In common with the French, the Romans have a passion for the game of Dominos. Every _caffe_ is supplied with a number of boxes, and, in the evening especially, it is played by young and old, with a seriousness which strikes us Saxons with surprise. We generally have a contempt for this game, and look upon it as childish. But I know not why. It is by no means easy to play well, and requires a careful memory and quick powers of combination and calculation. No _caffe_ in Rome or Marseilles would be complete without its little black and white counters; and as it interests at once the most mercurial and fidgety of people and the laziest and languidest, it must have some hidden charm as yet unrevealed to the Anglo-Saxon. Beside Dominos, Chess (_Scacchi_) is often played in public in the _caffes_; and there is one _caffe_ named _Dei Scacchi_, because it is frequented by the best chess-players in Rome. Here matches are often made, and admirable games are played. Among the Roman boys the game of _Campana_ is also common. A parallelogram is drawn upon the ground and subdivided into four squares, which are numbered. At the top and bottom are two small semicircles, or _bells_, thus:-- [Illustration] Each of the players, having deposited his stake in the semicircle (_b_) at the farthest end, takes his station at a short distance, and endeavors to pitch some object, either a disk or a bit of _terracotta_, or more generally a _baiocco_, into one of the compartments. If he lodge it in the nearest bell, (_a_,) he pays a new stake into the pool; if into the farthest bell, (_b_,) he takes the whole pool; if into either of the other compartments, he takes one, two, three, or four of the stakes, according to the number of the compartment. If he lodge on a line, he is _abbrucciato_, as it is termed, and his play goes for nothing. Among the boys, the pool is frequently filled with buttons,--among the men, with _baiocchi_; but buttons or _baiocchi_ are all the same to the players,--they are the representatives of luck or skill.