The Narrow Streets, Devoid Of
Footways, And Choked, In Every Obscure Corner, By Heaps Of
Dunghill-Rubbish, Contrast So Strongly, In Their Cramped
Dimensions, And Their Filth, And Darkness, With The Broad Square
Before Some Haughty Church:
In the centre of which, a
hieroglyphic-covered obelisk, brought from Egypt in the days of the
Emperors, looks strangely on the foreign scene about it; or perhaps
an ancient pillar, with its honoured statue overthrown, supports a
Christian saint:
Marcus Aurelius giving place to Paul, and Trajan
to St. Peter. Then, there are the ponderous buildings reared from
the spoliation of the Coliseum, shutting out the moon, like
mountains: while here and there, are broken arches and rent walls,
through which it gushes freely, as the life comes pouring from a
wound. The little town of miserable houses, walled, and shut in by
barred gates, is the quarter where the Jews are locked up nightly,
when the clock strikes eight--a miserable place, densely populated,
and reeking with bad odours, but where the people are industrious
and money-getting. In the day-time, as you make your way along the
narrow streets, you see them all at work: upon the pavement,
oftener than in their dark and frouzy shops: furbishing old
clothes, and driving bargains.
Crossing from these patches of thick darkness, out into the moon
once more, the fountain of Trevi, welling from a hundred jets, and
rolling over mimic rocks, is silvery to the eye and ear. In the
narrow little throat of street, beyond, a booth, dressed out with
flaring lamps, and boughs of trees, attracts a group of sulky
Romans round its smoky coppers of hot broth, and cauliflower stew;
its trays of fried fish, and its flasks of wine.
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