224 THE CARNIVAL AT ROME. 



When the carnival commences, and the signal for the reign of misrule 

 is given, very little is done on the forenoon of the first day, or of any 

 succeeding one. It would be too much to play the fool from morning 

 till night, and so men save themselves for a grand and united burst 

 of folly. It is at about half past two that the tide begins to flow: 

 men, women, children, and carriages may then be seen tending from 

 all parts to a common centre. The Corso is the attractive power 

 which draws to itself the most discordant particles of society, there 

 to work and ferment as they may. At every avenue a dragoon is 

 stationed to hinder ingress and egress by any other except the right 

 one. Parties of infantry are continually marching up and down, to 

 prevent the disturbances, civil or political, that might easily arise in 

 such an assembly. Bands of military music are posted here and 

 there, to show that the papal army is employed on this occasion to 

 adorn and not to intimidate. But the carriages have formed two 

 close and connected lines ; there is a train of pedestrians in the mid- 

 dle and another on the foot-pavement on each side, and a scene is 

 commencing to describe which would require, as Homer says of a 

 different display^ a hundred brazen mouths, as many tongues, and as 

 many different voices. 



And first we will begin with the masks on foot; nor are the sim- 

 plest of these the least elegant for instance, when a country girl of 

 Tivoli or Murino appears in the native costume of her beautiful 

 country, merely concealing her face with a mask of black silk. There 

 are several of these women constantly in Rome, who not only are 

 worthy to be, but who really are professionally models for painters. 

 But fun, not elegance, is the order of the day, as a list of groups and 

 characters will clearly show. A black bear walks arm-in-arm with a 

 cat, and a man after them dandles a dog dressed like an infant in 

 swaddling clothes.* A white bear runs about in a rampant attitude, 

 occasionally taking off his head to cool himself, or quiet some child that 

 had been frightened. A warrior with a lance and helmet charges 

 the crowd, at the same time humorously counterfeiting imbecility 

 and cowardice. A foot soldier, in a ridiculous uniform and yellow 

 complexioned mask, struts before the pope's shabby troops, and cari- 

 catures their ill-disciplined manners. Sometimes a handsome fellow, 

 clean shaved and dressed to represent a bouncing woman of forty, 

 singles from the throng a well-dressed man, perhaps an Englishman, 

 and kisses him with a loud smack, to the great amusement of the by- 

 standers. Then come Harlequins, Punches, and Scaramouches by 

 dozens. Two physicians strut along, followed by an apothecary 

 bearing a syringe of awful dimensions. The Quaker, dressed in an 

 old-fashioned English suit of clothes, is not so favourite a character as 



* Almost immediately that a child is born the Romans bind it up in a peculiar man- 

 ner, and so tightly that the poor thing cannot stir its legs. On the Epiphany, or 

 Festa del trc. Re, i. e. Feast of the Three Kings, a miraculous image of the infant Sa- 

 viour is exhibited at the church of S. Maria, in Araceli, and this image is an exact mo- 

 del of the present Roman method of swaddling children, except that the clothes are 

 covered with gold and jewels, and that the tips of the toes are uncovered. Every 

 stranger observes that Rome contains a very large proportion of dwarfs and deformed 

 persons, and the plan of nursing adopted there furnishes one sufficiently obvious cause. 



