"In the daytime there is hardly a livelier scene in Rome than the neighbourhood of the fountain of Trevi; for the piazza is then filled with stalls of vegetable and fruit dealers, chestnut-roasters, cigar-vendors, and other people whose petty and wandering traffic is transacted in the open air. It is likewise thronged with idlers, lounging over the iron railing, and with _forestieri_, who come hither to see the famous fountain. Here, also, are men with buckets, urchins with cans, and maidens (a picture as old as the patriarchal times) bearing their pitchers upon their heads. For the water of Trevi is in request, far and wide, as the most refreshing draught for feverish lips, the pleasantest to mingle with wine, and the wholesomest to drink in its native purity, that can anywhere be found. But, at midnight, the piazza is a solitude; and it is a delight to behold this untameable water, sporting by itself in the moonshine, and compelling all the elaborate trivialities of art to assume a natural aspect, in accordance with its own powerful simplicity. Tradition goes, that a parting draught at the fountain of Trevi ensures a traveller's return to Rome, whatever obstacles and improbabilities may seem to beset him."--_Hawthorne's Transformation_. "Le bas-relief, placé au-dessus de cette fontaine, représente la jeune fille indiquant la source précieuse, comme dans l'antiquité une peinture représentait le même évènement dans une chapelle construite au lieu où il s'était passé."--_Ampère, Emp._ i. 264. In this piazza is the rather handsome front of _Sta. Maria in Trivia_, formerly Sta. Maria in Fornica, erected by Cardinal Mazarin, on the site of an older church built by Belisarius--as is told by an inscription:-- "Hanc vir patricius Belisarius urbis amicus Ob culpæ veniam condidit ecclesiam. Hanc, idcirco, pedem qui sacram ponis in ædem Ut miseretur eum sæpe precare Deum." The fault which Belisarius wished to expiate, was the exile of Pope Sylverius (A.D. 536), who was starved to death in the island of Ponza. The crypt of the present building, being the parish church of the Quirinal, contains the entrails of twenty popes (removed for embalmment)--from Sixtus V. to Pius VIII.--who died in the Quirinal Palace! The little church near the opposite corner of the piazza is that of _The Crociferi_, and is still (1870) served by the Venerable Don Giovanni Merlini, Father General of the Order of the Precious Blood, and the personal friend of its founder, Gaspare del Buffalo. The Fountain of Trevi occupies one end of the gigantic _Palazzo Poli_, which contains the English consulate. At the other end is the shop of the famous jeweller, Castellani, well worth visiting, for the sake of its beautiful collection of Etruscan designs, both in jewellery and in larger works of art.