be fed on dog biscuits at Saint Helena--he has been "doped" by the editor, who gets the tip--and out he goes! unless he take it--from the owner, who is waiting for a certain emolument from this or that caucus, and trims his convictions to their taste. That is what the Press can do. It vitiates our mundane values. It enables a gang to fool the country. It cretinises the public mind. The time may come when no respectable person will be seen touching a daily, save on the sly. Newspaper reading will become a secret vice. As such, I fear, its popularity is not likely to wane. Having generated, by means of sundry trite reflections of this nature, an enviable appetite for breakfast, I dress and step out of doors to where, at a pleasant table, I can imbibe some coffee and make my plans for loafing through the day. Hot, these morning hours. Shadeless the streets. The Greeks, the Romans, the Orientals knew better than to build wide roadways in a land of sunshine. There exists an old book or pamphlet entitled "Napoli senza sole"--Naples without sun. It gives instructions, they say (for I have never seen it) how foot passengers may keep for ever in the shade at all hours of the day; how they may reach any point of the town from another without being forced to cross the squares, those dazzling patches of sunlight. The feat could have been accomplished formerly even in Rome, which was always less umbrageous than Naples. It is out of the question nowadays. You must do as the Romans do--walk slowly and use the tram whenever possible. That is what I purpose to do. There is a line which will take me direct to the Milvian bridge, where I mean to have a bathe, and then a lunch at the restaurant across the water. Its proprietor is something of a brigand; so am I, at a pinch. It is "honour among thieves," or "diamond cut diamond." Already a few enthusiasts are gathered here, on the glowing sands. But the water is still cold; indeed, the Tiber is never too warm for me. If you like it yet more chill, you must walk up to where the Aniene discharges its waves whose temperature, at this season, is of a kind to tickle up a walrus. Whether it be due to the medley of races or to some other cause, there is a singular variety of flesh-tints among the bathers here. I wish my old friend Dr. Bowles could have seen it; we used to be deeply immersed, both of us, in the question of the chromatophores, I observing their freakish behaviour in the epidermis of certain frogs, while he studied their action on the human skin and wrote an excellent little paper on sunburn--a darker problem than it seems to be. [20]