Whoever has passed the month of December in Rome will remember to have been awakened from his morning-dreams by the gay notes of the _pifferari_ playing in the streets below, before the shrines of the Madonna and Bambino,--and the strains of one set of performers will scarcely have ceased, before the distant notes of another set of pilgrims will be heard to continue the well-known _novena_. The _pifferari_ are generally _contadini_ of the Abruzzi Mountains, who, at the season of Advent, leave their home to make a pilgrimage to Rome,-- stopping before all the wayside shrines, as they journey along, to pay their glad music of welcome to the Virgin, and the coming Messiah. Their song is called a _novena_, from its being sung for nine consecutive days,--first, for nine days previous to the Festa of the Madonna, which occurs on the 8th of December, and afterwards for the nine days preceding Christmas. The same words and music serve, however, for both celebrations. The _pifferari_ always go in couples, one playing on the _zampogna_, or bagpipe, the bass and treble accompaniment, and the other on the _piffero_, or pastoral pipe, which carries the air; and for the month before Christmas the sound of their instruments resounds through the streets of Rome, wherever there is a shrine,--whether at the corners of the streets, in the depths of the shops, down little lanes, in the centre of the Corso, in the interior courts of the palaces, or on the stairways of private houses. Their costume is extremely picturesque. On their heads they wear conical felt hats adorned with a frayed peacock's feather, or a faded band of red cords and tassels,--their bodies are clad in red waistcoats, blue jackets, and small-clothes of skin or yellowish homespun cloth,--skin sandals are bound to their feet with cords that interlace each other up the leg as far as the knee,--and over all is worn a long brown or blue cloak with a short cape, buckled closely round the neck. Sometimes, but rarely, this cloak is of a deep red with a scalloped cape. As they stand before the pictures of the Madonna, their hats placed on the ground before them, and their thick, black, dishevelled hair covering their sunburnt brows, blowing away on their instruments or pausing to sing their _novena_, they form a picture which every artist desires to paint. Their dress is common to nearly all the peasantry of the Abruzzi, and, worn and tattered as it often is, it has a richness and harmony of tint which no new clothes could ever have, and for which the costumes of the shops and regular models offer a poor substitute. It is the old story again. The new and clean is not so paintable, not so picturesque, as the tarnished and soiled. The worn blue of the cloak is softened by the dull gray of the threads beneath,--patches of various colors are often let into the jacket or breeches,--the hat is lustreless from age, and rusty as an old wall,--and the first vivid red of the waistcoat is toned by