I sent J----- to buy some, and, tasting one, it resembled
an unspeakably bad doughnut, without any sweetening. In fact, it was
sour, for the Romans like their bread, and all their preparations of
flour, in a state of acetous fermentation, which serves them instead of
salt or other condiment. This fritter-shop had grown up in a night, like
Aladdin's palace, and vanished as suddenly; for after standing through
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, it was gone on Monday morning, and a
charcoal-strewn place on the pavement where the furnace had been was the
only memorial of it. It was curious to observe how immediately it became
a lounging-place for idle people, who stood and talked all day with the
fritter-friers, just as they might at any old shop in the basement, of a
palace, or between the half-buried pillars of the Temple of Minerva,
which had been familiar to them and their remote grandfathers.
April 14th.--Yesterday afternoon I drove with Mr. and Mrs. Story and Mr.
Wilde to see a statue of Venus, which has just been discovered, outside
of the Porta Portese, on the other side of the Tiber.
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