But one cannot follow the Tiber through the streets of Rome as one may the Seine in Paris: in the thickly-built quarters the houses back upon the stream and its yellow waves wash their foundations, working wrath and woe from time to time, as those who were there in the winter of 1870 will recollect. Sometimes it is lost to sight for half a mile together, unless one catches a glimpse of it through the carriage-way of a palace.
ST. PETER'S AND THE VATICAN, FROM THE FALLS OF THE TIBER.
THE CASTLE OF ST. ANGELO.
From the wharf of the Ripetta it disappears until you come upon it again at the bridge of St. Angelo, the Ælian bridge of ancient Rome, which is the most direct passage from the fashionable and foreign quarter to the Trastevere. It must be confessed that the idle sense of mere pleasure generally supersedes recollection and association after one's first astonishment to find one's self among the historic places subsides; yet how often, as our horses' hoofs rang on the slippery stones, my thoughts went suddenly back to the scene when Saint Gregory passed over, chanting litanies, at the head of the whole populace, who formed one vast penitential procession, and saw the avenging angel alight on the mausoleum of Adrian and sheath his sword in sign that the plague was stayed; or to that terrible day when the ferocious mercenaries of the Constable de Bourbon and the wretched inhabitants given over to sack and slaughter swarmed across together, butchering and butchered, while the troops in the castle hurled down what was left of its classic statues upon the heads of friend and foe, and the Tiber was turned to blood!
