Yet you must have passed by the Bocca della
Verita on your way to your drive on the Via Appia and the tomb of
Caecilia Metella. Do you not remember a large, shambling,
unkempt-looking open space, a sort of cross in appearance between the
_piazza_ of a city and a farmyard, a little after passing the remains
of the Teatro di Marcello, the grand old arches of which are now, in
the whirligig of Time's revenges, turned into blacksmiths' shops? The
piazza in question is nearly open on one side to the Tiber, on the
immediate bank of which stands that elegant little round temple, with
its colonnade of charming fluted pillars, which has from time out of
mind been known as the Temple of Vesta, though the designation, as
modern archaeologists tell us, is probably erroneous. All the world,
whether of those who have been at Rome or not, knows the Temple of
Vesta, for it is the prettiest, if not the grandest, of the legacies
to us of old pagan Rome, and it has been reproduced in little
drawing-room models by the thousand in every conceivable material.
Close to it, at one corner of the piazza, is the ancient and
half-ruinous house which is pointed out as the habitation of Cola di
Rienzi.
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