Whatever mathematicians may assert, your regular gamblers always believe in luck, and therefore it is not surprising that a nation, whose great excitement is the lottery, should be devout worshippers of the blind goddess. It may be that some memories of the Pythagorean doctrines still exist in the land of their birth, but be the cause what it may, it is certain that in the southern Peninsula a belief in the symbolism of numbers is a received article of faith. Every thing, name, or event, has its numerical interpretation. Suppose, for instance, a robbery occurs; forthwith the numbers or sequences of numbers corresponding to the name of the robber or the robbed, the day or hour of the crime, the articles stolen, or a dozen other coincident circumstances, are eagerly sought after and staked upon in the ensuing lottery. Then there are the _numeri simpatici_, or the numbers in each month or year which are supposed to be fortunate, and lists of which are published in the popular almanacs. The "sympathetic number for instance for the month of March is 88," why or wherefore I have never been able to discover. Let me assume now, that having dreamt a dream, or heard of a death, or I care not what, you wish to stake your money on the arithmetical signification of the occurrence. You will have no difficulty in discovering a lottery-office; in well nigh every street there are one or more "Prenditoria di Lotti." In fact, begging and gambling are the only two trades that thrive in Rome, or are pushed with enterprise or energy. When the drawing takes place in Tuscany, the result is communicated at once by the electric telegraph, a fact unparalleled in any other branch of Roman business. Over each office are placed the Papal arms, the cross keys of St Peter and the tiara. Outside their aspects differ, according to the quarter of the city. In the well-to-do streets, if such an appellation applied to any street here be not an absurdity, the exterior of the lottery-offices are neat but not gaudy. A notice, printed in large black letters on a white placard, that this week the lottery will be drawn for in Rome, or where- ever it may be, and a simple glass frame over the door, in which are slid the winning numbers of last week, form the whole outward adornment. In the poor and populous parts the lotteries flaunt out in all kinds of shabby finery: the walls about the door are pasted over with puffing inscriptions; from stands in front of the shop flutter long stripes of parti-coloured paper, inscribed with all sorts of cabalistic figures. If you like you may try the "Terno della fortuna," which is certain, morally, to turn up this week or next. If you are of a philosophical disposition, you may stake your luck on the numbers 19 and 42, which have not been drawn for ever so long a time, and must therefore be drawn sooner--or later; or if you like to cast in your lot with others, you may