further to increase it.

Sometimes it is a father and son who play together, but oftener two old friends who make the pilgrimage in pairs. This morning, as I was going out for a walk round the walls, two admirable speci

mens of the pifferari were performing the novena before a shrine at the corner of the street. The player of the bagpipe was an old man, with a sad, but very amiable face, who droned out the bass and treble in a most earnest and deprecatory manner. He looked as if he had stood still, tending his sheep, nearly all his life, until the peace and quiet of Nature had sunk into his being, or, if you will, until he had become assimilated to the animals he tended. The other, who played the pipe, was a man of middle age, stout, vigorous, with a forest of tangled black hair, and dark quick eyes that were fixed steadily on the Virgin, while he blew and vexed the little brown pipe with rapid runs and nervous fioriture, until great drops of sweat dripped from its round open mouth. Sometimes, when he could not play fast enough to satisfy his eagerness, he ran his finger up and down the vents. Then, suddenly lowering his instrument, he would scream, in a strong peasant-voice, verse after verse of the novena, to the accompaniment of the bagpipe. One was like a slow old Italian vettura all lumbered with luggage and held back by its drag; the other panting and nervous at his work as an American locomotive, and as constantly running off the rails. Both, however, were very earnest at their occupation. As they stood there playing, a little group gathered round. A scamp of a boy left his sport to come and beat time with a stick on the stone step before them; several children clustered near; and two or three women, with black-eyed infants in their arms, also paused to listen and sympathize. At last the playing ceased. The pifferari took up their hats and looked smilingly round at us.

"Where do you come from?" I asked.

“Eh!” said the pifferaro, showing all his teeth, and shrugging his shoulders good-naturedly, while the other echoed the pantomime. "Dal Regno," for so the Abruzzi peasants call the kingdom of Naples. And do you come every year?"

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Sì, Signore. He (indicating his friend) and I (pointing to himself) have been companions for thirty-three years, and every year we have come to Rome to play the novena."

To this the old zampognaro bent his head on one side, and said, assentingly," Eh! per trenta tre anni"

And “Ecco,” continued the pifferaro, bursting in before the zampognaro could go on, and pointing to two stalwart youths of about twenty-two or twenty-three years of age, who at this moment came up the street with their instruments,- "These are our two sons. He is mine,”-indicating one with his reversed thumb; "and that other is his,”—jerking his head towards his companion. “And they, too, are going to play in company, as we do."

"For thirty-three years more, let us hope," said I.

"Eh! speriamo," (Let us hope so,) was the answer of the pifferaro, as he showed all his teeth in the broadest of smiles. Then, with a motion of his hand he set both the young men going, he himself joining in, straining out his cheeks, blowing all the breath of his body into the little pipe, and running up and down the vents with a sliding finger, until finally he brought up against a high, shrill note, to which he gave the full force of his lungs, and after holding it in loud blast for a moment, startled us by breaking off, without gradation, into a silence as sudden as if the music had snapped short off like a pipe-stem.

On further conversation with my ciociari, I found that they came yearly from Sora, a town in the Abruzzi, about fifty miles from Rome, making the journey on foot, and picking up by the way whatever trifle of copper they could. In this manner they travelled the whole distance in five days, living upon onions, lettuce, oil, and black bread. They were now singing the second novena for Natale; and, if one could judge from their manner and conversation, were quite content with what they had earned. I invited them up into my room, and there in the pleasantest way they stunned us with the noise of both their instruments, to the great delight of the children and the astonishment of the servants, for whom these common things had worn out their charm by constant repetition. At my request they repeated the words of the novena they had been singing, and I took them down from their lips. After eliminating the wonderful m-ms of the Neapolitan dialect, in which all the words lay imbedded like shells in the sand, and supplying some of the curious elisions with which those Abruzzi Procrusteans recklessly cut away the polysyllables, so as to bring them within the rhythmic compass, they ran thus:

"Tu Verginella figlia di Sant' Anna,

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Che in ventre tuo portasti il buon Gesù;
E lo partoristi sotto la capanna,

E dov' mangiav'no lo bue e l' asinello.

'Quel Angelo gridava: Venite, Santi !
'Ch' è andato Gesù dentro la capanna;

Ma guardate Vergine beata,

Che in ciel in terra sia nostr' avvocata!'

"San Giuseppe andava in compagnia,
Si trovò al partorir di Maria.

La notte di Natale è notte santa

Il Padre e l' Figliuolo e lo Spirito Santo.

'Sta la ragione che abbiamo cantato;

Sia a Gesù bambino rappresentato."