Mediterranean, its loose, dark sand being made nasty by the vicinity.
The vetturino cheated us, one of the horses giving out, as he must have
known it would do, half-way on our journey; and we staggered on through
cold and darkness, and peril, too, if the banditti were not a myth,--
reaching Rome not much before midnight. I perpetrated unheard-of
briberies on the custom-house officers at the gates, and was permitted to
pass through and establish myself at Spillman's Hotel, the only one where
we could gain admittance, and where we have been half frozen ever since.

And this is sunny Italy, and genial Rome!


Palazzo Larazani, Via Porta Pinciana, February 3d.--We have been in Rome
a fortnight to-day, or rather at eleven o'clock to-night; and I have
seldom or never spent so wretched a time anywhere. Our impressions were
very unfortunate, arriving at midnight, half frozen in the wintry rain,
and being received into a cold and cheerless hotel, where we shivered
during two or three days; meanwhile seeking lodgings among the sunless,
dreary alleys which are called streets in Rome. One cold, bright day
after another has pierced me to the heart, and cut me in twain as with a
sword, keen and sharp, and poisoned at point and edge. I did not think
that cold weather could have made me so very miserable. Having caught a
feverish influenza, I was really glad of being muffled up comfortably in
the fever heat. The atmosphere certainly has a peculiar quality of
malignity. After a day or two we settled ourselves in a suite of ten
rooms, comprehending one flat, or what is called the second piano of this
house. The rooms, thus far, have been very uncomfortable, it being
impossible to warm them by means of the deep, old-fashioned, inartificial
fireplaces, unless we had the great logs of a New England forest to burn
in them; so I have sat in my corner by the fireside with more clothes on