Rome in 1860 | Page 3

in
every direction. Foot-pavement there is none; and the ricketty carriages
drawn by the tottering horses come swaying round the endless corners
with an utter disregard for the limbs and lives of the foot-folk. You are
out of luck if you come to Rome on a "Festa" day, for then all the shops
are shut, and the town looks drearier than ever. However, even here the
chances are two to one, or somewhat more, in favour of the day of your
arrival being a working-day. When the shops are open there is at any

rate life enough of one kind or other. In most parts the shops have no
window-fronts. Glass, indeed, there is little of anywhere, and the very
name of plate-glass is unknown. The dark, gloomy shops varying in
size between a coach-house and a wine-vault, have their wide
shutter-doors flung open to the streets. A feeble lamp hung at the back
of every shop you pass, before a painted Madonna shrine, makes the
darkness of their interiors visible. The trades of Rome are primitive and
few in number. Those dismembered, disembowelled carcases,
suspended in every variety of posture, denote the butchers' shops; not
the pleasantest of sights at any time, least of all in Rome, where the
custom of washing the meat after killing it seems never to have been
introduced. Next door too is an open stable, crowded with mules and
horses. Those black, mouldy loaves, exposed in a wire-work cage, to
protect them from the clutches of the hungry street vagabonds, stand in
front of the bakers, where the price of bread is regulated by the
pontifical tariff. Then comes the "Spaccio di Vino," that gloomiest
among the shrines of Bacchus, where the sour red wine is drunk at dirty
tables by the grimiest of tipplers. Hard by is the "Stannaro," or
hardware tinker, who is always re-bottoming dilapidated pans, and
drives a brisk trade in those clumsy, murderous-looking knives. Further
on is the greengrocer, with the long strings of greens, and sausages, and
flabby balls of cheese, and straw-covered oil-flasks dangling in
festoons before his door. 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. Bookselling too is a trade which does not
thrive on Roman soil. Altogether there is a wonderful sameness about

the streets. Time after time, turn after turn, the same scene is
reproduced. So having got used to the first strangeness of the sight you
move on more quickly.
There is no lack of life about you now, at the shop-doors whole
families sit working at their trades, or carrying on the most private
occupations of domestic life; at every corner groups of men stand
loitering about, with hungry looks and ragged garments, reminding one
only too forcibly of the "Seven Dials" on a summer Sunday; French
soldiers and beggars, women and children and priests swarm around
you. Indeed, there are priests everywhere. There with their long black
coats and broad-brimmed shovel hats, come a score of young priests,
walking two and two together, with downcast eyes. How, without
looking up, they manage to wend their way among the crowd, is a
constant miracle; the carriages, however, stop to let them pass, for a
Roman driver would sooner run over a dozen children than knock down
a priest. A sturdy, bare-headed, bare-footed monk, not over clean, nor
over savoury, hustles along with his brown robe fastened round his
waist by the knotted scourge of cord; a ghastly-looking figure, covered
in a grey shroud from head to foot, with slits for his mouth and eyes,
shakes a money-box in your face, with scowling importunity; a fat
sleek abbe comes sauntering along, peeping into the open shops or (so
scandal whispers) at the faces of the shop-girls. If you look right or left,
behind or in front, you see priests on every side,--Franciscan friars and
Dominicans, Carmelites and Capuchins, priests in brown cloth and
priests in serge, priests in red and white and grey, priests