A crippled beggar crouching at the door, a few common people kneeling before the candle-lighted shrines, a priest or two mumbling at a side-altar, half-a-dozen indifferent pictures and a great deal of gilt and marble everywhere, an odour of stale incense and mouldy cloth, and, over all, a dim dust-discoloured light.

Fancy all this, and you will have before you a Roman church.

On your way you pass no fine buildings, for to tell the honest truth, there are no fine buildings in Rome, except St Peter's and the Colosseum, both of which lie away from the town.

Fragments indeed of old ruins, porticoes built into the wall, bricked-up archways and old cornice-stones, catch your eye from time to time; and so, on and on, over broken pavements, up and down endless hills, through narrow streets and gloomy piazzas, by churches innumerable, amidst an ever-shifting motley crowd of peasants, soldiers, priests, and beggars, you journey onwards for two miles or so; you have got at last to the modern quarter, where hotels are found, and where the English congregate.

There in the "Corso," and in one or two streets leading out of it, there are foot-pavements, lamps at night, and windows to the shops.