Well, it was while traversing this piazza a few days since with a stranger friend, whom I was taking to visit the curious old church above mentioned, that I received and returned the salutation of an acquaintance whose appearance induced my companion to ask with some little surprise who my friend was. The individual whose courteous salutation had provoked the question was a horseman mounted on a remarkably fine black mare. Whether, in consequence of some little touch with the spur, or whether merely from high condition and high spirits, the animal was curvetting and rearing and dancing about a little as she crossed the piazza, and the perfect ease--and one may say, indeed, elegance--of the rider's seat, and his consummate mastery of the animal he bestrode, must have attracted the attention and excited the admiration of any lover of horses and horsemanship. It was abundantly evident that he was neither one of the "gentlemen riders" who figure in the somewhat mild Roman steeple-chase races, nor of those Nimrods from beyond the Alps who, mounted on such steeds as Jarrett or Rannucci can supply them with, attend the "meets" of the Roman hunt. The man in question was very unlike any of these; his horse was quite as unlike any that such persons are wont to ride; and his seat upon his horse and his mode of riding were yet more unlike theirs. It was not the seat of a man accustomed to "go across the country" and ride to hounds; and still less was it the seat of a cavalry-man, the result of teaching in a military riding-school. It was more like the seat (if the expression be permissible) of a centaur. The rider and his steed seemed to be one organization and governed by one and the same will.