FROM THE
OAK TO THE OLIVE.

A PLAIN RECORD OF A PLEASANT JOURNEY.

BY
JULIA WARD HOWE

BOSTON:
LEE AND SHEPARD.
1868.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, In the year 1868, by
JULIA WARD HOWE,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
STEREOTYPED AT THE
BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY,
19 Spring Lane.

TO
S. G. H.,
THE STRENUOUS CHAMPION OF GREEK LIBERTY
AND OF HUMAN RIGHTS,
IS OFFERED SUCH SMALL HOMAGE AS THE
DEDICATION OF THIS VOLUME
CAN CONFER.

FROM THE OAK TO THE OLIVE.

—————

PRELIMINARIES.

Not being, at this moment, in the pay of any press, whether foreign or domestic, I will not, at this my third landing in English country, be in haste to accomplish the correspondent's office of extroversion, and to expose all the inner processes of thought and of nature to the gaze of an imaginary public, often, alas! a delusory one, and difficult to be met with. No individual editor, nor joint stock company, bespoke my emotions before my departure. I am, therefore, under no obligation to furnish for the market, with the elements of time and of postage unhandsomely curtailed. Instead, then, of that breathless steeple chase after the butterfly of the moment, with whose risks and hurry I am intimately acquainted, I feel myself enabled to look around me at every step which I shall take on paper, and to represent, in my small literary operations, the three dimensions of time, instead of the flat disc of the present.

And first as to my pronoun. The augmentative We is essential for newspaper writing, because people are liable to be horsewhipped for what they put in the sacred columns of a daily journal. We may represent a vague number of individuals, less inviting to, and safer from, the cowhide, than the provoking egomet ipse. Or perhaps the We derives from the New Testament incorporation of devils, whose name was legion, for we are many. In the Fichtean philosophy, also, there are three pronouns comprised in the personal unity whose corporeal effort applies this pen to this paper, to wit, the I absolute, the I limited, and the I resulting from the union of these two. So that a philosopher may say we as well as a monarch or a penny-a-liner. Yet I, at the present moment, incline to fall back upon my record of baptism, and to confront the white sheet, whose blankness I trust to overcome, in the character of an agent one and indivisible.

Nor let it be supposed that these preliminary remarks undervalue the merits and dignity of those who write for ready money, whose meals and travels are at the expense of mysterious corporations, the very cocktail which fringes their daily experience being thrown in as a brightener of their wits and fancies. Thus would I, too, have written, had anybody ordered me to do so. I can hurry up my hot cakes like another, when there is any one to pay for them. But, leisure being accorded me, I shall stand with my tablets in the marketplace, hoping in the end to receive my penny, upon a footing of equality with those who have borne the burden and heat of the day.

With the rights of translation, however, already arranged for in the Russian, Sclavonian, Hindustanee, and Fijian dialects, I reserve to myself the right to convert my pronoun, and to write a chapter in we whenever the individual I shall seem to be insufficient. With these little points agreed upon beforehand, to prevent mistakes,—since a book always represents a bargain,—I will enter, without further delay, upon what I intend as a very brief but cogent chronicle of a third visit to Europe, the first two having attained no personal record.

THE VOYAGE.

The steamer voyage is now become a fact so trite and familiar as to call for no special illustration at these or any other hands. Yet voyages and lives resemble each other in many particulars, and differ in as many others. Ours proves almost unprecedented for smoothness, as well as for safety. We start on the fatal Wednesday, as twice before, expecting the fatal pang. Our last vicarious purchase on shore was a box of that energetic mustard, so useful as a counter-irritant in cases of internal commotion. The bitter partings are over, the dear ones heartily commended to Heaven, we see, as in a dream, the figure of command mounted upon the paddle-box. We cling to a camp stool near the red smoke-stack, and cruelly murmur to the two rosy neophytes who are our companions, "In five minutes you will be more unhappy than you ever were or ever dreamed of being." They reply with sweet, unconscious looks of wonder, that ignorance of danger which the recruit carries into his first battle, or which carries him into it. But five minutes pass, and twelve times five, and the moment for going below does not come. In the expected shape, in fact, it does not arrive at all. We do not resolve upon locomotion, nor venture into the dining saloon; but leaning back upon a borrowed chaise longue, we receive hurried and fragmentary instalments of victuals, and discuss with an improvised acquaintance the aspects of foreign and domestic travel. The plunge into the state-room at bedtime, and the crawl into the narrow berth, are not without their direr features, which the sea-smells and confined air aggravate. We hear bad accounts of A, B, and C, but our neophytes patrol the deck to the last moment, and rise from their dive, on the second morning, fresher than ever.

Our steamer is an old one, but a favorite, and as steady as a Massachusetts matron of forty. Our captain is a kindly old sea-dog, who understands his business, and does not mind much else. To the innocent flatteries of the neophytes he opposes a resolute front. They will forget him, he says, as soon as they touch land. They protest that they will not, and assure him that he shall breakfast, dine, and sup with them in Boston, six months hence, and that he shall always remain their sole, single, and ideal captain; at all of which he laughs as grimly as Jove is said to do at lovers' perjuries.

Our company is a small one, after the debarkation at Halifax, where sixty-five passengers leave us,—among whom are some of the most strenuous euchreists. The remaining thirty-six are composed partly of our own country people,—of whom praise or blame would be impertinent in this connection,—partly of the Anglo-Saxon of the day, in the pre-puritan variety. Of the latter, as of the former, we will waive all discriminating mention, having porrigated to them the dexter of good-will, with no hint of aboriginal tomahawks to be exhumed hereafter. Some traits, however, of the Anglais de voyage, as seen on his return from an American trip, may be vaguely given, without personality or fear of offence.

The higher in grade the culture of the European traveller in America, the more reverently does he speak of what he has seen and learned. To the gentle-hearted, childhood and its defects are no less sacred than age and its decrepitude; withal, much dearer, because full of hope and of promise. The French barber sneezes out "Paris" at every step taken on the new land. That is the utmost his ratiocination can do; he can perceive that Boston, Washington, Chicago, are not Paris. The French exquisite flirts, flatters the individual, and depreciates the commonwealth. The English bagman hazards the glibbest sentences as to the falsity of the whole American foundation. Not much behind him lags the fox-hunting squire. The folly and uselessness of our late war supply the theme of diatribes as eloquent as twenty-five letters can make them. Obliging aperçus of the degradation and misery in store for us are vouchsafed at every opportunity. But it is when primogeniture is touched upon, or the neutrality of England in the late war criticised, that the bellowing of the sacred bulls becomes a brazen thunder. After listening to their voluminous complaints of the shortcomings of western civilization, we are tempted to go back to a set of questions asked and answered many centuries ago.

"What went ye out into the wilderness for to see? A man clothed in soft raiment? Behold, they that live delicately dwell in kings' houses. But what went ye out for to see? A prophet? Yea, I say unto you, And more than a prophet." For the prophet only foretells what is to be, but the prophetic nation is working out and fulfilling the prophet's future.

Peace, however, peace between us and them. Let the bagman return to his business, the squire to his five-barred gate. We wish them nothing worse than to stay at home, once they have got there. Not thus do the Goldwin Smiths, the Liulph Stanleys, take the altitude of things under a new horizon. They have those tools and appliances of scientific thought which build just theories and strait conclusions. The imperfection and the value of human phenomena are too well understood by them to allow them to place all of the values in the old world, and all of the imperfections in the new. And, apropos of this, we have an antidote to all the poison of gratuitous malignity in the shape of M. Auguste Laugel's thorough and appreciative treatise entitled The United States during the War. From depths of misconception which we cannot fathom we turn to his pages, and see the truths of our record and of our conviction set forth with a simplicity and elegance which should give his work a permanent value. To Americans it must be dear as a righteous judgment; to Europeans as a vindication of their power of judging.

It must not, however, be supposed that our whole traversée is a squabble, open or suppressed, between nationalities which should contend only in good will. The dreamy sea-days bring, on the contrary, much social chat and comfort. Two of the Britons exercise hospitality of tea, of fresh butter, of drinks cunningly compounded. One of these glows at night like a smelting furnace, and goes about humming in privileged ears, "The great brew is about to begin." For this same great brew he ties a white apron before his stout person, breaks ten eggs into a bowl, inflicting flagellation on the same, empties as many bottles of ale in a tin pan, and flies off to the galley, whence he returns with a smoking, frothing mixture, which is dispensed in tumblers, and much appreciated by the recipients. In good fellowship these two Britons are not deficient, and the restriction of the alphabet, dimly alluded to above, does not lie at their door.

After rocking, and dreaming, and tumbling; after drowsy attempts to get hold of other people's ideas and to disentangle your own; after a week's wonder over the hot suppers of such as dine copiously at four P. M., and the morning cocktails of those who drink whiskey in all its varieties before we separate for the night; after repeated experiments, which end by suiting our gait and diet to an ever-mobile existence, in which our prejudices are the only stable points, our personal restraints the only fixed facts,—we fairly reach the other side. The earliest terrene object which we behold is a light-house some sixty miles out at sea, whose occupants, we hope, are not resolutely bent upon social enjoyment. Here the sending up of blue lights and rockets gives us a cheerful sense of some one besides ourselves. Queenstown, our next point, is made at two A. M., and left after weary waiting for the pilot, but still before convenient hours for being up. Some hours later we heave the lead, and enjoy the sight of as much terra firma as can be fished up on the greased end of the same. Our last day on board is marred by a heavy and penetrating fog. We are in the Channel, but can see neither shore. In the early morning we arrive at Liverpool, and, after one more of those good breakfasts, and a mild encounter with the custom-house officers, we part from our late home, its mingled associations and associates to be recalled hereafter with various shades of regard and regret. The good captain, having been without sleep for two nights, does not come to take leave of us—a neglect which almost moves the neophytes to tears. The two veterans console them, however; and now all parties are in the little lighter which carries the steamer's passengers and luggage to the dock. Here, three shillings' worth of cab and horse convey us and ours, a respectable show of trunks, to the hotel of our choice—the Washington by name. We commend this cheapness of conveyance, a novel feature in American experience. At the hotel we find a comfortable parlor, and, for the first time in many days, part from our wrappings. After losing ourselves among the Egyptian china of our toilet set, wondering at the width of beds and warmth of carpets, we descend to the coffee-room, order dinner, and feel that we have again taken possession of ourselves.

LIVERPOOL.

A good deal of our time here is spent in the prosaic but vital occupation of getting something to eat. If Nature abhors a vacuum, she does so especially when, after twelve days of a fluctuating and predatory existence, the well-shaken traveller at last finds a stable foundation for self and victuals. The Washington being announced as organized on the American plan, we descend to the coffee-room with the same happy confidence which would characterize our first appearance at the buffet of the Tremont House or Fifth Avenue Hotel. But here no waiter takes possession of you and your wants, hastening to administer both to the mutual advantage of guest and landlord. You sit long unnoticed; you attract attention only by a desperate effort. Having at length secured the medium through which a dinner may be ordered, the minister (he wears a black dress coat and white trimmings) disappears with an air of "Will you have it now, or wait till you can get it?" which our subsequent experience entirely justifies. We learn later that a meal ordered half an hour beforehand will be punctually served.

And here, except in cases of absolute starvation, we shall dismiss the meal question altogether, and devote ourselves to nobler themes. We ransack the smoky and commercial city in search of objects of interest. The weather being incessantly showery, we lay the foundation of our English liberty in the purchase of two umbrellas, capable each of protecting two heads. Of clothes we must henceforward be regardless. In the streets, barefooted beggary strikes us, running along in the wet, whining and coaxing. We visit the boasted St. George's Hall, where, among other statues, is one of the distinguished Stephenson, of railroad memory. Here the court is in session for the assizes. The wigs and gowns astound the neophytes. The ushers in green and orange livery shriek "Silence!" through every sentence of judge or counsel. No one can hear what is going on. Probably all is known beforehand. At the hotel, the Greek committee wait upon the veteran, with asseverations and hiccoughings of to us incomprehensible emotions. We resist the theatre, with the programme of "Lost in London," expecting soon to experience the sensation without artistic intervention. We sleep, missing the cradle of the deep, and on the morrow, by means of an uncanny little ferry-boat, reach the Birkenhead station, and are booked for Chester.

CHESTER—LICHFIELD.

The Grosvenor Inn receives us, not at all in the fashion of the hostelry of twenty years ago. A new and spacious building forming a quadrangle around a small open garden, the style highly architectural and somewhat inconvenient; waiters got up after fashion plates; chambermaids with apologetic caps, not smaller than a dime nor larger than a dinner plate; a handsome sitting-room, difficult to warm; airy sleeping-rooms; a coffee-room in which our hunger and cold seek food and shelter; a housekeeper in a striped silk gown,—these are the first features with which we become familiar at the Grosvenor. The veteran falling ill detains us there for the better part of two days; and we employ the interim of his and our necessities in exploring the curious old town, with its many relics of times long distant. The neophytes here see their first cathedral, and are in raptures with nothing so much as with its dilapidation. We happen in during the afternoon hour of cathedral service, and the sexton, finding that we do not ask for seats, fastens upon us with the zeal of a starved leech upon a fresh patient, and leads us as weary a dance as Puck led the Athenian clowns. This chase after antiquity proves to have something unsubstantial about it. The object is really long dead and done with. These ancient buildings are only its external skeleton, the empty shell of the tortoise. No effort of imagination can show us how people felt when these dark passages and deserted enclosures were full of the arterial warmth and current of human life. The monumental tablets tell an impossible tale. The immortal spirit of things, which is past, present, and future, dwells not in these relics, but lives in the descent of noble thoughts, in the perpetuity of moral effort which makes man human. We make these reflections shivering, while the neophytes explore nave and transept, gallery and crypt. A long tale does the old sexton tell, to which they listen with ever-wondering expectation. Meantime the cold cathedral service has ended. Canon, precentor, and choir have departed, with the very slender lay attendance. In a commodious apartment, by a bright fire, we recover our frozen joints a little. Here stands a full-length portrait of his most gracious etc., etc. The sexton, preparing for a huge jest, says to us, "Ladies, this represents the last king of America." The most curious thing we see in the cathedral is the room in which the ecclesiastical court held its sittings. The judges' seat and the high-backed benches still form a quadrangular enclosure within a room of the same shape. Across one corner of this enclosure is mounted a chair, on which the prisoner, accused of the intangible offence of heresy or witchcraft, was perforce seated. I seem to see there a face and figure not unlike my own, the brow seamed with cabalistic wrinkles. Add a little queerness to the travelling dress, a pinch or two to the black bonnet, and how easy were it to make a witch out of the sibyl of these present leaves! The march from one of these types to the other is one of those retrograde steps whose contrast only attests the world's progress. The sibylline was an excellent career for a queer and unexplained old woman. To make her a sorceress was an ingenious device for getting rid of a much-decried element of the social variety. Poor Kepler's years of solitary glory and poverty were made more wretched by the danger which constantly threatened his aged mother, who was in imminent danger of burning, on account of her supposed occult intelligences with the powers of darkness.

After a long and chilly wandering, we dismiss our voluble guide with a guerdon which certainly sends him home to keep a silver wedding with his ancient wife. The next day, the veteran's illness detained us within the ancient city, and we contemplated at some leisure its quaint old houses, which in Boston would not stand five days. They have been much propped and cherished, and the new architecture of the town does its best to continue the traditions of the old. The Guide to Chester, in which we regretfully invest a shilling, presents a list of objects of interest which a week would not more than exhaust. One of these—the Roodeye—is an extensive meadow with a silly legend, and is now utilized as a race-course. We see the winning post, the graduated seats, the track. For the rest,—

We visit the outside of a tiny church of ancient renown,—St. Olave's,—but, dreading the eternal sexton with the eternal story, we do not attempt to effect an entrance. The much-famed Roman bath we find in connection with a shop at which newspapers are sold. We descend a narrow staircase, and view much rubbish in a small space. For description, see Chester Guide. One of our party gets into the bath, and comes out none the cleaner. Spleen apart, however, the ruin is probably authentic, with its deep spring and worn arches. Near the Grosvenor Hotel is a curious arcade, built in a part of the old wall—for Chester was a fortified place. A portion of the old castle still stands, but we fail to visit its interior. The third morning sees us depart, having been quite comfortably entertained at the Grosvenor, even to the indulgence of sweetmeats with our tea, which American extravagance we propose speedily to abjure. Our national sins, however, still cling to us.

Although the servants are "put in the bill," the cringing civility with which they follow us to the coach leads me to suspect that the nimble sixpence might find its way to their acceptance without too severe a gymnastic. En route, now, in a comfortable compartment, with hot water to our feet, according to the European custom. Our way to Lichfield lies through an agricultural region, and the fine English mutton appear to be forward. Small lambs cuddle near magnificent fat mothers. The wide domains lie open to the view. Everything attests the concentration of landed property in the hands of the few. We stop at Lichfield, attracted by the famous cathedral. The Swan Inn receives, but cannot make us comfortable, a violent wind sweeping through walls and windows. Having eaten and drunk, we implore our way to the cathedral, St. Chadde, which we find beautiful without, and magnificently restored within. Many monuments, ancient and modern, adorn it, with epitaphs of Latin in every stage of plagiarism. A costly monument to some hero of the Sutlej war challenges attention, with its tame and polished modern sphinxes. Tombs of ancient abbots we also find, and one recumbent carving of a starved and shrunken figure, whose leanness attests some ascetic period not famous in sculpture. The pulpit is adorned with shining brass and stones, principally cornelians and agates. The organ discoursed a sonata of Beethoven for the practice of the organist, but secondarily for our delectation. A box with an inscription invites us to contribute our mite to the restoration of the cathedral, which may easily cost as much as the original structure. Carving, gilding, inlaid work, stained glass—no one circumstance of ecclesiastical gewgawry is spared or omitted; and trusting that some to us unknown centre of sanctification exists, to make the result of the whole something other than idol worship, we comply with the gratifying suggestion of our wealth and generosity. After satisfying ourselves with the cathedral, we look round wonderingly for the recipient of some further fee. He appears in the shape of a one-eyed man who invites us to ascend the tower. Guided by a small boy, Neophyte No. 1 executes this ascent, and of course reports a wonderful prospect, which we are content to take on hearsay. Leaving the cathedral, we seek the house in which Dr. Johnson is said to have been born. It is, strange to say, much like other houses, the lower story having been turned into a furnishing shop, where we buy a pincushion tidy for remembrance. In an open space, in front of the house, sits a statue of the renowned and redoubted doctor, supported by a pedestal with biographical bas-reliefs. Below one of these is inscribed, "He hears Sacheverell." The design represents a small child in a father's arms, presented before a wiggy divine, who can, of course, be none other than the one in question. While these simple undertakings are planned and executed, the veteran and elder neophyte engage a one-horse vehicle, and madly fly to visit an insane asylum. We shiver till dinner in the chilly parlor of the inn, and inter ourselves at an early hour in the recesses of a huge feather-bed, where the precious jewel, sleep, is easily found. And the next morning sees us en route for London.

At one of the stations between Lichfield and London, we encounter a group whose chief figure is that of a pretty little lady, blithe as a golden butterfly, apparelled for the chase. Her dress consists of a narrow-skirted habit, of moderate length, beneath which we perceive a pair of stout boots, of a description not strictly feminine. A black plush paletot corresponds with her black skirt. A shining stove-pipe crowns her yellow tresses. As she emerges from the railway carriage, a young man of elegant aspect approaches her. He wears white hunting trousers, high black boots, a black plush coat, and carries a hunting whip. The similarity of color in the costumes leads us to suppose that the wearers belong to some hunting association. He is at least Sir Charles, she, Lady Arabella. He accosts her with evident pleasure, and is allowed a shake of the hand. An elderly relative in the background, a servant in top boots, who touches his hat as if it could cure the plague,—these complete the picture.

At the same station we descry another huntsman in white breeches, scarlet cap, and overcoat. We learn that there are two meets to-day in this region, but our interests are with the black and white party. Farewell, Sir Charles and Lady Arabella. Joyous be your gallop, light your leap over five-barred gates. The sly fox Cupid may be chasing you, while you chase poor Renard. Prosit.

LONDON.

"Charing Cross Hotel? 'Ere you are, sir;" and a small four-wheeled cab, with a diminutive horse and beer-tinted driver, has us up at the door of the same. In front, within the precincts of the hotel court, stands the ancient cross, or that which replaces it, and around radiate cook-shops and book-shops, jewellers and victuallers and milliners. The human river of the Strand fluxes and refluxes before this central spot, and Trafalgar Square, and Waterloo Place, and Westminster Abbey, and the Houses of Parliament are near. Cabs spring up like daisies and primroses beneath the footsteps of spring. At the hotel they make a gratifying fuss about us. They seize upon all of us but our persons; the lift, (Americane—elevator) does that, and noiselessly lodges us on the second floor, where we occupy a decent sitting-room, with bedrooms en suite. A fire of soft coal soon glows in the grate. A smart chambermaid takes our orders. We get out our address-book, rub up our recollections, enclose and send our cards, then run out and take a dip in the Strand, and expand to the full consciousness that we are in the mighty city which cannot fall because there is no hollow deep enough to hold it.

We have a quiet day and a half at the hotel before we receive the echo of our cards. This interval we improve by visits to the houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey, where we pay our full price, and visit the royal chapels with their many tombs. At the recumbent figures of Mary Stuart and Elizabeth we pause to think of the dramatic ghosts which will not allow them to rest in their graves. Poetry is resurrection, and for us who have seen Rachel and Ristori, Mary and Elizabeth are still living and speaking lessons of human passion and misfortune. These marbles hold their crumbling bones, but we have seen them in far America, doing a night's royalty before a democratic audience, and demanding to be largely paid for the same.

The frescoes and statues in the long corridors of the Houses of Parliament deserve a more minute study than we are able to give them. The former show considerable progress in the pictorial art during the seventeen years which divide our present from our past observations. They represent noted events in English history, the last sleep of Argyle, the execution of Montrose, and so on. Among them we see the departure of the May Flower, but not the battle of Bunker Hill. The statues perpetuate the memories of public men, including a great variety both as to opinion and as to service. The solidity of all these adornments and arrangements well deserves the praise with which English authorities have been wont to comment upon them. A little sombre and sober in their tone, they are expressive of the taste and feeling of the nation. Parliament is now in session, and various interesting measures and reforms are under contemplation. Among these are the extension of the elective franchise, the abolition of flogging in the army, and the change of the whole long-transmitted system by which commissions in the latter are conferred or purchased. The last is perhaps a more democratic measure than is dreamed of. Throw open the military and church benefices to the competition of the most able and deserving, and the younger sons of houses esteemed noble will stand no better chance than others. They will then simply earn their bread where they can get it. Then, down comes primogeniture, then the union of state and church, then the prestige of royalty. This last we think to be greatly on the wane. The English prefer an hereditary to an elective symbol of supreme power. The permitted descent in the female line prevents the inconvenient issues to which the failure of an heir male might give rise. The Georges rose to great respectability in the third person, and sank to a disreputable level in the fourth. The present queen is an excellently behaved woman, and has adhered strictly to her public and private duties. Her long and strict widowhood is a little carped at by people in general, the personal sentiment having seemed to encroach upon the public career and office. But the Prince of Wales will be held to strict and sensible behavior, and, failing of it, will be severely dealt with. The English people will endure no second season of Carlton House, no letting down of manly reserve and womanly character by the spectacle of royal favorites, bankrupt at the fireside, but current in the world. All this John Bull will not put up with again. Nor will any Christendom, save that Frankish and monkeyish one which has yet to learn that true freedom of thought is not to be had without purity of conscience, and which, in its desire to be polite, holds the door wider open to bad manners than to good ones.

Rash words! What noble, thoughtful Frenchmen have not we known, and the world with us! Shall boastful Secesh and blustering Yankee, or the sordid, shining shoddy fool stand for the American? Yet these are the figures with which Europe is most familiar. So let us fling no smallest pebble at the nation of Des Cartes, Montesquieu, Pascal, and De Tocqueville. It is not in one, but in all countries that extremes meet. And in this connection a word.

The less we know about a thing, the easier to write about it. To give quite an assured and fluent account of a country, we should lose no time on our first arrival. The first impression is the strongest. Familiarity constantly wears off the edge of observation. The face of the new region astonishes us once, and once only. We soon grow used to it, and forget to describe it. The first day of our arrival in Liverpool or in London gave us volumes to write, which have proved as evanescent as the pictures of a swift panorama, vanishing to return no more. For now we are seated in London as though we had always lived there. We may sooner astonish it with our western accent, unconsidered costume, and wild coiffure, than it can rivet our attention with its splendors and its queernesses, its squares, fountains, equipages, cabmen, well-dressed and well-mannered circles. This for the features, for the surface. But for the depth and spirit of things, the longer we explore, the less sanguine do we feel of being able to exhaust them. We sink our deepest shaft, and write upon it, "Thus far our abilities and opportunities; far more remains than we can ever bring to light."

And, apropos of this terrible familiarity with things once discerned, let me say that when we shall have been two days in heaven, we shall not know it any longer, which is one reason why we must always be getting there, but never arrive. Pope's old-fashioned line, "always to be blest," expresses profoundly this philosophical necessity, although he saw it in a simply didactic light, and stated it accordingly. The line none the less takes its place in the stately train of the ideal philosophy, to which those have best contributed who have been least aware of the fact of their having done so. "Lord, when saw I thee naked and an hungered," etc., etc. On some smallest, obscurest occasion probably, when, the recognized form and the ignored spirit presenting themselves together, thy hospitable bosom received the one, and left the other to take care of itself.

Our neophytes take this great Babel with the charming at-homeness to which our paragraph alludes. They devour London as if it were the perpetual bread and butter which their father's house keeps always cut and spread for them; cab hire, great dinners, distinguished company, the lofty friend's equipage and livery, lent for precious occasions,—all this seems as much a matter of course as Lindley Murray's rules, or the Creed and the Commandments. Joachim? Of course they will hear Joachim, and the Opera, if it be good enough, and Mr. Dickens. Lady ——, Duke of So and so. Very well in their way. Presented at court? They wouldn't mind, provided it were not too tedious. Mr. Carlyle? Herbert Spencer? Yes, they have heard tell of them.

Happy season of youth, which can find nothing more reverend than its possibilities, more glorious than its unwasted powers! In spite of all the new views and theories, I say, let children be born, and let women nurse them and bring them up, and let us have young people to take our work where we leave it, laughing at our limitations, and excelling us with noble strides; to pause some day, and remember our lessons, and weep over our pains, not the less, O God of the future, surpassing us! So let children continue to be born, and let no one attempt to reconstruct society at the expense of one hair of the head of these little ones, ourselves in hope as well as in memory.

ST. PAUL'S—THE JAPANESE.

The first feature of novelty in visiting St. Paul's Cathedral is the facility for going thither afforded by the city railways,—one of which swiftly deposits us in Cannon Street, whence, with the Cathedral in full sight, we beg our way to the entrance, so far as information goes,—one only of its several doors being open to the public at all times. The second is the crypt occupied and solemnized by the ponderous funereal pomps of the late Duke of Wellington. In conjunction with these must be mentioned the Nelson monument. These two men have been the great deliverers of England in modern times, and there is, no doubt, a certain heartiness in the gratitude that attends their memory. The duke's mausoleum is of solid porphyry, highly polished, in a quadrangular enclosure, at each of whose four corners flames a gas-jet, fixed on a porphyry shaft. Behind this a large space is filled by the huge funereal car which bore the hero to this place of rest. It is of cast iron, furnished by the cannon taken in his victories. In it are harnessed effigies of the six horses that dragged it, in the veritable trappings worn on the occasion. The heavy black draperies of the car are edged with a colored border, representing the orders worn by the duke. And here the care of England will, no doubt, preserve them, with the nodding hearse-plumes, and all the monuments of that holiday of woe, to moulder as long as such things can possibly hold together. For there is a point at which the most illustrious antiquity degenerates into dirt. And in England the past and present will yet have some awkward controversies to settle; for the small island cannot always have room for both, and to cramp and crowd the one for the heraldic display of the other will not be good housekeeping, according to the theories of to-day. So, when the fox-hunting squire tells us that his chief public aim and occupation will be to keep his county conservative, we think that this should mean to cheat the honest and laborious peasantry out of their eye teeth; though how they should be ignorant enough to be outwitted by him, is a question which makes us pause as over an unexplored abyss of knownothingism.

St. Paul's is clearly organized for the extortion of shillings and sixpences. So much for seeing the bell, clock, and whispering gallery; so much for the crypt. You are pressed, too, at every turn, to purchase guide-books, each more authentic than the last. There, as elsewhere, we go about spilling our small change at every step, and wondering where it will all end. We remember the debtors' prisons which still abound in England, and endeavor to view the younger neophyte in the sober livery of Little Dorrit.

The only occasion of public amusement that we improve, after the one happy hearing of Joachim, is an evening performance of the Japanese jugglers, which remains fresh and vivid in our recollections, with all its barbaric smoothness and perfection.

The first spectacle which we behold is that of a chattering and shrieking monkey of a man, who, squatting on his haunches, visibly fills a tea-cup with water, inverts it upon a pile of papers without spilling a drop, and pulls out layer after layer of those papers, all perfectly dry, which he waves at us with a childish joy. By and by, he restores the cup to its original position, and then empties its contents into another vessel before our eyes. Another, a top-spinning savage, continually whirls his top into that state which the boys call "sleep," and spins it, thus impelled, along the sharp edge of a steel sword, up to the point and back again, and along the border of a paper fan, with other deeds which it were tedious to enumerate. While these feats go on, two funny little Japanese children, oddly bundled up according to the patterns of the two sexes, toddle about and chatter with the elders, probably for the purpose of illustrating the features of family life in Japan. A young creature, said to be the wife of six unpronounceable syllables, strums on a monotonous stringed instrument, and screeches, sometimes striking an octave, but successfully dodging every other interval. Both in speech and in song the tones of these people betray an utter want of command over the inflections of the voice. Every elevation is a scream, every depression, con rispetto, a grunt. And when, in addition to the song and strumming, the little ones lustily beat a large wooden tea-box with wooden weapons, we begin to waver a little about the old proverb, De gustibus non disputandum est. The beautiful butterfly trick, however, consoles our eyes for what our ears have suffered. The conjurer twists first one, then two, butterflies out of a bit of white paper, and, by means of a fan, causes them to fly and poise as if they were coquetting with July breezes. When, at last, he presents a basket of flowers, the illusion is perfect. They settle, fly again, and hover round, in true coleopteric fashion.

But the acrobatic exhibition is that which beggars all that our overworked sensibilities have endured at the hands of rope-dancer or equestrian. Blondin himself, Hanlon in the flying trapeze, are less perfect and less terrible. Acrobat No. 1 appears in an athlete's costume of white linen. He binds a stout silken tie around his head—a precaution whose object is later understood. He then gets into a small metal triangle with a running cord attached, and is swung up to the neighborhood of the high, arched ceiling, where various cross-pieces, slight in appearance, are attached. To one of these he directs his venturous flight, and letting his triangle depart, he takes his station with his legs firmly closed upon the cross-piece, his head hanging down, his hands free. Acrobat No. 2 now comes upon the scene. Mounting in a second triangle, he is swung to a certain height at a distance of some twenty or more feet from the first performer. A bamboo pole is here handed him, of which he manages to convey the upper end within the grasp of the latter. And now, swinging loose from his triangle, he hangs at the lower end of the bamboo, his steadfast colleague holding fast the upper end. And this mere straight line, with only the natural jointings of the cane, becomes to him a domain, a palace of ease. Now he clings to it apparently with one finger, throwing out the other hand and both feet. Now he clings by one foot, his head being down, and his hands occupied with a fan. There is, in fact, no name for the singularities with which he amazes us for at least a quarter of an hour. No. 1 always holds on like grim death. No. 2 seems at times to hold on by nothing. All the while one of their number chatters volubly in the Japanese dialect, directing attention to the achievements of the two pendent heroes. Our thoughts recurred forcibly to a dialogue long familiar in our own country:—

"Wat's dat darkening up de hole?" asks Cuffee in the she bear's den to Cuffee without, who is forcibly detaining the returned she bear by one extremity.

"If de tail slips through my fingers, you'll find out," is the curt reply, and end of the story.

But the pole did not slip through, and, finally, the second triangle was swung towards acrobat No. 2, who relinquished his hold of the bamboo, and intwining his legs about it, pleasantly made his descent with his head downwards, afterwards setting himself to rights with one shake. Acrobat No. 1 now condescends to come down from his high position, also with his head down, and a cool and consummate demeanor. But he walks off from the stage as if his late inverted view of it had given him something to think of. And in all this, not one jerk, one hasty snatch, one fall and recovery. All goes with the rounded smoothness of machinery. These gymnasts have perfected the mechanism of the body, but they have given it nothing to do that is worth doing.

SOCIETY.

We bite at the tempting bait of London society a little eagerly. In our case, as veterans, it is like returning to a delicious element from which we have long been weaned. The cheerfulness with which English people respond to the modest presentment of a card well-motived, the cordiality with which they welcome an old friend, once truly a friend, may well offset the reserve with which they respond to advances made at random, and the resolute self-defence of the British Lion in particular against all vague and vagabond enthusiasms. Carlyle's wrath at the Americans who homaged and tormented him prompted a grandiose vengeance. He called them a nation of hyperbores. Not for this do we now vigorously let him alone, but because his spleeny literary utterances these many years attest the precise moment in which bright Apollo left him. The most brilliant genius should beware of the infirmity of the fireside and admiring few, whose friendship applauds his poorest sayings, and, at the utmost, shrugs its shoulders where praise is out of the question.

Our remembrance of the London of twenty-four years ago is, indeed hyperdelightful, and of that description which one does not ask to have repeated, so perfect is it in the first instance. A second visit was less social and more secluded in its opportunities. But now—for what reason it matters not; would it were that of our superior merit—we find the old delightful account reopened, the friendly visits frequent, and the luxurious invitations to dinner occupy every evening of our short week in London, crowding out theatres and opera,—the latter now just in the bud. To these dissipations a new one has been added, and the afternoon tea is now a recognized institution. Less formal and expensive than a New York afternoon reception, it answers the same purpose of a final object and rest for the day's visiting. In some instances, it continues through the season; in others, invitations are given for a single occasion only. You go, if invited, in spruce morning dress, with as much or as little display of train and bonnet as may suit with your views. You find a cheerful and broken-up assemblage—people conversing in twos, or, at most, in threes. And here is the Very Reverend the Dean. And here is the Catholic Archbishop, renowned for the rank and number of his proselytes. And here is Sir Charles—not he of the hunting-whip and breeches, but one renowned in science, and making a practical as well as a theoretical approximation to the antiquity of man. And here is Sir Samuel, who has finally discovered those parent lakes of the Nile which have been among the lost arts of geography for so many centuries. In this society, no man sees or shows a full-length portrait. A word is given, a phrase exchanged, and "tout est dit." What it all may amount to must be made out in another book than mine.

Well, having been more or less introduced, you take a cup of tea, with the option of bread and butter or a fragment of sponge cake. Having finished this, you vanish; you have shown yourself, reported yourself; more was not expected of you.

A graver and more important institution is the London dinner, commencing at half past seven, with good evening clothes—a white neckcloth and black vest for gentlemen; for nous autres, evening dress, not resplendent. The dinners we attend have perhaps the edge of state a little taken off, being given at short notice; but we observe female attire to be less showy than in our recollections of twenty-four years previous, and our one evening dress, devised to answer for dinner, evening party, and ball, proves a little over, rather than under, the golden mean of average appearance. As one dinner is like all, the briefest sketch of a single possible occasion may suffice. If you have been at afternoon tea before dinner, your toilet has been perforce a very hurried one. If it is your first appearance, the annonce of a French hair-dresser in the upper floor of your hotel may have inspired you with the insane idea of submitting your precious brain-case to his manipulations. Having you once in his dreadful seat, he imposes upon you at his pleasure. You must accept his hair-string, his pins, his rats, at a price at which angola cats were dear. You are palpitating with haste, he with the conceit of his character and profession. Fain would he add swindle to swindle, and perfidy to perfidy. "Don't you want a little crayon to darken the hair?" and hide the ravages of age; "it is true it colors a little, since it is made on purpose." You desire it not. "A cream? a pomade? a hair-wash?" None of all this; only in Heaven's name to have done with him! He capers behind you, puffing your sober head with curls, as if he had the breath of Æolus, according to Flaxman's illustration. Finally he dismisses you at large and unwarranted cost; but in your imagination he capers at your back for a week to come.

This prelude, which gives to

leaves little time for further adornment. A hired cab takes your splendors to the door of the inviting mansion, and leaves them there. When you depart, you request the servant of the house which feeds you to call another cab, which he does with the air of rendering a familiar service.

I have no intention of giving a detailed portrait of the entertainment that follows. Its few characteristic features can be briefly given. Introductions are not general; and even in case the occasion should have been invoked and invited for you, the greater part of your fellow-guests may not directly make your acquaintance. Servants are graver than senators with us. Dishes follow each other in bewildering and rather oppressive variety. You could be very happy with any one of them alone, but with a dozen you fear even to touch and taste. Conversation is not loud nor general, scarcely audible across the table. As in marriage, your partner is your fate. One would be very glad to present one brick so that another could be laid on top of it, or even to attempt an angle and a corner adjustment. But this conversation is not architectonic. It aims at nothing more than the requisite small change. If by chance the society be assembled at an informal house, and composed of artists and authors, we shall hear jests and laughter, but the themes of these will scarcely go beyond the most familiar matters. Having told thus much we have told all, except that ice is not served, as with us, upon the table, in picturesque variety of form and color, but is usually bestowed in spoonfuls, one of either kind to each person, the quality being excellent, and the quantity, after all else that has been offered, quite sufficient. It is here one of the most expensive articles of luxe—costing thrice its Yankee prices. The ladies leave the table a little before the gentlemen; but these arrive with no symptoms of inordinate drinking. The latter, as is well known, is long gone out of fashion, and with it, we imagine, the description of wit and anecdote, whose special enjoyment used to be reserved for the time "after the ladies had left the table." This is all that can be told of the dinner, which is the ne plus ultra of English social enjoyments; for balls everywhere are stale affairs, save to the dancing neophytes, and the enjoyment to be had at them is either official or gymnastic. At a "select" soirée following a state dinner, we hear Mr. Ap Thomas, the renowned harpist, whose execution is indeed brilliant and remarkable. The harp, however, is an instrument that owes its prestige partly to its beauty of form, partly to the romance of its traditions, from King David to the Welsh bards. In tone and temper it remains greatly inferior to the piano-forte, the finger governing the strings far better with than without the intervention of the keys and hammers.

But while we thankfully accept the offered opportunities of meeting those whom we desire to see, we are forced, as hygienists and economists, to enter our protest against the English dinner—this last joint in the back-bone of luxury. After hearty luncheon and social tea, it would seem to be a mere superfluity, not needed, a danger if partaken of, a mockery if neglected. So let New England cherish while she can the early dinner; for with the extended areas of business and society, dinner grows ever later, and the man and his family wider apart. By the time that tea and coffee are got through with, it may well be half past ten o'clock, and by eleven, at latest, unless there should be music or some special after-entertainment, you take leave.

Hoping to revisit more fully this ancestral isle before the tocsin of depart for home, we will now, with a little more of our sketchiness, take leave of it, which we should do with heartier regret but for the prospect of a not distant return.

In philosophy, England at the present day does not seem to go beyond Mill on the one hand, and Stewart on the other. The word "science" is still used, as it was ten years ago with us, to express the rules and observances of physical and mathematical study. Science, as the mother of the rules of thought, generating logic, building metaphysics, and devising the rules of coherence by which human cogitation is at once promoted and measured,—this conception of science I did not recognize in those with whom I spoke, unless I except Rev. H. Martineau, with whom I had only general conversation, but whose intellectual position is at once without the walls of form, and within the sanctuary of freedom. I was referred to Jowett and his friends as the authorities under this head, but this was not the moment in which to find them. In religion, Miss Cobbe leads the van, her partial method assuming as an original conception what the Germans have done, and much better done, before her. Theodore Parker is, I gather, her great man; and in her case, as in his, largeness of nature, force and geniality of temperament, take the place of scientific construction and responsible labor. Mr. Martineau's position is well known, and is for us New Englanders beyond controversy. The broad church is best known to us by Kingsley and Maurice. To those who still stand within the limits of an absolute authority in spiritual matters, its achievements may appear worthy of surprise and of gratulation. To those who have passed that barrier they present no intellectual feature worth remarking.

I well remember to-day my childish astonishment when I first learned that I and my fellows were outside the earth's crust, not within it. In connection with this came also the fact of a mysterious force binding us to the surface of the planet, so that, in its voyages and revolutions, it can lose nothing of its own.

Something akin to this may be the discovery of believers that they and those whom they follow are, so far as concerns actual opportunity of knowledge, on the outside of the world of ideal truth. Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor heart conceived, any absolute form of its manifestation. A divine, mysterious force binds us to our place on its smiling borders. Of what lies beyond we construe as we can—Moses according to his ability, Christ and Paul according to theirs. Unseen and unmanifested it must ever remain; for though men say that God has done so and so, God has never said so. Of this we become sure: religion spiritualizes, inspires, and consoles us. The strait gate and narrow path are blessed for all who find them, and are the same for all who seek them. But this oneness of morals is learned experimentally; it cannot be taught dogmatically.

Proposing to return to this theme, and to see more of the broad church before I decide upon its position, I take leave of it and of its domain together. Farewell, England! farewell, London! For three months to come thou wilt contain the regalia of all wits, of all capabilities. Fain would we have lingered beside the hospitable tables, and around the ancient monuments, considering also the steadfast and slowly-developing institutions. But the chief veteran is in haste for Greece, and on the very Sunday on which we should have heard Martineau in the forenoon, and Dean Stanley in the afternoon, with delightful social recreation in the evening, we break loose from our moorings, reach Folkstone, and embark for its French antithesis, Boulogne sur mer.

THE CHANNEL.

If the devil is not so black as he is painted, it must be because he has an occasional day of good humor. Some such wondrous interval is hinted at by people who profess to have seen the Channel sea smooth and calm. We remember it piled with mountains of anguish—one's poor head swimming, one's heart sinking, while an organ more important than either in this connection underwent a sort of turning inside out which seemed to wrench the very strings of life. But on this broken Sabbath our wonderful luck still pursues us. It is in favor of the neophytes that this new dispensation has been granted. The monsters of the deep respect their innocence, and cannot visit on them the vulgar offences of their progenitors. They bind the waves with a garland of roses and lilies, whose freshness proves a spell of peace. We, the elders, embark, expecting the usual speedy prostration; but, placing ourselves against the mast, we determine, like Ulysses, to maintain the integrity of our position. And it so happens that we do. While a few sensitive mortals about us execute the irregular symphony of despair, we rest in a calm and upright silence. Never was the Channel so quiet! We were not uproarious, certainly, but contemplative. A wretch tucked us up with a tarpaulin, for which he afterwards demanded a trifle. If civility is sold for its weight in silver anywhere, it is on English soil and in English dependencies. We, the veterans, took our quiet ferriage in mute amazement; the neophytes took it as a thing of course.

Arrived, we rush to the buffet of the railroad station, where every one speaks French-English. Here a very limited dinner costs us five francs a head. We accept the imposition with melancholy thoughtfulness. Then comes the whistle of the locomotive. "En voiture, messieurs!" And away, with a shriek, and a groan, and a rattle,—to borrow Mr. Dickens's refrain, now that he has done with it,—en route for Paris.

PARIS AND THENCE.

In Paris the fate of Greece still pursues us. Two days the rigid veteran will grant; no more—the rest promised when the Eastern business shall have been settled. But those two days suffice to undo our immortal souls so far as shop windows can do this. The shining sins and vanities of the world are so insidiously set forth in this Jesuits' college of Satan, that you catch the contagion of folly and extravagance as you pace the streets, or saunter through the brilliant arcades. Your purveyor makes a Sybarite of you, through the inevitable instrumentality of breakfast and dinner. Your clothier, from boots to bonnet, seduces you into putting the agreeable before the useful. For if you purchase the latter, you will be moved to buy by the former, and use becomes an after-thought to your itching desire and disturbed conscience. Paris is a sweating furnace in which human beings would turn life everlasting into gold, provided it were a negotiable value. You, who escape its allurements solvent, with a franc or two in your pocket, and your resources for a year to come not mortgaged, should after your own manner cause Te Deum to be sung or celebrated. Strongly impressed at the time, moved towards every acquisitive villany, not excluding shop-lifting nor the picking of pockets, I now regard with a sort of indignation those silken snares, those diamond, jet, and crystal allurements, which so nearly brought my self-restraint, and with it my self-respect, to ruin. Everything in Paris said to me, "Shine, dye your hair, rouge your cheeks, beggar your purse with real diamonds, or your pride with false ones. But shine, and, if necessary, beg or steal." Nothing said, "Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary, like a roaring lion," etc., etc. What a deliverer was therefore the stern Crete-bound veteran, who cut the Gordian knot of enchantment with, "Pack and begone." And having ended that inevitable protest against his barbarity with which women requite the offices of true friendship, I now turn my wrath against false, fair Paris, and cry, "Avoid thee, scelestissima! Away from me, nequissima! I will none of thee; not a franc, not an obolus. Avoid thee! Nolo ornari!"

Touching our journey from Paris to Marseilles, I will only give the scarce-needed advice that those who have this route to make should inflict upon themselves a little extra fatigue, and stop only at Lyons, if at all, rather than risk the damp rooms and musty accommodations of the smaller places which lie upon the route, offering to the traveller few objects of interest, or none. For it often happens in travelling that a choice only of inconveniences is presented to us, and in our opinion a prolonged day's journey in a luxurious car is far less grievous to be borne than a succession of stoppages, unpackings, and plungings into unknown inns and unaired beds. To this opinion, however, our Greece-bound veteran suffers not himself to be converted, and, accordingly, we, leaving Paris on the Wednesday at ten A. M., do not reach Marseilles until four o'clock of the Friday afternoon following.

The features of our first day's journey are those of a country whose landed possessions are subdivided into the smallest portions cultivable. Plains and hill-sides are alike covered with the stripes which denote the limits of property. Fruit trees in blossom abound every where, but the villages, built of rough stone and lime, are distant from each other. As we go southward, the vine becomes more apparent, and before we reach Lyons we see much of that contested gift of God. The trains that pass us are often loaded with barrels whose precious contents cannot be bought pure for any money, on the other side of the Atlantic, or even of the Straits of Dover. To this the procession of the jolly god has come at last. He leers at us through the two red eyes of the locomotive; its stout cylinder represents his embonpoint. Instead of frantic Bacchantes, the rattling cars dance after him, and "Ohe evohe!" degenerates into the shrill whew, whew of the engine. At the buffets and hotels en route his mysteries are celebrated. These must be sought in the labyrinthine state of mind of those who have drunken frequently and freely. They utter words unintelligible to the sober and uninspired, sentences of prophetic madness which the prose of modern physiology condenses into those two words—gout and delirium tremens. Yet these two dire diseases are rare among the temperate French. They export the producing medium au profit de l'étranger.

We stop the first night at Macon, and sleep in an imposing, chilly room, without carpets, under down coverlets. The second day's journey brings us to Lyons an hour before noon. We engage a fiacre, drive around the town, whose growth and improvement in the interval of sixteen years do not fail to strike us. Fine public squares adorn it, themselves embellished with bronze statues, among which we observe an equestrian figure of the first and only Napoleon. The shops are as tormenting as those of Paris, the Café Casati, where we dine, as elegant. Re-embarking at four P. M., we reach Valence in about four hours.

The worst of it is, that, arriving at these quaint little places after dark, you see none of their features, and taste only of their discomforts. At Valence our inn was so dreary, that, having bestowed the neophytes in sound slumber, the veteran and I sallied forth in quest of any pastime whatever, without being at all fastidious as to its source and character. Passing along the quiet streets, we observe what would seem to be a theatre, on the other side of the way. Entering, we find a youthful guardian, who tells us that there is up stairs a "confèrence de philosophie." We enter, and find a very respectable assemblage, listening attentively to an indistinct orator, who rhapsodizes upon the poets of modern France, with quotations and personal anecdotes. What he says has little originality, but is delivered with good taste and feeling. He speaks without notes; for, indeed, such a causerie spins itself, like a sailor's yarn, though out of finer materials.

Returning to our hostelry, we sleep with open window in a musty room, and catch cold. The next day's journey still conducts us through a vine-growing region, in a more and more advanced condition. The constant presence of the morus multicaulis also makes us aware of the presence of the silk-worm—so far, only in the egg-condition; for that prime minister of vanity is not hatched yet. We learn that the disease which has for some years devastated the worm is on the decline. The world with us, meanwhile has become somewhat weaned from the absolute necessity of the article, and the friendly sheep and alpaca have made great progress in the æsthetics of the toilet. As we approach Marseilles, we cross a dreary flat of wide extent, covered with stones and saltish grass, and said to produce the finest cattle in France. The olive, too, makes his stiff bow to us as we pass, well remembering his dusty green. The olive trees seem very small, and are, indeed, of comparatively recent growth; all the larger ones having been killed by a frost, rare in these latitudes, whose epoch we are inclined to state as posterior to our last presence in these parts. Our informant places it at twenty years ago. After three days of piecemeal travelling, the arrival at Marseilles seems quite a relief.

MARSEILLES.

At Marseilles we find a quasi tropical aspect—long streets, handsome and well-shaded, tempting shops, luxurious hotels, a motley company, and, above all, a friend, one of our own countrymen, divided between the glitter of the new life and the homesick weaning of the old. Half, he assumes the cicerone, and guides our ignorance about. Half, he sits to learn, and we expound to him what has befallen at home, so far as we are conscious of it. We take half a day for resting, the next day for sight-seeing. On the third, we must sail, for finding that Holy Week is still to be, we determine to make our reluctant sacrifice to the Mediterranean, and to trust our precious comfort and delicate equilibrium to that blue imposture, that sunniest of humbugs.

On the second day, we climb the steep ascent that leads to the chapel of La Bonne Mère de la Garde. This hot and panting ascent is not made by us without many pauses for recovered breath and energy. At every convenient stopping-place in the steep ascent are stationed elderly women presiding over small booths, who urgently invite us to purchase candles to give to the Madonna, medals, rosaries, and photographs, to all of whom we oppose a steadfast resistance. We have twice in our lives brought home from Europe boat-loads of trash, and we think that, as Paul says, the time past of our lives may suffice us. Finally, with a degree of perspiration more than salutary, we reach the top, and enjoy first the view of the Mediterranean, including a bird's-eye prospect of the town, which looks so parched and arid as to make the remembrance of London in the rain soothing and pleasant. A palace is pointed out which was built in the expectation of a night's sojourn of the emperor, but to which, they tell us, he never came. Our point of view is the top of one of the towers of the church. Going inside, we look down upon the aisles and altars from a lofty gallery. The silver robes of the Madonna glisten, reflecting the many wax-lights that devotees have kindled around her. The first sight of these material expressions of devotion is imposing, the second instructive, the third, commonplace and wearisome. We are at the last clause, and gaze at these things with the eyes of people who have seen enough of them.

The remainder of the disposable day we employ in a drive to the Prado, the fashionable region for the display of equipage and toilet. This is not, however, the fashionable day, and we meet only a few grumpy-looking dowagers in all stages of fatitude. The road is planted with double rows of lindens, and is skirted by country residences and villas to let. We stop and alight at the Musée, a spacious and handsome building, erected and owned by a noble of great wealth, long since dead, who committed celibacy, and left no personal heir. It is now the property of the city of Marseilles. The hall is fine. Among the spacious salons, the largest is used as a gallery of pictures, mostly by artists of this neighborhood, and of very humble merit. In another we find a very good collection of Egyptian antiquities, while in yet another the old state furniture is retained, the rich crimson hangings, long divan of gobelin, and chairs covered with fine worsted needle-work. Beyond is a pretty Chinese cabinet, with a full-length squatue of Buddh, gayly gilded and painted. Above stairs, the state bed and hangings are shown, the latter matching a handsome landscape chintz, with which the walls are covered. This museum has in it a good deal of instructive and entertaining matter, and is kept in first-rate order. Returning, we drive around the outer skirts of the town, and see something of the summer bathing hotels, the great storehouses, and the streets frequented by the working and seafaring portion of the community.

In the evening we walk through the streets, which are brilliant with gas, and visit the cafés, where ices, coffee, and lemonade are enjoyed. We finally seat ourselves in a casino, a sort of mixed café and theatre, where the most motley groups of people are coming, going, and sitting. At one end is a small stage, with a curtain, which falls at the end of each separate performance. Here songs and dances succeed each other, only half heeded by the public, who drink, smoke, and chatter without stint. After a hornpipe, a dreadful woman in white, with a blue peplum, hoarsely shouts a song without music, accompanied by drums and barbaric cymbals. She makes at last a vile courtesy, matching the insufficiency of her dress below by its utter absence above the waist, and we take flight. The next morning witnesses our early departure from Marseilles.

ROME.

With feelings much mingled, I approach, for the third time, the city of Rome. I pause to collect the experience of sixteen years, the period intervening between my second visit and the present. I left Rome, after those days, with entire determination, but with infinite reluctance. America seemed the place of exile, Rome the home of sympathy and comfort. To console myself for the termination of my travels, I undertook a mental pilgrimage, which unfolded to me something of the spirit of that older world, of which I had found the form so congenial. To the course of private experience were added great public lessons. Among these I may name the sublime failure of John Brown, the sorrow and success of the late war. And now I must confess that, after so many intense and vivid pages of life, this visit to Rome, once a theme of fervent and solemn desire, becomes a mere page of embellishment in a serious and instructive volume. So, while my countrymen and women, and the Roman world in general, hang intent upon the pages of the picture-book, let me resume my graver argument, and ask and answer such questions of the present as may seem useful and not ungenial.

The Roman problem has for the American thinker two clauses: first, that of state and society; secondly, that of his personal relation to the same. Arriving here, and becoming in some degree acquainted with things as they are, he asks, first, What is the theory of this society, and how long will it continue? secondly, What do my countrymen who consent to pass their lives here gain? what do they give up? I cannot answer either of these questions exhaustively. The first would lead me far into social theorizing; the second into some ungracious criticism. So a word, a friendly one must stand for good intentions where wisdom is at fault.

The theory of this society in policy and religion is that of a symbolism whose remote significance has long been lost sight of and forgotten. Here the rulers, whose derived power should represent the consensus of the people, affect to be greater than those who constitute them, and the petty statue, raised by the great artist for the convenience and instruction of the crowd, spurns at the solid basis of the heaven-born planet, without which it could not stand. Rank here is not a mere convenience and classification for the encouragement of virtue and promotion of order. Rank here takes the place of virtue, and repression, its tool, takes the place of order. A paralysis of thought characterizes the whole community, for thought deprived of its legitimate results is like the human race debarred from its productive functions—it becomes effete, and soon extinct.

Abject poverty and rudeness characterize the lower class (basso ceto), bad taste and want of education the middle, utter arrogance and superficiality the upper class. The distinctions between one set of human beings and another are held to be absolute, and the inferiority of opportunity, carefully preserved and exaggerated, is regarded as intrinsic, not accidental. Vain is it to plead the democratic allowances of the Catholic church. The equality of man before God is here purely abstract and disembodied. The name of God, on the contrary, is invoked to authorize the most flagrant inequalization that ignorance can prepare and institutions uphold. The finest churches, the fairest galleries, you will say, are open to the poorest as to the richest. This is true. But the man's mind is the castle and edifice of his life. Look at these rough and ragged people, unwashed, uncombed, untaught. See how little sensible they are of the decencies and amenities of life. Search their faces for an intelligent smile, a glance that recognizes beauty or fitness in any of the stately circumstances that surround them. They are kept like human cattle, and have been so kept for centuries. And their dominants suppose themselves to be of one sort, and these of another. But give us absolutism, and take away education, even in rich and roomy America, and what shall we have? The cruel and arrogant slaveholder, the vulgar and miserable poor white, the wronged and degraded negro. The three classes of men exist in all constituted society. Absolutism allows them to exist only in this false form.

This race is not a poor, but a robust and kindly one. Inclining more to artistic illustration than to abstract thought, its gifts, in the hierarchy of the nations, are eminent and precious. Like the modern Greek, the modern Celt, and the modern negro, the Italian peasant asks a century or two of education towards modern ideas. And all that can be said of his want of comprehension only makes it the more evident that the sooner we begin, the better.

It should not need, to Americans or Englishmen, to set out any formal argument against absolutism. Among them it has long since been tried and judged. Enough of its advocacy only remains to present that opposition which is the necessary basis of action. And yet a word to my countrymen and countrywomen, who, lingering on the edge of the vase, are lured by its sweets, and fall into its imprisonment. It is a false, false superiority to which you are striving to join yourself. A prince of puppets is not a prince, but a puppet; a superfluous duke is no dux; a titular count does not count. Dresses, jewels, and equipages of tasteless extravagance; the sickly smile of disdain for simple people; the clinging together, by turns eager and haughty, of a clique that becomes daily smaller in intention, and whose true decline consists in its numerical increase,—do not dream that these lift you in any time way—in any true sense. For Italians to believe that it does, is natural; for Englishmen to believe it, is discreditable; for Americans, disgraceful.

Leaving philosophy for the moment, I must renew my sketchy pictures of the scenes I pass through, lest treacherous memory should relinquish their best traits unpreserved. Arrived in Rome, at a very prosaic and commonplace station, I had some difficulty in recognizing the front of Villa Negroni, an old papal residence belonging to the Massimi family, in whose wide walls the relatives I now visit had formerly built their nest. A cosy and pleasant one it was, with the view of the distant hills, a large entourage of gardens, a fine orange grove, and the neighborhood of some interesting ruins and churches. With all the cordiality of the old time these relatives now met me. My labors of baggage and conveyance were ended. One leads me to the carriage, where another waits to receive me. Time has been indulgent, we think, to both of us, for each finds the other little changed.

And now we begin in earnest to tread the fairy land of dreams. Here are the Quattro Fontane, there is the Quirinal, yonder the dome of domes. We thread the streets in which I used to hunt for small jewelry and pictures at a bargain, enacting the part of the prodigal son, and providing a dinner of husks for the sake of a feast of gewgaws. A certain salutary tingling of shame visits my cheeks at the remembrance of the same. I find the personage of those days poor and trivial. But here is the Forum of Trajan, and soon we drive within a palatial doorway, and our guides lead us up a stately marble staircase—a long ascent; but we pause finally, and a great door opens, and they say, Welcome! We are now at home.

Through a long hall we go, and through a sweep of apartments unmatchable in Fifth Avenue, at least in architectural dignity, seconded by rich and measured taste—green parlor, crimson parlor, drab parlor, the lady's room, the signore's room, the children's room. And in the guest-chamber I confronted my small and dusty self in the glass—small, not especially in my human proportions. But the whole of my modest house in B. Place would easily, as to solid contents, lodge in the largest of those lofty rooms. The Place itself would equally lodge in the palace. I regard my re-found friends with wonder, and expect to see them execute some large and stately manœuvre, indicating their possession of all this space.

And now, dinner served in irreproachable style, and waited on by two young men whose air and deportment would amply justify their appearance at Papanti's Hall on any state occasion. We soon grow used to their polite services; but at first Mario and Giuseppe somewhat intimidate us.

And after dinner, talk of old times and old friends, question of this region and the other, the cold limbo as to weather, whence we come. Long and familiar is our interchange of facts, and sleep comes too soon, yet is welcome.

ST. PETER'S.

The first day in Rome sees us pursuing the phantom of the St. Peter ceremonies, for all of which, tickets have been secured for us. Solid fact as the performance of the functions remains, for us it assumes a forcible unreality, through the impeding intervention of black dresses and veils, with what should be women under them. But as these creatures push like battering-rams, and caper like he-goats, we shall prefer to adjourn the question of their humanity, and to give it the benefit of a doubt. We must except, however, our countrywomen from dear Boston, who were not seen otherwise than decently and in order. Into the well-remembered palco we now drag the trembling neophyte, dished up in black in a manner altogether astonishing to herself. And we push her youthful head this way and that. "See, there are the cardinals; there is the pope; there, in white-capped row, sit the pilgrims. Now, the pope's mitre being removed, he proceeds with great state to wash the pilgrims' feet." But she, like sister Anne in the Blue Beard controversy, might reply, "I see only a flock of black dresses, heaped helter-skelter, the one above the other." Some bits of the picture she does get, certainly, which may thus be catalogued: "Pope's nose, black dress, ditto skull-cap, black dress, a touch of cardinal's back, black dress—and now? Bla—ck dre—ss, for the rest of the time. But what is this commotion?" For now the he-goats begin to jump in the most extraordinary way, racing out of the tribune as eagerly as they had pressed into it. Their haste is to see the tavola, or pilgrims' table, up stairs, where the pope and cardinals are to wait upon the twelve elect, whose foot-washing we have just tried to see. Silence, decency, decorum—all are forgotten. One in diamonds calls to a friend in the crowd outside, "Hollo, Hollo! Come along with us!" and at the top of her voice. If "the devil take the hindmost" be the moving cause of this gymnastic, I would humbly suggest that, on these occasions, the devil certainly seems to be in the foremost. With a little suppressed grumbling, we tumble out of the tribune, and descend to the body of the church, where the double line of Swiss guards detains us so long as to render our tickets for the cupola, where the pilgrims' feast takes place, nearly useless. This detention seems to be entirely arbitrary; for when, after endless entreaty, we are allowed to reach the door, an easy ingress is allowed us. And here, bit by bit, the neophyte puzzles out the significance of the scene before her—a table set with massive golden ornaments (silver gilt at best), the twelve white caps behind; the great church dignitaries handing plates of fish, vegetables, and fruit towards the table; the pope hidden behind some black dress or other, and a chanting of prayers or texts, we know not what. The whole is much like the stage banquet in Macbeth, the part of Banquo's ghost being played by the spirit of the Christian religion.

And now away, away! to the door of the Sistine Chapel, where the Miserere will be sung at six of the clock, it now being one of the same. So, in profane haste, we reach that door, already occupied by a small mob of women of the politer sort, and others. Here one maintains one's position till two o'clock, when the door opens, and, in shocking disorder, the mob enter. Those who keep the door exclaim, "Do not push so, ladies; there is room for all." But the savageness of the Anglo-Saxon race has full scope to-day, not being on its good behavior, as at home. So the abler-bodied jam and cram the less athletic without stint. After falling harmlessly on my face, I breathe freely, and obtain an end seat on the long benches reserved for the unreserved ladies.

And here passed three weary hours before the office began, and another hour after that before the musical bonne bouche, coveted by these people, and little appreciated by many of them, was offered to their tired acceptance. The first interval was mostly employed in the resuscitating process of chawing upon such victuals as had not proved contraband for such an occasion. And here were exchanged some little amenities which revived our sinking hopes of the race. Biscuits, sandwiches, and chocolate pastilles were shared. "Muffin from the Hotel de Russie" was offered by a face not unknown. Munching thereon with thankfulness, we interrogate, and find with joy a Boston woman. O comfort! be my friend; and when the next black rush doth come, if fisticuffs should become general and dangerous, be so good as to belabor the woman who belabors me.

The office begins at five. It consists mostly of linked sameness long drawn out. The chapel is by this time well filled with ceremonial amateurs in every sort and quality. Men of all nationalities, in gentlemen's dress, fill the seats and throng the aisle. Priests, militaires, and even Sisters of Charity, vary the monotony of the strict coat and pantaloon. Upon an upright triangle, as is well known, are spiked the fifteen burning candles, of which all, save one, must be quenched before we can enjoy our dear-bought Miserere. Much of our attendant zeal is concentrated upon the progress visible in their decline. The effect of the chanting is as square and monotonous as would be the laying down of so many musical paving-stones. We tried to peep at the Latin text of a book of prayers in the hand of a priest on our left; but the pitiless Swiss guard caused him and his Breviary to move on, and this resource was lost. About half way through the office, a pause came over matters, very unwelcome to our hurry. A door on the left of the altar opened, and the pope entered, preceded by his guard. He walked to his throne on the right of the altar, and the chanting was resumed. Some time before this, however, the treni or lamentations were sung. These were chanted in a high voice, neither fresh nor exact, and did not make on me the impression of sixteen years ago. The extinguishing of the candles was a slow agony, the intervals appearing endless. Finally, all the lights were out. The one burning taper which represented Christ was removed out of sight, the pope sank upon his knees before the altar, and the verses of the Miserere were sung. Twilight and fixed attention prevailed through the chapel, whose vaulted roof lends a certain magic of its own to the weird chant. Yet, with the remembrance of sixteen years since, and with present judgment, I am inclined to consider the supremacy of the Miserere a musical superstition. I know not what critical convictions its literal study would develop, but, as I heard it, much of it seemed out of tune, and deformed by other than musical discords. The soprani, without exception, were husky, and strained their voices to meet the highest effects. The vaulted roof, indeed, gives a lovely scope to such melody as there is. The dim, majestic frescos, which you still feel, though you see them no longer,—the brilliancy and variety of the company, its temporary stillness,—all these circumstances in this ne plus ultra of the Roman æsthetic combine to impress you. But the kneeling pontiff and his cardinals did not appear to me invested with any true priesthood. I could feel no religious sympathy with their movements, which seemed a show, and part of a show—nothing more. And when the verses were all sung, and the shuffling of feet at the end got through with, I staid not to see the procession into the Pauline Chapel, nor the adoration of the relics, nor the mopping of St. Peter's altar. I had seen enough of such sights, and, quietly wrapping the twilight about my discontent, I thankfully went where kindred voices and a kindred faith allowed me to claim the shelter of home.

SUPPER OF THE PILGRIMS.

Faster go these shows than one can describe them. On Good Friday evening we attempted only to see the supper of the female pilgrims at the Trinità dei Pellegrini. This again I undertook for the neophytes' sake, having myself once witnessed the august ceremony. Here, as everywhere at this time, we found a crowd of black dresses, with and without veils, which, on this occasion, are optional. Another mob of women, small but energetic; another rush to see what, under other circumstances, we should hold to be but a sorry sight. The pilgrims are waited upon by an association of ladies, who wear a sort of feminine overall in scarlet cotton, nearly concealing a dress, usually black, of ordinary wear. They are also distinguished by a pictorial badge, representing, I think, the Easter Lamb, in some connection. Some of these ladies are of princely family, others of rank merely civic. Princess Massimo, of first-rate pretensions, keeps the inner entrance to the rites, and accords it only to a limited number in turn. We tumble down the dividing stairs in the usual indecorous manner, and walk through two rooms, in each of which the pilgrims sit with their feet in tubs of water, the attendant ladies being employed either in scrubbing them clean, or in wiping them dry. All were working women from the country, their faces mostly empty of thought and rude with toil. Some of the heads were not without character, and would easily have made, with their folded head-dresses, a genre picture. In general, they and their attire were as rough and uninteresting as women and their belongings can be. A number of them carried infants, whose appearance also invited the cleansing ministration, which did not include them. In either room an ecclesiastic recited prayers in Latin, and a pretty young lady at intervals rattled a box, the signal for the participants to make the sign of the cross, which they did in a business-like manner. From this lavanda we passed to other rooms, in which the supper tables were in process of preparation. The materials for the meal were divided into portions. To each one was allotted a plate of salad and sardines, one of bacala, or fried salt fish, two small loaves of bread, and a little pitcher of wine, together with figs and oranges. The red-gowned ministrants bestirred themselves in dividing and arranging these portions, with much apparent good nature. Many of them wore diamond earrings, and one young lady, whom we did not see at work, was adorned as to the neck with a rich collar of jewelled lockets, an article of the latest fashion. All of these ladies are supposed to be princesses, but several of them talked house-gossip in homely Italian. To us the time seemed long, but at length arrived the minestra in a huge kettle. This universal Italian dish is a watery soup, containing a paste akin to macaroni. And now the pilgrims, having had all the washing they could endure, came in to take possession of the goods prepared for them. Those of the same family tried to sit together, but did not always manage to do so. For every babe a double portion is allowed, and the coin (ten cents) received at departure is also doubled. We had feared lest the pilgrims might have found the presence of numbers a source of embarrassment. But it did not prove so. They attacked their victuals with the most practical and evident enjoyment. The babies were fed with minestra, fish, salad, and wine. Of these one was two weeks old, and its mother had walked four days to get to Rome. Each pilgrim carried either a bottle or a tin canteen, into which the superior waiting-women decanted the wine allowed, that they might carry it home with them. A Latin grace was rehearsed before they fell to. Cardinals and monsignori were seen, here and there, talking with friends among the spectators. Observing that pilgrims eat much like other people, we left them still at table, and came away, to find the Prince Massimo in pink cotton, at the bottom of the staircase, and a stupid Swiss, with ill-managed bayonet, guarding the outer entrance. He, a raw recruit, carried his weapon as carelessly as a lady waves a bouquet. Close to the eye of the neophyte he thrusts it, through inattention. A scream from me makes her aware of the danger, but affects him not. Under the weight of my objurgation he falters not, but makes a vehement pass at a harmless dog, which runs by unhurt. And my reflections upon his sheer brutishness were the closing ones of the day.

EASTER.

St. Peter's on Easter called us with the magical summons of the silver trumpets, blown at the elevation of the host, and remembered by me through these sixteen years. To the tribunes, however, I did not betake myself, but, armed with a camp stool, wandered about the church, getting now a coup d'œil, now a whiff of harmony. The neophytes had our tickets, and beheld the ceremonies, which, once seen, are of little interest to those to whom they are not matters of religion. The pope and cardinals officiate at high mass, with the music of the Sistine singers. The pope drinks of the consecrated cup through a golden tube, the cup itself having previously been tasted of by one commissioned for the purpose. This feature clearly indicates the recognized possibility of poison. It is probably not observed by most of those present, who have, after all, but a glimpse of what passes. The effect of the trumpets is certainly magical. The public has no knowledge of their whereabouts, and the sound seems to fall from some higher region. Having enjoyed this æsthetic moment, one hurries out into the piazza in front of the church, where a great assemblage waits to receive the papal benediction. Here seats and balconies can be hired, and a wretched boy screeches, "Ecco luoghi," for half an hour, as if he had a watchman's rattle in his head. At last the blessed father in his palanquin is borne to that upper window of the church, over which the white canopy rests: his mitres are all arranged before him. The triple crown, glittering with jewels, is on his head. On either side of him flutter the peacock fans. Cannons clear the way for his utterance, and holding up two fingers, he recites the apostolic benediction in a voice of remarkable distinctness and power. It is received by good Catholics on their knees. Another cannon shot closes the performance, and at the same moment two or three papers, containing indulgences, fall from the pontiff's hand. Then the crowd disperses, and you yourself, having witnessed "the most impressive ceremony in the world," become chiefly occupied with the getting home, the crowd of carriages being very great, and the bridge of St. Angelo reserved for the passage of the legni privilegiati. And on the way, query as to this impressiveness. If one could suppose that the pope had any special blessing to bestow, or that he thought he had, one would certainly be desirous and grateful to share in it. If one could consider him as consecrated by anything better than a superstition for anything better than the priestly maintenance of an absolute rule, one might look in his kindly old face with a feeling stronger than that of personal good-will or indifference. But I, standing to see and hear him, was in the position of Macbeth.

And I concluded that common sense, common justice, and civil and religious liberty,—the noblest gifts of the past and promises of the future,—had been quite long enough

"Butchered to make a Roman holiday."

As for the evening illumination, it was just as I remember it on two former occasions, separated from this and from each other by long intervals. A magical and unique spectacle it certainly is, with the well-known change from the paper lanterns to the flaring lampions. Costly is it of human labor, and perilous to human life. And when I remembered that those employed in it receive the sacrament beforehand, in order that imminent death may not find them out of a state of grace, I thought that its beauty did not so much signify.

We have a dome, too, in Washington. The Genius of Liberty poises on its top; the pediment below it is adorned with the emblems of honest thrift and civic prosperity. May that dome perish ere it be lit at the risk of human life, and lit, like this, to make the social darkness around it more evident by its momentary aureole.

WORKS OF ART.

Enough of shows. Galleries and studios are better. Rome is rich in both, and with a sort of studious contentment, one embraces one's Murray, picks out the palace that unfolds its art treasures to-day, and travels up the stairs, and along the marble corridors, to wonderful suites of apartments, in which the pasteboard programmes lie about waiting for you, while the still drama of the pictures acts itself upon the thronged wall, yourself their small public, and they giving their color-eloquence, whether any one gives heed or not.

They are precious, the Colonna, Doria, Sciarra, Borghese, and we have seen them. We have picked out our old favorites, and have carried the neophytes before them, saying, "I saw this, dear, before you were born." But this past, whose reflex fold inwraps us, does not exist for the neophytes, who look at it as out of a moment's puzzle, and then conclude to begin their own business on their own responsibility, without any reference to these outstanding credits of ours.

Of the pictures it is little useful to speak. Your description enables no one to see them, and the narration of the feelings they excite in you is as likely to be tedious as interesting to those who cultivate feelings of their own. Copies and engravings have done here what you cannot do, and the best subjects are familiar to art students and lovers in all countries. A little sigh of pleasure may be allowed you at this, your third sight of the Francias, the Raphaels, Titian's Bella, Claude's landscapes, and the scientific Leonardo's heavily-labored heads and groups. But do not therefore put the trumpet to your lips, and blow that sigh across the ocean, to claim the attention of ears that invite the lesson for the day. The lesson for this day is not written on canvas, and though it may be read everywhere in the world, you will scarcely find its clearest type in Rome.

And here, perhaps, I may as well carry further the philosophizing which I began a week ago with regard to the objects and resources of Roman life, and their compatibility with the thoughts and pursuits most dear and valuable to Americans.

Art is, of course, the only solid object which an American can bring forward to justify a prolonged residence in Rome. Art, health, and official duty, are among the valid reasons which bring our countrymen abroad. Two of these admit of no argument. The sick have a right, other things permitting, to go where they can be bettered; a duty perhaps, to go where the sum of their waning years and wasting activities admits of multiplication. Those who live abroad as ministers and consuls have a twofold opportunity of benefiting their country. If honest and able, they may benefit her by their presence in foreign lands; if unworthy and incompetent, by their absence from home. But our artists are those whose expatriation gives us most to think about. They take leave of us either in the first bloom or in the full maturity of their powers. The ease of living in Southern Europe, the abundance of models and of works of art, the picturesque charms of nature and of scenery, detain them forever from us, and, save for an abstract sentiment, which itself weakens with every year, the sacred tie of country is severed. Its sensibilities play no part in these lives devoted to painting and modelling.

Now, an eminent gift for art is an exceptional circumstance. He who has it weds his profession, leaves father and mother, and goes where his slowly-unfolding destiny seems to call him. Against such a course we have no word to say. It presents itself as a necessary conclusion to earnest and noble men, who love not their native country less, but their votive country more. Of the first and its customs they would still say,—

Yet of this career, so often coveted by those to whom its attainment does not open, I cannot speak in terms of supreme recognition. The office of art is always as precious as its true ministers are rare. But the relative importance of sculptural and pictorial art is not to-day what it was in days of less thought, of smaller culture. Every one who likes the Bible to-day, likes it best without illustrations. Were Christ here to speak anew, he would speak without parables. In ruder times, heavenly fancies could only be illustrated on the one hand, received on the other, through the mediation of a personal embodiment. Only through human sympathy was the assent to divine truth obtained. The necessity which added a feminine personality to the worship of Christ, and completed the divided Godhead by making it female as well as male, was a philosophical one, but not recognized as such. The device of the Virgin was its practical result, counterbalancing the partiality of the one-sided personal culte of the Savior. Modern religious thought gets far beyond this, makes in spiritual things no distinction of male and female, and does not apply sex to the Divine, save in the most vague and poetic sense. The inner convictions of heart and conscience may now be spoken in plain prose, or sung in ringing verse. The vates, prophet or reformer, may proclaim his system and publish his belief; and his audience will best apprehend it in its simplest and most direct form. The wide spaces of the new continent allow room for the most precious practical experimentation; and speculative and theoretical liberty keep pace with liberty of action. The only absolute restraint, the best one, is a moral one. "Thou shalt not" applies only to what is intrinsically inhuman and profane. And now, there is no need to puzzle simple souls with a marble gospel. Faith needs not to digest whole side-walls of saints and madonnas, who once stood for something, no one now knows what. The Italian school was to art what the Greek school was to literature—an original creation and beginning. But life has surpassed Plato and Aristotle. We are forced to piece their short experiences, and to say to both, "You are matchless, but insufficient." And so, though Raphael's art remains immortal and unsurpassed, we are forced to say of his thought, "It is too small." No one can settle, govern, or moralize a country by it. It will not even suffice to reform Italy. The golden transfigurations hang quiet on the walls, and let pope and cardinal do their worst. We want a world peopled with faithful and intelligent men and women. The Prometheus of the present day is needed rather to animate statues than to make them.

PIAZZA NAVONA—THE TOMBOLA.

When, O, when does the bee make his honey? Not while he is sipping from flower to flower, levying his dainty tribute as lightly as love—enriching the world with what the flower does not miss, and cannot.

This question suggests itself in the course of these busy days in Rome, where pleasures are offered oftener than sensibilities can ripen, and the edge of appetite is blunted with sweets, instead of rusting with disuse. In these scarce three weeks how much have we seen, how little recorded and described! So sweet has been the fable, that the intended moral has passed like an act in a dream—a thing of illusion and intention, not of fact. Impotent am I, indeed, to describe the riches of this Roman world,—its treasures, its pleasures, its flatteries, its lessons. Of so much that one receives, one can give again but the smallest shred,—a leaf of each flower, a scrap of each garment, a proverb for a sermon, a stave for a song. So be it; so, perhaps, is it best.

Last Sunday I attended a Tombola at Piazza Navona—not a state lottery, but a private enterprise brought to issue in the most public manner. I know the Piazza of old. Sixteen years since I made many a pilgrimage thither, in search of Roman trash. I was not then past the poor amusement of spending money for the sake of spending it. The foolish things I brought home moved the laughter of my little Roman public. I appeared in public with some forlorn brooch or dilapidated earring; the giddy laughed outright, and the polite gazed quietly. My rooms were the refuge of all broken-down vases and halting candelabra. I lived on the third floor of a modest lodging, and all the wrecks of art that neither first, second, nor fourth would buy, found their way into my parlor, and staid there at my expense. I recall some of these adornments to-day. Two heroes, in painted wood, stood in my dark little entry. A gouty Cupid in bas-relief encumbered my mantel-piece. Two forlorn figures in black and white glass recalled the auction whose unlucky prize they had been. And Horace Wallace, coming to talk of art and poetry, on my red sofa, sometimes saluted me with a paroxysm of merriment, provoked by the sight of my last purchase. Those days are not now. Of their accumulations I retain but a fragment or two. Of their delights remain a tender memory, a childish wonder at my own childishness. To-day, in heathen Rome, I can find better amusements than those shards and rags were ever able to represent.

Going now to Piazza Navona with a sober and reasonable companion, I scarcely recognize it. At the Braschi Palace, which borders it, we pause, and enter to observe the square hall and the fine staircase of polished marble. This palace is now offered in a lottery, at five francs the ticket; and all orders in Rome, no doubt, participate in the venture it presents. The immense piazza is so filled and thronged with people that its distinctive features are quite lost. Its numerous balconies are crowded with that doubtful community comprehended in the title of the "better class." From many of its windows hang the red cotton draperies, edged with gilt lace, which supply so much of the color in Roman festas. Soldiers are everywhere mingled with the crowd, so skilfully as to present no contrast with them, but so effectually that any popular disorder would be instantly suppressed. The dragoons, mounted and bearing sabres, are seen here and there in the streets leading to the piazza. These constitute the police of Rome; and where with us a civil man with a badge interposes himself and says, "No entrance here, sir," in Rome an arbitrary, ignorant beast, mounted upon a lesser brute, waves his sabre at you, shrieks unintelligible threats and orders, and has the pleasure of bringing your common sense to a fault, and of making all understanding of what is or is not to be done impossible. Their greatest glory, however, culminates on public festas, when there are foreigners as well as Romans to be intimidated. At the Tombola they are only an en cas.

Well, the office of the Tombola is solemnized upon a raised stage, whereon stand divers officials, two seedy trumpeters, and a small boy in fancy costume, whose duty soon becomes apparent. Before him rests a rotatory machine, composed of two disks of glass, bound together by a band of brass: this urn of fate revolves upon a pivot, and is provided with an opening, through which the papers bearing the numbers are put in, to be drawn out, one by one, after certain revolutions of the machine. Not quite so fast, however, with your drawing. The numbers are not all in yet. A grave man, in a black coat, holds up each number to the public view, calls it in his loudest tones, and then hands it to another, who folds and slips it into the receptacle. When all of the numbers have been verified and deposited, the opening is closed up, the trumpeters sound a bar or two, the wheel revolves, the fancy boy paws the air with his right hand, puts the hand into the opening, and draws forth a number, which the second black coat presents to the first, who unfolds it, and announces it to the multitude. At the same moment, a huge card, some two feet square in dimensions, is placed in a frame, and upon this we read the number just drawn out. The number is also shown upon several large wooden frames in other parts of the square. Upon these it remains, so that the whole count of the drawing may be apparent to the eager public. This course of action is repeated until a stir in one part of the piazza announces a candidate for one of the smaller prizes. A white flag, repeated at all the counting frames, arrests the public attention. The candidate brings forward his ticket and is examined. Finally, a quaterna is announced, formed by the agreement of four numbers on a ticket with four in the order of the drawing. The crowd applaud, the trumpets sound again, and the drawing proceeds. Unhappily, at one moment the persons on duty forget to close the valve through which the numbers are taken out. The omission is not perceived until several rotations have shaken out many of the precious papers. A roar of indignation is heard from the populace; the wheel is arrested, the numbers eagerly sought, counted, and replaced, under the jealous scrutiny of the public eye. Meanwhile, one of two copious brass bands, provided with five ophicleides each, and cornets, etc., to match, discoursed tarantellas and polkas. And we see the quinquina (formed by five numbers) drawn, and then the first Tombola, and the second. And lo! there are four tombolas: but we await them not. But in all this crowd, busy with emotion and reeking with tobacco and Roman filth in all its varieties, who shall interest us like the limonaro with his basket of fruit, his bottles of water, his lemon squeezer, and his eager thrifty countenance? A father of family, surely, he loves no plays as thou dost, Anthony. Pale, in shirt sleeves, he keeps the sharpest lookout for a customer, and in voice whose measure is not to be given, hammers out his endless sentence, "Chi vuol bere? Ecco, il limonaro." To the most doubtful order he responds, carrying his glasses into the thickest of the throng, and thundering, "Chi ha comandato questo limone?" For half a bajoco he gives a quarter of a lemon, wrung out in a glass of tepid water, which his customers absorb with relish. Sometimes he varies this procedure by the sale of an orzata, produced by pouring a few drops of a milky fluid into a glass of water. On our way from the piazza we encounter other limonari,—dark, sleepy, Italian, not trenchant nor incisive in their offers. But our man, a blond, yet remains a picture to us, with his business zeal and economy of time. A thread of good blood he possibly has. We adopt and pity him as a misplaced Yankee.

SUNDAYS IN ROME.

Our first Sunday in Rome was Easter, in St. Peter's, of which we have elsewhere given a sufficient description. Our second was divided between the Tombola just described, in the afternoon, and the quiet of the American Chapel in the morning. We found this an upper chamber, quietly and appropriately furnished, with a pleasant and well-dressed attendance of friends and fellow country-people. The prayers of the Episcopal service were simply read, with no extra formality or aping of more traditional forms. It was pleasant to find ourselves called upon once more to pray for the President of the United States, although in our own country he is considered as past praying for. Still, we remembered the old adage, "while there is life there is hope," and were able, with a good conscience, to beseech that he might be plenteously endowed with heavenly grace, although the reception of such a gift might seriously compromise him with his own party. The sermon, like others we have heard of late, shows a certain progress and liberalization even in the holding of the absolute tenets which constitute what has been hitherto held as orthodoxy. In our youth, the Episcopal church, like the orthodox dissenters, preached atonement, atonement, atonement, wrath of God, birth in sin,—position of sentimental reprobation towards the one fact, of unavailing repentance concerning the other. The doctrine of atonement in those days was as literal in the Protestant church as in the Catholic, while the possibility of profiting by it was hedged about and encumbered by frightful perils and intangible difficulties. But to-day, while these doctrines are not repudiated by the denominations which then held them, they are comparatively set out of sight. The charity and diligence of Paul are preached, and even the sublime theistic simplicity of Jesus is not altogether contraband; though he, alas! is as little understood in doctrine as followed in example. For he has hitherto been like a beautiful figure set to point out a certain way, and people at large have been so entranced with worshipping the figure, that they have neglected to follow the direction it indicates.

Well, our American sermon was dry, but sensible and conscientious. It did not congratulate those who had accepted the mysterious atonement, nor threaten those who had neglected to do so. But it exhorted all men towards a reasonable, religious, and diligent life, and thus afforded the commonplace man a basis for effort, and a possible gradual amelioration of his moral condition. One little old-fashioned phrase, however, the preacher let slip. He cast a slight slur upon the moral, as distinguished from the religious man. Now, modern ethics do not recognize this distinction. For it, true morals are religion. He who exemplifies the standard does it more honor than he who praises, and pursues it not. And he who prays and plunders is less a saint than he who does neither. We passed this, however, and went away in peace.

Our third Sunday morning was passed in S. Andrea delta Valle, a large and sumptuous church, where we had been promised a fine messa-cantata, i.e., a mass performed principally in music. Mustafa, of the pope's choir, was there, with some ten other vocalists, who put into their Kyrie, Miserere, and so on, as much operatic emphasis and cadence as the bars could hold. The organ was harsh, loud, and overpowering, the music utterly uninteresting. Mustafa's renowned voice, which has suffered by time and use, has something nasal and criard in it, with all its power. He still takes and holds A and B with firmness and persistence, but his middle notes are unequal and husky. Although the sopranos of to-day are merely falsetto tenors, and their unsexed voices a fiction, they yet acquire in process of time a tone of old-woman quality, which contrasts strangely with their usually robust appearance. On this occasion we did not conjecture whose might be the music to which we listened. It had a mongrel paternity, and hailed from no noble race of compositions. Having, however, our comfortable chairs, and being out of the murderous direct reverberation of the organ, we sat and saw as outsiders the flux and reflux of life which passed through the church. It was obviously, this morning, a place of fashionable resort; and many were the good dresses and comfortable family groups that first appeared, and then were absorbed among its crowded chairs and their occupants. The well-dressed people were mostly, I thought, of medio ceto,—middling class,—which in Rome is a term of strict reprobation, and answers to what we used to call Bowery in New York. Their devotion had mostly a business-like aspect. They hired their chair, brought it, sat down, made their crosses and courtesies, accompanied the priest with their books, went down on their knees at the elevation of the host, had benediction, and went. Mass was taking place at various side altars, and people were coming and going, as their devotions were past or future. Dirty and shabby figures mingled with the others; a group of little children from the street, holding each other by the hand; a crippled old woman, hobbling on two crutches, who, wonderfully, did not beg, of us at least; an elderly dwarf, of composed aspect, some thirty-eight inches high, who took a chair, but could not get into it, so squatted down beside it, and stared at us. A loud bell was rung, and one in yellow satin bore an object under yellow satin across the church. This was the sacrament, going to one of the altars for the beginning of the mass. Having mused sufficiently on the music and on the crowd, we desired to hear a Puritan sermon, and, there being none to be had, we went away.

Away to the Farnesina Palace, lovely with Raphael's frescos of Galatea and the story of Psyche, with Michael Angelo's grim charcoal head looming in the distance. The Psyche series has suffered much by restorations; and though the gracious outline and designs remain, the coloring, one thinks, is far other than that of the master. The Galatea has faded less, and has been less restored. The lovely Sodoma fresco up stairs—the family of Darius—was undergoing repairs, and could not be seen. The palace belongs to the ex-king of Naples. It was formerly visible at all times, but may now be seen only on Sunday. He himself now lives in Rome, and perhaps chooses to tread its banquet halls deserted, which possibly accounts for the present restriction. In the afternoon we were bidden to see the embalmed remains of an ancient pontiff,—Pius V.,—who should be happy to make himself useful to Catholic institutions at a period so remote from the intentions of Nature. The old body is shown in a glass case, upon an altar of Santa Maria Maggiore. He lies on his side, his darkened face adorned by a new white beard composed of lamb's wool. His hands are concealed by muslin gloves; his garments are white, and he wears a brilliant mitre. And the devout crowd the church to touch and kiss the glass case in which he resides. There is, moreover, a procession of the crucifix, and vespers are sung in pleasing style by a tolerable choir; and many pauls and bajocs are dropped hither and thither in pious receptacles by the pious in heart. So, I repeat it, the mummied pope, sainted also, is of use.

CATACOMBS.

Of all that befell us in the catacombs we may not tell. We betook ourselves to the neighborhood of St. Calixtus one afternoon. A noted ecclesiastic of the Romish church soon joined our party, with various of our countrymen and countrywomen. He wore a white woollen gown and a black hat. Before descending, he ranged us in a circle, and harangued us much as follows:—

"You will ask me the meaning of the word 'catacomb,' and I shall tell you that it is derived from two Greek words—cata, hidden, and cumba, tomb. You have doubtless heard that the whole city of Rome is undermined with catacombs; but this is not true. The American Encyclopædia says this. I have read the article. But intramural burials were not allowed in Rome; therefore the catacombs commence outside the walls. They are, moreover, limited to an irregular extent of some three miles. Why is this? It is because they were possible only in the tufa formation. Why only in the tufa? Because it cuts easily and crumbles easily, hardening afterwards. And as the burials of the Christians were necessarily concealed, it was important for them to deal with a material easily worked and easily disposed of. The solid contents of the catacombs of Rome could be included within a square mile; their series, if arranged at full length, would not measure less than five hundred miles. In some places there are no less than seven strata of tombs, one below the other." All of this, with more repetitions than I can possibly signify, was delivered under the cogent stimulus of a roasting afternoon sun of the full Roman power. Being quite calcined as to the head and shoulders, we somewhat thankfully undertook the descent. The extreme contrast, however, between the outer heat and the inner chill and damp, proved an unwelcome alternative to most of us. Had we been allowed a somewhat brisk motion, we should have dreaded less its effects. But Father —— fought his ground inch by inch, and continued to carry on a stringent controversy with imaginary antagonists. We will not endeavor to transcribe the catechism, at once tedious and amusing, with which he held captive a dozen of Yankees prepared to sell their lives dearly, but uncertain how to deal with his mode of warfare. He kept us long in the crypt of the pontiffs, where are found two fragments of marble tablets bearing names in mingled Latin and Greek character. One inscription records, "Anteros episcopus." The other is of another name—"episcopus et martyr." The father now led us into a narrow crypt, where his stout form wedged us all as closely as possible together. He showed us on the walls two time-worn frescos, one of which—Jonah and the whale—represented the resurrection, while the other depicted that farewell banquet at Emmaus in which Peter received the thrice-repeated charge, "Feed my sheep." To this symbolical expression the father added one later and more puzzling. The fish which appeared in one of the dishes represented, he told us, the anagram of Christ in the Greek language—icthus, the fish, Jesus Christos theos—I forget the rest. The fish was the only hint of the presence of Christ on this occasion, and its significance could be apprehended only with this explanation. These pictures, he insisted, sufficiently showed us that the early Christians had religious images—a point of great authority and significance in the Catholic church, for us how easily disposed of! The pictures and the symbolism of the primitive church are both alike features of its time. In periods when culture is rare and limited, the picture and the parable have their indispensable office. The one preserves and presents to the eye much that would otherwise be overlooked and forgotten; the other presents to the mind that which could not otherwise be apprehended. The painted Christs, Madonnas, and so on, were in their time a gospel to the common people. Even in Raphael's period, even in the Italy of to-day, how few of the populace at large are able to save their souls by reading the New Testament! The paintings undoubtedly answered a useful purpose, as all men must acknowledge; but the Catholic system, carried out in its completeness, would give a melancholy perpetuity to the class of people who cannot read otherwise than in pictures. Even where it teaches to read, it withholds the power of interpretation. Protestantism means direct and general instruction. It gives to the symbolism of the Bible its plainest and most practical interpretation, without building upon it a labyrinth of types whose threading asks the study of a lifetime.

The fear and danger of early times had, no doubt, much to do with the growth of symbolism, both in pictures and in language. The intercourse of the early Christians was limited and insecure. It was guarded by watchwords. Its bodily presence took refuge in pits and caves. Its thought buried itself in similitudes and allusions. But now, when Christianity has become the paramount demand of the world, this obscurity is no longer needed nor legitimate.

The parables of Christ may be supposed to have had a double object. The most usually recognized is that of popular instruction, in the form best suited to the comprehension of his hearers. Many of his sayings, however, point to another meaning; viz., the discrimination between those who were fitted to receive his doctrine, and those who were not. How many, among the multitudes who heard him, can we suppose to have been anxious about the moral lessons intended by his illustrious fables? Few indeed; and those few alone would be able to understand his teaching, and, in turn, to teach according to his method. So he represents the kingdom of heaven which he preached as a net thrown into the sea. His sermons were such castings of the net; he made his disciples fishers of men. The Christian church, like the Jewish, rapidly degenerated into a tissue of legends and observances—at first representative of morality, soon cumbrous, finally inimical to it.

All this time, however, we are standing wedged by Father —— in a narrow compass, and, while the thought of one undertakes this long, swift retrospect, the temper of the others becomes irritated—not without reason. So we insist upon breaking out of the small quadrangle, and are led into the crypt in which were found the remains of St. Cecilia. Here tradition again holds a long parley with the representatives of modern thought. St. Cecilia, a noble Roman lady, was beheaded, but survived the stroke of the executioner three days, which she occupied in describing and explaining the doctrine of the trinity. (This, therefore, is the doctrine of those who have lost their head.) For this purpose she employed two fingers of the right hand and one of the left. All of this passes without controversy. Her body was found lying on its face, in an attitude perpetuated by the well-known statue in the church in Trastevere. But in this crypt are the relics of an altar, erected over the remains of another saint. The early Christian altars, our guide says, were always erected above the burial-place of some saint. Hence, no Catholic church is allowed to dispense with the presence of consecrated bones. Other graves, moreover, cluster around that which is supposed to have consecrated this altar: sums of money were paid for the privilege of interment in this proximity. This clearly shows the early Christians to have supposed that the saint himself had the power to benefit them, and the right of intercession. This we concede as quite possible; but does this go to show, O father, that the saint had any such power? Let us go back after this fashion in other things. Fingers were made before knives and forks, skins were worn before tissues, and nakedness is of earlier authority than either. A predatory existence has older precedent than agriculture or commerce. Let us go backward like a crab, if you will, but let us be consistent.

In another crypt we are shown two marble sarcophagi, well carved, in each of which lies a mouldering human figure once embalmed, and now black, without features, and with only a dim outline of form. Elsewhere we are shown a large marble slab handsomely engraved, with the record of a Christian martyr on one side, and with an inscription concerning the Emperor Hadrian on the other, presenting the economic expedient of a second-hand tombstone. We passed also through various dark galleries, and down one staircase. Some chambers of the catacomb had a luminarium, or light from the top; many of them were entirely dark. Father ——'s style of explanation threatening to prolong itself till midnight, impatience became general, and one of our party ventured a remonstrance, which was made and met something after the following fashion:—

Mr. F. Hem—hem! Sir, I am old and infirm, and—

Father ——. O, sir, ask any questions you like. The more you ask, the better I can explain myself. (Repeated over some three times.)

Mr. F. But, sir, I do not wish to ask any questions. I only wish—

Father ——. Don't make any excuses, sir. I shall be very glad to have you ask any questions. I am very ready to answer and explain everything. (Several repetitions.)

After a number of efforts, the senior member of the party at length obtained the floor, and succeeded in expressing himself to the effect that he feared to take death of cold in the catacomb, and would gladly be piloted out by the commonplace youth who followed Father —— as attendant, without views of any kind, except as to a possible buona mano. This suggestion of the elder met with so hearty a response from the remainder of the party as to bring the present exploration to an end, and Father —— and his public simultaneously dispersed to carriages and horses. In view of the whole expedition, I would advise people in general to read up on the subject of the catacombs, but not to visit them in company with one intent on developing theories of any kind. The underground chill is unwholesome in warm weather, and a conversion made in these dark galleries and windings would be much akin to baptism at the sword's point. Meet, therefore, the theorist above ground, and on equal terms; and for the subterraneous proceeding, elect the society of swift and prosaic silence.

VIA APPIA AND THE COLUMBARIA.

Since my last visit to Rome, more progress has been made under ground than above it. Rome is the true antipodes of America. Our business is to build—her business is to excavate. The tombs on Via Appia are among the interesting objects which the spade and mattock, during the last seventeen years, have brought to view. I remember well the beginning of this work, and the marble tombs and sarcophagi which it brought to light. I also remember, in those unconscientious days, a marble head, in exceedingly flat relief, which was desired by me, and stolen for me by the faithful servant of a friend. At the commencement of the diggings, we descended from our carriage, and easily walked to the end of the way then opened. Via Appia now affords a long drive, set with tombs on either side. Many of these are in brick, and of large dimensions. Most of the marbles have, however, been removed to the Museum of the Vatican.

On this road, if I mistake not, are the two columbaria discovered and excavated some seven years ago. They stand in a vineyard, which I saw in its spring bloom. The proprietor, a civil man, answers the little bell at the gate, and taking down a bunch of keys, unlocks for you the door of the small building erected over the vault. The original roof has fallen. All else looks as if it might have been used the day before for burial. The descent is by a steep, narrow stairway, of at least thirty steps, each of which is paved with a single lamina of coarse brick. The walls are honeycombed with small parallelogrammatic niches, in each of which was set a funeral vase or box. Over some of these places are such inscriptions as, "Non tangite vestes mortales," "Vencrare deos manes." There are many names, of which I have preserved but one, "Castus Germanicus Cæsaris." This columbarium belonged to the Flavian family. It has about it an indescribable gloom, like that of a family vault in our own time, but, it must be confessed, more æsthetic. One felt the bitter partings that death had made here, the tears, the unavailing desire to heap all the remaining goods of life upon the altar of departed friendship. Time healed these wounds then, no doubt, as he does to-day. The tears were dried, the goods enjoyed again; but, while Christianity has certainly lightened the dead weight of such sorrows, the anguish of the first blow remains what it was all those dim centuries ago. A glance into the columbarium makes you feel this.

The second columbarium is much like the first, excepting that the stair is not so well preserved. On emerging, the proprietor invited us to visit an upper room in his own house, in which were a number of objects, taken, he averred, from the two columbaria. These were mostly vases, tear-bottles, and engraved gems. But I doubted their genuineness too much to make any purchases from among them. The trade in antiquities is too cheap and easy a thing in Italy to allow faith in unattested relics.

Not very far beyond the columbaria stand the catacombs of the ancient Hebrews, much resembling in general arrangement those of the Christians. We found in several places the image of the seven-branched candlestick impressed upon the tufa. In one of the rooms were some remains of fresco. At each of its corners was painted a date-palm with its fruit. In two other rooms the frescos were in good preservation. Some of the graves were sunk in the earth, the head and feet at right angles with the others. We were shown the graves of two masters of synagogues. The frescos are not unlike those in the Christian and pagan tombs, though as I remember them, the Christian paintings are the rudest of all, as respects artistic merit.

The subjects were usually genii, peacocks, the cock, fruits, garlands, the latter sometimes painted from end to end of the wall. Some of the small tombs were still sealed with a marble slab. An entire skeleton was here shown us, and a number of sarcophagi. Of these, one was sunk into the ground, and several graves were grouped around it, much after the fashion of those in the Christian catacombs, from which Dr. Smith inferred so largely, both concerning the sanctity of the saint's body and the post-mortem power of the saint.

We were taken also to see some interesting tombs in the Via Latina. These were recently brought to light from their long concealment in a tract of the Campagna, belonging to the Barberini family. Descending a flight of stone steps, the custode admitted us into two fine vaulted chambers, decorated each after its own manner. The ceiling of the first was adorned with miniature bas-reliefs in stucco. The small figures, beautifully modelled, were enclosed in alternate squares and octagons. The designs were exhibitions of genii, griffins, and of centaurs, bearing female figures on their backs. The sculptured sarcophagi found in this tomb were removed to the Lateran Museum.

In the second tomb the walls and ceilings were adorned with miniature frescos, also enclosed in small compartments. Many of these represented landscapes, sometimes including a water view, with boats. These were rather faint in style, but very good. Peacocks, also, were frequent; and in one compartment was painted a glass dessert vase, with the fruit showing through its transparency. This design amazed us, both as to its subject and execution. Some panels in this tomb bore stucco reliefs on grounds of brilliant red and blue. In its centre was found hanging a fine bronze lamp, which is now at the Barberini Palace. A large sarcophagus of stone still remains here, nearly entire, with a pointed lid. On looking through a small break in one side of it, we perceived two skeletons, lying side by side, supposed, the custode told us, to have been husband and wife. These tombs certainly belong to a period other than that of the columbaria before described. The presence of sarcophagi, and of these skeletons, attests the burial of the dead in accordance with the usage of modern society, while the great elegance and finish of the ornamentation point to a time of wealth and luxury. I have heard no conjecture as to the original proprietorship of these tombs. They contain no military or civil emblems, and probably belonged to wealthy contractors or merchants. That day, no doubt, had its shoddy, and of the tricks practised upon the government one may read some account in Titus Livy, who, to be sure, wrote of an earlier time, but not a more vicious one.

Rome now boasts an archæological society, not indeed of Romans, but composed of foreign residents, mostly of British origin. The well-known artist Shakspear Wood is one of its most energetic members. At his invitation I attended a lecture given by Mr. Charles Hemans, on the subject of the ancient churches and mosaics of the city. Complementary to this lecture was an expedition of the society to several of these churches, which I very gladly joined. Our first and principal object of interest was the old Church of San Clementi, a building dating from the eleventh or twelfth century. Here Mr. Hemans first led us to observe an ancient fresco in the apsis, which represents the twelve apostles in the guise of twelve lambs, a thirteenth lamb, in the middle of the row, and crowned with a nimbus, representing Christ. Here we saw also an ancient marble chair, a marble altar screen, and a pavement in the ribbon mosaic, of which archæologues have so much to say. This mosaic is so named from the strips of colored stones which form its various patterns on the white marble of the pavement.

The church itself, however, occupied us but briefly. Beneath the church has recently been discovered and excavated a very extensive basilica, of a date far more ancient. This crypt was now lighted for us. Its original proportions are marred by walls of masonry built between its long rows of columns, and essential to the support of the church above. These walls are adorned by curious paintings of saints, popes, martyrs, and miracles. Among them is a very rude crucifixion; also a picture of Christ giving benediction after the fashion of the Greek church, and of a pontiff in the same act. Upon these things Mr. Hemans made many interesting comments. From the crypt we descended yet farther into a house supposed to date back at least to the empire, if not to the republic. It is a small but heavily-built enclosure, of two chambers, and contains a curious bas-relief in marble, representing a pagan sacrifice. In the narrow descent that led to it Mr. Wood showed me in three consecutive strata the tufa of the time of the kingdom, travertine of the republic, and brick of the empire.

The presence of the ancient basilica below the ancient church was suggested to one of the priests of the latter by the presence of a capital, rising just above the pavement of the church, and not accounted for by any circumstance in its architecture. This capital belonged to one of the columns of the basilica; but before so much could be ascertained, a long and laborious series of excavations had to be instituted. Father ——, the priest who first conjectured of the presence of this under building, has been indefatigable in following up the hint given by the capital, which he alone, in a succession of centuries, was clever enough to interpret. Most of the expense of this work has been borne by him.

From San Clementi the worshipful society went to the church of Santi Quattro. The object of interest here was a small chapel filled with curious old frescos, one series of which represents the conversion of Constantine. We see first depicted a dream, in which Sts. Peter and Paul appear to Constantine, warning him to desist from the murder of innocent children, whose blood was supposed to be a cure for his leprosy. Not disobedient to the heavenly vision, Constantine relinquishes the blood-bath, and releases the children. He sends for St. Sylvester, the happy possessor of an authentic portrait of the two apostles. The fresco shows us Sylvester responding to this summons, and bringing in his hand the portrait, which the emperor immediately recognizes. Farther on we see Sylvester riding in papal triumph, the emperor leading his palfrey—a haughty device for those days. Another fresco records the finding of the true cross by St. Helena. Coming at one time upon the three crosses she applied each of them in succession to the body of a dying person, who was healed at once by the contact of the true one.

The archæological society also explores the interesting neighborhoods of Rome, the villas of emperors, statesmen, and poets. Thus life springs out from decay, and the crumbling relics of the past incite new activities in minds that cling, like the ivy, about relics and ruins. This society, ancient as are the facts about which it occupies itself, seemed to me one of the most modern features of Rome, especially as it travels by rail, and carries its luncheon with it. I was not fortunate enough to join its visits to the environs of the Eternal City, but I wish that on one of its excursions it would take with it the oldest nuisance of modern society, and forget to bring it back. There is room enough outside of Rome for that which, shut within its walls, crowds out every new impulse of life and progress. No harm to the old man; no violence to his representative immunity; only let him remember that the world has room for him, and that Rome has not.

NAPLES—THE JOURNEY.

From these brief, sombre notes of Rome, we slide at once to Naples and her brilliant surroundings. Here, taking the seven colors as the equivalents of the seven notes, we are at the upper end of the octave of color. Rome is painted in purple, gold, olive, and bistre—its shadows all in the latter pigment. Naples is clear red, white, and yellow. Orange tawny is its deepest shade. The sounds of Rome awaken memories of devotion. They call to prayer, although the forms now be empty, and the religious spirit resident elsewhere. The voice of Naples trills, shrieks, scolds, mingling laughter, wail, and entreaty, in a new and confused symphony. Little piano-fortes, played like a barrel organ, go about the streets, giving a pulse to the quick rhythm of life. The common people are pictures, the aristocracy caricatures. When you rise above low life, Italian taste is too splendid for good effects in costume. The most ill-married colors, the most ill-assorted ornaments, deform the pale olive faces, and contradict the dignity of the dark eyes and massive hair. This is somewhat the case in Rome, much more in Naples. The continual crescendo of glare, as you go southward, points to the African crisis of orange and crimson, after which the negro nakedness presents an enforced pause, saying, "I can no more."

This land is the antipodes of the Puritan country. There all is concentration, inward energy, interior. Here all is external glow and glitter. If there be any interior, it can only belong to one of these three—passion, superstition, avarice. Every one who deals with you speculates upon your credulity. "Will you give four times the value of a thing, or five, or only twice?" is the question which the seller's eyes put to the buyer, however the tongue of the one may respond to that of the other. And here is a sad deforming of the Scripture parable; and he who has five in value gets ten in money for it, he who has three gets six, while the one talent, honesty,—the fundamental gift of God to man,—is indeed ignominiously buried in a dirty napkin, and laid nobody knows where. And while New England energy is a hundred-armed giant that labors, Italian sloth is a hundred-handed lazzaro that begs. If this is the result of the loveliest climate, the most brilliant nature, give me our snow and ice, ay, the east wind and all.

The journey from Rome to Naples at this season is hot, oppressive. Railway carriages, even as administered in Europe, make you acquainted with strange way-fellows. We chance upon a Neapolitan prince, with an English wife, returning to his own country and possessions after an absence of six years, the time elapsed since the inauguration of the new rule. He obviously regrets the changes over which the rest of the civilized world rejoices. In person, however, he and his partner are simple and courteous. Our car confines also a female nondescript carrying a dog, herself quite decently got up, but with an extraordinary smile, that is either lunatic or wicked, we cannot determine which. A certain steadiness and self-possession incline us to the latter theory, but we hold it subject to correction at a later day. She is obviously of Irish or low English extraction, and may be anything, from a discarded lady's maid to a reigning mistress. As we approach Naples, our princely friend begins to take notice. Here is Caserta, here its battle-field, where poor Francesco would certainly have had the victory, had not the French and Piedmontese interfered. "Oh Richard, oh mon Roi!" But we remember another saying: "And I tell you, if these had held their peace, the very stones would have cried out." Ay, those very stones, volcanic lava and tufa, worn by the chariot wheels of the wicked, from Tiberius to Napoleon and after, would have sobbed, "Let the feet of the messenger of peace, the beautiful feet, at last pass this way!" Arrived at the station, no warning can have taught you what to expect. It costs you forty cents to have your moderate effects transported from the cars to the omnibus of the hotel,—this not through any system, but because various people meddle with them, and shriek after you for recompense. At the Hotel de Rome, you are shown up many stairs into a dingy little room, a sort of spider's web. This will not do. You try the Hotel de Russie, opposite. Here you are forced to take an apartment much too fine for your means and intentions. The choice being this or none, you shut your eyes upon consequences, and blindly issue orders for tea and meats. To-morrow you will surely get a cheaper apartment. But to-morrow you do not.

The hotel book looks discouraging. Names of your countrymen are in it, not of your friends. Better remain apart than run the risk of ungenial society, and enforced fellowship. But the dull waters soon break into the sparkle of special providences. A bright little Briton, with a mild husband, hospitably makes your acquaintance. She is from Ireland, and has not the "thorough-bred British stare." All the more of a lady do we deem and find her. To her pleasant company is soon added that of an American of the sincere kind. He accepts us without fear or condition, and while we remain under the same roof with him, we have no cause to complain for want of sympathy or of countenance.

THE MUSEUM.

In the Museum we spend two laborious days. The first we give to the world-renowned marbles, finding again with delight our favorites of twenty years' standing. Prominent among these are the Amore Delfino, and the Faun bearing the infant Bacchus.

The Farnese Bull and the Farnese Hercules are admirable for their execution, but their subject has no special interest for us. We observe the Atlas, the Athletes, and the Venuses, one of whom is world-famous, but inexcusable. Here, too, is the quadriform relic of the Psyche, well known by copies, and the whole Balbo family on horseback. These marble knights once guarded the Forum of Pompeii. There is a certain melancholy in their present aspect, whether of fact or imagination we will not determine. One of the most interesting objects, from the vicissitudes through which it has passed, is the statue of Caligula, destroyed by the people with all other mementos of him after his death, the head having served, even in modern times, to steady the wheels of carriages in a ferry boat. The Naples Museum does not rival the Vatican in the merit of its nude marbles; but in draped statues it is far richer, as well as in statues of personal historical interest. The belief of the past has the most stately illustration in Rome, its life the most vivid record in Naples.

Many new treasures have been added to the collection during these years of our absence. Among them are some exquisite small bronzes, and three statuettes in marble, of which the eyes are colored blue, and the hair of a reddish tint. One of them is very pretty. It represents the seated figure of a little boy, and almost reconciles us to the strictly inadmissible invasion of color into the abstract domain of sculpture. Each art has, indeed, its abstraction. Sculpture dispenses with color, painting with the materiality of form. The one is to the other as philosophy to poetry.

From the marbles we flit to the Pompeian bronzes and mosaics, rich in number and in interest. Two tablets in mosaic especially detain us, from their representation of theatrical subjects. One of these shows the manager surrounded by several of his actors, to whom he dispenses the various implements of their art. At his feet, in a basket, lie the comic and tragic masks. Of the personages around him, one is pulling on his garment, another is trying the double tubes of a wind instrument. The second mosaic presents a group of three closely-draped figures. Actor is written on their faces, though we know not the scene they enact. The bronzes are numerous and admirable. Miniature art seems to have been held in great esteem among the Pompeians. Most of these figures are of small size, and suggest a florid and detailed style of adornment. Among other objects, we are shown the semicircular model of a Pompeian bath, on which are arranged the ornaments and water-fixtures just as they were found. One of these imitates a rampant lion standing on his hind legs, and delivering water from his mouth; another a serpent nearly upright. In the upper story of the Museum we see whole rooms floored with mosaic pavements removed entire from houses in Pompeii. The patterns are mostly in black and white, but of an endless variety. The contents of these rooms match well in interest with their pavements. Here, in glass cases, are carefully ranged and presented the tools and implements of Pompeian life; the loaves that never left the baker's shop, still fresh and puffy in outline, although calcined in substance; the jewels and silver vessels of the wealthy, the painter's colors, the workman's needles and thread: baths and braziers, armor in bronze and in iron, scarcely more barbaric than that of the middle ages; helmets, with clumsy metal network guarding the spaces for the eyes; spades, cooking utensils in great variety, fruits and provisions as various. Among the bronze utensils is a pretty and economical arrangement which furnishes at once hot water, a fire of coals to heat the room, with the convenience of performing at the same time the solemn rites of cookery. Hot water, both for bathing and drinking, seems to have been a great desideratum with the Pompeians. The stone cameos and engraved gems are shown in rows under glass cases. This Museum contains a well-known tazza, or flat cup, of onyx entire, elaborately carved in cameo on either side. It also possesses a vase of double glass, of which the outer or white layer has been cut, like a cameo, into the most delicate and elaborate designs. The latter is an object of unique interest and value, as is shown by the magnificence with which it has been mounted on a base of solid silver, the whole being placed under glass.

The Cumæan collection is less rich in objects of interest than the Pompeian. Its treasures are mostly Etruscan. It possesses many vases, Etruscan and Greek, many rude Etruscan sculptures, with household articles of various descriptions. It occupies a separate set of rooms, and is the gift of the Prince of Carignano.

Among the Pompeian remains we forgot to mention a mosaic tablet representing a cock-fight. One cock already bleeds and droops; above him the figure of his genius turns desponding away. The genius of the victorious cock, on the contrary, bears a crown and palm. The design is worthy of the Island of Cuba at the present day.

The frescos brought and transferred from Pompeii are beautiful and interesting. One of them shows thirteen dancing figures, all of which are frequently copied. Many inscriptions in marble are also preserved, but to decipher them would ask much time. We were interested in a small painted model of a Pompeian dwelling, called the House of the Poet. It shows the quadriform arrangement of the dark chambers around the open courts, of which one is the atrium, one the peristylium. The window-panes of the house of Diomed are shown,—not of glass, but talc, and only translucent. Windows, however, were rare in Pompeii. Perhaps the most pathetic relic that we observe is the skull of the sentinel in his helmet, as it was found.

We have here given only the most hurried and imperfect indication of the mines of wealth which this institution offers to the student of art and of history. A detailed account of its contents will be found in the valuable but prosaic Murray, and would here be superfluous. Its guardians, the custodi, are civil, and are not allowed to ask or receive any compensation from visitors. Several of them, nevertheless, manage to suggest that they would be glad to wait on you at your hotel, with books, objects of antiquity, and other small merchandise, which you hurriedly decline. You will be fortunate to get out of Naples in any state short of utter bankruptcy. How you are ever to get home to America, with temptations and expenses multiplying so frightfully upon you, sometimes threatens to become a serious question.

NAPLES—EXCURSIONS.

You have been two days in Naples, the hotel expenses and temptations of the street eating into your little capital. For value received your intellects have nothing to show. Your eyes and ears have been full, your brain passive and empty. You rouse yourself, and determine upon an investment. To learn something, you must spend something. These cherished napoleons must decrease, and you must, if possible, increase.

The first attempt is scarcely a success. Having heard marvels of the conventual church of San Martino, formerly belonging to the Cistercian brotherhood, you consult the porter of the hotel, and engage, for seven francs, a carriage to transport you thither. The drive is one immense climb under the heat of the afternoon sun. When you have gained the difficult ascent, your driver coolly informs you that the church is always closed at four P. M., the present time being 5.30. "Why did you not tell me so?" is the natural but useless question. "Because I could not in that case have got seven francs from you," would be the real answer. The driver shrugs his shoulders, and expects a scolding, which you are too indignant to give.

But you are not to be defeated in this way. A second expedition is planned and executed. To the gates of Pompeii you fly, partly by steam, and partly by horse-aid. You alight from your cloud of dust, demand a guide. "Yes; you can have the guide by paying also for the litter. This being Sunday, the entrance is free, and the government supplies no guide. You must have the portantina, or blunder about alone." The litter, with its pink gingham frill and cushion, looks hateful to you. You remember it twenty-three years ago with dislike. The sun of noon is hot upon you. The men are unpersuadable. Red and fierce as lava, you storm through the deserted streets of the ancient capital of seaside luxury. Like the lava, you soon cool, as to your temper—the rest of you continuing at 120 Fahrenheit. There are two of your party: one finds the litter convenient; the other also gives way, and you ride and tie, as the saying is, in very amicable style, and encourage the guide to tell you all he knows; but he, alas! has cropped but the very top of the clover. The fragments of history which he is able to give you, measure only his own ignorance and yours.

"Here is the Forum in which the Balbo statues were found. At the upper end were the court and seat of justice,—for a figure was found there bearing a balance; underneath were the prisons." Ah, the broken columns! Stately did they stand around the mounted statues, that expected to ride into perpetual fame on their marble horses—now most famous because so long forgotten. "Wherever four streets met, madam, stood a fountain. The Exchange stood also in the Forum. Here is the street of abundance, in which was found a marble bust bearing a horn of plenty. Here is the Temple of Isis. By this secret staircase the priest ascended and stood unseen behind the goddess, making the sounds which she was supposed to utter. Here was the bakery; behold the ovens. This was found filled with newly baked loaves. [Yes; for I myself beheld them in the Museum at Naples.] Ah, madam! the baths, with hot water and cold, and vapor. In those niches running around the wall were placed the vases with unguents. Here is the House of the Poet; here that of the Faun. See the frescos. What forms! what colors! Here is a newly excavated house, large and richly appointed. Each of these marble columns surrounding the inner court contains a leaden water-pipe with a faucet, so that from all at once water might flow to cool the extreme heats of summer. Here still stand two fine dragons carved in white marble, which must formerly have supported a marble slab. See what a garden this house had! What a fish-pond! Climb this stair, madam, if you would see the theatre. This larger one was for day performances. Yonder was the stage. There are still the grooves for the scenes to slide in. There was the orchestra [mostly flutes and fiddles]. Here sat the nobles, here the citizens, here the plebeians. From this eminence you can look over into the smaller theatre close at hand, in which night performances were given." And the stately dames, with those jewels which you saw stored at the Museo, and dressed and undressed like the frescos we have seen to-day, sat on their cushioned benches, and wafted their perfumes far and wide.

Here was the house of Diomed, rich and very extensive. The skeleton of Diomed (as is supposed) was found at the garden gate, with the key of the house and a purse of money. In one of the subterranean rooms is shown the impression of his wife's figure, merely a darker mark on a dark wall. Seventeen similar impressions were found. I think it is in this house that the walls of one of the rooms have an under-coating of lead to keep the moisture from the frescos, which are still brilliant. The luxe of fountains was, as is known, great and universal in Pompeii, and the arrangement of its leaden conduits is ample and skilful. Besides the well-known frescos, with their airy figures and brilliant coloring, we are shown a bath, whose vaulted roof is adorned with stucco reliefs, arranged in small medallions, octagons alternating with squares.

Presently we come to the street of tombs. Among these I best remember that which bears the inscription, "Diomede, sibi suis." At the upper end of this street we find a semicircular seat of stone, for the accommodation of the guard. Close by this was found the skeleton of the sentinel in armor which we saw in the Museum at Naples. In the prison were found the iron stocks, with at least one skeleton in them; others chained in divers ways. A feature new to me is that of various diminutive temples, with roofs roundly or sharply arched, devoted to the household gods. These usually stand upon an elevated projection, and might measure three feet in height and four in depth. The guide pointed out to us some small, square windows, which are simply open squares in the masonry, defended by iron gratings, deeply rusted. They are not numerous. Our guide suggests that there may have been a tax upon windows, accounting for their rare occurrence. One he shows us still nearly entire, a narrow slit, measuring, perhaps, eight inches by three, with a slab of talc in place of glass.

And presently we come to a small museum, whose contents are much the same in kind with the household remains seen by us in the Museum at Naples. And farther on is a room in which we are shown the quattro morti—the four dead bodies whose impress on the hardened cinders which surrounded them has been so ingeniously utilized. It is known that the masses of cinder within which these bodies had slowly mouldered were filled with liquid plaster, and the forms of the bodies themselves, writhing in their last agonies, were thus obtained. One of these figures—that of a young woman—is full of pathetic expression. She lies nearly on her face, her hand near her eyes, as if weeping. Her back, entirely exposed, has the fresh and smooth outline of youth. The forms of two elder women and one man complete the sad gallery. Of these women one wears upon her finger a silver ring, the plaster having just fitted within it. This figure and that of the man are both swollen, probably from the decomposition that took place before the crust of ashes hardened around them into the rigid mould which to-day gives us their outlines.

These four plaster ghosts were the last sights seen by us in Pompeii. For by this time we had walked and ridden three hours, and those three the most fervent of the day, beginning soon after noon. The heat was cruel and intense, but we had not given ourselves time to think of it. The umbrella and portantina helped us as they could, but the feeling that the work had to be done now or never helped us most of all. Our vexation against our guides had long ago cooled into a quiet good will. Relinquishing the fiery journey, which might have been prolonged some hours further, we paid the rather heavy fee. The second carrier of the litter demanded a few extra pence, reminding us that at our first arrival he had brushed the dust from our dresses with a zeal which then appeared mysterious, but whose object was now clear. Parting from these, we passed into the little inn, quite bare and dirty, whose coolness seemed delicious. We here ordered an afternoon déjeûner, and ate, drank, and rested.

THE CAPUCHIN.

While we waited for our dinner, a Capuchin at another table enjoyed a moderate repast. Bologna sausage, cheese, fruit, and wine of two sorts contented him. His robust countenance beamed with health, his eyes were intelligent. This was one of the personalities of which the little shown makes one desirous to know more. His refreshment consumed and paid for, he began a rambling conversation with the garçon who attended us, as well as with the proprietor of the locanda in which we were. Capuchin and Garçon mutually deplored the poverty of the poor in Naples. Capuchin showed two blue silk handkerchiefs which he had been forced to purchase, for compassion, of a poor woman. Both obviously considered the new state of things as partly accountable for this poverty, which is, on the contrary, as old as the monastic orders. The Capuchin had been preaching Lenten sermons in Greece, and had been well received. Garçon rejoined that there were good Catholics in Greece, agreeing harmoniously with the man in brown. But at this juncture another face looks in at the door. "That is the man who plagues me to give him lucky numbers for play," says the frate. Here I can keep out of the company no longer. "What does he play at—cards or dice?" I ask. "Neither, madam; that man ruins himself with playing at the lottery." Capuchin continues: "If I had the gift of fortunate numbers, I would not withhold them. I should wish to benefit my fellow-creatures in this way, if I were able to do so. But I have it not, this gift of prophecy." And if you had it, thought I, I am not so sure of the ultimate benefit of gambling to your fellow-creatures, even were they to win, instead of losing.

The Capuchin and I, however, talk of other things—of monasteries, and rich libraries, closed to women. "So, father, you consider us the allies of the devil." "No, signora; the inhibition is mutual: we may not enter any nunnery." The padrone of the inn here breaks in with the robust suggestion that these restrictions ought to be removed, and that monks and nuns should have liberty to visit each the establishments of the other. While this talk proceeds, I occasionally glance into the smoky depths of the kitchen opposite, where a mysterious figure, in whose cleanliness I desire to believe, wafts a frying-pan across a dull fire, which he stimulates by fanning with a turkey's wing. After each of his gymnastics, a dish is brought out, and set upon our table—first fish, then omelet, then cutlet; and we discover that the Capuchin and ourselves have a mutual friend at Fuligno, the good, intelligent, accomplished Count ——, in whose praises each of us is eloquent. We part, exchanging names and addresses. Our Pompeian guide urges us to return and make the ascent of Vesuvius under his care. But we depart untrammelled. Every one was satisfied with us except the cripple who rolled himself in the dust, and the weird, white-haired women with spindles, who followed us shrieking for a largess. We gave nothing, and they commented upon us with a gravity of moral reprobation quite fit to make one's hair stand on end, even with New England versus beggar behind one. But the train came, and mercifully took us away; and whether in not giving we did well or ill, is a point upon which theorists will not agree; so we may be pardoned for giving ourselves the benefit of a doubt.

After Pompeii a little good fortune awaited us. As before said, we had encountered an American of the right sort,—kindly, sincere, and of adequate education. Joining forces with him, we no longer shivered before the hackman, nor shrank from the valet de place. We at once engaged the latter functionary, ordered the remise of the hotel to wait for us, and started upon two days of eager but weary sight-seeing. Our first joint act was to scale again the height of San Martino, this time to enter the church and convent, and view their boasted riches. A pleasant court, with a well in the centre of it; a church whose chapels and altars were gorgeous with lapis lazuli, jasper, agate, and all precious marbles; a row of seats in wooden mosaic, executed by a monk of the Cistercian order, vowed to silence; cloisters as spacious and luxurious as can well be imagined; a great array of relics in golden boxes, shielded from dust and common sight by rich curtains of heavy silk and gold—this is all of the establishment that remains in our recollection. The present government has dismissed the saintly idlers of the monasteries, saying, perhaps, in the style of Henry VIII., "Go plough, you drones, go plough." But in what field and for what wages they henceforth labor is not known to me.

Hence to the Grotto of Siana, half a mile long, and some eight feet wide. The chill of this long, damp passage, in contrast with the high temperature from which we entered it, so alarmed us that we turned back at half the distance, and gave up seeing the den or cave that lay beyond. At Pozzuoli we view Caligula's Bridge, of which but a few large stones remain: the guide points out the place at which Paul and Peter landed. Here are the ruins of a fine amphitheatre. The underground arrangements still show us the pits in which the wild beasts and the gladiators were kept. Square openings at the top ventilated each of these, and a long, open space in the middle separated the cells of the beasts from those of the gladiators. On public occasions all of these openings were closed by heavy plates of metal, so as to present the solid surface desired for the combats.

"Arise, ye Goths, and glut your ire!"

In this neighborhood we visited what is left of the temple of Jupiter Serapis. The salt water formerly covered its columns to such a height as to corrode them badly. The smell caused by the evaporation of the sea-water in the hot sun was so offensive that the government found it necessary to apply a thorough drain. These time and tide worn marbles were of the choicest kinds—African marble, rosso antico, and so on. Their former beauty little avails them now. We drive further to the cavern with the stratum of carbonic acid gas, and see the dog victimized, which cruel folly costs us two francs. And then we visit the sulphur vapor baths, whose fiery, volcanic breath frightens us. These are near the Lake of Agnano, an ancient volcanic crater. In its neighborhood are the royal game preserves, in which fratricidal V. E. hunts and slays the wild boar. Returning, we climb to Virgil's tomb, a small, empty enclosure, with a stone and inscription dating from 1840.

"Cecini pascua, rura, duces,"

says the poet, through his commemorator. Item, this steep journey under a scorching sun did not pay very well. Yet, having ascended the fiery stair, and stood in the small, dark enclosure, and read the tolerable inscription, I felt that I had done what I could to honor the great Mantuan: so, with a good conscience, I returned through cool, ill-smelling Posilippo, to the hotel, dinner, and the afternoon meditation.

BAJA.

The excursion to Baja called us up early in the morning. With a tender hush, a mysterious remembrance of our weaker and still sleeping brethren, we stole through the hotel, swallowed coffee, and issued forth with carriage and valet de place for a day's campaigning. As the functionary just mentioned had invented a hitherto unpatented language, supposed by him to present some points of advantage over the Queen's English, I will here, en passant, serve up a brief sample, for the study of those inclined to the practical pursuit of linguistics.

"Zat is ze leg Agnano [lake of.] In vinter he is full of vile dog [wild duck]." Of Lake Avernus: "Zis was de helty [hell]." Of the ruins of the amphitheatre at Pozzuoli: "Ruin by de barbions [barbarians]. Zey brok him in piece and pushed him down. Zar is Caligole's [Caligula's] Bridge. Tis de Sibyl's Cave, where she gib de ragle [oracle]. Temple Diana, temple Neptune, ze god of ze sea and ze god of ze land." Here was a mythological aperçu thrown in. This individual rarely condescended to speak his native language—Italian. In ours, it required no little adjustment of the perceptive faculties to meet his views.

Passing through Posilippo, we come first to a piece of ground which bears the form of an amphitheatre, although the whole structure, if it exist at all, is thickly overgrown with trees and shrubs. A rustic proprietor cultivates the vine here, but cannot pass the nights during July, August, and September, on account of the bad air. The wines, white and red, are nevertheless excellent. The right of excavation here vests in a Frenchman, who has purchased the same.

Our next point of exploration is the Temple of Mercury, at Baja—a circular building, with fine columns partly overthrown. Here exists a perfect whispering gallery, for at a certain spot in the wall the slightest utterance is instantly heard at the point directly opposite. Here two forlorn women, with a tambourine and without costume, dance a joyless tarantella, which costs us a franc. They urge us, also, to buy sea-shells, and small fragments of mosaic, together with skeletons of the sea-horse, a queer little fish, some two inches long. After this, we are shown some columbaria, and a bath with stucco reliefs. Adjacent is the well preserved ruin of a large bathing establishment. Besides the baths, we here find places for reclining, where vapor baths were probably enjoyed.

Now come Nero's prisons, gloomy, under-ground galleries, in which he kept his slaves. Torches here became necessary. These galleries, destitute of daylight, were quite extensive, frequently crossing each other at right angles. And then we visited the Piscina Mirabilis, an immense reservoir which formerly supplied the Roman fleet at Marina with fresh water. Its tall columns, still entire, are deeply corroded by water. This was a work of surprising extent and finish. Thereafter, mindful of Murder considered as a Fine Art, we gave some heed to the whereabouts of Agrippina's villa, and inquired concerning those matricidal attempts of her son, which were finally crowned with so entire a success. The villa of Hortensius, in this neighborhood, lies chiefly under water, the level of the ground having changed. Perhaps this villa was anciently built on ground reclaimed from the sea, as Horace says,—

We next visited the Lake of Avernus, and Lake Fusano, the River Styx of Virgil and the Romans. Bordering upon this we found a whole hill-side honeycombed with columbaria. Then came the long sulphurous gallery leading to the hot spring in which eggs are boiled for your instruction. Each of these visitations has its fee, so that the pilgrimage, even if made on foot, would be a costly one. Cuma next claimed us. A long, dark gallery leads to the cave of the Cumæan Sibyl, described by Virgil. But the presence of water here makes it necessary for visitors to sit upon the shoulders of two or three shaggy and uncleanly-looking sprites. We stoutly decline this adventure, and are afterwards sorry. From this neighborhood was taken the Cumæan collection, which figures at the Museo Nazionale, presented by the Prince of Carignano. Somewhere in the course of this crowded and heated day, a dinner was slidden in, which gave our labor a brief interval of rest and refreshment. It consisted mostly of dirt, in various forms, flavored with cheese, garlic, and a variety of savors equally choice. To facilitate its consumption, we drank a sour-sweet fluid, called white Capri. I found none of the Italian wines joyous. Despite their want of body, they give one's nerves a decided shake.

Well, I have narrated all that took place on the day set apart for Baja. Its results may be prosaically summed up as heat, haste, and headache, with a confused vision of the past and a most fragmentary sense of the present.

CAPRI.

I have a fresh chapter of torment for a new Dante, if such an one could be induced to apply to me. I will not expatiate, nor exhale any Francesca episodes, any "Lasciate ogni spiranza!" I will be succinct and business-like, furnishing the outlines from which some more leisurely artist, better paid and employed, shall do his hell-painting.

We leave enchanting Naples,—tear ourselves from our hotel, whose very impositions grow dear to us; the precious window, too, which shows the bay and Capri, and close at hand the boats, the fish-market, and the chairs on which the populace sit at eventide to eat oysters and drink mineral water. A small boat takes us to a very small steamer, on whose deck we pay ten francs each to a stout young man, in appearance much like a southern poor Buckra, who departs in another small boat as soon as he has plundered us. The voyage to Capri is cool and reasonably smooth. A pleasant chance companion, bound to the same port, beguiles the time for us. We exchange our intellectual small wares with a certain good will, which remains the best part of the bargain. When quite near the island, the small steamer pauses, and lowers a boat in which we descend to view the famous Blue Grotto. At the entrance, we are warned to stoop as low as possible. We do so, and still the entrance seems dangerous. With some scratching and pushing, however, the boat goes through, and the lovers of blue feast their eyes with the tender color. The water is ultramarine, and the roof sapphire. The place seems a toy of nature—a forced detention of a single ray of the spectrum. Dyes change with the fashion; the blue of our youth does not color our daughter's silks and ribbons. The purples of ten years ago cannot be met with to-day. But this blue is constant, and therefore perfect.

Our enjoyment of it, however, is marred by an old beast in human form who rushes at us, and insists upon being paid two francs for diving. He promises us that he will show us wondrous things—that he will fill the azure cave with silver sparkles. Wearied with his screeching, and a little deluded by his promises, we weakly offer him a franc and a half; whereupon he throws off some superfluous clothing, and softly glides into the deep, without so much as a single sparkle. He certainly presents an odd appearance; his weird legs look as if twisted out of silver; his back is dark upon the water. But the refreshing bath he takes is so little worth thirty sous to us that we feel tempted to harpoon him as he dodges about, sure that, if pierced, he can shed nothing more solid than humbug. On our return to the steamer we pay two francs each for this melancholy expedition, and presently make the little harbor of Capri.

And here the promised Hell begins. The way to it, remember, is always pleasant. No sooner does our boat touch the land than a nest of human rattlesnakes begins to coil and hiss about us, each trying to carry us off, each pouring into our ears discordant, rapid jargon. "My donkey, siora." "And mine." "And mine." "How much will you give?" "Will you go up to Tiberio?" But all this with more repetition and less music than a chorus of Handel's or an aria of Sebastian Bach. "My donkey," flourish; "My do-n-onkey," high soprano variation; "My donkey," good grumbling contralto. "How much?" "How much?" "How much?" "How much?" shriek all in chorus. And you, the unhappy star in this hell opera, begin with uncertain utterance—"Let me see, good people. One at a time. What is just I will pay"—the motivo also repeated; chorus renewed—"Money;" "Three francs;" "Four francs;" "Five francs;" "A bottiglia;" "A buona mano." A buona mano? Good hand—would one could administer it in the right way, in the right place! By this time each of you occupies the warm saddle of a donkey, and at one P. M., less twenty, the thermometer at 90 Fahrenheit or more, and being warned to reach the steamer by three P. M., at latest, the punishment of all your past, and most of your future sins begins.

Facile descensus Averni. Yes; but the ascensus? To climb so high after Tiberio, who went so low! For this is the ruined palace of Tiberius Cæsar himself, which you go to seek and see, if possible. He still plagues the world, as he would have wished to do. Your expedition in search of his stony vestiges is a long network of torment, spun by you, the donkey, and the donkey-driver, undisguised Apollo standing by to weld the golden chains by which you suffer. As often as you seem to approach the object, a new détour leads you at a zigzag from the straight direction. But this is little. At every turn in the road a beggar, in some variety, addresses you. Now a deformed wretch shows you his twisted limbs, and shrieks, "co cosa, siora." Now, a wholesome-looking mother, with a small child, asks a contribution to the wants of "questa creatura" Now, a grandam, with blackened face and bleached hair, hobbles after you. Children oppress you with flowers, women with oranges,—all in view of the largest quid for the smallest quo. You grow afraid to look in a pretty face or return a civil nod, lest the eternal signal of beggary should make itself manifest. And such women and children!—every one a picture. Such intense eyes, such sun-ripened complexions! I take note of them, handsome devils that they are, all foreordained as a part of my fiery probation. For all this time I am making a steep ascent. Sometimes the donkey takes me up a flight of stone steps, clutching at each with an uncertain quiver, but stimulated by the nasal "n—a—a—a," which follows him from the woman who by turns coaxes and threatens him. Now we clamber along a narrow ledge, whose height causes my dizzy head to swim; there is nothing but special providence between me and perdition. A little girl, six years of age, pulls my donkey by the head; a dignified matron behind me holds the whip. The little girl leads carelessly, and I quake and grow hot and cold with terror; but it is of no use. The matron will not take the rein; her office is to flog, and she will do nought else. And the sun?—the sun works his miracles upon us until we wish ourselves as well off as the Niobides, who, at least, look cool. Finally, after an hour of jolting, roasting, quivering, and general exasperation, we reach the top. Here we are passively lifted from our donkeys; we mechanically follow our guide through a white-washed wine-shop into a small outer space, with a low wall around it, over which we are invited to look down some hundreds of feet into the sea. This is called the Leap of Tiberio: from this height, says the barefooted old vagabond who guides us, he pitched his victims into the deep. The descent here is as straight as the wall of a house. Farther on, we find some very fragmentary ruins, in the usual Roman style. Among them is a good mosaic pavement, with some vaults and broken columns. A sloping way is shown us, carefully paved, and with a groove on either side. Into this, say they, fitted the wheels of a certain chariot, in which guests were invited to seat themselves. The chariot, guided by two cords, then started to go down to the sea. But at a certain moment the vehicle was arrested by a sudden shock. Those within it were precipitated into the water, after which the cords comfortably drew the chariot back.

I have never heard any of the evidence upon which is based the modern rehabilitation of Tiberius and Nero. I have, however, found in the stately Tacitus, and even in gossipy Suetonius, a shudder of horror accompanying the narration of their deeds. The world has seen cruelty in all ages, and sees it still; but I cannot believe that the average standard of humanity can justly be lowered so far as to make the acts of Tiberius simply rigorous, those of Nero a little arbitrary. Mr. Carlyle, in dealing with the French revolution, reprobates the hysterical style of reviewing painful events; but in the history of Rome under the Cæsars we hear too plainly the sobs and shrieks of the victims to be satisfied with the modern philosophizing which would deprive them of our compassion. Man is naturally cruel; superstition makes him more so. A genuine religion alone softens his ferocious instincts, and places the centre of action and obligation elsewhere than in his own pleasure or personal advantage. Man is also compassionate; but without the systematic formation of morals, his weak compassion will not compensate the ardor of his self-assertion, which may involve all crimes. Luxury exaggerates cruelty, because it intensifies the action of the selfish interests, and loosens the rein of restraint—its objects and the objects of morals being incompatible. The most cruel characters have been those presenting this admixture of luxury and ferocity. The silken noose gives finer and more atrocious death than the iron sword.

I think that the (unless vilified) wretch Tiberius built this palace in fear, and dwelt in it in torment. In its fastnesses he felt himself safe from the knife of the assassin. In the leisure of its isolation he could meditate murders with æsthetic deliberation, and hurl his bolts of death upon the world below, remorseless and unattainable as Jove himself.

Here is an episode of philosophizing in the hell I promised you. But hell itself would not be complete without the button-bore—the man or woman who holds you by a theory, and detains you amid life's intensity to attend the slow circlings of an elaborative brain.

I have now finished Tiberio. The donkeys brought us down with more danger, more heat, more fear and clatter. Only beggary diminishes, a little discouraged, in our rear. It seems to have been given out that we have no small change, as is indeed the fact; so the young and old only grumble after us enough to keep their hand in. In compensation for this, however, a new trouble is added, viz., the danger of losing the small steamboat, which threatens to leave at three P. M., a period by this time scarce half an hour distant. Yet a bit of bread we must have at the hotel. It is the former palace of Queen Joanna; but we do not know it at the moment, and nothing leads us to suspect it. Here two good-natured English faces make us for the moment at home. A cup of tea,—the English and American restorative for all fatigues,—a wholesome slice of bread and butter, a moderate charge, and ten minutes of cool seclusion, make the Hotel di Tiberio pleasant in our recollection. And then we remount, and, the little steamer beginning to manœuvre, our haste and anxiety become extreme; so we take no more heed of steep or narrow, but the donkeys and we make one headlong business of it down to the beach, where we have still to make a secondary embarkation before reaching the steamer. Here, as we had foreseen, the final crush attends us. The guide and each of the donkey girls and women insist upon separate payment. With grim satisfaction I fling a five-franc note for the whole. It is too much, but the whole island cannot or will not give change for it. And then ensues much shrieking, expostulation, and gesticulation, in the midst of which I plunge into the boat, make my bargain with Charon, and am for the time out of hell. As I looked back, methought I saw Stefano the guide and the women having it out pretty well with reference to the undivided fee. Stefano leaped wildly into the sea after me, and extorted five more soldi from my confusion. Finally, I exhort all good Christians to beware of Capri, and on no account to throw away a trip thither, but to undertake the same as a penance, for the mortification of the flesh and the good of the immortal soul. The island is to-day in as heathen a condition as Tiberius himself could wish; only from a golden, it has descended to the perpetual invoking of a copper rain. That the Beggar's Opera should have been written out of the kingdom of Naples is a matter of reasonable astonishment to the logically inferring mind. I could improvise it myself on the spur of the moment, making a heroine out of the black-eyed woman who drove my animal—black-haired also, and with a scarlet cotton handkerchief bound around her head in careless picturesqueness. Gold ear-rings and necklace had she who screamed and begged so for a penny more than her due. And when I cried aloud in fear, she replied, "Non abbia timor—donkey molt' avezzo;" which diverted my mind, and caused me to laugh. As we went up and as we went down, she encountered all her friends and gossips in holiday attire; for yesterday was Festa, and to-day, consequently, is festa also—a saint's day leaving many small arrearages to settle, in the shape of headache, fight, and so on, so that one does not comfortably get to work again until the third day. This fact of the antecedent festa accounted for the unusual amount of good clothes displayed throughout the island. Our eyes certainly profited by it, and possibly our purses; for we just remember that one or two groups in velvet jackets and gold necklaces did not beg.

But all of this is a superfluous after-digression, as I am really, in my narrative, already on board of the little steamer, with the charitable waves between me and the brigand Caprians. A pleasant sail—not so smooth but that it made the Italian passengers ill—brought us to Sorrento. Here our trunk was hoisted on the head of a stout fellow, all the small fry of the harbor squabbling for our minor luggage. We climbed a long, steep flight of stone steps, walked through a shady orange garden, and came out upon a cool terrace fronting the sea, with the Rispoli Hotel behind it. Here we were to stay; our bargain was soon made, with the divine prospect thrown in. Our room was on the ground floor, behind a shallow arcade paved with majolica. Shaking off the dust of travel, and ranging our few effects in the rather narrow quarters, we at once took possession of the prospect, and regulated ourselves accordingly.

SORRENTO.

Ugh! after the roasting, hurried day at Capri, how delicious was the first morning's rest at Sorrento! The coral merchant came and went. We did not allow him to trouble us. They offered us the hotel asses; we did not engage them. The blue sea, the purple mountains, the green, rustling orange groves,—these were enough for us, pieced with the writing of these ragged notes, and a little dipping into our Horace, who, it must be confessed, goes lamely without a dictionary. A day of lights and shadows, of sunshine and silence, of pains caressed, and fatigues whose healing was sweeter than fresh repose. And we dreamed of novels that we could write beneath this romance-forging sun, and how the commonplace men and women about us should take grandiose shapes of good and ill, and figure as ideals, no longer as atoms. We would forsake our scholastic anatomy, and make studies of real life, with color and action. For this, as we know, we should need at least six months of freedom, which perhaps the remnant of our mortal lives does not offer. Meantime we sit and dream. Each sees the content of the landscape reflected in the other's eyes. We sit just within our room, the little writing-table half within, half without the window, that reaches to the ground. The soft breeze flutters our pages to and fro. We scold it caressingly, as one reproves the overplay of a gracious child. With the exception of an occasional straggling visitor, the whole terrace is ours. Now and then we forsake the writing-table, rush to the railing that borders the terrace, and take a good look up and down, to assure ourselves that what we see is real, and founded on terra firma. Here our wearied nerves shall bathe in seas of heavenly rest. As to our suffering finances, too,—if one word is not too often profaned for us to profane it, we will quote Horace's

"mox reficit rates quassas,"

not

"indociles pauperiem pati"

Here our rapture will cost nothing. We will feed our eyes. The sea and sky shall wear sapphires and diamonds for us. Our shabbiness will be the æsthetic complement to their splendors. Do you not remember the figures in brown or olive green that always lurk in the corners of pictures in whose centre the Madonna, or some saint, is glorified? They also serve, who only stand and wait in the shadow. So will we do now. We will lie forgotten in the corner of this splendid picture, while our time and our remaining credit equalize themselves a little. The days in Naples considerably outran our estimate; the days here must make up for it. And we want nothing; and all is delightful.

It is true, we do not carry out those good intentions quite literally. Who ever does? But we adhere to our proposed outline of rigid economy with only an occasional break. We soon begin to take note of small temptations that lie about the streets. Here we see the little neck-ribbons that are so cheap and pretty. A handful of them twisted around the neck of Economy give her something of a choke. Further on in our days and walks, a sound of saws in motion arrests our attention; while a sign and tempting show-case urge us at least to look at the far-famed Sorrento woodwork. We enter; we set the tenth clause of the Decalogue at nought, coveting wildly. Brackets, tea, glove, and cash boxes are displayed there for our overthrow; watch-cases, on a new principle, all either brave with mosaic, or smooth and shining in the simple beauty of the olive wood. Something of all this we snatched and fled. We took far too little for our wishes, rather too much for our means. Silk stockings we did resist by that simplest and best of measures—not entering the shops in which they were pressingly advertised. The very passing of those shops gave us, however, vague dreams of swimming about in silken movements; how grateful in a world of heat! But the line has to be drawn somewhere, and we draw it here.

A donkey excursion pleasantly varies our experience in Sorrento. Do you know how much a donkey ride means in Sorrento? It does not mean a perpetual jolt, and horrible inter-asinicidal contest between the ass who carries the stick and the ass who carries you. The donkeys of Sorrento are fat and well-liking: smooth and gray are the pair that come for us, comfortable as to the saddle and the bridle. And our donkey-driver is a handsome youth, with a bold, frank countenance, and the ripest olive and vermilion complexion. His walk is graceful and robust; he knows every one he meets, and has his bit of fun with sundry of the groups who pass us. These consist of men and women bearing on their heads large flat baskets filled with cocoons, or in their hands bundles of the same; girls leading mules, or carrying household burdens; soldiers, beggars, Neapolitan princes, the syndic of Sorrento, and other varieties of the species vaguely called human. He takes us up a steep and rough ascent to the telegraph station. There are many bad bits in the road; he is but one, and the donkeys are two; but he has such a clever way, at critical moments, of holding on to the head of the second donkey in conjunction with the tail of the first, that he gets the two cowardly riders through many difficulties and more fears. Once on level ground, the donkeys amble along delightfully. So pleasant is the whole in remembrance, that, sitting here, at an interval of many miles in distance, and ten days in time, we feel a sincere twinge in remembering that we gave him only a franc for himself, paying by agreement two francs for either donkey. Forgive us, beauteous and generous Gaetano, and do not curse us in aggio and saggio, the open-mouthed patois of your country.

FLORENCE.

A week is little for the grandeurs of Florence, much for the discomforts of its summer weather. The last week of May, which we passed there, mistook itself for June, and governed itself accordingly. We went out as early as human weakness, unsubdued by special discipline, permitted. We struggled with church, gallery, painting, sculpture, and antiquities. We breathlessly read sensible books, guides, and catalogues, in the little intervals of our sight-seeing. We dropped at night, worn and greedy for slumber; and the day died, and made no sign.

A hot week, but a happy one. To be overcome in a good cause is glorious, and our failure, we trust, was quantitative, not qualitative. Good friends helped us, took away all little troubles and responsibilities; took us about in carriages of dignity and ease, and landed us before royal, imperial works of art. With all their aid and cherishing, Florence was too many for us. So, of her garment of splendors, we were able only to catch at and hold fast a shred here and there, and whether these fragments are worth weaving into a chapter at all, will better appear when we shall have made the experiment of so combining them.

Our first view of her was by night; when, wearied with a day's shaking, a hot and a long one, we tumbled out of railroad car into arms of philanthropic friend, who received us and our bundles, selected our luggage, conquered our porter and hackman, pointed to various interesting quadrangles of lamps, and said, "This is Florence." But we had seen such things before, and gave little heed—our thought machinery being quite run down for lack of fuel. The aspect which we first truly perceived, and still remember, was that of a clean and friendly interior, a tea-table set, a good lamp bright with American petrolio (O shade of Downer!), and, behind an alcove, the dim, inviting perspective of a comfortable bed, which seemed to say, "Come hither, weary ones. I have waited long enough, and so have you."

PALAZZO PITTI.

The second aspect of Florence was the Pitti Palace, brown and massive; and the bridges numerously spanning the bright river; and the gay, busy streets, shady in lengths and sunny only in patches; the picturesque mélange of business and of leisure, artisans, country people, English travellers and dressed-up Americans; the jeweller's bridge, displaying ropes of pearls and flashes of diamonds, with endless knottings and perplexities of gold and mosaic; alabaster shops, reading-rooms, book-stores, fashions, cabinets of antiquities—all leading to a welcome retirement within the walls of the Palazzo Pitti.

Well content was the Medici to live in it, ill content to exchange it, even for the promised threshold of Paradise. A good little sermon here suggests itself, of which the text was preached long ago, "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." And Medici's investments had been large in Pitti, and trifling in Paradise; hence the difficulty of realizing in the latter. Within the Pitti Palace are things that astonish the world, and have a right to do so, as have all the original results of art. The paintings are all—so to speak—set on doors that open into new avenues of thought and speculation for mankind. The ideal world, of which the real is but a poor assertion, has, in these glimpses, its truest portraiture. Their use and dignity have also limits which the luxury and enthusiasm of mankind transgress. But indispensable were they in the world's humanization and civilization: that is enough to say of them.

O, unseen in twenty-three years, and never to be seen again with the keen relish of youth. What have I kept of you? What good seed from your abundant harvest has ripened in my stony corner of New England? Your forms have filled and beautified the blank pages of life, for every life has its actual blanks, which the ideal must fill up, or which else remain bare and profitless forever. And you are here, my Seggiola, and you, my Andreas and Peruginos and Raphael; and Guercino's woman in red still tenderly clasps the knees of the dead Savior. But O! they have restored this picture, and daubed the faded red with savage vermilion.

Scarcely less ungrateful than the restoration of a beautiful picture is the attempt to restore, after the busy intervals of travelling, the precious impressions made by works and wonders of art. The incessant labor of sight-seeing in Florence left little time for writing up on the spot, and that little was necessarily given to recording the then recent recollections of Naples and Rome. It was in Venice that I first tried to overtake the subject of Florence. It is in Trieste that I sit down and despair of doing the poorest justice to either. My meagre notes must help me out; but, in setting them down, I forgot how rapidly and entirely the material, of which they gave the outline, would disappear. I thought that I held it, so far as mind possession goes, forever. At the feast of the gods we think our joys eternal.

On reference to the notes, then, I find that the best Andreas and Fra Bartolomeos are to be found here, and quite a number of them in the Pitti. Some of the first Raphaels also are here, and some Titians. The Seggiola looked to me a little dim under her glass. The Fates of Michael Angelo were strong and sincere. Two of the Andreas are the largest I remember, and very finely composed. Each represents some modification of the Madonna and Saints, subjects of which we grow very weary. Yet one perceives the necessity of these pictures at the time in which they were painted. The æsthetic platform of the time would have them, and accepted little else. A much smaller picture shows us the heads of Andrea and his beautiful wife, the Lucia, made famous by Browning. The two heads look a little dim now, both with age, and one with sorrow. Raphael's pictures, seen here in copious connection with those of his predecessors, appear as the undoubted culmination of the Florentine school, grandly drawn, and conceived with the subtlest grace and spirit. The Florentine school, as compared with others, has a great weight of æsthetic reason behind it. It reminds me of some rare writing in which what is given you represents much besides itself. The best Peruginos share this merit, so do, in a different manner, the works of Beato Angelico, whose wonderful faces deserve their gold background. How to overtake these supreme merits in the regions of prose and of verse, one scarcely knows. By combining bold and immediate conception with untiring energy, unflinching criticism, and a nicety that stops before no painfulness, one might do it. Life runs like a centiped; one dreams of being an artist, and dies.

Here it may not be amiss for me to recur to the form of my diary, whose inartistic jottings will best give the order of my days and movements.

Wednesday, May 29.—Walked to Santa Croce, hearing that a mass was to be celebrated there for the Florentine victims of '48. When I arrived, the mass was nearly over; the attendance had been very numerous, and we found many people still there. Near the high altar were wreaths and floral trophies. I should be glad to know whether the priests who celebrated this mass did so with a good will. The ideas of '48 are the deadly enemies of the absolute and unbounded assumptions of the Roman papacy and priesthood. I hear that many of the priests desire a more liberal construction of their office. Would to God it might be so. It is most mournful that those who stand, in the public eye, for the religion of the country, should be pledged to a course utterly out of equilibrium with the religious ideas of the age. Thus religious forms contradict the spirit and essence of religion, and the established fountain-heads of improvement shut the door against social and moral amelioration.

In Santa Croce we hastily visited the monument erected to Alfieri by the Countess of Albany, and the tombs of Machiavelli, Galileo, and Raphael Morghen. The last has a mural background of florid marble, of a light red color, with a recumbent figure in white marble, and an elaborate medallion of the same material, representing the Madonna, infant and saints. I fully hoped and intended to revisit this venerable and interesting church, but was never able to do so. It has lately received, as all the world knows, a fine front in pure white marble, adorned by bas-reliefs executed by the popular sculptor Fedi. In the square before the church stands the new statue of Dante, which I found graceful, but not grandiose, nor indeed characteristic. The face bears no trace of the great poem; the awe and dignity of super-human visions do not appear in its lines. He, making hell and heaven present to our thoughts, did a far deeper and more difficult work than those accomplished who made their material semblance present to our eyes.

The remainder of this morning we devoted to the gallery of the Uffizi, the artistic pendant of the Pitti. We hastily make its circuit with a friend who points out to us the portraits of Alfieri and the Countess of Albany, his lady and companion. The head of Alfieri is bold and striking, the hair red, the temperament showing more of the northern energy than of the southern passion. The sobriety of his works and laborious character of his composition also evince this. The countess, painted from mature life, shows no very marked characteristic. Hers is the face of an intelligent woman, but her especial charm does not appear in this portrait.

The Uffizi collection appears to have been at once increased and rearranged during the three and twenty years of our absence. We find the Niobides grouped in an order different from that in which we remember them. The portrait gallery of modern artists is for us a new feature, and one which, alas! we have not time to study, seeing that the great chefs-d'œuvres imperiously challenge our attention, and that our time is very short for them. We spend a dreamy hour in the Tribune, whose very circumscription is a relief. Here we are not afraid of missing anything. This étui of gems is so perfectly arranged and inventoried that the absence of any one of them would at once be perceived. Here stands the Venus, in incomparable nudity. Here the Slave still sharpens his instrument—the classic Boxers hold each other in close struggle. Raphael, Correggio, Michael Angelo, Carlo Dolce, are all here in concentration. You can look from one to the other, and read the pictorial language of their dissents and arguments. A splendid Paul Veronese, in half figures, merits well its place here. It represents a Madonna and attendant female saint: the hair and costumes are of the richest Venetian type; and though the crinkles of the one and the stripes of the other scarcely suggest the fashions of Palestine, they make in themselves a very gorgeous presentment. In the other rooms we remember some of the finest Raphaels, a magnificent Perugino, Sodoma's beautiful St. Sebastian, a famous Salutation of Mary and Elizabeth, by Albertinelli, a very tipsy and impudent Silenus by Rubens, with other pictures of his which I cannot characterize. The Vandykes were all hung too high to be well seen. They did not seem nearly so fine as the Vandykes in the Brignoli Palace in Genoa. Here are some of Beato Angelico's finest works, among others his famous triptych, from whose bordering of miniature angels so many copies are constantly made. Here is also a well-known Leonardo da Vinci, as well as Raphael's portraits of Leo Tenth, attended by a cardinal and another dignitary. A narrow gallery is occupied by numerous marble alto relievos by Luca della Robbia and Donatello; here is also a marble bas-relief of the Madonna and Child, the work of the great Michael.

By knocking at a side door you gain admittance into a small chamber, whose glass cases contain works of art in gold, crystal, and precious stones. Here is a famous cup, upon whose cover a golden Hercules encounters the many heads of the Hydra, brilliant with varied enamels, the work of Benvenuto Cellini. Miniature busts in agate and jasper, small columns of the same materials,—these are some of the features which my treacherous memory records. It has, however, let slip most of what is precious and characteristic in this collection. The Uffizi demands at least a week's study for even the slightest sketch of its contents. We had but a week for all Florence, and tasted of the great treasure only on this day, and a subsequent one still more hurried. In remembrance, therefore, we can only salute it with a free confession of our insufficiency.

Thursday.—A dies non for the galleries. It was a Festa, and they were all closed. So was the Bargello. The Boboli gardens were not open till noon, at which time the heat made them scarcely occupable. We visited the Church of San Michele, which was formerly a Loggia, or building with open sides and arches, like others still existing in various parts of the city. The filling up of these open arches changed it into a church. They tell us that it is to be reconverted into a Loggia, to answer the present necessities of the over-crowded city. Here we found a curious tabernacle, carved in marble—a square enclosure, with much detail of execution, and, on the whole, a Gothic effect. Tombs, monuments, and old mosaic pavement this temple also contains; but I cannot recall its details.

The afternoon of this day we employed partly in a visit to the two tombs beside which American feet will be sure to pause. Here, in this sculptured sarcophagus, sleeps the dust of E. B. B. Here, beneath this granite cross, lie the remains of Theodore Parker. At the first, I seemed to hear the stifled sobs that mourned a private sorrow too great to take account of the public loss. For what she gave the world, rich and precious as it was, was less than that inner, unalienable jewel which she could not give but in giving herself. And he who had both, the singer and her song, now goes through the world interrogating the ranks of womanhood for her peer. Seek it not! She was unique. She died and left no fellow.

A soberer cortege, probably, followed Theodore to his final resting-place. The grief of poets is ecstatic, and cannot be thought of without dramatic light and shade, imagined, if not known of. A sorrowing, patient woman, faithful through all reverses, stood beside the grave of the great preacher, the mighty disputant. She remembered that it had always been peace between her and this church militant. From every raid, every foray, into the disputed grounds of theory and opinion, she kept open for him a return to the orthodoxy of domestic life. The basis of his days was a calm, well-ordered household, whose doors were opened or shut in accordance with his desire of the moment. Would he receive his whole congregation, or a meeting of the clergy, or a company more mixed and fashionable? The simple, well-appointed rooms were always in order; the lights were always clear; the carpets swept; the books and engravings in nice order. The staid New England women-servants brought in the refreshments, excellent of their kind, and carefully selected for their suitableness to the occasion. The wife sat or moved unobtrusively among her guests; but she loved Theodore's friends, and made his visitors welcome. If Theodore had war without, and it became his business to have it, he had ever peace within. And this it was pleasant and exemplary to remember, standing beside his grave.

How often have I, in thought, linked these two graves together, striving to find a middle term or point of meeting for them both! The distant image of the spot was sacred and dear to me. The person of the one, the character of the other, were fixed among my affections. For let me say here that though I have criticised Parker's theology, adopting neither his methods nor his conclusions, of Parker himself I have never ceased to think as of a person with a grand and earnest scope, of large powers and generous nature. He was tender in large and in little, a sympathist in practice as well as a philanthropist in theory. My heart still warms and expands at the remembrance of what he was in the pulpit and at the fireside. Nor was he the less a stern moralist because he considered the ordinary theories of sin as unjust and insufficient. No one would better console you for a sin deplored, no one could more forcibly deprecate a sin contemplated. He painted his time more wicked than it was, and saw it so. A modern Dante, all in the force of prose, E. B. B. lies here like the sweet Beatrice, who was at hand when the cruel task of criticism was over, to build before the corrected vision of the great pilgrim the silvery shrines and turrets of the New Jerusalem. So will we leave them—a lesser Dante, a greater Beatrice, and one who has borne record of herself.

VENICE.

Venice, which I seek to hold fast, is already a thing of yesterday. "Haste is of the devil," truly says the Koran, whose prophet yet knew its value. But the strokes of the pen need deliberation as much as those of the sword need swiftness. Strength goes with Time, and skill against him.

Little of either had I after a night in the cars between Florence and Venice,—hot, dusty Florence, and cool, glassy Venice,—a night of starts and stops, morsels of sleep set in large frames of uneasy waking. The steep ascent of the Apennines is only partially descried through the darkness. It begins at Pistoia, and when it ends, Pistoia lies vertically under you, at the bottom of what seems in the darkness an abyss, in which its lights shine brightly. Tunnels there are in plenty on this road, and one of these threatens us with suffocation. For the engine was unduly replenished with coal at Pistoia in view of the hard task before it, and the undigested food vented itself in unwholesome gases, which the constraints of the tunnel drove in upon us, filling the lungs with mephitic stuff which caused them to ache for more than an hour afterwards. This part of the journey was made pleasant to us by the presence of a Venetian lady, handsome, intelligent, and cordial. At Bologna we lost her, making also a long stop. The hour was three in the morning; the place, a bare railroad depot. The hour passed there would not have been patiently endured by an American public. But Italians endure every possible inconvenience from the railway management, which is clearly conducted on pessimistic principles. On reaching the cars again, another pleasant companion shortened the time with easy conversation. Not but that we dozed a little after the weary night; and the priest in the opposite compartment fell asleep over his morning prayers. But my new companion and I made our way through a shoal of general remarks to the terra firma of a mutual acquaintance, in whose praises both of us grew warm. And at length we began to see marshes, and waters, and a fortress. "That is Venice," said the captain; and I replied with sincere surprise, "Is it possible?" For Venice, as approached by the railroad, makes no impression, presents no coup d'œil. And this marks a precaution for which the devisers of railroads in this country may deserve praise. Being pure men of business, and not sentimentalists, they do not wish to find themselves mixed up with any emotions consequent upon the encounter of the sublime and beautiful. They cannot become responsible for any enthusiasm. And so, in their entrances and exits, they sedulously avoid the picturesque, and lead the traveller into no temptation towards stopping and lingering by the way. Of two possible routes, they, on principle, choose the more prosaic; so that the railroad traveller nowhere gets less beauty for his money than in this same Italy, the flower-garden of the world.

The arrival even in Venice becomes, therefore, vulgar and commonplace in their management. And soon one gets one's luggage out of the clutches of guardians and porters, and cheaply, in an omnibus gondola, one swashes through a great deal of middling water, landing finally at Hotel Barbesi, where breakfast and the appliances of repose are obtained.

We did not prudently devote this first day to sleep, as we ought to have done. The energy of travel was still in us, and we aroused ourselves, and went forth. The valet de place, with high cheek-bones, a fresh color, and vivacious eyes, led us on foot to the Place and Cathedral of St. Mark, the Ducal Palace, the Bridge of Sighs, and prisons of the condemned. We visited the great council-halls, superb with fretted gilding, and endless paintings by Tintoretto and Bellini. We saw the Lion's Mouth, into which anonymous accusations were dropped; the room of the Ten; the staircase all in white and gold, sacred to the feet of Doge and Dogaressa alone. As magnificent as is the palace, so miserable are the prisons, destitute of light, and almost of air—a series of small, close parallelograms, with a small hole for a window, opening only into a dark corridor, containing each a stony elevation, on which, perhaps, a pallet of straw was placed. Heaven forbid that the blackest criminal of our day should confront the justice of God with so poor a report to make of the mercy of man! In the dreaminess of our fatigue, we next visited a bead factory, and inspected some of its delicate operations. And then came the table d'hôte, and with it a little whiff of toilet and hotel breeding, sufficiently irksome and distasteful. In the evening there was to be a Fresco, or procession of gondolas on the great canal, with lanterns and music, in honor of Prince Plomplon, who was at Danieli's hotel. Uncertain whether to engage a gondola or not, I sat in the garden balcony of Barbesi's, immediately over the canal. I saw the gondolas of high society flit by, gay with flags and colored lanterns, the gondoliers in full livery. Their attitude in rowing is singular. They stand slanting forward, so that one almost expects to see them fall on their faces. In the gondola, however, one becomes aware of the skill and nicety with which they impel and guide their weird-looking vehicles.

The Fresco was to be at nine o'clock; but by an hour earlier the gondolas were frequent. And soon a bark, with lanterns and a placard announcing an association of artists, stopped beneath our balcony, while its occupants, with vigorous lungs, shouted a chorus or two in the Venetian dialect. The effect was good; but when one of the singers asked for a "piccola bottiglia" and proceeded, hat in hand, to collect from each of us a small contribution, we felt that such an act was rather compromising for the artists. In truth, these men were artisans, not artists; but the Italian language has but one word for the two meanings, contriving to distinguish them in other ways.

The stream of gondolas continued to thicken on the canal, and at nine o'clock, or thereabouts, a floating theatre made its appearance—a large platform, brilliantly lighted, and bearing upon it a numerous orchestra and chorus. The chef d'orchestre was clearly visible as he passed, energetically dividing the melody and uniting the performers. This lovely music floated up and down the quiet waters, many lesser lights clustering around the greater ones. Comparison seems to be the great trick of descriptive writing; but I, for my part, cannot tell what the Fresco was like. It was like nothing that I have ever seen.

And I saw it in the intervals of a leaden stupor; for, after the sleepless night and active day, the quiet of Barbesi's balcony was too much for me. Fain would I have hired a gondola, have gone forth to follow the musical crusade, albeit that to homage a Napoleon be small business for an American. But by a new sort of centaurship, my chair and I were that evening one, and the idea of dividing the two presented itself only in the light of an impossibility. Roused by the exclamations of those about me, I awoke from time to time, and mechanically took note of what I have here described, returning to sleep again, until a final wrench, like the partition of soul and body, sent me with its impetus to the end of all days—bed.

The fatigue of this day made itself severely felt in the waking of the next morning. Shaking off a deadly stupor and dizziness, I arose and armed for the day's warfare. My first victim was the American consul, who, at the sight of a formidable letter of introduction, surrendered at discretion. Annexing the consul, I bore him in triumph to my gondola, but not until I had induced him to find me a lodging, which he did speedily; for of Barbesi and many francs per diem I had already enough, and preferred charities nearer home to that of enriching him. I do, moreover, detest hotel life, and the black-coated varlets that settle, like so many flies, upon your smallest movement. I have more than once intrenched myself in my room, determining to starve there rather than summon in the imps of the bell. With the consul's aid, which was, I must say, freely given, I secured to myself the disposal of a snug bedroom and parlor, with a balcony leading into a music-haunted garden, full of shiny foliage, mostly lemon and myrtle trees, having also a convenient access to the grand canal. After this, we proceeded to the Church of the Frari, rich with the two monuments of Titian and Canova. Both are architectural as well as sculptural. That of Canova is a repetition of his own model, executed in the well-known Vienna monument, with the addition, I thought, of a winged lion and one or two figures not included in the other. The monument of Titian stands opposite to that already described. The upper portion of it presents a handsome façade enclosed in three arches, each of which contains a bas-relief of one of his great pictures. The middle one presents the Assumption, in sculpture; that on the right the Entombment of Christ; that on the left the St. Peter Martyr—the picture itself being in the sacristy of the Church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo. The Frari also contains a curious and elaborate monument to a doge whose name I forget. Above sits the doge in his ducal chair; below, four black slaves clad in white marble, their black knees showing through their white trousers, support the upper part of the monument upon their heads. Two bronze Deaths, between the doge and the slaves, bear each a scroll in white marble, with long inscriptions, which we did not read. The choir was adorned with the usual row of seats, richly carved in black walnut. From this rich and interesting temple we passed to the Academia delle belle Arti.

This institution contains many precious and beautiful works of art. The Venetian school is, however, to the Florentine much as Rossini's Barbière to Dante's Divina Commedia. Here all is color, vitality, energy. The superabundance of life and of temperament does not allow the severer deliberations of thoughtful art. The finest picture of this school, the Assumption of Titian, is the intense embodiment of the present, an ideal moment that presupposes no antecedent and no successor. It is as startling as a sudden vision. But it is a vision of life, not of paradise. The Madonna is a grand, simple, human woman, whose attitude is more rapt than her expression. She stands in the middle of the picture, upon a mass of clouds, which two pendent cherubs deliciously loop up. Above, the Eternal Father, wonderfully foreshortened, looks down upon her. Beneath, the apostles are gazing at the astonishing revelation. All is in the strongest drawing, the most vigorous coloring. Yet the pale-eyed Raphaels have more of the inward heaven in them. For this is a dream of sunset, not of transfiguration. So great a work of art is, however, a boon beyond absolute criticism. Like a precious personality, its value settles the account of its being, however widely it may depart from the standard recognized in other things.

In the same hall is the last work of Titian, a Pieta, or figure of the dead Christ upon his mother's knees. This picture is so badly placed that its effects can only be inferred, absolute glare and darkness putting out its light and shade. Far from the joyous allegro of Titian's characteristic style, the coloring presents a greenish pallor, rather negative and monotonous. The composition of the picture is artistic, tonic, and harmonious; its expression high and pathetic. The ebbing tide of the great master's vitality left this pearl on the shore of time.

The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, by Titian, is another of the famous pictures in this collection. The Virgin is represented as a maiden of ten years, ascending the steps of the temple at Jerusalem. The figure and the steps are both of them seen in profile. Her pale-blue dress is relieved by an oblong glory which surrounds her from head to foot. More famous is a large Paul Veronese, representing Christ at supper in the house of the Pharisee. The richness of the Venetian costumes, the vigor and vitality of the figures, give this picture its great charm. It is no nearer to Christ and Jerusalem "than I to Hercules." A large painting by a French artist, in this hall, replaces the great Paul Veronese taken to Paris by Napoleon I.,—the Cena,—and, to my mind, replaces it very poorly. The huge paintings of Tintoretto are among the things that amaze one in Venice. How one hand, guided by one brain, could, in any average human life, have covered such enormous spaces of canvas, is a problem and a puzzle. The paintings themselves are full of vigor, color, and variety. But one naturally values them less on account of their great number. Of course, in the style of Raphael or Perugino, a single life could not have produced half of them. The Venetian school is sketchy, and its figures often have more toilet than anatomy.

I am almost ashamed to speak of these pictures at all, since I speak of them so inadequately. Yet, gentle reader, all is not criticism that criticises, all is not enthusiasm that admires. Copious treatises are written on these subjects by people who know as little of them as is possible for a person of average education. Americans have especially to learn that a general tolerable intelligence does not give a man special knowledge in matters of art. Among the herd of trans-Atlantic travellers who yearly throng these galleries, they know most who pretend least to know.

A brief interval of rest and dinner enabled us to visit the Armenian Convent at San Lazzaro. For this excursion two rowers were requisite. Starting at five P. M., we reached the convent in half an hour. It stands upon an island which its walls and enclosures fill. The porter opens to us. We have a letter of introduction from Ex-Consul Howills to Padre Giacomo, and bring also a presentation copy of the late consul's work on Venice. The padre receives us with courteous gravity. We make acquaintance with his monkey before we make acquaintance with him. The monkey leaps on the neophyte's hat, tears off a waxen berry, and eats it. His master thoughtfully leads us through the dreamy rooms and passages of the convent. Here is the room that Byron occupied; here is his name, written in Armenian in his own hand. Here also is Prince Plonplon's name, written by him in the book of illustrious visitors. After showing it, the padre offers another book, for commonplace visitors, in which he invites me to enter my name: I humbly comply. We visit the chapel, which is handsome, and the pleasant garden. The printing establishment interests us most. These Armenian fathers are great polyglots, and print books in a variety of languages. Padre Giacomo, who speaks good English, shows us an Armenian translation of Napoleon's Life of Julius Cæsar, which we are surprised and rather sorry to see. We afterwards hear it suggested that the expense of this work has probably been borne by the French emperor himself, with a view to the Eastern question. Among the antiquities of the convent we find a fine Armenian manuscript of the fourth century; among its modern curiosities, a book of prayers in thirty languages. In the refectory is a pulpit, from which one monk reads aloud, while the others dine. Connected with this convent is a college for the education of Armenian youths, either for the priesthood or for active life. Another institution, in Venice proper, receives from this those scholars who decide upon an ecclesiastical profession. Padre Giacomo had already bought Consul Howill's book for the convent library. He led us, lastly, into a small room, in which are kept the publications of the convent, to be sold for its benefit. Here we made a few purchases, and took leave, trusting to see Padre Giacomo again.

One of my earliest acts in Venice, after the first preliminaries of living, was to get from a circulating library the first volume of Mr. Ruskin's Stones of Venice. I have never been a reader of Mr. Ruskin, and my position towards him is that of an outside unbeliever. I shun his partisans and disbelieve his theories. The title of this book, however, seemed to promise a key to the architectural mysteries of the mirror city, and I, taking him at his word, reached out eagerly after the same. But Mr. Ruskin's key opens a great many preliminary doors before admitting you to the point desired, and my one busy week was far too short to follow the intricacies of his persuasions. I could easily see that the book, right or wrong, would add to the pleasure and interest of investigating the city. Mr. Ruskin is an author who gives to his readers a great deal of thought and of study. His very positive mode of statement has this advantage; it sums up one side of the matter so exhaustively as to make comparatively easy the construction of the opposite argument, and the final decision between the two. Yet, while the writer's zeal and genius lead us to follow his reasonings with interest, and often with pleasure, his judgment scarcely possesses that weight and impartiality which would lead us to acquiesce in his decisions. Those who fully yield to his individual charm adopt and follow his opinions to all extremes. This already shows his power. But they scarcely become as wise as do those who resist, and having fully heard him, continue to observe and to think for themselves. And as, in Coleridge's well-known lines, anxiety is expressed as to the human agency that can cleanse the River Rhine when that river has cleansed the city of Cologne, we must confess that our expectations always desire the man who shall criticise Mr. Ruskin, when he has criticised to his full extent. For there is one person whom he cannot criticise, and that is himself. To do this would involve a deliberation of thought, an exactness of style, to which even Mr. Ruskin cannot pretend.

With his help, however, I did observe the two granite columns in the Piazzetta, to whose shafts he gives fifteen feet of circumference, and to their octagonal bases fifty-six, a discrepancy exceeding the difference which the eye would measure. But he certainly ought to know. And I found also the columns brought from St. Jean d'Acre, which are, as he does not mention, square, and of a dark marble, with Oriental capitals and adornments. And I sought out, in the church of SS. Giov. e Paolo, two dogal monuments, of which he praises one and criticises the other with stress. The one praised is that of Doge Mocenigo; the other, that of Doge Vendramin. I did not find in either a significance to warrant the extensive notice he gives them. Having learned, with great satisfaction, that the artist of the monument which "dislikes" him was afterwards exiled from Venice for forgery, he proceeds to speak of "this forger's work," allowing no benefit of doubt. And this was my account with Mr. Ruskin, so far as the Stones of Venice are concerned; for time so shortened, and objects so multiplied, that I was constrained thereafter to dispense with his complicated instruments of vision, and to look at things simply with my own eyes.

We made various visits to the Cathedral of San Marco, whose mosaic saints, on gold backgrounds, greet you in the portico with delight. The church is very rich in objects of art and in antiquities. It has columns from Palestine, dogal monuments, tessellated pavements, in endless variety. But the mosaics in the sacristy were for me its richest treasure. They comprise the conscientious labors mentioned by George Sand, in her Maîtres Mosaistes. The easy arch of the ceiling allows one to admire them without the painful straining usually entailed by the study of fresco or other ceiling adornment. In a small chapel we were shown a large baptismal font brought from Palestine, and the very stone on which John Baptist's head was cut off!

We went in, one Sunday, hoping to see the famous palle d'oro, an altar-covering in massive gold, exhibited only on rare Festas, of which this day was one. But while we wedged ourselves in among the crowd, one of our party descried a boy with the pustules of small pox still fresh upon his face. We fled in precipitation, marvelling at the sanitary negligence which allows such exposures to take place at the public risk.

We visited the Church of the Scalzi (Barefooted Friars), and found it very rich in African and other marbles. It boasts some splendid columns of nero antico. One of the side chapels has four doors executed in Oriental alabaster, together with simulated hangings in rosso antico, the fringe being carved in giallo. Another was adorned with oval slabs of jasper, very beautiful in color and in polish. The ceiling, painted in fresco by Tiepolo, was full of light and airy grace.

From this, we went to the Church of the Gesuiti, in high repute for the richness of its adornments. We found it a basilica, its sides divided by square piers, and the whole interior, piers and walls, covered with a damasked pattern wrought in verd antique upon a ground of white marble. The capitals of the piers were heavily gilded. The baldecchino of the high altar was dome-shaped, and covered on the outside with a scolloped pattern in verd antique, each scollop having a slender bordering of white marble. The baldecchino is supported by four twisted columns formed of small rounded pieces of verd antique closely joined together. The pulpit has a heavy marble drapery, with simulated fringe, all in the pattern already mentioned. The whole is more luxurious than beautiful. Its art bears no proportion to its expense. To those who think of the Jesuits in general as I do, it will hardly stand as a monument of saintly service and simplicity. Near the high altar rest the ashes of the last Doge of Venice. The spot is designated by a simple slab, forming part of the pavement. On it is written, "Æternitate suœ Manini cineres."

We visited two very good collections of antiquities, in one of which we found the door of the Bucentaur, and its banner of crimson silk, with gilded designs. Here were portraits of doges, curious arms, majolicas, and old Venetian glass, much finer than that of the present day. Here also are collected many relics of Canova, the most interesting of which are the small designs for his great works. Over the door of this museum stands a pathetic inscription to the effect that Michel Correr, "vedendo cadere la patria" had collected here many things of patriotic and historical interest.

But these prosaic recounts are only the record of actual steps. The charm, the delight of Venice they do not and cannot express. My recollections of the city invest her with a solemn and stately personality. I did not see her bowed beneath the Austrian yoke, betrayed, but not sold, refusing to be cajoled and comforted. That cloud was removed. The shops were busy and prosperous, the streets thronged with people, the canals gay with gondolas, bearing also barges and large and small boats of very various patterns. The Piazza was filled at night with social groups of people, less childish, methought, than other Italians, and with a more visible purpose in them. Still, the contrast of the past and present, no longer shameful and agonizing, was full of melancholy. Venice can never be what she has been. The present world has no room for a repetition of her former career. But she can be a prosperous and happy Christian commonwealth, with her offices and dignities vested in her own sons, with education and political rights secured to all her children. And this is better, in the present day, than to be the tyrant of one half of the world, the fear and admiration of the other. For Peace, now, with open hands, bestows the blessings which War formerly compelled with iron grasp and frowning brow. The true compulsion now is to compel the world to have need of you, by the excellence of your service. Industry has a deeper mine of wealth than piracy or plunder can ever open. A man's success is in strict proportion to his use; and the servant of all is the master of all. So the new Venice for which I look is to be no more like the old Venice than the new Jerusalem will be like the city of David. Moral grandeur must make her great. Justice must make her people happy. And so beautiful and delightful is she, that I cannot help echoing the Psalmist's exclamation, "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem! They shall prosper who love thee!"

A wash of waters, a play of lights, a breeze that cools like the perfumed water of the Narguilé, a constant interchange of accents musically softened from the soft Italian itself, which seems hard in comparison with them; rows of palaces that have swallowed their own story; churches modelled upon the water like wax-flowers upon a mirror; balconies with hangings of yellow-brown and white; dark canals, that suggest easy murders and throwing over of victims; music on the water; robust voices, of well-defined character; columns and arches, over which Mr. Ruskin raves, and which for him are significant of religion or irreligion; resolute-looking men and women; a world of history and legend which he who has to live in to-day can scarcely afford time to decipher,—this is Venice as I have seen her, and would see her again. Rejoice, O sister cities, that she is free. Visit her with your golden rain, O travellers; with your golden sympathy, O poets! Enrich her, commerce! Protect her, Christian faith of nations, for she is free—free!

To me she is already a recollection. For after the days of which I have so briefly told, a far summons carried me to an elder land, a more mournful mystery. Looking, but not loving my last, I packed the wearisome trunk, paid for the nights and dinners, owing little else at my lodging. A certain nightingale, who, at eight precisely every morning, broke in upon my slumbers with delicious singing, did not figure in the bill. But remembering his priceless song, I almost regret my objections to certain items set down in the account against me. And I had a last row in the gondola, and a last ice in the Piazzetta, and, last of all, a midnight embarkation on board the Austrian steamer for Trieste. Farewell, Sebastiano, my trusty gondolier. I shall not hear you cry, "Oh, juiné" (giovine) again. I see the line of the Piazzetta, defined by the lamps. Brightly may they burn; glad be the hearts that beat near them. And now they are all out of sight, and the one outside light is disappearing, too. Farewell, wonderful Venice. Thou wert painfully gotten together, no doubt, like other dwelling-places of man. Thou camest of toiling and moiling, planning, digging, and stone-breaking. But thou lookest to have risen from the waters like a dream. And this wholeness of effect makes thee a great work of art, not henceforth to be plundered by the powerful ones of the earth, but to be cherished by the lovers of beauty, studied by the lovers of art.

I will return upon my steps to mention one feature in the new Venice, a small and obscure one, whose significance greatly interested me. Having heard of a Protestant Italian congregation in the neighborhood of one of the great Catholic temples, I turned my steps one evening towards one of its meetings, and found, in a large upper chamber, a numerous assemblage of Italians of various grades, chiefly people of the poorer class, who listened with attention to a fervent address from a young clergyman of their own nation. The discourse had much of the spirit of religion, little of its technic, and was thereby, I thought, the better adapted to the feeling of the congregation. A sprinkling of well-dressed men was observable. A prayer followed the discourse, in which the auditors joined with a hearty amen. This little kernel of Protestantism, dropped in a field so new, gave me the assurance of the presence of one of the most important elements in the progress and prosperity of any state, to wit, that of religious liberty.

It is quite true that the sects under whose protection the Protestant Venetian church has sprung up—the Scotch and Swiss Presbyterians—can in no sense be considered as exponents of liberal ideas in religion. Calvinism, per se, is as absolute as Catholicism, and as cruel. The Calvinistic hell is but an adjourned Inquisition, in which controversialists have as great satisfaction in tormenting the souls of their opponents as Torquemada had in tormenting their bodies. Yet Calvinism itself is a rough and barbaric symbolization of great truths which the discipline of Catholicism tended ever more and more to distance from the efficient lives of men. The principle of individual responsibility, the impossibility of moral action without religious liberty, the inward character of religious acts and experiences, in contradistinction to the precepts and practice of a religion which had become all form, all observance. These ideas, gathered together by a vigorous mind, and made efficient by the constitution of a sect or party, were capable of regenerating modern Europe, and did so. For it will be found that all of its Protestant piety ran within the bounds of this somewhat narrow channel. But even here, the liberalizing influences of time are irresistible, and although the cruel and insufficient doctrines are still subscribed to by zealous millions, the practice and culture of the church itself become more and more liberal. The zeal for propagandism, which characterizes the less tolerant portion of the Protestant sects, makes their ministration on new ground efficient and valuable. The material hell, from which, in good faith, they seek to deliver those who hear them, symbolizes the infinite danger and loss to man of a life passed without the impulses and restraints of religion. A more philosophic statement would be far less tangible to the minds alike of teacher and disciple. Their intervention in communities characterized by a low grade of religious culture is therefore useful, perhaps indispensable. And while I value and prize my own religious connections beyond aught else, I am thankful to the American missions that support Waldense preaching in Italy. They at least teach that a man is to think for himself, pray for himself; and their worship, even when rudest and most uncultured, is more an instruction of the multitude than a propitiation of the infinite love which is always ready to do for us more and better than we can ask.

So, little Protestant congregation in Venice, my heart bids you God speed! But may the love of God be preached to you rather than the torment of fear, and may the simplicity and beauty of the Christian doctrine and example preserve you alike from the passional and the metaphysical dangers of the day.

GREECE AND THE VOYAGE THITHER.

"in a transition state."

We have left Venice. We have passed an intolerable night on board the Austrian steamer, whose state-rooms are without air, its cabin without quiet, and its deck without shelter. So inconvenient a transport, in these days of steamboat luxury, makes one laugh and wonder. Trieste, our stopping-place, is the strangest mongrel, a perfect cur of a city (cur-i-o-sity). It is neither Italian, Greek, nor German, but all three of these, and many more. The hotel servants speak German and Italian, the shop-keepers also. Paper money passes without fight or agio upon the prices demanded. It seems to be par, with gold and silver at a premium. Much Oriental-looking merchandise is seen in the shop windows. The situation is fine, the port first rate.

Our consul here, Mr. Alex. Thayer, is the author of the Life of Beethoven, already favorably known to the world as far as the first volume. The second, not yet completed, is looked for with interest. Mr. Thayer's kind attentions made our short stay in Trieste pleasant, and our transit to the Austrian Lloyd's steamer easy, and within thirty-six hours after our arrival we found ourselves embarked on board the latter, en route for Syra, where we should find another Austrian Lloyd waiting to convey us to the Piræus, the well-known port of Athens.

Our voyage began with a stormy day. Incessant rain soaked the deck. A charming little upper cabin, cushioned and windowed like a luxurious carriage, gave us shelter, combined with fresh air—the cordial of those who "cœlum et animum mutant, quia trans mare current." Here I pillowed myself in inevitable idleness, now become, alas! too familiar, and amused myself with the energetic caquet of my companions.

An elderly Greek gentleman, Count Lunzi of Zante, with a pleasing daughter; a young Austrian, accompanied by a pretty sister; an elderly Neapolitan bachelor,—these were our fellow-passengers in the first cabin. In the second cabin were eleven friars, and an intelligent Venetian apothecary, with whom I subsequently made acquaintance. The captain, a middle-aged Dalmatian, came and went. He wore over his uniform a capote of India rubber cloth, which he laid aside when he came into our deck-parlor for a brief sitting and a whiff of tobacco. The gentlemen all smoked without apology. The little Greek lady soon became violently seasick, and the Austrian maiden followed. The neophyte and the Austrian brother felt no pang, but the neophyte's mother was dizzy and uncomfortable. Count Lunzi and the Neapolitan kept up a perpetual conversation in French, having many mutual acquaintances, whose absence they found it worth while to improve. I blessed their loquacity, which beguiled for me the weary, helpless hours. We went down to dinner; at tea-time we were non compos mensis. The state-rooms below being intensely hot and close in consequence of the rain, we all staid up stairs as long as possible, and our final retreat was made in the order of our symptoms.

The following morning brought us the sun. The rain was at an end, and the sea grew less turbulent. The day was Sunday, and the unmistakable accents of theological controversy saluted my ears as I ascended the companion-way, and took my place in the deck-parlor. Count Lunzi, a liberal, and a student of German criticism, was vigorously belaboring three of the friars, who replied to him whenever they were able to get a word in, which was not often. His arguments supported the action of the Italian government in disbanding all monastic fraternities throughout its dominions, giving to each member a small pension, and inviting all to live by exercising the duties of their profession as secular priests. Our friars had concluded to expatriate, rather than secularize, themselves, and were now en route for Kaiafa, a place concerning which I could only learn that it was in Syria. They were impugned, according to the ancient superstition, as the causes of our bad embarkation and rough voyage. They were young and vigorous men, and the old count not unreasonably urged them to abandon a career now recognized as useless and obsolete, and to earn their bread by some availing labor. The circle of the controversy widened. More friars came up from below. The ship's surgeon joined himself to them, the Venetian siding with the count. The Neapolitan stood by to see fair play, and a good part of the day of rest was occupied by this symphony of discord.

I confess that, although the friars' opinions were abhorrent to mine, I yet wished that they might have been let alone. Even Puritan Milton does not set a Calvinistic angel to argue with Adam and Eve concerning the justice of their expulsion from Paradise. The journey itself was pain enough, without the reprobation. As the friars had been turned out of their comfortable nests, and were poor and disconsolate, I myself would sooner have given them an obolus unjustified by theory than a diatribe justified by logic. But the old count was sincere and able, and at least presented to them views greatly in advance of their bigotry and superstition. While this conversation went on, we passed Lissa, where the Italian fleet was repulsed by the Austrians, during the war of Italian unity. Our fellow-passenger of the nation second named quietly exults over this event. He does well. Austrian victories have been rare of late. Of the day following my diary says,—

June 17.—In sight of the Acroceraunian mountains and shore of Albania. Vessel laboring with head wind, I with Guizot's Meditations, which also have some head wind in them. They seem to me inconclusive in statement, and insufficient in thought, presenting, nevertheless, some facts and considerations of interest. At a little before two P. M., we pass Fano, the island in which Calypso could not console herself; and no wonder. At two we enter the channel of Corfu, but do not reach the shore itself until five o'clock. A boat conveys us to the shore, where, with our Austrian friends, we engage a carriage, and drive to view the environs.

This is my first experience of Greece. The streets are narrow and irregular, the men mostly in European costume, with here and there a fustanella. Our drive took us to a picturesque eminence, commanding a lovely prospect. It led us through a sort of Elysian field, planted with shade trees, where the populace on gala days go to sip coffee, and meet their friends and neighbors. Returning to the town, we pass several large hotels and cafés, at one of which we order ices. I puzzle myself in vain with the Greek signs over the shop windows. Our leave of absence having expired, we hasten back to the steamer, but find its departure delayed by the labor of embarking a Turkish dignitary, Achmed Pacha, who, with a numerous suite, male and female, is to take passage with us for the Dardanelles.

A steamer, bearing the Crescent flag at her mast-head, was anchored alongside of our own. Our hitherto quiet quarters were become a little Babel of strange tongues and costumes. Any costume artist would have gone mad with delight over the variety of coats and colors which our new visitors displayed. Those wonderful jackets and capotes, which are the romance of stage and fancy-ball attire, here appeared as the common prose of every-day dress. Every man wore a fez. I remember a handsome youth, whose crimson head-gear contrasted with a white sheepskin jacket with wide, hanging sleeves—the sleeves not worn on the arms, but at the back; the close vest, loose, short skirt, and leggings were also white—the whole very effective. He was only one figure of a brilliant panorama, but treacherous memory does not give me the features of the others.

Our vessel, meanwhile, was engaged in swallowing the contents of the Turkish steamer with the same deliberation with which an anaconda swallows a bullock. The Turks and Albanians might scream and chatter, and declaim the whole Koran at their pleasure, the great crane went steadily on—hoisting bale after bale, and lowering the same into our hold. This household stuff consisted principally of rugs and bedding, with trunks, boxes, and kitchen furniture, and some mysterious bundles whose contents could not be conjectured.

The sight of this unwholesome-looking luggage suggested to some of us possible communication of cholera, or eastern plague. The neophyte and I sat hand in hand, looking ruefully on, and wondering how soon we should break out. But when the dry goods were disposed of, the transfer of the human merchandise from one vessel to the other seized our attention, and put our fears out of sight.

Our first view of the pacha's harem showed us a dozen or more women crouching on the deck of the Turkish steamer, their heads and faces bundled up with white muslin veils, which concealed hair, forehead, mouth, and chin, leaving exposed to view only the triangle of the eyes and nose. Several children were there, who at first sight all appeared equally dirty and ill-dressed. We were afterwards able to distinguish differences between them.

The women and children came on board in a body, and took up a position on the starboard side of the deck. With them came an old man-servant, in a long garment of whitish woollen cloth, who defined their boundaries by piling up certain bales of property. In the space thus marked off, mattresses were at once laid down and spread with coverlets; for these women were to pass night as well as day on deck. Five ladies of the pacha's family at once intrenched themselves in one of the small cabins below, where, with five children, they continued for the remainder of the voyage, without exercise or ventilation. Too sacred to be seen by human eyes, these ladies made us aware of their presence by the sound of their incessant chattering, by the odor of their tobacco, and by the screaming of one of their little ones, an infant of eight months.

When these things had been accomplished, our captain sent word to the pacha that he was ready to depart. The great man's easy-chair—by no means a splendid one—was then carried on board, and the great man himself, accompanied by his son-in-law and his dragoman, came among us. He was a short, stout person, some fifty years of age, and wore a dark military coat, with a gold stripe on the shoulder, and lilac trousers. His dragoman was a Greek. He and his suite smoked vigorously, and stared somewhat, as, with the neophyte on one side and the little Austrian lady on the other, I walked up and down the deck. The women and the old servant all slept à la belle étoile. The pacha and his officers had state-rooms in the saloon; the other men were in the third cabin. I forgot to say that at Corfu we left Count Lunzi and his amiable daughter, whose gracious manners and good English did credit to Mrs. Hills's excellent tuition, which the young lady had enjoyed for some years at her well-known school in Athens.

When we came on deck the next morning, we found some of the Turkish women still recumbent, others seated upon their mattresses. Two of the children, a girl of ten years and a boy of twelve, went about under orders, and carried dishes and water-vessels between the cabin and the deck. We afterwards learned that these were Albanian slaves. The girl was named Haspir, the boy Ali. The first had large dark eyes and a melancholy expression of countenance; the boy also had Oriental eyes, whose mischievous twinkle was tempered by the gravity of his situation. The old servant, whom they called Baba, ate his breakfast in a corner. He had a miscellaneous looking dish of fish, bread, and olives. The women fed chiefly, as far as I could judge, on cucumbers and radishes, which they held and munched. Water was given from a brazen pitcher, of a pattern decidedly Oriental. Coffee was served to the invisible family in the small cabin. I did not see the women on deck partake of it. But from this time the scope of my observations was limited. A canvas partition, made fast to the mast overhead, now intervened, to preserve this portion of the harem from the pollution of external regards. Henceforth, we had glimpses of its members only when a lurch of the steamer swayed the canvas wall far out of equilibrium. The far niente seemed to be their fate, without alternative. Nor book nor needle had they. The children came outside, and peeped at us. Baba, grim guardian of the household, sat or squatted among his bales, oftenest quite unoccupied, but sometimes smoking, or chattering with the children. I took my modest drawing-book, and, with unsteady hand, began to sketch him in pen and ink. He soon divined my occupation, and kept as still as a mouse until by a sign I released him, when he begged, in the same language, to see what I had drawn. I next tried to get a croquis of a pretty little girl who played about, wearing a pink wadded sack over a gown and trousers of common flowered calico, buff and brown. She was disposed to wriggle out of sight; but Baba threatened her, and she was still.

Presently, the slave-boy, Ali, came up from the select cabin below, bearing in his arms an ill-conditioned little creature, two years of age, who had come on board in a cashmere pelisse lined with fur, a pink wadded under-jacket, and a pair of trousers of dirty common calico. He had now discarded the fur-pelisse. On his round little head he wore a cap of pink cashmere, soiled and defaced, with a large gold coin attached to it. A natural weakness drew me towards the little wretch, whom I tried to caress. Ali patted him tenderly, and said, "Pacha." This was indeed the youngest member, save one, of the pacha's family—the true baby being the infant secluded down stairs, whose frequent cries appealed in vain for change of air and of scene. The two-year-old had already the title of bey.

"Can a baby a bey be?" I asked, provoking the disgust which a pun is sure to awaken in those who have not made it.

We met the pacha at meals, interchanging mute salutations. He had a pleasant, helpless sort of smile, and ate according to the orthodox standard of nicety. On deck some attendant constantly brought him a pipe composed of a large knob of amber, which served as a mouth piece, and a reed some eight inches in length, bearing a lighted cigar.

As we sat much in our round house, it was inevitable that I should at last establish communication with him through the mediation of a young Greek passenger, who spoke both Turkish and French.

It was from the pacha that I learned that Haspir and Ali were slaves. The little girl whom I had sketched was his daughter. I inquired about a girl somewhat younger, who played with this one. The pacha signified that he had given the mother of his daughter to one of his men, and that the second little girl was born of this connection. The two younger children already spoken of were born of another mother, probably each of a different one.

"O Christian marriage!" I thought, as I looked on this miscellaneous and inorganic family, "let us not complain of thy burdens."

With us the birth of a child is the strongest bond of union between its parents; with the Oriental it is the signal for separation. No society will ever permanently increase whose structure rests on an architecture so feeble. The Turkish empire might spread by conquest and thrive by plunder. But at home it can never compete with nations in which family life has individuality of centre and equality of obligation. With Greeks and Albanians to work for them, and pay them tribute, the Turks are able to attain a certain wealth. It is the wealth, however, which impoverishes mankind, exhausting the sources of industry and of enterprise. Let the Turk live upon what he can earn, and we shall hear little of him.

The women sometimes struggled out from their canvas enclosure, and went below on various errands. On these occasions they were enveloped in a straight striped covering, white and red, much like a summer counterpane. This was thrown over the head, held together between the teeth, and reached to the feet. It left in view their muslin head-dresses, and calico trousers, gathered at the ankle, nothing more. A few were barefoot—one or two only wore stockings. Most of them were shod with brodequins, of a size usually worn by men.

At a late hour in the afternoon, Ali brought to their enclosure a round metal dish of stewed meat, cut in small pieces for the convenience of those whose customs are present proof that fingers were made before knives and forks. A great dish of rice simultaneously made its appearance. Baba chattered very much, Ali made himself busy, and a little internal commotion became perceptible behind the canvas wall.

My opportunity of observing Turkish manners was as brief as it was limited. Having taken the Moslems on board on Monday, well towards evening, the Wednesday following saw, at ten A. M., my exit from the steamer. For we were now in the harbor of Syra. When I came on deck, soon after five A. M., the pacha sent me coffee in a little cup with a silver stand. It was prepared after the Turkish manner, and was fragrant and delicious. While we were at breakfast, Mr. Saponzaki, American consul at Syra, came on board in search of me, followed soon by an old friend, Mr. Evangelides. With real regret I took leave of the friendly captain and pleasant companions of the voyage. I shook hands with the pacha, not unmindful of the miseries of Crete. Baba also gave me a parting salutation. He was a nice observer of womanly actions, and his farewell gesture seemed to say, "Although barefaced, you are respectable;" which, if he really meant it, was a great deal for him to allow. Our luggage was now transferred on board the smaller steamer, which was to sail at six P. M. for the Piræus, and the neophyte and myself soon found ourselves under the shelter of Mr. Evangelides' roof, where his Greek wife made us cordially welcome.

SYRA.

Mr. Evangelides was one of a number of youths brought to the United States, after the war of Greek independence, for aid and education. The latter was the chief endowment with which his adopted country returned him to his native land. The value of this gift he was soon to realize, though not without previous hardships and privations. After a year or two of trial, he commenced a school in Syra. This school was soon filled with pupils, and many intelligent and successful Greeks of the present day are among his old scholars. Besides methods of education, he brought from America a novel idea—that of the value of real estate. Looking about Syra, and becoming convinced of its inevitable growth, he invested the surplus of his earnings in tracts of land in the immediate neighborhood of the then small town, to the utter mystification of his neighbors. That one should invest in jewels, arms, a house, or a vineyard, would have seemed to them natural enough; but what any man should want of mere land scarcely fit for tillage, was beyond their comprehension. The expected growth was not slow in coming. Mr. Evangelides soon began to realize handsomely, as we should say, from his investment, and is now esteemed a man of wealth. His neighbors thereafter named him "the Greek Yankee;" and I must say that he seems to hold equally to the two belongings, in spite of the Scripture caution.

Under the escort of my old friend, I went out to see the town, and to make acquaintance with the most eminent of the inhabitants, the custom of the country making the duty of the first call incumbent upon the person newly arrived.

Unfurling a large umbrella, and trembling with the fear of sun-stroke, I proceeded to climb the steep and narrow streets of the town. We first incommode with our presence the governor of the Cyclades, a patriotic Greek, who speaks good English and good sense. We talk of Cretan affairs; he is not sanguine as to the efficient intervention of the European powers.

We next call upon the archbishop, at whose house we are received by a black servant in Frank dress, speaking good French. Presently the prelate appeared—a tall, gentlemanly person in a rich costume, one feature of which was a medallion, brilliant with precious stones of various colors. His reverence had made his studies in Germany, and spoke the language of that country quite fluently. Tholuck had been his especial professor, but he had also known Bauer; and he took some pains to assure me that the latter was not an irreligious man, in spite of the hardihood of his criticism. He deplored the absence of a state religion in America. I told him that the progress of religion in our country seemed to establish the fact that society attains the best religious culture through the greatest religious liberty. He replied that the members should all be united under one head. "Yes," said I, "but the Head is invisible;" and he repeated after me, "Indeed, the Head is invisible." I will here remark that nothing could have been more refreshing to the New England mind than this immediate introduction to the theological opinions of the East.

Other refreshment, however, was in store for me—the sweetmeats and water which form the somewhat symbolical staple of Greek hospitality. Of these I partook in the orthodox manner. One dish only is brought in, but many spoons, one of which each guest dips into the gliko (sweet), and, having partaken, drops the spoon into the glass of fresh water which always follows. Turkish coffee was afterwards served in small cups without spoons. And now, not knowing what sermons or other duties my presence might impede, I took leave, much gratified by the interview.

We passed from hence to the house of the Austrian consul, Dr. Hahn, a writer of scientific travels, and a student of antiquities. He had not long before visited the Island of Santorin, whose recently-awakened volcano interests the world of science. He told me of a house newly excavated in this region, containing tools and implements as old, at least, as those of the Lacustrine period, and, in his opinion, somewhat older. This house had been deeply buried in ashes by an ancient eruption, so violent as to have eviscerated the volcano of that time, which subsequently collapsed. The depth of ashes he stated as considerably greater than that found in any part of the Pompeian excavation, being at least thirty yards. Hewn stones were found here, but no metal implements, nor traces of any. Caucasian skulls were also found, and pottery of a finer description than that belonging to the Lacustrine period. He gave me a model of a small pitcher discovered among the ruins, of which the nose was shaped like the beak of a bird, with a further imitation of the eye on either side. Another small vessel was ornamented by the model of a human breast, to denote plenty. He had also plaster casts of skulls, arm and jaw bones, and flint saws, upon which he descanted with great vivacity.

Dr. Hahn's courteous and charming manners caused me to remember him as one of the many Austrians whose amiable qualities make us doubly regret the onus which the untimely policy of their government throws upon them.