j
j

| bably the teeth have got ground down in their |

| thankless office.

LOUGH NOTES ON ROME. 161

the leisureliness of a southern country. None but
those who can make the afternoon nap one of the
Iyabat important of social institutions, could put up
with such a name as this, unless indeed their cli-
mate is excessively inclement, when they may be
glad of long words to while away the dreariness of
the long evenings.

Try sucha name as “ the Piazza of the Garden of
the Convent” in London, and you will soon find it
shortened. Not many years ago a street was built
there on a gentleman’s property, and named after
his country-seat, Stowlangtoft Street, but nobody

would call it any thing but that Street, so it was |

renamed. So, too, San Francisco, in California,
now that it has come into the hands of a new race,
is becoming “Frisco.”

However, here we are in the Piazza délla Bocca

The other church, that of St. Mary del Sole, the
| round building in our cut, is about the best known
| building of old Rome. The Mamertine Prison
and the Forum may be names, the Tabularium
and the Muro Torto may be not even so much as
that ; but the Coliseum, the Pantheon, and the
Temple of Vesta (as it is called), are forms which
are reproduced in every way—photographs,
brooches, inkstands, lie under a debt of undying
gratitude to these buildings.

Why the building should be called the Temple
of Vesta it is hard to say, most probably it was a
Temple of Hercules, now it is the Chureh of St.
Mary del Sole, but it has not been used as such for
many years. It looks in a very melancholy state,
and serves as a kind of lumber-room for fragments
of statuary and architecture, as one can see through
the doors, which hang askew half off their hinges.

TEMPLE

della Veriti, in the middle of which the fountain
is spirting away between the two churches of St.
Mary in Cosmedin, and St. Mary del Sole.

We have our backs to the former, at which the
two figures in our cut are looking.

It is built out of an ancient temple, several of
the pillars of which still remain in their original
position. In its portico stands the “Bocca della

mask with an open mouth, which was said to close
upon the hand of the false swearer who held it there
while he was taking his oath. The inside of the
mouth is, if I recollect rightly, quite smooth, pro-

| Verita,” or “mouth of truth, ” itself a huge marble

If so, the Popes have not eared

| to restore them. The king, too, will very probably

not be in too great a hurry to supply a set. There

is no telling what may turn up.

OF VESTA.

The pointed roof which now covers the building is
no part of the original construction or design.

A few yards down the street, passing the Temple
of Fors Fortuna, we come to the House of Rienzi,
a kind of successful Garibaldi of the middle ages,
who, beginning as the idolized liberator of his
country, ended as a despot, assassinated by the
people over whom he tyrannized.

Here we are close upon the Tiber, which, how-
ever, we will not cross. Instead of doing that we
will take a stretch into the heart of the city, giving a
glance at the dirtiest and healthiest part of Rome.

How strange! it may be said; how contrary to
all that we are told about dirt breeding sickness!
| Well, it does seem a contradiction to sound sanitary
| principles, but it may be explained.

In the first place, all Rome is dirty.
In the second place, malaria (evil air), a subtle,

EEE

VOL. IX. N.S.—NO. LI.

M