Audouin led the way, through the modernised shops and gay bustle of the Corso, to a small side street, with squalid blotchy houses rising high against the sky on either hand, and a crowd of dirty ragged children loitering in the gutter, save when an occasional rickety carriage, drawn by a tottering skinny horse, dashed round the dark corners with a sudden swoop, and scattered them right and left with loud chattering cries into the gloomy archways. All was new and strange to Hiram, and, if the truth must be told, not particularly inviting. Past the Spaccio di Vino, the squalid temple of Dionysus, where grimy Romans in grubby coatsleeves sat drinking sour red wine from ill-washed tumblers; past the tinker's shop, where some squat Etruscan figure crouched by a charcoal stove hammering hopelessly at dilapidated pannikins; past the foul greengrocery, where straw-covered flasks of rancid oil hung up untemptingly between long strings of flabby greens and mouldering balls of country cheese; past many other sights and sounds, dimly visible to Hiram's eyes or audible to his ears in the whirl and confusion of an unknown city; till at last Audouin wheeled round the corner into the Via Colonna (where Colin had gone before), and stopped in front of a large and decently clean house, bearing on the lintel of its great oak door a little painted tin plate, 'Atelier de M. J.-B. Seguin.' Audouin turned with a smile to Hiram, poor dazzled, half-terrified Hiram, and said in a tone of some little triumph, 'There, you see, Hiram, here we are at last; in Rome, and at the great man's studio!' And was this Rome! And was this the end of all his eager youthful aspirations! Hiram had hardly the courage to smile back in his friend's face, and assume an air of pretended cheerfulness. Already he felt in his heart that this great, squalid, sordid city was really no place for such as him. He knew he would never like it; he knew he could never succeed in it. England, beautiful, smiling England, had quite unaffectedly charmed and delighted him. There, he could find a thousand subjects ready to his hand that would exactly suit his taste and temper. It was so rich in verdure and tillage; it was so pregnant with the literary and historical interests that were nearest and dearest to him. But Rome! the very first glimpse of it was to Hiram Winthrop a hideous disillusionment. Its dirt, its mouldiness, its gloom, its very antiquity--nay, in one word, to be quite frank, its picturesqueness itself, were all to his candid American soul unendurably ugly. He hated it from top to bottom at first sight with a deadly hatred; and he felt quite sure he should hate it cordially as long as he lived in it.