bane. The wife, if she be pretty, sells herself, or the husband does
what he had better leave undone.

Judge them not too harshly. Remember, they have read nothing, they
have never been out of Rome; the example of ostentation is set them by
the Cardinals, of misconduct by the prelates, of venality by the
different functionaries, of squandering by the Finance Minister. And
above all, remember that care has been taken to root out from their
hearts, as if it were a destructive weed, that noble sentiment of
human dignity which is the principle of every virtue.

The blood which flows in Italian veins must be very generous, or so
notable a portion of the plebeians of Rome as the people of the
_Trastevere_, could never have preserved their manly virtues, as is
notoriously the case with them. I have met with men in this quarter of
the city, coarse, violent, sometimes ferocious, but really _men_; nice
as to their honour, to the extent of poniarding any one who is wanting
in respect to them. They are fully as ignorant as the people of the
Monti; they have learnt the same lessons, and witnessed the same
examples; they have the same improvidence, the same love of pleasure,
the same brutality in their passions; but they are incapable of
stooping, even to pick anything up.

A government worthy of the name would make something of this ignorant
force, first taming, and then directing it. The man who stabs his
fellow in a wineshop might prove a good soldier on a battle-field. But
we are in the capital of the Pope. The Trasteverini neither attack God
nor the Government; they meddle neither with theology nor politics; no
more is asked of them. And in token of its appreciation of their good
conduct, a paternal administration allows them to cut one another's