"You have the full throat of a singing-bird," he was going to say.

He placed on the music-rack a simple little Ave Maria, and she sang it in a pure, flute-toned voice, and with a composed painstaking to do her best that provoked him. He leaned a little, only a little, nearer when she had ended, and sat with her eyes downcast, the lashes making a shadow on her smooth, colorless cheeks.

"It is a sweet song," he said; "but you can sing what is far more difficult and expressive. Sing once again, something stronger. Give me a love-song."

He trembled at his own audacity, and his face reddened as he brought out the last words. Would she start up and rush out of the room? Would she blush, or burst into tears? Nothing of the kind. She merely sat with her eyes downcast, and her fingers resting lightly on the keys, and tried to recollect something.

Then a little smile, faint from within, touched the corners of her mouth, her eyes were lifted fully and fixed on air, and she sang that hymn beloved by S. Francis Xaverius:

"O Deus! ego amo te."

It was no longer the pale and timid novice. Fire shone from her uplifted eyes, a roseate color warmed her transparent face, and the soul of a smile hovered about her lips. It was the bride singing to her Beloved.

When she had finished the last words, the singer turned toward the window, as if looking to Sister Cecilia for sympathy, knowing well that only with her could she find it, and perceived then that she was alone with Lawrence Gerald.

for doing it, had kept her promise, and lured the sister out of the parlor on some pretext.

Anita rose immediately, made the gentleman a slight obeisance, and glided from the room without uttering a word.

When she had gone, he sat there confounded. "She a child!" he muttered. "She is the most self-possess ed and determined woman I ever met."

The love-song he had asked for addressed to God, and her abrupt departure, were to his mind proofs of the most mortifying rebuff he had ever received.

But he mistook, not knowing the difference between a child of earth and a child of heaven. That he could mean any other kind of lovesong than the one she had sung never entered Anita's mind. Love was to her an everyday word, oftener on her lips than any other. She spoke of love in the last waking moment at night and the first one in the morning. There was no reason why she should fear the word. As to the rest, it was nothing but obedi

ence.

"Why did you come out, my dear?" asked Sister Cecilia, meeting her in the entry.

"Sister Bernadette told me never to remain alone with a gentleman," Anita replied simply.

Lawrence was just saying to himself that, after all, her fear of staying with him was rather flattering, when she re-entered the room with Annette and the sister, and came to the piano again. It was impossible for vanity to blind him. He had not stirred the faintest ripple on the sur face of her heart. It was a salutary mortification.

vised sofa, and tucked it in around the arms and the cushions. "It will do nicely," she said. "And we do not need it for a wrap or a spread."

Annette viewed it a little. "So it will," she acquiesced. "A few large pins will keep it in place. But here is a little tear in the corner. Let me turn it the other way. There! that does nicely, doesn't it, Lawrence ?"

She turned in speaking to him, but he was not there. He had stepped out into the porch, and was

beckoning Jack to drive the carriage up inside the grounds.

They took leave after a minute.

"Be sure you all pray for the success of our concert," was Annette's farewell charge to the sister. "We are to have our last rehearsal tonight."

She glanced into her companion's face as they drove along, but refrained from asking him any questions about his interview with Anita. His expression did not indicate that he had derived much pleasure from it.

ROME as we saw it in 1863 was already so far modernized as to possess two railway lines, one on the Neapolitan and one on the Civita Vecchia side. The old and more romantic entrance was by the Porta del Popolo, which was reached by crossing the Ponte Molle. Two traditions help to invest this plain, strong bridge with peculiar interest. It was within sight of it that the great battle was fought which decided the triumph of Constantine and Christianity in the already tottering Roman Empire. Here the miraculous cross appeared to the great leader the night before the battle, lighting up the horizon with its mystic radiance, and blazoning forth those prophetic words: In hoc signo vinces-" In this sign shalt thou conquer"—which were afterwards graven as the motto of the emperor on his new standard, or labarum. Near the Ponte Molle, too, then called Pons Milviensis, were the spoils of the temple, and notably the sevenbranched candle-stick, thrown into the Tiber to save them from the hands of the invading Huns; and it is seriously believed that, were the river to be drained and carefully dredged in that spot, many rare and valuable historical relics would be found. It is supposed that, the flow of the water being very sluggish, and the mud, with its tawny color, oozy and detaining, these treasures may easily have remained embedded in their unsavory hiding-place.

The modern entrance from the Civita Vecchia side is unattractive in the extreme, but the new depot at the Piazza de' Termini affords a very

fair first view of Rome. Before reaching the city, a beautiful spectacle is presented by the long rows of aqueducts standing sharply defined out of the low, olive-spotted plain, and by the massive tomb of Cecilia Metella, rising in towering prominence among the lesser monuments of the Appian Way. Beautiful at all times, this scene of lovely and suggestive grandeur is still more beautiful by moonlight; and, if one could forget the unfortunate details of that most prosaic of modern buildings, a railway-station, the Piazza de' Termini would hardly break the spell. On one side are the ruins of the baths of Diocletian, their brick walls covered with golden wallflowers, and just beyond them the cloister and church of Santa Maria degli Angeli. The interior of this church is supported by huge monolith columns of granite, still bearing the marks of the fire which destroyed the baths, from whose adjoining halls they were taken. On the opposite side are the prisons for women-a far happier and more peaceful abode than most places of the sort, the jailers being cloistered sisters specially vowed to this heroic work of self-devotion. A little further on is the great fountain, divided into three compartments, each backed by a basso-rilievo of great merit, the centre one representing in gigantic proportions Moses striking the rock. The small domed church of the Vittoria, which faces the fountain, is the national ex-voto commemorating the battle of Lepanto, and boasts a masterpiece of one of the sculptors of the Renaissance—a term

too often convertible with artistic decadence. This is a languishing and affected but marvellously correct statue of S. Teresa on her death-bed; and the church is served by barefooted Carmelite friars. The streets branching from the Piazza, though not so narrow, are to the full as crooked as those in the lower portion of the city; but, to the practised Italian traveller, they will appear almost wide. Those of Genoa and Venice are veritable lanes, through which two wheelbarrows could not pass each other, and across which you could literally shake hands out of the windows of each floor; so that the Roman streets do not strike you as uncommonly narrow, unless you are fresh from Paris or Munich.

Here are the same peculiarities as in most other Italian towns, but fraught with a deeper meaning, since we are at the headquarters of the religion which gives them birth: the frequent shrines at the street-corners, chiefly of the Blessed Virgin and the divine Infant, rudely enough represented, but denoting the steadfast faith of the people, and kept perpetually adorned by a lighted oil-lamp in a blue or red glass; the stalls in the markets, which, by the way, stand only in the dingier thoroughfares round the Pantheon and S. Eustachio; the strange medley of meat, vegetables, flowers, antiquities; in summer, the mounds of cut watermelons (the Roman's favorite fruit), and the ricketty stands piled with figs in all the confused shades of purple, black, green, and white; in winter, the scaldini, or little square boxes filled with charcoal, which the market-women carry about everywhere to market, to church, and very often to bed; the curious antique lamps of brass with two or three beaks, each bearing a weak flame, and the whole thing a copy,

line for line, of the old Roman lamps of two thousand years ago; on S. Joseph's day, the 19th of March, the stalls decorated with garlands of green, and heaped with fritellette (fried fish under various disguises); the peasant funeral winding slowly through the crowd, with the corpse, that of a young girl, lying uncovered, but enwreathed in simple flowers, on an open bier borne by the cowled members of a pious brotherhood specially dedicated to this work, and whose faces even are covered, leaving only the eyes visible through two narrow slits; the droves of Campagna oxen, cream-colored, mild, Juno-eyed, and with thick, smooth, branching horns; the flocks of Campagna buffaloes, shaggy and fierce, with eyes like pigs, humps on their necks, and short, crooked horns-a very fair impersonation of the evil one for an imaginary "temptation of S. Anthony"; then, finally, at Christmas time, the pifferari, peasants of the Abruzzi, whose immemorial custom it is to come on an annual musical pilgrimage to Rome, and play their mountain airs before every street-shrine in the city.

These latter are deserving of a more lengthened notice, and, indeed, no traveller can fail to be struck by the rugged picturesqueness of their appearance. Some one has not inappropriately called them the " satyrs of the Campagna," though they belong rather to the mountain than to the plain. Their dress is that which we are erroneously taught to connect with the traditional ideal of a brigand (an ideal, by the way, very unjustly supposed to be realized by the honest, industrious, and deluded peasants of whom New York has recently said such hard things)-a high, conical felt hat, with a frayed feather or red band and tassels; a red waistcoat; a coarse blue jacket

and leggings, sometimes of the shaggy hair of white goats (hence the title satyr), sometimes of tanned skin bound round with cords that interlace as far as the knee. The ample cloak common to all Roman and Neapolitan peasants completes the costume, and gives it a dignity which sits well upon them. Their instruments are very primitive, and the tunes they perform are among the oldest national airs of Italy, transmitted intact from father to son by purely oral teaching. They always go in couples, and, while one plays the zampogna, or bagpipe, the other accompanies him on the piffero, or pastoral pipe-a short, flute-like instrument. These are the men who make the fortunes of many an artist, and who, as models, are transformed as often as Proteus or Jupiter of old. The broad flight of steps leading from the Piazza di Spagna to the Pincian hill is their chief resort when off duty as pifferari, and on the lookout as models; and any guide could show you among them Signor Soand-So's "Moses," or Madame Sucha-one's "S. Joseph," besides innumerable other characters, Biblical and classical, sustained by at most only a dozen men of flesh and blood. A few women there are among them, some in the characteristic but rare costume which is erroneously supposed to be the only one worn in the neighborhood of Rome, namely, the square fold of spotless linen on the head (a style almost Egyptian in its massiveness) and narrow skirt of darkest blue, with an apron of carpetlike pattern and texture. A row of heavy coral beads encircles their throats, and the ample folds of their loose chemise of white cotton are confined by a blue boddice laced up the front. These figures suggest themselves as splendid models for a set of Caryatides, but they are more

usually painted as typical peasant women, and sometimes, when old, as S. Elizabeth, S. Anne, or the Sibyls.

The confusion of gaily-attired or dark-robed figures in the streets is at first bewildering to the stranger, especially on a festival day, when one would think that the middle ages had broken up through the thin crust of levelling modern decorum. Here are Capuchin friars, in their coarse brown tunics confined round the waist by a white knotted cord, hurrying with large baskets on their arms from house to house to collect their meal of broken refuse; further on is a Papal zouave in his uniform of gray and his white half-leggings-a foreigner and very likely a noble, fair, slight, and dignified, like Col. de Charrette, the grandson of the great Vendean leader of 1793; here, again, comes an abbate, with his enormous black three-cornered hat and his long and ample cloak or garment gathered in a line of full, close folds at his back, and sweeping thence around his person with all the picturesque dignity of a Roman toga; jostling against this dark figure is the lithe, cat-like French soldier, cheery and open-faced; beyond him hurry lackeys in rich but faded liveries that look as if they had been fashioned out of tapestry; peasants in every garb, some clustering round a scrivano, or public letterwriter, established in the open air at a ricketty table, with a few sheets of dirty paper and a heap of limp red wafers for his stock in trade; and others intent upon their birthright, i.e. noisy and successful begging.

Perhaps one of the most curious sights to a stranger is to be found in the back yards of houses inhabited by swarms of families who have but one well among them from which to draw water. The well is in the mid