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It is an impressive monument, for you feel as if the last of the race had
passed through that door.
Emerging from the church, I saw a French sergeant drilling his men in the
piazza. These French soldiers are prominent objects everywhere about the
city, and make up more of its sight and sound than anything else that
lives. They stroll about individually; they pace as sentinels in all the
public places; and they march up and down in squads, companies, and
battalions, always with a very great din of drum, fife, and trumpet; ten
times the proportion of music that the same number of men would require
elsewhere; and it reverberates with ten times the noise, between the high
edifices of these lanes, that it could make in broader streets.
Nevertheless, I have no quarrel with the French soldiers; they are fresh,
healthy, smart, honest-looking young fellows enough, in blue coats and
red trousers; . . . . and, at all events, they serve as an efficient
police, making Rome as safe as London; whereas, without them, it would
very likely be a den of banditti.


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