As a change they got up game parties _a la_ Little Athens in their own small _salon_, introduced the Potatoe Pantomime, had charades, and enacted the immortal Jarley's waxworks on one of the Seven Hills. A true Yankee breakfast of fish-balls, johnny-cake, and dip-toast, was given in their honour, and its delights much enhanced by its being eaten in a lovely room with reeds and rushes on the pale-green walls, shell-shaped chairs, and coral mirror-frames. What a thing it was to consume those familiar viands in a famous palace, with Guido's Cenci downstairs, a great sculptor next door, three lovely boys as waiters, and 'Titian T.' to head the feast, and follow it up with dates from the Nile, and Egyptian sketches that caused the company to vote a speedy adjournment to the land 'of corkendills' and pyramids. These and many other joys they tasted, and when all else palled upon them they drove on the Campagna and were happy. It is sad to be obliged to record that these quiet drives were the especial delight of the unsocial Lavinia, whose ill-regulated mind soon wearied of swell society, classical remains, and artistic revelry. Ancient Rome would have suited her excellently, she thought; but modern Rome was such a chaos of frivolity and fanaticism, poverty and splendour, dirt and devilry, dead grandeur and living ignorance, that she felt as if shut up in a magnificent tomb, the bad air of which was poisoning both body and soul. Her only consolation was the new freedom, that seemed to blow over Rome like a wholesome wind. Old residents lamented the loss of the priestly pageants, _fetes_, and ceremonies; but this republican spinster preferred to see Rome guarded by her own troops, and governed by her own King, who ordered streets to be cleaned, fountains filled, schools opened, and all good institutions made possible, rather than any amount of Papal purple covering poverty, ignorance, and superstition. Better than the sight of all the red coaches that ever rumbled was the spectacle of many boys quitting the Jesuit college and demanding admittance into the free schools; and sweeter than the music of all the silver trumpets that ever blew were the voices of happy men and women singing once forbidden songs of liberty in the streets of Rome.