Book Description:
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. BEGGARS IN ROME. 1IEECTLY above the Piazza di Spagna, and opposite to the Via de' Condotti, rise the double towers of the Trinita de' Monti. The ascent to them is over one hundred and thirty five steps, planned with considerable skill, so as to mask the steepness of the Pincian, and forming the chief feature of the Piazza. Various landings and dividing walls break up their monotony; and a red granite obelisk, found in the gardens of Sallust, crowns the upper terrace in front of the church. All day long, these steps are flooded with sunshine, in which, stretched at length, or gathered in picturesque groups, models of every age and both sexes bask away the hours when they are free from employment in the studios. Here, in a rusty old coat, and long white beard and hair, is the Padre Eterno, so called from his constantly standing as model for the First Person of the Trinity in religious pictures. Here is the ferocious bandit, with his thick black beard and conical hat, now off duty, and sitting with his legs wide apart, munching in alternate bites an onion, which he holds in one hand, and a lump of bread, which he holds in the other. Here is the contadina, who spends her studio life in praying at a shrine with upcast eyes, or lifting to the Virgin her little sick child, or carrying a perpetual copper vase to the fountain, or receiving imaginary bouquets at a Barmecide Carnival. Here is the invariable pilgrim, with his scallop shell, who has been journeying to St. Peter's and reposing by the way nearaqueducts or broken columns so long that the memory of man runneth not to the contrary, and who is now fast asleep on his back, with his hat pulled over his eyes. When the forestieri come along, the little ones run up and thrust out their hands for baiocchi; and so ...
|
