Rome, though it surpasses all the cities of the earth in the number, beauty, and splendour of its public monuments, is imposing only in parts. It presents no effective _tout ensemble_. Some of its noblest edifices are huddled into corners, and lost amid a crowd of mean buildings. The Pantheon rises in the fish-market. The Navonna Mercato, which has the finest fountain in Italy, is a rag-fair. The church of the Lateran is approached through narrow rural lanes. The splendid edifice of St Paul's stands outside the walls, in the midst of swamps and marshes so unwholesome, that there is not a house near it. The meanest streets of Rome are those that lie around St Peter's and the Vatican. The Corso is in good part a line of noble palaces; but in other parts of the city you pass through whole streets, consisting of large massive structures, once comfortable mansions, but now squalid, filthy, and unfurnished hovels, resembling the worst dens of our great cities. It cannot fail to strike one, too, as somewhat anomalous, that there should be such a vast deal of ruins and rubbish in the _Eternal_ City. And as regards its sanitary condition, there may be a great deal of holiness in Rome, but there is very little cleanliness in it. When a shower falls, and the odour of the garbage with which the streets are littered is exhaled, the smell is insufferable. One had better not describe the spectacles that one sees every day on the marble stairs of the churches. The words of Archenholtz in the end of last century are still applicable:--"Filth," says he, "infects all the great places of Rome except that of St. Peter's; nor would this be excepted from the general rule, but that it lies at greater distance from the dwellings. It is incredible to what a pitch filthiness is carried in Rome. As palaces and houses are mostly open, their entrance is usually rendered unsufferable, being made the receptacle of the most disgustful wants." In fine, Rome is the most extraordinary combination of grandeur and ruin, magnificence and dirt, glory and decay, which the world ever saw. We must distinguish, however: the grandeur has come down to the Popes from their predecessors,--the filth and ruin are their own.