There is one noble exception not to be forgotten. To the Hospital of San Michele Cardinal Tosti has given a new life and vigor, and set an example worthy of his elevated position in the Church. This foundation was formerly an asylum for poor children and infirm and aged persons; but of late years an industrial and educational system has been ingrafted upon it, until it has become one of the most enlarged and liberal institutions that can anywhere be found. It now embraces not only an asylum for the aged, a house of correction for juvenile offenders and women, and a house of industry for children of both sexes, but also a school of arts, in which music, painting, drawing, architecture, and sculpture are taught gratuitously to the poor, and a considerable number of looms, at which from eight hundred to one thousand persons are employed for the weaving of woollen fabrics for the government. A stimulus has thus been given to education and to industry, and particularly to improvements in machinery and manufacture. Once a year, during the holy week, religious dramas and operas, founded on some Biblical subject, are creditably performed by the pupils in a private theatre connected with the establishment. I was never present but at one of these representations, when the tragical story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Ahednego was performed. Honor to Cardinal Tosti for his successful efforts in this liberal direction! At many of the convents in Rome, it is the custom at noon to distribute, gratis, at the door, a quantity of soup, and any poor person may receive a bowlful on demand. Many of the beggars thus become pensioners of the convents, and may be seen daily at the appointed hour gathering round the door with their bowl and wooden spoon, in expectation of the _Frate_ with the soup. This is generally made so thick with cabbage that it might be called a cabbage-stew; but Soyer himself never made a dish more acceptable to the palate of the guests than this. No nightingales' tongues at a banquet of Tiberius, no edible birds-nests at a Chinese feast, were ever relished with more gusto. The figures and actions of these poor wretches, after they have obtained their soup, make one sigh for human nature. Each, grasping his portion as if it were a treasure, separates himself immediately from his brothers, flees selfishly to a corner, if he can find one empty, or, if not, goes to a distance, turns his back on his friends, and, glancing anxiously at intervals all around, as if in fear of a surprise, gobbles up his cabbage, wipes out his bowl, and then returns to companionship or disappears. The idea of sharing his portion with those who are portionless occurs to him only as the idea of a robber to the mind of a miser.