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286 consisting of a skirt of some bright shade — never mind how gaudy ; the Italian sun is the best of colourists, and will, in a few weeks, make the most crying, star- ing impossibility of colour subdued and harmonious. This is worn over so many petticoats that one is tempted to think that all the newly-acquired skirts are put on, year by year, over the old ones, until a woman becomes a sort of walking hanging-cupboard of her personal wardrobe. One advantage it has — though I confess that any woman with less natural beauty of figure would be apt to look like the wife of Noah or one of his sons' wives, as represented in these modern days in the cheaper of his arks, constructed for the amusement and edification of our childhood — that it accentuates the line of the hips, thereby attaining the end, without the preposterous exaggeration of the crinoline of our grandmother. When I say that, in spite of the most uncompromisingly inflexible stays, worn outside, and laced at the back, and a thick white square of stuff (of the texture of our tablecloth at Signer Amato's), coming perfectly flat on the top of the head — that still they do not look like those little wooden eftigies of the antediluvian Prophet's wife or daughters-in-law, I think I have spoken in the strongest terms for the strength of development and the grace of movement that the universal practice among the women of carrying water and heavy bundles on their heads gives to the figure. The costume is completed by a huge handkerchief crossed over the chest, the ends of which are tucked into the stays ; while cioce, or sandals made of goat-skin, and tied round the ankles by cords over a piece of stuff, also of the texture of our table- cloth (the universal linen of the place, in fact), cover the feet, which in summer are bare.

To continue, then : — Around the door-steps of these

quaint, tumble-down houses, or rolling with delight in the richest parts of the muddy swamp which fills this rock-cleft pathway of a street, are the most deliciously ragged-looking little urchins, such as would have cap- tivated the heart of Murillo — with great shy eyes that, the minute you are gone by, sparkle with mischief, as they call after you to give them a soldo. Solemn baby-girls with long frocks down to their bare little heels, looking, with their high stays, very Elizabethan, struggle along as demurely and maternally as possible under the weight of their infant brothers and sisters — to whose care the latter are already consigned by the mother, who has to work in the fields. While, mixed