I.

DON ORSINO SARACINESCA is of the younger age and lives in the younger Rome, with his father and mother, under the roof of the vast old palace which has sheltered so many hundreds of Saracinesca in peace and war, but has rarely, in the course of the centuries, been the home of three generations at once during one and twenty years.

The lover of romance may lie in the sun, caring not for the time of day, and content to watch the butterflies that cross his blue sky on the way from one flower to another; but the historian is an entomologist who must be stirring. He must catch the moths, which are his facts, in the net, which is his memory, and he must fasten them upon paper with sharp pins, which are dates.

By far the greater number of old Prince Saracinesca's contemporaries are dead, and more or less justly forgotten. Old Valdarno died long ago in his bed, surrounded by sons and daughters. The famous dandy of other days, the Duke of Astrardente, died at his young wife's feet some three and twenty years before this chapter of family history opens. Then the primeval Prince Montevarchi came to a violent end at the hands of his librarian, leaving his English princess-consolable but unconsoled; leaving also his daughter Flavia married to that other Giovanni Saracinesca who still bears the name of Marchese di San Giacinto; while the younger girl, the

fair, brown-eyed Faustina, loved a poor Frenchman, half soldier and all artist. The weak, good-natured Ascanio Bellegra reigns in his father's stead, the timidly extravagant master of all that wealth which the miser's lean and crooked fingers had consigned to a safekeeping. Frangipani, too, whose son was to have married Faustina, is gone these many years, and others of the older and graver sort have learned the great secret from the lips of death.

But there have been other and greater deaths, beside which the mortality of a whole society of noblemen sinks into insignificance. An empire is dead and another has arisen in the din of a vast war, begotten in bloodshed, brought forth in strife, baptized with fire. The France we knew is gone, and the French Republic writes "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" in great red letters above the gate of its habitation, which within is yet hung with mourning. Out of the nest of kings and princes and princelings, and of all manner of rulers, great and small, rises the solitary eagle of the new German Empire and hangs on black wings between sky and earth, not striking again, but always ready, a vision of armed peace, a terror, a problem, perhaps a warning.

Old Rome is dead, too, never to be old Rome again. The last breath has been breathed, the aged eyes are closed forever, corruption has done its work, and the grand skeleton lies bleaching upon seven hills, half covered with the

piecemeal stucco of a modern architectural body. The result is satisfactory to those who have brought it about, if not to the rest of the world. The sepulchre of old Rome is the new capital of united Italy.

The three chief actors are dead also,

- the man of heart, the man of action, and the man of wit, the good, the brave, and the cunning, the Pope, the King, and the Cardinal, — Pius IX., Victor Emmanuel II., and Giacomo Antonelli. Rome saw them all dead.

In a poor chamber of the Vatican, upon a simple bed beside which burned two waxen torches in the cold morning light, lay the body of the man whom none had loved and many had feared, clothed in the violet robe of the cardinal-deacon. The keen face was drawn up on one side with a strange look of mingled pity and contempt. The delicate, thin hands were clasped together on the breast. The chilly light fell upon the dead features, the silken robe, and the stone floor. A single servant in a shabby livery stood in a corner, smiling foolishly, while the tears stood in his eyes and wet his unshaven cheeks. Perhaps he cared, as servants will when no one else cares. The door opened almost directly upon a staircase, and the noise of the feet of those passing up and down upon the stone steps disturbed the silence in the death chamber. At night the poor body was thrust unhonored into a common coach and driven out to its resting-place.

In a vast hall, upon an enormous catafalque, full thirty feet above the floor, lay all that was left of the honest king. Thousands of wax candles cast their light up to the dark, shapeless face, and upon the military accoutrements of the uniform in which the huge body was clothed. A great crowd pressed to the railing to gaze their fill and go away. Behind the division tall troopers in cuirasses mounted guard and moved carelessly about. It was all tawdry,

but tawdry on a magnificent scale, unlike the man in whose honor it done. For he had been simple brave.

When he was at last borne to tomb in the Pantheon, a file of impe and royal princes marched shoulder shoulder down the street before h and the black charger he had loved led after him.

In a dim chapel of St. Peter's the Pope, robed in white, the jewe tiara upon his head, his white face ca and peaceful. Six torches burned side him; six nobles of the guard st like statues with drawn swords, th on his right hand and three on his l That was all. The crowd passed single file before the great closed ga of the Julian Chapel.

At night he was borne reverently loving hands to the deep crypt belo But at another time, at night also, dead man was taken up and driven wards the gate to be buried without walls. Then a great crowd assembl in the darkness and fell upon the lit band, and stoned the coffin of him w never harmed any man, and scream out curses and blasphemies till all city was astir with riot. That was last funeral hymn.

Old Rome is gone. The narrow stre are broad thoroughfares, the Jews' qu ter is a flat and dusty building lot, fountain of Ponte Sisto is swept aw one by one the mighty pines of V Ludovisi have fallen under axe and sa and a cheap, thinly inhabited quar is built upon the site of the enchan garden. The network of byways fr the Jesuits' church to the Sant' Ang bridge is ploughed up and opened the huge Corso Vittorio Emmanu Buildings which strangers used to sea for in the shade, guidebook and map hand, are suddenly brought into blaze of light that fills broad streets a sweeps across great squares. The v Cancelleria stands out nobly to the s

the curved front of the Messino palace exposes its black colonnade to sight upon the greatest thoroughfare of the new city, the ancient Arco de' Cenci exhibits its squalor in unshadowed sunshine, the Portico of Octavia once more looks upon the river.

He who was born and bred in the Rome of twenty years ago comes back, after long absence, to wander as a stranger in streets he never knew, among houses unfamiliar to him, amidst a popnlation whose speech sounds strange in his ears. He roams the city from the Lateran to the Tiber, from the Tiber to the Vatican, finding himself now and then before some building once familiar in another aspect, losing himself perpetnally in unprofitable wastes made more monotonous than the sandy desert by the modern builder's art. Where once he lingered in old days to glance at the river, or to dream of days yet older and long gone, scarce conscious of the beggar at his elbow and hardly seeing the half dozen workmen who labored at their trades almost in the middle of the public way, where all was once aged and silent and melancholy and full of the elder memories, — there, at that very corner, he is hustled and jostled by an eager crowd, thrust to the wall by huge, grinding, creaking carts, threatened with the modern death by the wheel of the modern omnibus, deafened by the yells of the modern news-venders, robbed, very likely, by the light fingers of the modern inhabitant.

And yet he feels that Rome must be Rome still. He stands aloof and gazes at the sight as upon a play in which Rome herself is the great heroine and actress. He knows the woman, and he sees the artist for the first time, not recognizing her. She is a dark-eyed, black-haired, thoughtful woman when not upon the stage. How should he know her in the strange disguise, her head decked with Gretchen's fair tresses, her olive cheek daubed with pink and

white paint, her stately form clothed in garments which would be gay and girlish, but which are only unbecoming? He would gladly go out and wait by the stage door until the performance is over, to see the real woman pass him in the dim light of the street lamps as she enters her carriage and becomes herself again. And so, in the reality, he turns his back upon the crowd and strolls away, not caring whither he goes, until, by a mere accident, he finds himself upon the height of Sant' Onofrio, or standing before the great fountains of the Acqua Paola, or perhaps upon the drive which leads through the old Villa Corsini along the crest of the Janiculum. Then, indeed, the scene thus changes: the actress is gone and the woman is before him; the capital of modern Italy sinks like a vision into the earth out of which it was called up, and the capital of the world rises once more, unchanged, unchanging, and unchangeable, before the wanderer's eyes. The greater monuments of greater times are there still, majestic and unmoved; the larger signs of a larger age stand out clear and sharp; the tomb of Hadrian frowns on the yellow stream; the heavy hemisphere of the Pantheon turns its single opening to the sky; the enormous dome of the world's cathedral looks silently down upon the sepulchre of the world's mas

ters.

Then the sun sets, and the wanderer goes down again through the chilly evening air to the city below, to find it less modern than he had thought. He has found what he sought, and he knows that the real will outlast the false, that the stone will outlive the stucco, and that the builder of to-day is but a builder of card-houses beside the architects who made Rome.

So his heart softens a little, or at least grows less resentful, for he has realized how small the change really is as compared with the first effect produced. The great house has fallen into

new hands, and the latest tenant is furnishing the dwelling to his taste. That is all. He will not tear down the walls, for his hands are too feeble to build them again, even if he were not occupied with other matters and hampered by the disagreeable consciousness of the extravagances he has already committed. Other things have been accomplished, some of which may perhaps endure and some of which are good in themselves, while some are indifferent and some distinctly bad. The great experiment of Italian unity is in process of trial, and the world is already forming its opinion upon the results. Society, heedless as it necessarily is of contemporary history, could not remain indifferent to the transformation of its accustomed surroundings; and here, before entering upon an account of individual doings, the chronicler may be allowed to say a few words upon a matter little understood by foreigners, even when they have spent several seasons in Rome, and have made acquaintance with one another for the purpose of criticising the Romans.

Immediately after the taking of the city in 1870 three distinct parties declared themselves, to wit, the Clericals or Blacks, the Monarchists or Whites, and the Republicans or Reds. All three had doubtless existed for a considerable time, but the wine of revolution favored the expression of the truth, and society awoke one morning to find itself divided into camps holding very different opinions.

At first the mass of the greater nobles stood together for the lost temporal power of the Pope, while a great number of the less important families followed two or three great houses in siding with the Royalists. The Republican idea, as was natural, found but few sympathizers in the highest class, and these were, I believe, in all cases young men whose fathers were Blacks or Whites, and most of whom have since thought fit

to modify their opinions in one directio or the other. Nevertheless, the Red in terest was, and still is, tolerably strong and has been destined to play the pow erful part in parliamentary life whic generally falls to the lot of a compa third party, where a fourth does not y exist or has no political influence, as the case in Rome.

For there is a fourth body in Rom which has little political but much socia importance. It was not possible tha people who had grown up together the intimacy of a close caste life, cal ing each other "thee" and "thou," an forming the hereditary elements of still feudal organization, should sudden ly break off all acquaintance and b strangers one to another. The brothe a born and convinced Clerical, foun that his own sister had followed he husband to the court of the new king The rigid adherent of the old orde met his own son in the street arraye in the garb of an Italian officer. Th two friends who had stood side by sid in good and evil case for a score ( years saw themselves abruptly divide by the gulf which lies between a Roma cardinal and a senator of the Italia kingdom. The breach was sudden an great, but it was bridged for many b the invention of a fourth proportiona The points of contact between White ar Black became Gray, and a social powe politically neutral and constitutionally i different, arose as a mediator betwee the Contents and Malcontents. The were families who had never loved t old order, but who distinctly disliked t new, and who opened their doors to tl adherents of both. There is a hou which has become Gray out of a so of superstition inspired by the unfort nate circumstances which oddly coinci ed with each movement of its membe to join the new order. There is a other, and one of the greatest, in whi a very high hereditary dignity in one party, still exercised by force