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Rh feet as would that of a top-hat to one's head, had one the temerity to wear such a badge of civilisation in this pleasant wilderness. Daj' by day the polish goes off one's boots, until after two weeks one beholds the natural leather; so the polish which comes from dwelling in cities (with which surely it is etymologi- cally connected), and which in such utter rusticity becomes a superfluous impertinence, wears off one's manners, and one finds one's-self, in manner at least, as natural as father Adam, and one begins to mutu- ally ivtoyer the peasants, think with them, suffer and sympathise with them, think dry bread made from corn a luxury, and become really hazy in one's ideas of butter. Habits, after all, are second nature ; and our clothes fortunately do not grow on our backs. One then sallies forth to paint. If a model has not been previously en- gaged, they are easy to find ; for every one one meets is worthy, either from beauty of type or picturesqueness of cos- tume, of being repi-oduced on canvas. Indeed Anti colij with the adjacent village of Saracenesco, is -, the mother of all the models that flood Rome in the winter months with their goat-skins, slouch-hats, knee-breeches and red waist- coats, and that give to the steps of Trinita del Monte a character all its own. When the summer draws on, and Rome empties, they usually depart too, and (like Cincinnatus) once more return to the spade in their own country till the next winter. And many a face does one begin to meet again in Anticoli that before one had seen in the Margutta or the Piazza di Spagna. And, which is always a con- sideration, they will pose for you here at half the price they will demand at the capital. Whei-eas in Rome they will ask 5 francs a day, here they will only ask 2 francs .50.

It is somewhat of a pleasant revelation, I must confess, to find that the ordinary Piazzi di Spagna lounger is not, as is pretty generally supposed, a creature playing at the picturesque peasant, dressed up to look like a figure on a bon-bon box, or to reproduce those painted in that abominable period for art — the earlier part of the present century. Here in Anticoli the dress is identical ; and a peasant landed at the Roman station wears the same costume with him who has just left the poetic heights of his native village here.

Utterly unconscious that any aesthetic eye is upon him, the Italian conladino, in the remotest wilds, will sling his bhiey-green coat over his shoidder, stick wild roses from the hedge- row into his hat, so that they fall down its slouched brim, and mingle, fresh and pink, with his dark, clustering curls, and walk homeward, his day's work ended, through the dark- ening corn-fields as the sapphire splendours of an Apennine sunset fade into the silver solitude of a still summer night — singing some wild, musical snatches of his mountain songs, with theii' long- drawn-out last note, with an appropriate grace and a natural charm that no art could inspire.

As you walk to your work, it is hard not to be distracted from your purpose by the mass of beauty that arrests your eye on every side. First, as you descend with the greatest caution some pre- cipitous drain that runs from the main street, and which is itself known to the simple inhabitant by the name of street, every house is a wonder for a painter, an architect, or an engineer. For a painter, for obvious reasons, for its charms of tone and quaintness of form. For an architect, because many of these, poor and filthy as they ai'e, are veritable specimens of fourteenth and fifteenth century archi- tecture ; one, indeed, I know to be of thirteenth century construction. While, for an engineer, the continual wonder must be that they do not tumble down.

Imagine from these houses troops of graceful, sun- browned girls, lithe and active, balancing purplish copper coiiche on their heads, to be filled with water from the old foimtain down below. Their dress is that usually worn by the women of the Campagna,