Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/121

Rh a new chapter. The contents of which are Love and Marriage! January 12th.—If the weather be beautiful, as it has been almost uninterruptedly, since we came here, then life in Rome is to the stranger, like an incessant festival. Every day brings with it something new to see, something new to think about, interesting for beauty, or spectacle, or curiosity. The palaces and collections of works of art are always open to visitors, the promenades are always splendid with gay equipages and toilettes, the fountains are always playing, and the roses always blooming brightly beneath the dark-blue sky. One can rejoice daily in the power and life of the sun, and in the ever-varied scenes and the grand views which it lights up.

The beggars in Rome do not constitute any dark shadow in these pictures. One sees and knows that they practice a trade, which they are accustomed to, and from which very few of them could be weaned. Every beggar has his own peculiar style, and he is certain that it will produce him something. In the evening he counts over his little earnings—probably three or four paoli—less than two shillings—I have been told, and passes a cheerful evening; able also to lay by a little for the future. Begging is a species of finding, and it has all the interest of that occupation. Custom has removed any humiliation which might otherwise attend it. Some beggars—as the well-known Beppo, on the Piazza di Spagna—are wealthy, but they cannot leave off begging. They are so accustomed to it; life, to them without it would be wearisome, and the sun in Rome, takes care that they do