Cobblers and
carpenters, barbers and old clothes-men, seem to me to carry on their
trades much in the same way all the world over. The peculiarity about
Rome is, that all these trades seem stunted in their development. The
cobbler never emerges as the shoemaker, and the carpenter fails to rise
into the upholstery line of business. Bookselling too is a trade which
does not thrive on Roman soil. Altogether there is a wonderful sameness
about the streets. Time after time, turn after turn, the same scene is
reproduced. So having got used to the first strangeness of the sight you
move on more quickly.
There is no lack of life about you now, at the shop-doors whole families
sit working at their trades, or carrying on the most private occupations
of domestic life; at every corner groups of men stand loitering about,
with hungry looks and ragged garments, reminding one only too forcibly of
the "Seven Dials" on a summer Sunday; French soldiers and beggars, women
and children and priests swarm around you. Indeed, there are priests
everywhere. There with their long black coats and broad-brimmed shovel
hats, come a score of young priests, walking two and two together, with
downcast eyes. How, without looking up, they manage to wend their way
among the crowd, is a constant miracle; the carriages, however, stop to
let them pass, for a Roman driver would sooner run over a dozen children
than knock down a priest.
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