At Cardinal Berni’s assembly, which is usually more crowded than any in Rome, the company are served with coffee, lemonade, and iced confections of various kinds; but this custom is not universal. In short, at a conversatione, you have an opportunity of seeing a number of well-dressed people, you speak a few words to those you are acquainted with, you bow to the rest, and enjoy the happiness of being squeezed and pressed among the best company in Rome. I do not know what more can be said of these assemblies; only it may be necessary, to prevent mistakes, to add, that a conversazione is a place where there is no conversation. They break up about nine o’clock, all but a small select company, who are invited to supper. But the present race of Romans are by no means so fond of convivial entertainments, as their predecessors. The magnificence of the Roman nobility displays itself now in other articles than the luxuries of the table: they generally dine at home, in a very private manner. Strangers are seldom invited to dinner, except by the foreign ambassadors. The hospitality of Cardinal Bernis alone makes up for every deficiency of that nature. There is no ambassador from the Court of Great Britain at Rome, but the English feel no want of one. If the French Cardinal had been instructed by his court to be peculiarly attentive to them, he could not be more so than he is. Nothing can exceed the elegant magnificence of his table, nor the splendid hospitality in which he lives. Years have not impaired the wit and vivacity for which he was distinguished in his youth; and no man could support the pretensions of the French nation to superior politeness, better than their ambassador at Rome. There are no lamps lighted in the streets at night; and all Rome would be in utter darkness, were it not for the candles, which the devotion of individuals sometimes place before certain statues of the Virgin. Those appear faintly glimmering at vast intervals, like stars in a cloudy night. The lackeys carry dark lanthorns behind the carriages of people of the first distinction. The Cardinals, and other Ecclesiastics, do not choose to have their coaches seen before the door of every house they visit. In the midst of this darkness, you will naturally conclude, that amorous assignations in the streets are not unfrequent among the inferior people. When a carriage, with a lanthorn behind it, accidentally comes near a couple who do not wish to be known, one of them calls out, “Volti la lanterna,” and is obeyed; the carriage passing without farther notice being taken. Venus, as you know, has always been particularly respected at Rome, on account of her amour with Anchises. ————Genus unde Latinum Albanique patres, atque alta mœnia Romæ.