Thet tells the story! Thet 's wut we shall git By tryin' squirtguns on the burnin' Pit; For the day never comes when it 'll du To kick off Dooty like a worn-out shoe. I seem to hear a whisperin' in the air, A sighin' like, of unconsoled despair, Thet comes from nowhere an' from everywhere, An' seems to say, "Why died we? war n't it, then, To settle, once for all, thet men wuz men? O, airth's sweet cup snetched from us barely tasted, The grave's real chill is feelin' life wuz wasted! O, you we lef, long-lingerin' et the door, Lovin' you best, coz we loved Her the more, Thet Death, not we, had conquered, we should feel Ef she upon our memory turned her heel, An' unregretful throwed us all away To flaunt it in a Blind Man's Holiday!" My frien's, I 've talked nigh on to long enough. I hain't no call to bore ye coz ye 're tough; My lungs are sound, an' our own v'ice delights Our ears, but even kebbigeheads hez rights. It 's the las' time thet I shell e'er address ye, But you 'll soon fin' some new tormentor: bless ye! QUESTION OF MONUMENTS. In the beautiful life which the English-speaking foreigners lead at Rome, the great sensations are purely aesthetic. To people who know one another so familiarly as must the members of a community united in a strange land by the ties of alien race, language, and religion, there cannot, of course, be wanting the little excitements of personal gossip and scandal; but even these have generally an innocent, artistic flavor, and it is ladies' statues, not reputations, which suffer,--gentlemen's pictures, not characters, which are called into question; while the events which interest the whole community are altogether different from those which move us at home. In the Capital of the Past, people meeting at the _cafe_, or at the tea-tables of lady-acquaintance, speak, before falling upon the works of absent friends, concerning the antique jewel which Castellani lately bought of a peasant, and intends to reproduce, for the delight of all who can afford to love the quaint and exquisite forms of the ancient workers in gems and gold; or they talk of that famous statue of the young Hercules, dug up by the lucky proprietor, who received from the Pope a marquisate, and forgiveness of all his debts, in return for his gift of the gilded treasure. At the worst these happy children of art, and their cousins the connoisseurs, (every English-speaking foreigner in Rome is of one class or the other,) are only drawn from the debate of such themes by some dramatic aspect of the picturesque Roman politics: a scene between the French commandant and Antonelli, or the arrest of a restaurateur for giving his guests white turnips, red beets, and green beans in the same revolutionary plate; or the like incident.