Leti, in his entertaining and gossipping life of this most merciless of Popes, tells a story of another pasquinade, which exhibits the temper of Sixtus.

He overheard rude speeches and gossipping tattle; and was made acquainted with some domestic bickerings and feuds; and kindly, though not always discretely, endeavored to check them; but his mediation was repelled as uncalled-for interference.

Mr. Godwin's faculties have kept house, and plied their task in the work-shop of the brain, diligently and effectually: Mr. Coleridge's have gossipped away their time, and gadded about from house to house, as if life's business were to melt the hours in listless talk.

Pigeon flyers, dog fanciers, gossipping vagrants, crying children, old iron, stray hens, women with a passion for sitting on door steps, men looking at nothing with their hands in their pockets, ancient rags pushed into broken windows, and the mirage of perhaps one policeman on duty constitute the sights in the neighbourhood.

But Mary imagined that she had a very hard time, because she could not be a lady, and she associated with some idle, gossipping women, who encouraged her to find fault with her husband, because he could not put her into a palace.