We will now follow the Corso, which, in spite of its narrowness and bad side-pavements, is the finest street in Rome. It is greatly to be regretted that this street, which is nearly a mile long, should lead to nothing, instead of ending at the steps of the Capitol, which would have produced a striking effect. It follows the line of the ancient Via Flaminia, and in consequence was once spanned by four triumphal arches--of Marcus Aurelius, Domitian, Claudius, and Gordian--but all these have disappeared. The Corso is perfectly lined with balconies, which, during the carnival, are filled with gay groups of maskers flinging confetti. These balconies are a relic of imperial times, having been invented at Rome, where they were originally called "Mœniana," from the tribune Mœnius, who designed them to accommodate spectators of processions in the streets below. "The Corso is a street a mile long; a street of shops, and palaces, and private houses, sometimes opening into a broad piazza. There are verandahs and balconies, of all shapes and sizes, to almost every house--not on one story alone, but often to one room or another on every story--put there in general with so little order or regularity, that if, year after year, and season after season, it had rained balconies, hailed balconies, snowed balconies, blown balconies, they could scarcely have come into existence in a more disorderly manner."--_Dickens._ On the left of the Corso is the Augustine Church of _Gesù e Maria_, with a façade by _Rinaldi_. Almost opposite, is the Church of _S. Giacomo degli Incurabili_, by _Carlo Maderno_. It is attached to a surgical hospital for 350 patients. In the adjoining Strada S. Giacomo was the studio of Canova, recognizable by fragments of bas-reliefs engrafted in its walls. Three streets beyond this (on right) is the _Via de' Pontefici_ (so called from a series of papal portraits, now destroyed, which formerly existed on the walls of one of its houses), where (No. 57R) is the entrance to the remains of the _Mausoleum of Augustus_. "Hard by the banks of the Tiber, in the grassy meadows where the Roman youths met in athletic and martial exercises, there rose a lofty marble tower with three retiring stages, each of which had its terrace covered with earth and planted with cypresses. These stages were pierced with numerous chambers, destined to receive, row within row, and story upon story, the remains of every member of the imperial family, with many thousands of their slaves and freedmen. In the centre of that massive mound the great founder of the empire was to sleep his last sleep, while his statue was ordained to rise conspicuous on its summit, and satiate its everlasting gaze with the view of his beloved city."--_Merivale._