an excellent opportunity to secure the welfare of their souls

PALAZZO LARAZANI, VIA PORTA PINCIANA, -- February 3rd.

We have been in Rome a fortnight to-day, or rather at eleven o'clock to-night; and I have seldom or never spent so wretched a time anywhere. Our impressions were very unfortunate, arriving at midnight, half frozen in the wintry rain, and being received into a cold and cheerless hotel, where we shivered during two or three days; mean while seeking lodgings among the sunless, dreary alleys which are called streets in Rome. One cold, bright day after another, has pierced me to the heart, and cut me in twain as with a sword, keen and sharp and poisoned at point and edge. I did not think that cold weather could have made me so very miserable. Having caught a feverish influenza, I was really glad of being muffled up comfortably in the fever heat. The atmosphere certainly has a peculiar quality of malignancy. After a day or two we settled ourselves in a suite of ten rooms, comprehending, one flat, or what is called the second piano of this house. The rooms, thus far, have been very uncomfortable, it being impossible to warm them by means of the deep, old-fashioned inartificial fire-places, unless we had the great logs of a New England forest to burn in them; so I have sat in my corner by the fireside with more clothes on than I ever wore before, and my thickest great-coat over all. In the middle of the day I generally venture out for an hour or two, but have only once been warm enough even in the sunshine, and out of the sun never at any time. I understand now the force of that story of Diogenes when he asked the Conqueror, as the only favour he could do him, to stand out of his sunshine, there being such a difference in these southern climes of Europe between sun and shade. If my wits had not been too much congealed, and my fingers too numb, I should like to have kept a minute journal of my feelings and impressions during the past fortnight. It would have shown modern Rome in an aspect in which it has never yet been depicted. But I have now grown somewhat acclimated, and the first freshness of my discomfort has worn off, so that I shall never be able to express how I dislike the place, and how wretched I have been in it; and soon, I suppose, warmer weather will come, and perhaps reconcile me to Rome against my will. Cold, narrow lanes, between tall, ugly, mean-looking whitewashed houses, sour bread, pavements most uncomfortable to the feet, enormous prices for poor living; beggars, pick pockets, ancient temples and broken monuments, and clothes hanging to dry about them ; French soldiers, monks, and priests of every degree ; a shabby population, smoking bad cigars these would have been some of the points of my description. Of course there are better and truer things to be said...

It would be idle for me to attempt any sketches of these famous sites and edifices St. Peter's, for example -which have been described by a thousand people, though none of them have ever given me an idea of what sort of place Rome is...

The Coliseum was very much what I had preconceived it, though I was not prepared to find it turned into a sort of Christian church, with a pulpit on the verge of the open space. The French soldiers, who keep guard within it, as in other public places in Rome, have an excellent opportunity to secure the welfare of their souls.