The Spanish Steps looked beautiful, glowing with colour--pink, yellow, and that soft grey tint that the Roman stones take in the sunlight. All the lower steps are covered with flower stalls (they are not allowed any longer scattered all over the piazza), and most picturesque they looked--daffodils, mimosa, and great bunches of peach-blossoms which were very effective. There were very few models in costume sitting about; a few children playing some sort of game with stones, which they interrupted to run after the forestieri and ask for a "piccolo soldo" (a penny), and one or two old men with long white beards--might have done for models of the apostles or Joseph in the flight into Egypt--wrapped in their wonderful long green cloaks, sitting in the sun. There is one novelty--an "ascenseur." I haven't been in it yet, but I shall try it some day. One must get accustomed to many changes in the Rome of to-day. I recognised some of the houses at the top of the steps--the corner one between Vias Sistina and Gregoriana, where the Rodmans used to live one year, and where we have dined so often, sitting on the round balcony and seeing the moon rise over the Pincio. I walked home the other day by the Via Sistina to the Piazza Barberini, and that part seemed to me absolutely unchanged. The same little open mosaic shops, with the workmen dressed in white working at the door--almost in the street. In one shop they were just finishing a table, putting in countless bits of coloured marble (some of them very small). It was exactly like the one we brought from Rome many years ago, which stands now in Francis's smoking-room. There was of course the inevitable jeweller's shop, with crosses and brooches of dull yellow Roman gold and mosaic, and silk shops with Roman silk scarfs, and a sort of coarse lace which I have seen everywhere. In the middle of the street a miserable wrinkled old woman, her face mahogany colour, attired in a red skirt with a green handkerchief on her head, was skirmishing with a band of dirty little children, who had apparently upset her basket of roast chestnuts, and were making off with as many as they could find, pursued by her shrill cries and "maledizioni." We went out in the open carriage yesterday, and drove all around Rome leaving cards--finished with a turn in the Villa Borghese and Pincio. It was too late for the Villa--almost every one had gone, and one felt the chill strike one on going into the thick shade after coming out of the bright sun in the Piazza del Popolo. We crossed Queen Margherita at the gate. She looked so handsome--the black is very becoming and threw out well her fair hair and skin. She was driving in a handsome carriage--the servants in mourning. One lady was with her--another carriage and two cyclists following. All the people bowed and looked so pleased to see her, and her bow and smile of acknowledgment were charming.