I herborize at the Tomb of Cæcilia Metella: the undulated mignonette and the Apennine anemone make a pretty effect against the whiteness of the ruin and the ground. Taking the Ostia Road, I go to St. Paul's, lately fallen a prey to the flames; I sit down to rest on some calcined porphyry and watch the workmen silently building up a new church; they pointed out to me some columns already outlined as I descended the Simplon: the whole history of Christianity in the West begins at St. Paul's Without the Walls. In France, when we build any bit of a house, we make a terrible noise about it; numbers of machines, and multitude of men and cries: in Italy, they undertake immense works almost without stirring. The Pope, at this very moment, is rebuilding the fallen portion of the Coliseum; half-a-dozen mason's labourers, without any scaffolding, are lifting up the colossus under whose shoulders died a nation changed into workmen slaves. Near Verona, I used often to stop to watch a village priest who was building a huge steeple by himself; the glebe farmer acted as mason under him. I often go round the walls of Rome on foot; as I take this circular walk, I read the history of the queen of the pagan and Christian universe written in the diverse constructions, architectures and ages of the walls. Again, I go to discover some dilapidated villa within the walls of Rome. I visit Santa Maria Maggiore, St. John Lateran with its obelisk, Santa Croce di Girusalemme with its flowers: I listen to the singing; I pray: I love to pray on my knees; in this way my heart is nearer the dust and endless rest: I draw nigh to my tomb. My excavations are only a variation of the same pleasures. From the upland of some hill one perceives the dome of St. Peter's. What does one pay the owner of the place where treasures lie buried? The value of the grass destroyed by the excavation. Perhaps I shall give my clay to the earth in exchange for the statue which it will give me: we shall only be bartering a man's image for a man's image. He has not seen Rome who has not walked through the streets of its suburbs interspersed with empty spaces, with gardens full of ruins, with enclosures planted with trees and vines, with cloisters where rise palm-trees and cypresses, the first resembling Eastern women, the second mourning nuns. Issuing from these ruins, one sees tall Roman women, poor and handsome, going to buy fruits or to fetch water from cascades of the aqueducts of the emperors and popes. To see the native manners in their simplicity, I pretend to be in search of an apartment to let; I knock at the door of a secluded house; they answer, "_Favorisca_," and I enter. I find, in a bare room, either a workman pursuing his trade, or a proud _zitella_, knitting her wool-work, a cat upon her knees, watching me wander at random without rising from her seat.