Nothing can equal the nastiness at one's entrance to this magazine of
perfection: but the Roman nobles are not disgusted with _all sorts_ of
scents it is plain; these are not what we should call perfumes indeed,
but certainly _odori_: of the same nature as those one is obliged to
wade through before Trajan's Pillar can be climbed.
That the general appearance of a city which contains such treasures
should be mean and disgusting, while one literally often walks upon
granite, and tramples red porphyry under one's feet, is one of the
greatest wonders to me, in a town of which the wonders seem innumerable:
that it should be nasty beyond all telling, all endurance, with such
perennial streams of the purest water liberally dispersed, and
triumphantly scattered all over it, is another unfathomable wonder: that
so many poor should be suffered to beg in the streets, when not a hand
can be got to work in the fields, and that those poor should be
permitted to exhibit sights of deformity and degradations of our species
to me unseen till now, at the most solemn moments, and in churches where
silver and gold, and richly-arrayed priests, scarcely suffice to call
off attention from their squallid miseries, I do not try to comprehend.
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