438 VISIT TO ST. PETER'S AT ROME. 



behind their jutting angles; the prudent, or the timid, will make a 

 circuit of half-a-mile rather than ascender descend them after night- 

 fall. I have, however, passed them myself many hundreds of times 

 at all hours, without seeing the slightest cause for alarm ; but still 

 there is no doubt that, on this spot, murder and outrage are both 

 frequent and unpunished. Another, and perhaps a more forcible 

 reason for avoiding it, is the state of disgusting defilement in which 

 it always remains ; except after a long continuance of rain, or the 

 periodical visit of the convicts sentenced to sweep the streets, this 

 useful and handsome thoroughfare looks more like a dunghill than 

 the public ornament, which it might be made. But delicacy and 

 decency, in the sense in which we understand them, are ideas which 

 the modern Romans have yet to receive. Faugh ! what a pestilence 

 comes upon the breeze ! let us trip quickly down, and get at once 

 into the Piazza di Spagna. 



" Piazza" is a word which I find a difficulty in translating into 

 English, and the difficulty is greater in consequence of its having 

 been corrupted to mean " a colonnade." Piazza in Italian, comes 

 nearest to square in English ; but the Piazza di Spagna is triangular, 

 the Piazza di San Pietro is elliptical, and many Piazze in Rome are 

 any shape or no shape. In Norwich, and perhaps in a few other 

 old English towns, wherever there is an open space surrounded by 

 houses, it is called a plain; thus, St. Martfs Plain, The Theatre 

 Plain^ &c. ; and the word plain used in this sense, exactly answers 

 to the Italian piazza. However, as such a word is too local and old- 

 fashioned to claim a place in our language, we must leave the Piazza 

 di Spagna, as well as many other names of localities, untranslated 

 from their native idiom. 



There is nothing to admire in the Piazza di Spagna, except 

 the steps from which we have just descended, and the excellent 

 supply of water, discharged by an odd-looking fountain, which is 

 meant to be a representation of an ancient galley. Many foun- 

 tains in Rome are magnificent, this is only droll and whimsical ; if 

 it suggest any idea to the imagination, it is that of a ship on the point 

 of foundering. The private fountains in the court-yards of the 

 nobility are generally very elegant, and tastefully furnished with 

 aquatic plants, particularly a large-leaved species of arum; the 

 public fountains are mostly grand and gigantic, decorated with 

 columns and obelisks ; but the fountain of the Piazza di Spagna, is as 

 strange as the place where it stands, which is merely a triangular 

 nook of some extent, surrounded by shops and lodging houses, well 

 enough in themselves, but too common-place to make us linger on 

 the way to St. Peter's. 



We now pass through the Via de Condotti (i. e. street of the con- 

 duits), a straight, well-frequented thoroughfare, which leads to the 

 Corso. It is crowded with shops for the sale of mosaics, cameos, 

 bronzes, marbles, and all sorts of virtd and knick-knackery, and con- 

 sequently is a great lounge for those who have time and money to 

 spare, as well as for the numerous individuals who court the smiles of 

 that small and favoured portion of mankind. Where the great are 

 to be seen the little will come to stare at them ; and therefore a 



