Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 93, No. 570, April, 1863Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 93, No. 570, April, 1863
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
The Roman Ghetto furnishes the theme of one of Mr Story’s longest and
most lively chapters; Fountains and Aqueducts, Saints and Superstitions,
the Evil Eye, are the titles of three others. He begins his second
volume with a vivid and characteristic sketch of the Markets of Rome,
which are well worth the attention of foreign visitors, especially of
Englishmen, who will find their arrangements, and much of what is there
sold, to contrast strikingly with what they are accustomed to in their
own country. Carcasses of pigs and goats adorned with scraps of
gold-leaf and tinsel, blood puddings of a brilliant crimson, poultry
sold by retail—that is to say, piecemeal, so that you may buy a wing, a
leg, or even the head or gizzard of a fowl, if so it please you. There
is game of all sorts, and queer beasts and fowls of many kinds are also
there; the wild boar rough and snarling—the slender tawny
deer—porcupines (commonly eaten in Rome)—most of our English
game-birds—ortolans, beccaficoes, and a great variety of singing-birds.
Passing into the fruit and vegetable market, one comes upon mushrooms of
many colours, and some of them of enormous size, most of which would in
England be looked upon as sudden death to the consumer, although in
Italy they are found both savoury and harmless. “Here are the grey
_porcini_, the foliated _alberetti_, and the orange-hued _ovole_; some
of the latter of enormous size, big enough to shelter a thousand fairies
under their smooth and painted domes. In each of these is a cleft stick,
bearing a card from the inspector of the market, granting permission to
sell; for mushrooms have proved fatal to so many cardinals, to say
nothing of popes and people, that they are naturally looked upon with
suspicion, and must all be officially examined to prevent accidents.”
Besides the fruits common in England, figs are very abundant, and of
many kinds; and when the good ones come in, in September, the Romans of
the lower classes assemble in the evenings, in the Piazza Navona, for
great feeds upon them. Five or six persons surround a great basket and
eat it empty, correcting possible evil results by a glass of strong
waters or a flask of red wine. But figs are a wholesome fruit—much more
so than one which at Rome, and in many parts of Southern Europe, is the
most popular of all—namely, the water-melon. What millions of people,
from the Danube’s banks to the Portuguese coast, are daily refreshed the
summer through by those huge green gourds, hard and unpromising in
outward aspect, but revealing, at stroke of knife, rich store of rosy
pulp, dotted with sable seeds! Pesth is a great place for them; and
daily, when morning breaks, so long as they are in season, they are to
be seen piled, all along the river-side, in heaps like those of shot and
shell in an arsenal, only much broader and higher. All through the hot
months, in Hungary’s pleasant and interesting capital, few persons think
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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