As I was returning from a twilight stroll upon the Pincian hill this evening, the bells of the convent of Santa Trinita rung to vespers. I had heard of the singing of the nuns in the service at the convent chapel, but the misbehavior of a party of English had excluded foreigners, of late, and it was thought impossible to get admittance. I mounted the steps, however, and rung at the door. It was opened by a pale nun, of thirty, who hesitated a moment, and let me pass. In a small, plain chapel within, the service of the altar was just commencing, and, before I reached a seat, a low plaintive chant commenced, in female voices from the choir. It went on with occasional interruptions from the prayers, for perhaps an hour. I can not describe the excessive mournfulness of the music. One or two familiar hymns occurred in the course of it, like airs in a recitative, the same sung in our churches, but the effect was totally different. The neat, white caps of the nuns were just visible over the railing before the organ, and, as I looked up at them and listened to their melancholy notes, they seemed, to me, mourning over their exclusion from the world. The small white cloud from the censer mounted to the ceiling, and creeping away through the arches, hung over the organ till it was lost to the eye in the dimness of the twilight. It was easy, under the influence of their delightful music, to imagine within it the wings of that tranquilizing resignation, one would think so necessary to keep down the heart in these lonely cloisters. * * * * * The most considerable ruins of ancient Rome are those of the _Baths_. The Emperors Titus, Caracalla, Nero, and Agrippa, constructed these immense places of luxury, and the remains of them are among the most interesting and beautiful relics to be found in the world. It is possible that my readers have as imperfect an idea of the extent of a Roman bath as I have had, and I may as well quote from the information given by writers on antiquities. "They were open every day, to both sexes. In each of the great baths, there were sixteen hundred seats of marble, for the convenience of the bathers, and three thousand two hundred persons could bathe at the same time. There were splendid porticoes in front for promenade, arcades with shops, in which was found every kind of luxury for the bath, and halls for corporeal exercises, and for the discussion of philosophy; and here the poets read their productions and rhetoricians harangued, and sculptors and painters exhibited their works to the public. The baths were distributed into grand halls, with ceilings enormously high and painted with admirable frescoes, supported on columns of the rarest marble, and the basins were of oriental alabaster, porphyry, and jasper. There were in the centre vast reservoirs, for the swimmers, and crowds of slaves to attend gratuitously upon all who should come."