Let me fancy that such a traveller--a very Gallio among travellers--is standing by my side.

Let me try and tell him what, under my mentorship, he would mark and see.
It shall not be on a bright, cloudless day that we enter Rome.

To our northern eyes the rich Italian sun-light gives to everything, even to ruins and rags and squalor, a deceptive grandeur, and a beauty which is not due.

No, the day shall be such a day as that on which I write; such a day in fact as the days are oftener than not at this dead season of the year, sunless and damp and dull.

The sky above is covered with colourless, unbroken clouds, and the outline of the Alban and the Sabine hills stands dimly out against the grey distance.