Sometimes you will meet a procession of ladies outside the
gates following a cross on foot, while their carriages come after in a
long file. These are societies which are making the pilgrimage of the
Seven Basilicas outside the Walls. They set out early in the morning,
stopping in each basilica for a half-hour to say their prayers, and
return to Rome at Ave Maria.
Life, too, is altogether changed now. All the windows are wide open,
and there is at least one head and shoulders leaning out at every
house. And the poorer families are all out on their door-steps, working
and chatting together, while their children run about them in the
streets, sprawling, playing, and fighting. Many a beautiful theme for
the artist is now to be found in these careless and characteristic
groups; and curly-headed Saint Johns may be seen in every street, half
naked, with great black eyes and rounded arms and legs. It is this
which makes Rome so admirable a residence for an artist. All things are
easy and careless in the out-of-doors life of the common people,--all
poses unsought, all groupings accidental, all action unaffected and
unconscious. One meets Nature at every turn,--not braced up in prim
forms, not conscious in manners, not made up into the fashionable or
the proper, but impulsive, free, and simple.
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