There is neither splendor nor taste in the carnival: its universal tumult assimilates it in the fancy with the bacchanalian orgies; but in the fancy only; for the Romans are generally sober and serious enough--the last days of this fête excepted. The one makes such varied and sudden discoveries in their character, as have contributed to give them a reputation for cunning. Doubtless, there is a great habit of feigning among people who have borne so many yokes; but we must not always attribute their rapid changes of manner to dissimulation. Inflammable imagination is as oft its cause. Reasoners may readily foresee their own actions; but all that belongs to fancy is unexpected: she overleaps gradations; a trifle may wound her, or that which ought to move her most be past by with indifference; she's her own world, and in it there is no calculating effects by causes. For instance, we wonder what entertainment the Roman nobles find in driving from one end of the Corso to the other for hours together, every day in the year, yet nothing breaks in on this custom. Among the masks, too, may be found wandering victims to ennui, packed up in the drollest of dresses, sad harlequins, and silent clowns, who satisfy their carnival conscience by merely seeking to divert themselves. In Rome, they have one assumption that nowhere else exists--maskers, who, in their own persons, copy the antique statues, and from a distance perfectly realize their beauty. Many of the women are losers by renouncing this disguise. Nevertheless, to behold life imitating motionless marble, however gracefully, strikes one with fear. The carriages of the great and gay throng the streets; but the charm of these festivities is their saturnalian confusion: all classes are mingled; the gravest magistrates ride among the masks with almost official assiduity. All the windows are decorated, and all the world out of doors: the pleasure of the populace consists not in their spectacles nor their feasts; they commit no excess, but revel solely in the delight of mixing freely with their betters, who, on their parts, are as diverted at finding themselves thrown among those beneath them. Only the refined and delicate pleasures that spring from research and education can build up barriers between different ranks. Italy, as hath been said, is more distinguished by universal talent than by its cultivation among the aristocracy. Therefore, during the carnival, all minds and all manners blend: the shouting crowds, that indiscriminately shower their bonbons on the passers-by, confound the whole nation pell-mell, as if no social order remained. Corinne and Nevil arrived in the midst of this uproar: at first it stunned them; for nothing appears stranger than such activity of noisy enjoyment, while the soul is pensively retired within herself. They stopped in the Piazza del Popolo, to ascend the amphitheatre near the obelisk, thence to overlook the horse-racing: as