As a writer, Mr Story’s strong point is description of scenery, both rural and urban. He is excellent at a landscape; and, in the graphic views he presents to us of Rome’s streets and squares and fountains and markets, beggars and models, washerwomen and _pifferari_, he is a compound of Prout and Pinelli. From the very first page of the book, one is attracted by the freshness of his vocabulary and the vividness of his style. With his Cleopatra and Sybil bright in our memory, we cannot think he mistook his vocation when devoting himself to sculpture; but certainly the glow and choice of his literary tints incline us to the belief that, as a painter, he might have been even more successful. We are unwilling to quote extensively from a book that will doubtless have been read by many of our readers ere this notice of it gets into their hands, but there are fifty passages that we are tempted to extract instead of merely referring to them. The first short chapter, “Entrance,” contains more than one of these. At page 11 we have a sketch of a couple of the Abruzzi _pifferari_, piping and blowing on their primitive instruments before one of the fifteen hundred Madonna shrines of Rome—images of the Virgin, with burning lamps, found in all manner of places, at street corners, down little lanes, in the heart of the Corso, in the interior courts of palaces, or on the staircases of private houses—which places the itinerants before us, in flesh and blood, in their conical hats with frayed feathers, red waistcoats and skin sandals, _wie sie leibten und lebten_, as the Germans say, the old man with a sad amiable face, droning out bass and treble in an earnest and deprecatory manner, and the younger vigorous player on the _piffero_, “with a forest of tangled black hair, and dark quick eyes that were fixed steadily on the Virgin, while he blew and vexed the little brown pipe with rapid runs and nervous _fioriture_, until great drops of sweat dripped from its round open mouth. Sometimes, when he could not play fast enough to satisfy his eagerness, he ran his finger up and down the vents; then, suddenly lowering his instrument, he would scream, in a strong peasant voice, verse after verse of the _novena_, to the accompaniment of the _zampogna_ (bagpipe). One was like a slow old Italian _vettura_, all lumbered with luggage and held back by its drag; the other panting and nervous at his work as an American locomotive, and as constantly running off the rails. As they stood there playing, a little group gathered round. A scamp of a boy left his sport to come and beat time with a stick on the stone step before them; several children clustered near; and one or two women, with black-eyed infants in their arms, also paused to listen and sympathise.”