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THE CARNIVAL SENZA MOCCOLO.
There are things in the world which allow of no description, and of such things a true Roman carnival is one.

You might as well seek to analyze champagne, or expound the mystery of melody, or tell why a woman pleases you.

The strange web of colour, beauty, mirth, wit, and folly, is tangled so together that common hands cannot unravel it.

To paint a carnival without blotching, to touch it without destroying, is an art given unto few, I almost might say to none, save to our own wondrous word- wizard, who dreamt the "dream of Venice," and told it waking.