In general the northern end of the city is the fashionable section, although the Subura, the street running out between the Esquiline and the Viminal, is notorious for containing some of the vilest tenements in all Rome. To live in a “Subura garret” is about the greatest possible degradation socially. Right above this ill-favored avenue, however, slopes the Esquiline itself, lined with the palaces of many of the most exclusive Senators. Pliny the Younger resided there in his lifetime,[7] and a rich ex-consul has his house at present. Rome is, in fact, decidedly like many later cities; walk only a few blocks, and one can pass from the bottom to the top of the social ladder. Further north, in the regions of the parks and public gardens, the fine residences are probably more continuous, but one can never know Rome by merely visiting its ultra-genteel quarters. There is, consequently, no better place to begin an investigation than near the Esquiline, let us say where the disreputable Subura runs northeast towards the somewhat more select “Patrician Street” (_Vicus Patricius_). [Illustration: STREET IN POMPEII: present state. Note the pavement, the stepping stones, the wayside fountain, and the numerous subdivisions into small houses or shops.] =12. A Typical Short Street, “Mercury Street.”=--We may wisely take our stand facing somewhat southward, with our backs to the Viminal and with the domes of the huge Baths of Trajan partially in sight upon the heights ahead. It is a little after dawn on a warm spring morning; but all Rome, we shall discover, rises very early, and normally goes to bed correspondingly early. Even the sedate “Conscript Fathers” of the Senate are supposed to convene at _prima luce_,--gray morn. What can be seen? To any later judgment this “Mercury Street” (so named from a local temple)[8] is very narrow, not over fifteen feet from housewall to housewall. Although the sun has now risen the way is still uncomfortably dark, because the houses pressing on either side rise to at least thirty or forty feet. The roadway, one discovers, is skillfully and durably paved with heavy lava blocks, and since it forms a regular thoroughfare it has been swept reasonably clean; although to right and left in the semi-darkness can be descried impossible alleys barely ten feet wide winding off between the tall buildings, and these side passages are more than dirty. This street, like the great majority in Rome, is comparatively short. You come to an abrupt turn, or perhaps to an ascending flight of stone steps worn slippery by innumerable sandals, and immediately enter into a quite different quarter. [Illustration: STEPPING STONES ACROSS A SIDE STREET: a gentleman followed by personal slave with umbrella. _After Von Falke._]