All this, however, is a matter of personal taste, about
which it is useless to express a decided opinion. I must content myself
with the remark, that the Roman peasantry as depicted, year after year,
on the walls of our academy, bear about the same resemblance to the
article provided for home consumption, as the ladies in an ordinary
London ball-room bear to the portraits in the "Book of Beauty." The
peasants' costumes too, like the smock-frocks and scarlet cloaks of Old
England, are dying out fast. On the steps in the "Piazza di Spagna," and
in the artists' quarter above, you see some score or so of models with
the braided boddices, and the head-dresses of folded linen, standing
about for hire. The braid, it is true, is torn; the snow-white linen
dirt-besmeared, and the brigand looks feeble and inoffensive, while the
hoary patriarch plays at pitch and toss: but still they are the same
figures that we know so well, the traditional Roman peasantry of the
"Grecian" and the "Old Adelphi." Unfortunately, they are the last of the
Romans. In other parts of the city the peasants' dresses are few and far
between; the costume has become so uncommon, as to be now a fashionable
dress for the Roman ladies at Carnival time and other holiday festivals.
On Sundays and "Festas" in the mountain districts you can still find real
peasants with real peasants' dresses; but even there Manchester stuffs
and cottons are making their way fast, and every year the old-fashioned
costumes grow rarer and rarer.
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