A BULL.--A son of Erin once commenced the translation of Cæsar’s Commentaries thus: “All Gaul is quartered into three halves!” The Voyages, Travels, and Experiences of Thomas Trotter. CHAPTER XXI. _Holy week at Rome.--A Roman tavern.--Strange crowds at St. Peter’s.--Description of the church.--The Pope.--The Coliseum.--A fox among the ruins.--The Vatican--its splendor and immense extent.-- General description of the city.--Cheapness of living.--Oddities of the tradesmen.--The malaria.--Climate and salubrity of Rome._ This was Holy Week, the season of the most pompous and showy display of religious ceremonies and festivities at Rome: on which account the city was full of strangers. People flock to Rome to see these sights, far and near. English travellers and Roman country people crowded the streets. All the hotels appeared full to overflowing, and I thought myself lucky to find at last a snug little tavern on the banks of the Tiber, with the sign of the _Albergo del Orso_, or the “Bear’s Hotel.” This was a very good name, for it was not much better than a bear’s den. The entry was a stable; and the kitchen stood where there should have been a parlor. I had no choice; so, depositing my trunk in this same den of the bears till better quarters could be found, I set off for a ramble through the city. To a traveller who enters Rome as I did, at the waste end of the city, where he sees nothing but mouldering walls and heaps of grass-grown ruins, it is quite a matter of wonder to find, at the other extremity, such a collection of populous streets and splendid structures. My first steps were directed to St. Peter’s church, that ornament and wonder of modern Rome, the most magnificent edifice that the world ever saw. Vast crowds of people were moving in the same direction, so that I had no difficulty in going straight to the spot. The near approach to it is most imposing. An immense circular piazza is in front, surrounded with rows of columns and adorned with two beautiful fountains, which are constantly in play, throwing the water up to an immense height. This grand area, and all the other avenues to the church, were thronged with a motley population, which seemed to have flowed thither from the four quarters of the earth. Priests, soldiers, pilgrims and beggars, in variegated costume and manner, were mingled up together in picturesque confusion. Cardinals, in red dresses, rolled along in their gilt coaches, drawn by such fat, sleek, black horses as we never see on this side of the Atlantic. Capuchin friars, in dingy brown woollen gowns, tied with bits of bedcord, bare legs and sandaled feet; friars, of other denominations, in black, white and gray--shaven crowns, Quaker broad-brims and three-cornered scrapers; Swiss guardsmen in steel armor; Roman militia in red baize regimentals