that any single employer or labourer, who contracted for work
independently, would run a risk of annoyance or actual injury; of having,
for example, his block of marble split "by a slip of the hand," or his
tools destroyed, or a knife stuck into him as he went home at night, and,
more than all, that, without the supervision of the actual overseer, your
workmen would cheat you right and left, no matter what wages you paid.
After all it is better to be cheated by one man than by a dozen, and
being at Rome you must do as the Romans do.

It may possibly have been observed that, in the foregoing paragraph, I
have spoken of the "workmen at Rome," not of the Roman workmen. The
difference, though slight verbally, is an all-important one. The workmen
in Rome are not Romans, for the Romans proper never work. The Campagna
is tilled in winter by groups of peasants, who come from the Marches, in
long straggling files, headed by the "Pifferari," those most inharmonious
of pipers. In summer-time the harvest is reaped and the vintage gathered
in by labourers, whose homes lie far away in the Abruzzi mountains. In
many ways these mountaineers bear a decided resemblance to the swarms of
Irish labourers who come across to England in harvest-time. They are
frugal, good-humoured, and, compared to the native Romans, honest and
hard-working. A very small proportion too of the working-men in Rome
itself are Romans. Certain trades, as that of the cooks for instance,
are almost confined to the inhabitants of particular outlying districts.
The masons, carpenters, carvers, and other mechanical trades, are filled
by men who do not belong to the city, and who are called and considered
foreigners. Of course the rule is not without exceptions, and you will
find genuine Romans amongst the common workmen, but amongst the skilled
workmen hardly ever. There is a very large, poor, I might almost say,
pauper population in Rome, and in some form or other these poor must work
for their living, but their principle is to do as little work as