Over the way is the Government depot, where the coarsest of salt and the rankest of tobacco are sold at monopoly prices.

Those gay, parti-coloured stripes of paper, inscribed with the cabalistic figures, flaunting at the street corner, proclaim the "Prenditoria di Lotti," or office of the Papal lottery, where gambling receives the sanction of the Church, and prospers under clerical auspices to such an extent that in the city of Rome alone, with a population under two hundred thousand, fifty-five millions of lottery tickets are said to be taken annually.

Cobblers and carpenters, barbers and old clothes-men, seem to me to carry on their trades much in the same way all the world over.

The peculiarity about Rome is, that all these trades seem stunted in their development.

The cobbler never emerges as the shoemaker, and the carpenter fails to rise into the upholstery line of business.