It is one of the many charms of Horace's didactic writings, that he takes us into the very heart of the life of Rome. We lounge with its loungers along the Via Sacra; we stroll into the Campus Martius, where young Hebrus with his noble horsemanship is witching the blushing Neobule, already too much enamoured of the handsome Liparian; and the men of the old school are getting up an appetite by games of tennis, bowls, or quoits; while the young Grecianised fops--lisping feeble jokes--saunter by with a listless contempt for such vulgar gymnastics. We are in the Via Appia. Bariné sweeps along in her chariot in superb toilette, shooting glances from her sleepy cruel eyes. The young fellows are all agaze. What is this? Young Pompilius, not three months married, bows to her, with a visible spasm at the heart, as she hurries by, full in view of his young wife, who hides her mortification within the curtains of her litter, and hastens home to solitude and tears. Here comes Barrus--as ugly a dog as any in Rome--dressed to death; and smiling Malvolio--smiles of self-complacency. The girls titter and exchange glances as he passes; Barrus swaggers on, feeling himself an inch taller in the conviction that he is slaughtering the hearts of the dear creatures by the score. A mule, with a dead boar thrown across it, now winds its way among the chariots and litters. A little ahead of it stalks Gargilius, attended by a strong force of retainers armed with spears and nets, enough to thin the game of the Hercynian forest. Little does the mighty hunter dream, that all his friends, who congratulate him on his success, are asking themselves and each other, where he bought the boar, and for how much? Have we never encountered a piscatory Gargilius near the Spey or the Tweed? We wander back into the city and its narrow streets. In one we are jammed into a doorway by a train of builders' waggons laden with huge blocks of stone, or massive logs of timber. Escaping these, we run against a line of undertakers' men, "performing" a voluminous and expensive funeral, to the discomfort of everybody and the impoverishment of the dead man's kindred. In the next street we run the risk of being crushed by some huge piece of masonry in the act of being swung by a crane into its place; and while calculating the chances of its fall with upturned eye, we find ourselves landed in the gutter by an unclean pig, which has darted between our legs at some attractive garbage beyond. This peril over, we encounter at the next turning a mad dog, who makes a passing snap at our toga as he darts into a neighbouring blind alley, whither we do not care to follow his vagaries among a covey of young Roman street Arabs. Before we reach home a mumping beggar drops before us as we turn the corner, in a well-simulated fit of epilepsy or of helpless lameness. _'Quoere peregrinum'_--"Try that game on country cousins,"--we mutter in our beard, and retreat to our lodgings on the third floor, encountering