PART I.

One bright summer's day, the sun shining in unclouded splendour, the landscape lighted up with the magic glory only to be seen under that bright, cloudless sky, and an atmosphere which merely to breathe gives you a joyous feeling of escape from imprisonment-from the dull, leaden, lowering sky which so often falls to our lot in England-I found myself transported to the Roman Campagna; and one evening I arrived, dusty and travel-worn, at the hour of sunset at the Piazza, just outside the gate of Frascati, with my legs curled up, in one of the indigenous small jingling carretelle in which I occupied one of the six available seats. Glad enough was I to escape from this instrument of torture; my ears half deafened by the heathen oaths, such as "Per Bacco," addressed by the redhaired, squinting driver, to the horses; and I gladly descended, and, hiring a donkey, drove him before me, trudging on foot up the mountain, by the narrow paths leading to Rocca, carpeted on both sides by the most lovely flowers, with here and there a rudely-cut cross, and occasionally an immovable figure, kneeling before the image of the Virgin carved beside it. Rocca di Papa is one of the most beautiful positions of the Ager Romanus.

As some of my gentle readers have never seen the Eternal City, I will give a slight sketch, and their imaginations must fill-in the picture. Looking south-east from the gate of San Giovanni, in Lalernano, on a clear day, you perceive in the extreme distance a line of azure mountains, of majestic shape, bounding a gently undulating plain, looking like a green sea changed by some enchanter's wand into land stretching for fourteen miles, unbroken by a single tree, but covered with fragments of tombs and aquaducts. These hills, starting up from the old country of the Sabines, gradually rise, in a capricious and graceful sweep, up to a high peak called "Monte Cavi," which overtops and is enthroned, like a king, above the surrounding ranges. From this point the chain again slopes down into a gentle declivity of great extent, and sinks imperceptibly into the plain, no far from the sea-shore, near the

summit of Monte Cavi, where once stood the splendid temple of Jupiter Latialis, lighted with a beautiful pillar composed of one precious stone, the prisms of which caught each ray of light as it fell, decomposing and spreading out the light in green, blue, and yellow rays. This pillar was given by a Roman Emperor, as a thanksgiving for some victory he had won. The "Ferice Latina" were celebrated here with the greatest pomp and luxury; now this temple, with the worship of the old gods, has crumbled away, and is replaced by a humble Passionist convent. On an isolated rock, shaped like a sugar-loaf, jutting abruptly out from the profile of the mountains, Alexander the Sixth built a stronghold, from which his soldiers could overawe the old Collonna fortress of Mariano, and the rock was soon crowned with crenulated walls.

My readers all know that in those centuries the poor and weak had a choice given them. Between two ways of being fleeced it was necessary for them to choose one of them-either to be plundered by casual and vagrant thieves, or by those who were regularly established in castles; they generally gave a preference to the latter, and thus there grew up round the fortress those timid groups of humble houses and peasants huts which afterwards were transformed into whole villages. Such had been the origin of the place which I selected as my residence, and where I arrived long after sunset at the house which I had secured, and which fortunately had its door still open to receive me.

Let me give you an idea of Rocca di Papa. High above is a crag crowned with the ruins of the antique feudal tower, the hideous gurgoils still bidding defiance, in grinning anger, to the passing traveller. On the bare granite surface of the rock are perched, you know not how, grown into the stone like the fossil-shells in the rock beneath them the first and more ancient houses, hanging like wasps' nests among the crevices. Then where the rock, after a fashion, joins the declivity of the mountain, the more modern houses begin forming the two sides of a long and precipitous street leading to a little terrace outside the village, where there is a second convent upon another little open space.

Exactly where the Roche terminates stands the church, the fountain, the little café, and the best houses all like large bird-nests amid a tangled thicket of foliage, some of them looking smothered with flowers. The house I selected for my residence was the last at the foot of the descent on the left hand side, and there was an interval of about two hundred yards between it and the convent below. I occupied two neat little rooms on the first-floor. One looked on to the street, the other filled with roses and sweet-scented plants, which wandered here and there over the old-fashioned windows, quite unrestrained, commanded a view of the beautiful country vineyards, river, and mountain "deeply blue," which afforded continual delight to the eye and thoughts. I rented it from a middle-aged widow belonging to that special class of peasants which is to be found in many parts of Italy, and more particularly in the hamlets of the "Ager Romanus," while in the north it is entirely unknown. In the north of Italy a peasant woman is only the wife of the peasant; for habits and daily occupations are alike common to both. This equality, moreover, is sometimes disturbed, very much to the detriment of the woman. Here, for instance, on the Lago Maggiore, suppose a load of chopped wood, weighing half a hundred-weight, and a few chickens have to be brought from a village half way up the mountain to the market on the shore, the work of the family is distributed thus: The wife takes up the load of wood, and the husband the basket of chickens.

It is curious to hear the peasants, when they try to lift a weight and find it too heavy, drop it and say "It is woman's work."

In mountainous countries this is the general custom, and shows that gallantry towards the fair is entirely a human institution; whereas, the peasant woman of the mountains a little further south is generally the wife of a man who owns the house in which he lives and a little vineyard or field, more or less distant from the village; therefore the husband leaves his house, in the summer, at midnight, with a spade and a gun on his shoulder, both of which are his inseparable companions, for he seldom returns without bringing home some birds; occasionally a rare one, which would fill a naturalist with rapture, but is only estimated by the simple peasant in proportion to its weight and fitness for cooking purposes, and goes to work in the fields; his wife in the meanwhile may be said never to stir from her own home, where she looks after the children, her pretty garden, which is generally tended with great care, and her domestic duties. Her husband becomes sunburnt, black, and rough under that burning vertical sun; his callous hands are like the claws of an eagle, with muscles made prominent from continual labour, as I have seen in Yorkshire the woolcombers with their hands literally bent into the form of an eagle's claw; their fingers bent by continually wool combing, so that they cannot straighten them, and their not over-clean pointed nails liks talons. While his

more fortunate wife, who has been spared every hardship, possesses the golden and transparent complexion of the pictures of the Venetian school; she has well-shaped hands, not in the least disfigured by hard work, is always neatly dressed, with the bright petticoat showing her prettily-formed ancles, her boddice either of black silk, or on rare occasions black, or coloured velvet laced with tiny gold chains, from which hangs amulets and charms to preserve her from the evil eye or any danger, while the pretty thick muslin and linen bandkerchief shows off the contour of her neck, generally well-shaped, and her arms. She is also very careful of the picturesque, spotless white linen cloth which forms her head-dress, and which differs in every village, so that by its peculiar shape it is easy to distinguish the native-place of the wearer. They speak in low soft melodious tones, a language full of graceful and endearing ex pressions, such as "Figlio mio!" "Core mio!" "Bello mio!" pronounced with a tone of voice which goes to the heart, and is the most charming of harmonies and with a certain innate cleverness and mother wit, all of which place them in quite a different category from the peasant woman in the north deformed by manual labour, dirty and dishevelled, who stare at you open-mouthed if you say a word to them. I do not mean to say that the more refined women are always angels of sweetness and peace, their passions are sometimes like real thunder storms; the big silver pin called justly "Spadino," which fastens in a classic knot their lovely raven hair, does not bear that bellicose name for nothing, and has often been the instrument of feminine vengeance, or at least a dangerous weapon in their frequent angry discussions. I seldom saw it glitter in any fair hand except on one occasion, a hot summer's day at Genzano, where there was so great a drought, that the fountains were almost dried up, and I saw the women like furies each armed with a "Spadino," warmly disputing for water. My widow may perhaps have used it on great occasions. One day she entered my room, her eyes starting out of her head, and said: Signor, give me your rifle !" and then she confessed that she wanted to shoot someone who had incurred her displeasure, I know not why. You may be sure I did not comply with her request. I am standing at the window and drawing over the covering to protect me from the sun's burning rays. What lovely shadows of leaves, branches, and stems suddenly picture themselves on the white surface, the beautiful clematis and the rose all mingling like a little forest of green before my eyes! then the shadows of the leaves take the form of delicious bunches of grapes bending from their weight like the grapes of the promised land. What an elegant tracery of stem and slender tapering stalk, and all continually waving to and fro with the motion of the snow-white linen shade, while butterflies, golden beetles, and other winged insects, hover about like little microscopic birds dancing up and down in their tiny

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