Among the games pursued by the Romans we mention that called La Ruzzica, this manly, athletic, and graceful game was, and we believe still is, a very favorite pastime with the trasteverini, or those bold and picturesque, but somewhat rough and lawless fellows, who dwell beyond the Tiber, round the roots of the Vatican hill. The game, which is also called La Rotuola, resembles the ancient and classical sport of the discus, from which, as well as our game of quoits, it may descend. The rotuola, or that circular substance which the man in Pinelli's design is about to throw with such a concentration of energy, is a piece of heavy hard wood, of the shape of a cheese, but rather thicker in the middle than at the edges. It is as large as a moderate-sized cheese, and it has a slight groove running round it like the block of a pulley. A long string or thong is coiled as tight as possible round this disc. By a powerful jerk the string or throng is rapidly untwisted, and an impetus more or less strong, according to the strength of arm and the skill and knack of the player, is. given to the heavy piece of wood, which, when handled to perfection, flies with amazing velocity and to a great distance. The length of the course is generally the criterion of victory, without regard being paid to any particular aim or direction; but sometimes a peg is stuck in the earth (as in our game at quoits), and the thrower that comes nearest to the peg marks a point in the game. We have also seen the ruzzica played without any string or thong, the disc being thrown from the hands, like the wooden ball in our game of nine-pins; but, from its size and shape, and superior weight, it requires the employment of both hands, and the hands are so applied as to give it a rotatory motion. A good player will in this way hurl it to a great distance. The attitude and action of the trasteverino have been compared to those of the discobulus, or thrower of the discus; but the comparison will not strictly hold, as the ancient player throws with the right hand only, and the trasteverino invariably uses both hands. But among these dwellers in the suburb of Rome, who boast that they are the only true descendants of the ancient Romans, faces and forms may often be found as striking and as classical as those of the antique statue; and this athletic game, and the strong excitement it produces in them, bring finely into play the muscles of the body and the animated expression of the countenance. The statue of the discobulus, is attributed to Myron, one of the most celebrated sculptors of ancient Greece, who was famed for the wonderful truth and spirit with which he copied nature. He flourished nearly four centuries and a half before the Christian era. The original statue was in bronze, and of the size of life. There were anciently five admirable copies in marble, but of these only three are extant. The copy possessed by the British museum was discovered in the year 1791, in the grounds of Count Fede, in the part of the Emperor Hadrian's villa, Tiburtina, supposed to have

been the pinacotheca, or picture gallery. Though dug from beneath the soil, it was very perfect, and had suffered little injury. It is considered as the most perfect of the three marble copies of Myron's great work in bronze, the statue most celebrated among the master-pieces of Grecian art for its accurate display of technical skill and science in representing a momentary and violent action of the human body. The artist could have had no stationary model to assist his memory, for the figure is represented in action at the precise moment of delivering or throwing the discus; and that action, with the wonderful play of the limbs and body by which it is produced, lasts but for an instant, and can not possibly be made permanent to the eye. But Myron must have been an assiduous attendant at the sport, and must have watched the youth of Greece throwing the discus, as the artist at Rome may watch the trasteverini playing at la ruzzica, a difference, unfavorable to the modern painter or sculptor, being that these modern Romans, though scantily clad and stripping for the game, are yet more covered with clothes than were the ancient Greeks.

Il Giuoco alla Ruzzica, like that of la morra, is always an animated and animating scene. Prohibitions have been more than once issued by the papal government against the very popular diversion, as the trasteverini were accustomed to play in the streets, in the public squares, and on the high roads; and as it sometimes happened that legs of unwary passengers were broken or damaged by coming in contact with the rotuola or discus; but the passion for the sport has been too strong for the priestly government and its not very vigorous or efficient police. The players, however, generally shun the streets and high roads, and seek some open, unfrequented, and uncultivated space; and of such there is no want in the solitary neighborhood of the eternal city.

The game of the morra, which is very ancient in Italy, is thus played: Two men, or boys (we never saw women or girls play at it), place themselves opposite to each other, and at the same instant of time each throws out his right hand, with so many fingers open and so many shut or bent upon the palm, and each of the players, also at the same instant of time, cries out the number made by adding his adversary's open fingers to his own. Thus, if A throws out three fingers and B four, and A cries seven, and B eight, or any other number not the true one, A marks a point in the game. If both cry right, then, as a matter of course, there is a tie, and the throw goes for nothing. This to the uninitiated may seem a very childish and a very easy game, but the difficulty of it is far greater than can well be conceived without seeing it played; and success in the game does not depend upon chance, but upon superior quickness of sight. Each player knows the number of fingers he himself throws out, but he must catch at a glance the number thrown out by his adversary, whose movements, like his own, are as quick as lightning, and as he sees he must call out the joint number, his adversary doing the same.

This game is mentioned by ancient Roman writers under the name of "micare digitis," and the glittering or flashing of the finger is descriptive of its nature. The fingers are now open, now shut; the hand is now in the air, and now down at the side; and throw follows throw, and call follows call, as quick as the muscles can move or the tongue speak. The first time we saw the game played, we were amazed at this rapidity, and at the loud voices and excited passionate expression of the players, who were only playing for about a pennyworth of wine. Their eyes flashed, and their voices sounded like the simultaneous discharge of a brace of large pistols, it being scarcely possible, to our unpractised eye and ear, either to see the number of fingers that were opened, or to distinguish by the ear who cried one number or who another. But two bystanders, who acted as umpires, and who were almost equally excited, seemed to make these distinctions very well.

When the first game was decided, which happened in a very few seconds, the two fellows played another, and getting more and more inflamed, they went on throwing out hands and fingers, and bawling numbers, as quattro, sei, otto, cinque, nove, &c., until their voices were hoarse, and their arms so tired that they could no longer keep up the rapid movement. As a man gains a point by hitting the right number, he marks it with a finger of his left hand, which is kept motionless, but generally raised above the shoulder. Five points make the game, and when the thumb and four fingers of the left hand are all expanded, then the lucky owner of that hand cuts a caper and sometimes cries fatto (done)! or guadagnato (gained)! or ho vinto (I have conquered)! Not once, but many a time, have we seen the losing party, in his mad spite, bite the fingers of his right hand until the blood came. But this valuable ex

tremity of the human frame is very liable to bites in the south of Italy, for not only do men bite their thumbs to show their contempt of their enemies, in the manner Shakspere has recorded in the first scene of "Romeo and Juliet," but they also bite and almost gnaw their fingers whenever they are exceedingly vexed and disappointed. We once heard a capuchin friar, in the mercato, or great market-place, of Naples, preach rather a long sermon on the evil practice of finger-biting, which he denounced as heathenish and Saracenic. We have said that five points make the game; but we believe that morra, like whist, has its longs and shorts, and that in the long game ten points are needed. We have also said that the player throws open so many fingers of his right hand and keeps so many shut; but he may, if he chooses, throw open all the fingers of his right hand, and this upon occasions he does. It sometimes happens that both players simultaneously throw out five fingers.

The worst of the game of the morra is, that it frequently leads to violent quarreling. Involuntary mistakes will happen, and at times men will try to cheat. Notwithstanding the marvellous quickness of their keen, black, and well-practised eyes, both players and umpires will now and then be at fault, and fierce disputes will arise about the number of glittering fingers which have been thrown. Their ears too are occasionally at fault, and then with equal violence they will dispute whether it was the voice of A or the voice of B that cried the right number. Whenever fives were thrown there was a greater chance of fierce disputation, for one of the players was very likely to say that he had not extended his thumb, but had only opened his four fingers; and certainly this thumb-point, which we ourselves could never attain to, seemed to be of difficult attainment to "ipiu periti giuocatori," the most experienced players. Although private assassination and the use of the stiletto and knife had happily declined in Italy, we regret to say that some twenty years ago knives were not unfrequently drawn after a disputed game at morra. On this account, attempts have been made at various times to put down the sport; but in our time it flourished greatly and seemed indestructible. It was in vogue among the common people of Rome, and more especially among the trasteverini, those rough and somewhat turbulent fellows, previously spoken of, who dwell beyond the Tiber. But the greatest professors and most ardent followers of the game were the lazzaroni and common people of the city of Naples, and the neighboring towns in the Terra di Lavoro. In this, the sunniest part of the south, there never was fair, festa, saint's day, or other holyday, in which the game of the morra was not played for wine and nuts, melons, sweetmeats, or other refreshments, by thousands; and at these great meetings the

air rang and re-echoed with the sharp, loud-volleyed voices of the players. The confusion and wildness of noise are scarcely to be imagined, except by one who has been at the Festa della Madonna dell' Arco, or the Festa di Pie di Grotta, or some other great Neapolitan festival. In loudness of voice the Neapolitans excel every other people in the world, and they are, perhaps, never so loud-tongued as when under the excitement of this game. If mistakes and quarrels arise when the game is played singly, it may well be imagined that they are more likely to occur when many pairs are playing close together, and flashing their fingers and shouting their numbers all at one time. Moreover, on those great celebrations more wine than usual was drunk, and in these very excitable people even a slight intoxication by wine was apt to seem very near akin to madness. We forget what saint's, or what Madonna's day it was, when, being on our way from Pæstum and Salerno to Naples, we rode into the town of Torre dell' Annunziata, which stands by the seashore at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, at a short distance from the ancient city of Pompeii. It is here that the best maccaroni is made; this manufacture gives employment to many persons, and the town of Torre dell' Annunziata was one of the most prosperous, and quiet, and orderly places in the kingdom. But on this glorious summer evening, as we rode into the town, we heard the most savage yelling, and saw a great many knives flashing in the air, and fellows running hither and thither, and uttering the most fearful exclamations. At the same time some hundreds of women screamed, and shrieked, and tore their hair, or bit their fingers. It looked as if Masaniello, that marvellous fisherman, had come back to life to make a new state revolution; but we very soon ascertained, that all this hubbub and drawing of knives had origi nated in some disputed games at morra. It was more owing to the screams, and tears, and entreaties, of the women, than to any exertion of the gendarmes, that an end was put to hostilities; but this desirable event did not happen until several of the knives we had seen in the air had been wetted in human blood. Such was the tragical part of the morra. The comic part, however, was often very rich, and the game offered the quiet observer an excellent opportunity for studying expression and gesticulation.

In the summer-time, there was no going in the evening into any street or lane of the lower part of the city of Naples, without hearing the shouts of fellows that were playing at this ancient and primitive game; but we are told that his present Neapol itan majesty has so far succeeded in his social reforms as to diminish within his capital the amount and frequency of the sport.

Madame de Staël and other travellers, who wrote at the beginning of the present century, grossly exaggerated the number of the Neapolitan lazzaroni; yet, as late as the year 1827, there were certainly many hundreds of men, bearing the name of laz zaroni, who had no home or habitation; who slept pell-mell, scores together, in the porches of the churches; who had scarcely any clothes beyond a coarse cotton shirt, a pair of tattered trowsers, a red sash round the waist, and a red woollen nightcap; who gained a precarious subsistence by running of errands, or doing any chance work; and who would never work at all, if they had but money enough to buy food for the day. We are informed by a friend, in a recent letter from Naples, that the last of these men have disappeared, or are fast disappearing, and that a genuine laz zaro is now a very rare sight. They were once a power in the state, and had their capo, or head, or chief, who was elected by their own suffrages, and officially recog nised by king, church, and government. The game of the morra may have suffered through this change, although the game was far from being confined to the laz

zaroni.

The canofieno, or Roman swing, is a lively representation of an animated scene which is very common among the trasteverini and the peasantry of the states of the church. The construction of this Roman swing is sufficiently shown in the engraving. The ropes which support the strong plank are sometimes fastened to a revolving axis, and sometimes merely passed over a beam or rafter. In the latter case, when greasing is neglected, the ropes are apt to wear away and break; and then down comes the whole party with a great crash, and not without peril to legs and bodies. The danger, however, is the less from the comparatively slight elevation and limited play of the swing. The Romans, who have no such machine, would be alarmed at the swings which are used at our places of amusement.

Such as it is, the canofieno is a very favorite amusement among the Roman peasantry of all ages. We have seen three generations upon it at once-a grandfather

and a grandmother, their son and their son's wife, with her children. At times we have seen one or two Franciscan friars or bearded capuchins seated upon the plank, and singing and hallooing with the rest; but this was in recondite quarters, where the eyes of their superiors could not reach them, and when their cerca, or begginground, had been successful, and their libations unusually copious. To fairs and rustic festivals of all sorts the monks of the mendicant orders always repaired in considerable numbers; for every festa is the day of some saint whom they are bound to honor, and they know full well that good cheer and sport in the open air quicken generosity, and that the hands as well as the hearts of the faithful are most open on a gay summer holyday. Moreover, these begging friars spring from the common people, and are always men of the people. Now and then an old tabellone, or notary, or other sedate, starch Roman citizen, was to be seen on the plank, in his solemn suit of faded black, and with spectacles on nose--those antiquated, horn-rimmed spectacles, with nothing but the bridge to keep them on the nose, and without any sides; in short, the spectacles that are worn by the miser in Quintin Messys's or Matsys's celebrated picture at Windsor castle, and in other paintings by the old Dutch masters. It should seem that man has a natural liking for every kind of swinging, except hanging. There was a Neapolitan doctor and theorist of the last century who thought, that if men and women would only swing enough, they might swing away all their distempers and disorders, and he wrote a book to prove it. Like other theorists, he only carried the matter too far. In many cases this exercise is well known to be favorable to health. In cases of insanity the swing is said to have been used with good effect; but here the greatest advantage has been found, not from the pendular motion, but from the rotatory motion. That great turner of lines and rhymes, Dr. Darwin, first suggested the method of "spinning a madman" on a rotatory swing; and a Dr. Cox caused such a swing or roundabout to be made, and tried the experiment in a very bad case, and with such striking success, that he attributed to it the complete recovery of his patient. Dr. Cox afterward employed the rotatory swing in many other cases, and found this singular remedy generally efficacious, and never prejudicial. Father Linguiti, in the early part of the present century, introduced the rotatory swing, or roundabout, or whirligig, into the great hospital for the insane which he organized at Aversa; and the use of it in such places is now universal in Italy, where a refractory patient, instead of being beaten or subjected to other harsh severities, as in former times, is merely whirled or spun round on a pivot. But this is a matter too serious to accompany Pinelli's hilarious design.