The love of show, that peculiar disease of Rome, is their bane.

The wife, if she be pretty, sells herself, or the husband does what he had better leave undone.
Judge them not too harshly.

Remember, they have read nothing, they have never been out of Rome; the example of ostentation is set them by the Cardinals, of misconduct by the prelates, of venality by the different functionaries, of squandering by the Finance Minister.

And above all, remember that care has been taken to root out from their hearts, as if it were a destructive weed, that noble sentiment of human dignity which is the principle of every virtue.
The blood which flows in Italian veins must be very generous, or so notable a portion of the plebeians of Rome as the people of the _Trastevere_, could never have preserved their manly virtues, as is notoriously the case with them.

I have met with men in this quarter of the city, coarse, violent, sometimes ferocious, but really _men_; nice as to their honour, to the extent of poniarding any one who is wanting in respect to them.