Some visitors to the Eternal City leave it without having found time to see this one of its wonders, while others are driven by the sad inelasticity of the hours to leave a different class of objects for "another time." But it may be safely asserted that none who have been at Rome for even twenty-four hours ever left it without having had their attention forcibly arrested by the groups of painters' and sculptors' models--the former mainly--who haunt the upper part of the great steps that lead up from the Piazza di Spagna to the Trinità di Monti, and perhaps even more specially the corner where the Via Sistina falls into the Piazza Barberini. But very few probably have asked for, and fewer still obtained, information as to who and what these people are, and whence they come. Yet to an attentive observer many points about the appearance of these groups must suggest that a curious interest might attach itself to the reply to such questions. There are sights in Rome of grander and greater interest, but there is nothing in all the famous centre of the Catholic world more distinctively, essentially and exclusively Roman, more unlike anything that is seen elsewhere, more instinct with _couleur locale_, than these singularly picturesque groups of nomads. Let us, then, take a stroll among them, starting from that bright centre of the foreigners' quarter of Rome, the Piazza di Spagna. It is a brilliant January day, and, we will say, ten o'clock in the morning. In the Via Babuino and the neighboring streets, which the sun has not yet visited, the morning cold is a little sharp. _Matutina parum cautos jam frigora mordent_. But the magnificent flight of the great stair--there are properly eleven flights, divided by as many spacious and handsomely balustraded landing-places, each flight consisting of twelve steps, and all of white marble--with its southern exposure has almost the temperature of a hothouse. There are two or three beggars basking in the sunshine near the bottom of the steps. But our models do not consort with these. Not only are they not beggars, but they belong to a different caste and a different race. We leisurely saunter up the huge stair, pausing at each landing-place to turn and enjoy the view over the city, and the gradually rising luminous haze around the cupola of St. Peter's, and the heights of Monte Mario clear against the brilliant blue sky. It is not till we are at the topmost flight that we come upon the objects of our ramble. There we fall in with a group of them, consisting perhaps of three or four girls, as many children, a man in the prime of life, and an aged patriarch. There is not the smallest possibility that we should pass them unobserved. They are far too remarkable and too unlike anything else around us. Even those who have no eye for the specialties of type which characterize the human countenance will not fail to be struck by the peculiarities of the costume of the group of figures before us.