marble. Finally, a frescoed ceiling over the nave and transepts, and a
dome rising high above the central part, and filled with frescos brought
to such perspective illusion, that the edges seem to project into the
air. Two or three persons are kneeling at separate shrines; there are
several wooden confessionals placed against the walls, at one of which
kneels a lady, confessing to a priest who sits within; the tapers are
lighted at the high altar and at one of the shrines; an attendant is
scrubbing the marble pavement with a broom and water, a process, I should
think, seldom practised in Roman churches. By and by the lady finishes
her confession, kisses the priest's hand, and sits down in one of the
chairs which are placed about the floor, while the priest, in a black
robe, with a short, white, loose jacket over his shoulders, disappears by
a side door out of the church. I, likewise, finding nothing attractive
in the pictures, take my departure. Protestantism needs a new apostle to
convert it into something positive. . . . .

I now found my way to the Piazza Navona. It is to me the most
interesting piazza in Rome; a large oblong space, surrounded with tall,
shabby houses, among which there are none that seem to be palaces. The
sun falls broadly over the area of the piazza, and shows the fountains in
it;--one a large basin with great sea-monsters, probably of Bernini's
inventions, squirting very small streams of water into it; another of the
fountains I do not at all remember; but the central one is an immense
basin, over which is reared an old Egyptian obelisk, elevated on a rock,
which is cleft into four arches. Monstrous devices in marble, I know not
of what purport, are clambering about the cloven rock or burrowing
beneath it; one and all of them are superfluous and impertinent, the only
essential thing being the abundant supply of water in the fountain. This
whole Piazza Navona is usually the scene of more business than seems to
be transacted anywhere else in Rome; in some parts of it rusty iron is