'_Jamais cheval n'y homme S'amenda pour aller a Rome._' 'Never horse or man mended, that unto Rome wended.' Your American axe is useless without American energy, and would not, if introduced here, mend the present shiftless style of wood chopping: evidently the people will one day take it up and try it--when their minds and arms are free. As it is, the genuine Romans live through their winters without wood in a merry kind of humor; taking the charcoal sent them by chance for cooking with great good nature; and, without words, blessing GOD for giving them vigorous frames and sturdy bodies to withstand cold and heat. After all, the want of fixed firesides by no manner of means annoys the buxom Roman woman of the people: she picks up her moving stove, the _scaldina_, and trots out to see her nearest gossip, knowing that her reception will be warm, for she brings warmth with her. There is a copy of Galignani, a round of bull beef, and a dirty coal fire, even in Rome, for every Englishman who will pay for them; but why, oh why! forever hoist the banner of the Blues over the gay gardens of every earthly paradise? Why hide Psyche under a hogshead?' 'Are you asking me those hard questions? For if you are,' said Caper, 'I will answer you thus: A fishwoman passing along a street in Philadelphia one day, heard from an open window the silver-voiced Brignoli practising an aria, possibly from the Traviata: 'That voice,' quoth she, 'would be a fortune for a woman in shad time!'' THE VIOLETS OF THE VILLA BORGHESE. 'It is well to be off with the old love Before you are on with the new:' hummed James Caper, as he sauntered, one morning early, through the dewy grass of the Villa Borghese, with his uncle, Bill Browne, leisurely picking a little bouquet of violets--'dim, but sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, or Cytherea's breath.'--and pleasantly thinking of the pretty face of his last love, the blonde Rose, who was at that moment smiling on somebody else in Naples. 'There is nothing keeps a man out of mischief so well as the little portrait a pair of lovely eyes photographs on his heart; is there now, Uncle Bill?' 'No, Jim, you are 'bout right there: if you want to keep the devil out of your heart, you must keep an angel in it. If you can't find a permanent resident, why you must take up with transient customers. First and last, I've had the pictures of half the pretty girls in Saint Louis hanging up in my gallery: as one grows dim I take up another, and that's the way I preserve my youth. If it hadn't been for business, I should have been a married man long ago; and my advice to you, Jim, is to stop off being a bachelor the instant you are home again.' 'I think I shall, the instant I find one with the beauty of an Italian, the grace of a French girl, the truth and tenderness of a German, the health of an Englishwoman, and--' 'Draw it mild, my boy,' broke in Uncle Bill: 'here she comes!'