the river. There was a little heap of what looked chiefly like willow
twigs, the poor result of their labor. The hook was a knot of wood, with
the lopped-off branches projecting in three or four prongs. The Tiber
has always the hue of a mud-puddle; but now, after a heavy rain which has
washed the clay into it, it looks like pease-soup. It is a broad and
rapid stream, eddying along as if it were in haste to disgorge its
impurities into the sea. On the left side, where the city mostly is
situated, the buildings hang directly over the stream; on the other,
where stand the Castle of St. Angelo and the Church of St. Peter, the
town does not press so imminent upon the shore. The banks are clayey,
and look as if the river had been digging them away for ages; but I
believe its bed is higher than of yore.


February 10th.--I went out to-day, and, going along the Via Felice and
the Via delle Quattro Fontane, came unawares to the Basilica of Santa
Maria Maggiore, on the summit of the Esquiline Hill. I entered it,
without in the least knowing what church it was, and found myself in a
broad and noble nave, both very simple and very grand. There was a long
row of Ionic columns of marble, twenty or thereabouts on each side,
supporting a flat roof. There were vaulted side aisles, and, at the
farther end, a bronze canopy over the high altar; and all along the
length of the side aisles were shrines with pictures, sculpture, and
burning lamps; the whole church, too, was lined with marble: the roof was
gilded; and yet the general effect of severe and noble simplicity
triumphed over all the ornament. I should have taken it for a Roman
temple, retaining nearly its pristine aspect; but Murray tells us that it
was founded A. D. 342 by Pope Liberius, on the spot precisely marked out
by a miraculous fall of snow, in the month of August, and it has
undergone many alterations since his time. But it is very fine, and