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PENCIL SKETCHES IN ROME. 285
jailors with every reason were, so much beloved and
cherished is the armed force now in Rome, for these are
Italy’s own sons, its " people in arms :
" and the Italian in
uniform is the same natural, kind and open-hearted crea-
ture as the Italian in garb of peace. We constantly meet
the stout little dark-skinned bcrsaglieri, with elastic step
and waving plumes ; or the tall grenadiers, usually of
fair complexion, who when we see them in companies,
with their fair mustaches and their honest look, remind
us so strongly of the Swedish soldiers, that we must in-
voluntarily remember that Longobards, Eastern Goths,
Herules, and other kinsmen of us dwellers in the North,
have given a large tributary stream to the blood of the
Italian race.
If our traveller go into the quarter where the North-
men of to-day incline to make their abiding-places—on
the Via Felice, Via del Tritone, Capo le Case, Via de’
due Macelli, and others—he can now tread a good stone
pavement and broad sidewalks. The Corso and the Via
Condotti are no longer the only streets that can boast of
such. Numberless houses have been brushed up, many
measures taken for the advance of cleanliness. Even
the Ghetto, the old Jewish quarter, from which a Jewish
removal and into which a Christian immigration are grad-
ually taking place, has begun to shoot up, and no longer
gives reason for the name of being the slovenliest hole in
Europe. And the results are already apparent in the
tables of statistics of mortality. Rome, a few years ago
one of the unhealthiest of cities, is now not even in sum-
mer a dwelling-place very dangerous to health. And
when once it has advanced so far—but it seems to delay
very, very long—that free peasants plant the beneficent
ploughshare in the ground of the Campagna, then shall
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