Chapter 5

LOST AND NOW FOUND.

In bringing up Alick tied tight to her apron-strings, feeding him on moral pap, putting his mind into petticoats, and seeking to make him more of a woman than a man, Mrs. Corfield had defeated her design and destroyed her own influence. During his early growth the boy had yielded to her without revolt, because he was more modest than self-assertive--had no solid point of resistance and no definite purpose for which to resist; but after his college career he developed on an independent line, and his soul escaped altogether from his mother's hold. Had she let him ripen into manhood in the freedom of natural development, she would have been his chosen friend and confidante to the end: having invaded the most secret chambers of his mind, and sought to mould every thought according to the pattern which she held best, when the reaction set in the pendulum swung back in proportion to its first beat; and as a protest against his former thraldom he now made her a stranger to his inner life and shut her out inexorably from the holy place of his sorrow.

The mother felt her son's mind slipping from her, but what could she do? Who can set time backward or reanimate the dead? Day by day found him more silent and more suffering, the poor little woman nearly as miserable as himself. But the name of Leam, standing as the spectre between them, was never mentioned after Mrs. Corfield's first outburst of indignation at her flight--indignation not because she was really angry with Leam, but because Alick was unhappy.

After Alick's stern rejoinder, "Mother, the next time you speak ill of Leam Dundas I will leave your house for ever," the subject dropped by mutual consent, but it was none the less a living barrier between them because raised and maintained in silence.

"Oh, these girls! these wicked girls!" Mrs. Corfield had said with a mother's irrational anger when speaking of the circumstance to her husband. "We bring up our boys only for them to take from us. As soon as they begin to be some kind of comfort and to repay the anxiety of their early days, then a wretched little huzzy steps in and makes one's life in vain."

"Just so, my dear," said Dr. Corfield quietly. "These were the identical words which my mother said to me when I told her I was going to marry you."

"Your mother never liked me, and I did like Leam," said Mrs. Corfield tartly.

"As Leam Dundas, maybe; but as Leam the wife of your son, I doubt it."

"If Alick had liked it--" said Mrs. Corfield, half in tears.

"You would have been jealous," returned her husband. "No: all girls are only daughters of Heth to the mothers of Jacobs, and I never knew one whom a mother thought good enough for her boy."

"You need not discredit your own flesh and blood for a stranger," cried Mrs. Corfield crossly; and the mute man with an aggravating smile suddenly seemed to repent of his unusual loquacity, and gradually subsided into himself and his calculations, from which he was so rarely aroused.

Alick, ceasing to make a confidante of his mother, began to make a friend of Mr. Gryce. Perhaps it ought rather to be said that Mr. Gryce began to make a friend of him. The old philosopher, with that corkscrew mind of his, knew well enough what was amiss with the poor lank-visaged curate. Being of the order of the benevolent busybodies fond of playing Providence, how mole-like soever his method, he had marked out a little plan of his own by which he thought he could make all the crooked roads run straight and discord flow into harmony. But he too fell into the mistake common to busybodies, benevolent and otherwise--treating souls as if they were machines to be wound up and kept going by the clockwork of an extraneous will and neatly manipulated by well-arranged circumstance.

One day he joined Alick in his walk to an outlying cottage of the parish, where the husband was sick and the wife and children short of food, and the Church sent its prayer-book and ministers as the best substitute it knew for a wholesome dwelling and sufficient wages. Theology was not much in the way of an old heathen who reduced all religions save Mohammedanism to the transmuted presentation of the archaic solar myth, and who thought Buddhism far ahead of every other creed; but he liked the man Alick, if the parson bored him, and he was caressing a plan which he had in his pocket.

"You find your life here satisfying, I suppose?" he began, his blue eyes looking into the wayside banks for creatures.

"Is any life?" answered Alick, his eyes turned to the vague distance.

"Not fully: the spirit of progress, working by discontent, forbids the social stagnation of rest and thankfulness; but we can come to something that suffices for our daily wants if it does not satisfy all our longings. Work in harmony with our nature, and doing good here and there when we can, both these help us on. But the work must be harmonious and the good we do manifest."

"So far as that goes, Church-work is pleasant to me--all, indeed, I care for or am fit for; but North Aston is stony ground," said Alick.

"Can you wonder? When the husbandman-in-chief is such a man as Mr. Birkett, you must make your account with stones and weeds. The spiritual cannot flourish under the hand of the unspiritual; and, considering the pastor, the flock is far from bad."

"That may be, but we do not like to live only in comparatives," said Alick. "I confess I should be happier in a cure where I was more of one mind with my rector than I am here, and not decried or ridiculed on account of every scheme for good that I might propose. Parish-work here is shamefully neglected, but Mr. Birkett will not let me do anything to mend it."

"Ah!" said Mr. Gryce, catching a luckless curculio by the way, "that is bad. A more harmonious one would certainly be, as you say, far more agreeable. Or a little parish of your own--a parish, however small, which would be all your own, and you not under the control of any one below your diocesan? How would that do? That would be my affair if I were in the Church."

Alick's face lightened. "Yes," he said, "that is my dream--at least one of them. I would not care how small the place might be, if I had supreme control and might work unhindered in my own way."

"It will come," said Mr. Gryce cheerily. "All things come in time to him who knows how to wait."

"Ah, if I could believe that!" sighed Alick, thinking of Leam.

"Take my word for it," returned Mr. Gryce. "It will do you no harm to have a dash of rose-color in your rather sombre life; and Hope, if it tells flattering tales, does not always tell untrue ones."

"I fear my hope has flattered me untruly," said Alick, his faithful heart still on Leam.

Mr. Gryce captured a caterpillar wandering across the road. "Conduct is fate," he said. "If this poor fellow had not been troubled with a fit of restlessness, but had been content to lie safely hidden among the grass-roots where he was born, he would not have been caught. Yes, conduct is fate for a captive caterpillar as well as for man."

"And yet who can foresee?" said Alick. "We all walk in the dark blindfold."

"As you say, who can foresee? That makes perhaps the hardship of it, but it does not alter the fact. Blindly walking or with our eyes wide open, our steps determine our destiny, and our goal is reached by our own endeavors. We ourselves are the artificers of our lives, and mould them according to our own pattern."

"But that part of our lives which is under the influence of another? How can we manipulate that?" said Alick. "Love and loss are twin powers which create or crush without our co-operation."

"I only know one irreparable manner of loss--that by death," said Mr. Gryce steadfastly. "For all others while there is life there is hope, and I hold nothing, beyond the power of the will to remedy."

"I wish I could believe that," Alick sighed again; and again Mr. Gryce said cheerily, "Then take that too on trust, and believe me if you do not believe in your own inborn elasticity, your own power of doing and undoing."

"There are some things which can never come right when they have once gone wrong," said Alick.

"You think so? I know very few," his companion answered in the hearty, inspiriting manner which he had used all through the interview, talking with a broader accent and lisping less than usual, looking altogether more manly and less cherubic than his wont. "I am a believer myself in the power of the will and holding on." After a pause he added suddenly, "You would be really glad of a small living, no matter where situated, nor how desolate and unimportant, where you would be sole master?"

"Yes," said Alick. "If I could win over one soul to the higher life, I should count myself repaid for all my exertions. We must all have our small beginnings."

"I am an odd old fellow, as you know, Mr. Corfield," laughed Emmanuel Gryce. "Give me your hand: I can sometimes see a good deal of the future in the hand."

Alick blushed and looked awkward, but he gave his bony, ill-shaped hand all the same.

After a little while, during which Mr. Gryce had bent this finger this way and that finger another way, had counted the lines made by the bended wrist, and had talked half to himself of the line of Jupiter and the line of Saturn, the line of life and that of Venus, he said quietly, "You will have your wish, and soon. I see a most important change of residence at about this time, which in conjunction with this," pointing to a small cross at the root of the fourth finger, "will be certainly to your advantage."

"How strange!" said Alick. "One scarcely knows whether to laugh at it all as old wives' fables or to believe in the mysterious forewarnings of fate, the foremarkings of the future."

"There are more things in heaven and earth--" said Mr. Gryce. "And we know so little we may well believe a trifle more."

The fact was, all this was founded on these circumstances: He had at this moment a letter in his pocket from his sister Keziah telling him that old Priest Wilson had been found dead in his bed last night; the bishop's chaplain was a friend of his, both having been at the same station in India; and the perpetual curacy of Monk Grange was one which, if offices went according to their ratio of unpleasantness, a man should have been paid a large income to take. Hence there was no chance of a rush for the preferment, and the bishop would be grateful for any intimation of a willing martyr. Through all of which chinks whereby to discover the future Mr. Gryce founded his prophecy; and through them, too, it came about that he proved a true prophet. In three days' time from this the post brought a letter to Alick Corfield from the bishop offering him the perpetual curacy of Monk Grange, income seventy pounds a year and a house.

Before speaking even to his mother, Alick rushed off with this letter to Mr. Gryce. The old leaven of superstition which works more or less in all of us--even those few who think proof a desirable basis for belief, and who require an examination conducted on scientific principles before they accept supernaturalism as "only another law coming in to modify those already known"--that superstition which belongs to most men, and to Alick with the rest, made this letter a matter of tremendous excitement to him. He saw in it the hand of God and the finger of Fate. It was impossible that Mr. Gryce, living at North Aston, should know anything of a small country incumbency in the North. It was all that study made of his poor parched and knuckly hand. And what had been seen there was manifestly the thing ruled for him by Providence and destiny.

"How could you possibly tell?" he cried, looking at his own hand as if he could read it as his clever friend had done.

"That is my secret," said Emmanuel, smiling at the credulity on which he traded. Then, thinking a flutter outward of the corners of his cards the best policy in the circumstances about them at the moment, he added, "And when you get there you will understand more than you do now. For you will go?"

"Surely," said Alick: "it would be unfaithful in me to refuse."

"But see if you cannot make arrangements to take the place on trial for a few months. I know very little of your ecclesiastical law, but grant even that it is as devoid of common sense as I should suppose--seeing who are the men who make, administer and obey it--still, I should think that a temporary incumbency might be arranged."

"I should think so, and I will take your advice," said Alick, over whom Emmanuel Gryce was fast establishing the power which belongs to the stronger over the weaker, to the more astute over the more dense.

"You will find an adopted daughter of mine in the neighborhood," then said Mr. Gryce with the most amiable indifference. "She lives with my sister at our old home on the fell-side: Windy Brow the place is called. You must tell me how she looks and what you think of her altogether when you write to me, as I suppose you will do, or when you come home, if you elect not to take the cure even on trial."

"I am not much in the way of criticising young ladies," said Alick sadly.

"She is rather a remarkable girl, all things considered," returned Mr. Gryce quietly. "Her name is Leonora Darley. You will remember--Leonora Darley. Ask for her when you go up to Windy Brow: Leonora Darley," for the third time.

"All right: Miss Leonora Darley," repeated Alick, suspecting nothing; and again Mr. Gryce smiled as he dug his fingers into the earth of a chrysalis-box. How pleasant it was to pull the strings and see his puppets dance!

Of course, Mr. Birkett's consent was a necessary preliminary to Alick's departure, but there was no difficulty about it. The military rector was tired to death, so he used to say, of his zealous young aide-de-camp, and hailed the prospect of getting rid of him handsomely with a frank pleasure not flattering to poor Alick's self-love. "Certainly, my dear boy, certainly," he said. "It will be better for you to have a place of your own, where you can carry out your new ideas. You see I am an old man now, and have learnt the value of letting well alone. You are in all the fever-time of zeal, and believe that vice and ignorance are like the walls of Jericho, to fall down when you blow your trump. I do not. But on the whole, it is as well that you should learn the realities of life for yourself, and carry your energies where they may be useful."

"Then you do not mind?" asked Alick boyishly.

The rector gave a loud clear laugh. "Mind! a thousand times no," he said, rubbing his plump white hands. "I can manage well enough alone, and if I cannot there are dozens of young eligibles ready to jump at the place. Mind! no. Go in Heaven's name, and may you be blessed in your undertaking!"

The last words came in as grace-lines, and with them Alick felt himself dismissed.

If the rector had been facile to deal with, Mrs. Corfield was not. When she heard of the proposed arrangement, and that she was to lose her boy for the second time out of her daily life, and more permanently than before, her grief was as intense as if she had been told of his approaching death. She wept bitterly, and even bent herself to entreaty; but Alick, to whom North Aston had become a dungeon of pain since Leam went, held pertinaciously to his plan--not without sorrow, but surely without yielding. He was fascinated by the idea of a cure where he might be sole master, not checked by rectorial ridicule when he wished to establish night schools or clothing clubs, penny savings banks, or any other of the schemes in vogue for the good of the poor; thinking too, not unwisely, that the best heal-all for his sorrow was to be found in change of scene and more arduous work together. Also, he thought that if his vague tentative advertisements in the papers, which he dared not make too evident, had as yet brought nothing, some more satisfactory way of discovering Leam's hiding-place might shape itself when he was alone, freer to act as he thought best. On all of which accounts he resisted his mother's grief, and his own at seeing her grieve, and decided on going down to Monk Grange the next day.

Had not Dr. Corfield been ailing at this time, the mother would have accompanied her son. The possibility of damp sheets weighed heavy on her mind; and landladies who filch from the tea-caddy, with landladies' girls, pert and familiar, preparing insidious gruel and seductive cups of coffee, were the lions which her imagination conjured up as prowling for her Alick through the fastnesses of Monk Grange. Circumstances, however, were stronger than her desire; and, happily for Alick, she was perforce obliged to remain at home while her darling went out from the paternal nest to shake those limp wings of his, and bear himself up unassisted in a new atmosphere in the best way he could.

It was on the cold and rainy evening of a cold and rainy summer's day that Alick arrived at Monk Grange--an evening without a sunset or a moon, stars or a landscape; painful, mournful, as those who dwell in the North Country know only too well as the tears on its face of beauty. He had driven in a crazy old gig from Wigton, and the nine miles which lay between that not too brilliant town and the desolate fell-side hamlet which he had been so fain to make his own spiritual domain had not been such as disposed him to a cheerful view of things. The rain had fallen in a steady, pitiless downpour, which seemed to soak through every outer covering and to penetrate the very flesh and marrow of the tired traveler as it pattered noisily on the umbrella and streamed over the leather apron; and the splash of the horse's hoofs through the liquid mud and broad tracts of standing water was as dreary as the "splash, splash" of Bürger's ballad. And when all this was over, and they drew up at the Blucher, with its handful of desolate gray hovels round it, the heart of the man sank at the gloomy surroundings into the midst of which he had flung himself. But the zeal of the churchman was as good a tonic for him as the best common sense, and he waited until to-morrow and broad daylight before he allowed himself to even acknowledge an impression. The warm fireside at the Blucher cheered him too, and his supper of eggs and bacon and fresh crisp havre-bread satisfied such of his physical cravings as, unsatisfied, make a man's spiritual perceptions very gaunt.

He went to bed, slept, and the next day woke up to a glory of sun and sky, a brilliancy of coloring, a photographic sharpness and clearness of form, a suggestion of beauty beyond that which was seen, which transformed the place as if an angel had passed through it in the night. As he tramped about the sordid hamlet he forgot the rude uncouthness of men and place for a kind of ecstasy at the loveliness about him. Every jutting rock of granite shone in the sun like polished jasper, and the numberless little rills trickling down the fell-sides were as threads of silver, now concealed in the gold of the gorse, and now whitening the purple of the heather. The air was full of blithesome sounds. Overhead the sky-larks sang in jocund rivalry, mounting higher and higher as if they would have beaten their wings against the sun: the bees made the heather and the thyme musical as they flew from flower to flower, and the tinkling of the running rills was like the symphony to a changeful theme. It was in real truth a transformation, and the new-comer into the fitful, seductive, disappointing North felt all its beauty, all its meaning, and gave himself up to his delight as if such a day as yesterday had never been.

After he had done what he wished to do in the village, he went up the fell-side road to Windy Brow, and, obeying his instructions, asked when he got there "if Miss Leonora Darley was at home."

"Na, she bain't," said Jenny, eying poor innocent Alick as a colley might eye a wolf sniffing about the fold. "T' auld mistress is."

"Say Mr. Corfield, please," said Alick; and Jenny, telling him to "gang intilt parlor," scuffled off to Keziah, pottering over some pickled red cabbage, which made the house smell like a vinegar-cask.

"I've heard tell of you," said Miss Gryce as she came in wiping her hands on a serviceable and by no means luxurious cloth: "Emmanuel wrote me a letter about you. You're kindly welcome to Monk Grange, but you're only a haverel to look at. Take a seat, and tell me--how's Emmanuel, my brother?"

"He was well when I saw him the day before yesterday: at least he said nothing to the contrary," answered Alick with his conscientious literalness.

"I like that," said Keziah, also eying him, but as a colley might have eyed a strange sheep, not a wolf. "A random rory would have made no difference between now and two days back, and believing and being. You cannot be over-particular in the truth, I take it."

Alick blushed, shifted his place and looked uneasy. And again, as so often before, it came across him: had he done right, judged by the highest law, to conceal the truth as he knew it about Leam?

"Hoot, man! there's no call for you to sit on pins and needles in that fashion," said Keziah. "It's a daft body that cannot hear a word of praise without turning as red as a turkey-cock and fidging like a parched pea on a drum-head. I've not turned much of you over yet, and maybe I'll come to what I'll have no mind to praise; so keep your fidges till you are touched up with the other end of the stick. And so you are to be our new priest, are you?"

"I am going to offer myself for a time," said Alick.

"For a time? That's a thing as has two sides to it. If you are not to our minds, that's its good side: if you are, and we are not to yours, that's its bad. I doubt if our folk will care to be played Jumping Joan with in that fashion."

"I will be guided by the will of the Lord," said Alick reverently.

"Humph! I like the words better nor the chances in them," returned Keziah, taking a pinch of snuff. "But maybe things'll work round as one would have them; and whether you stay or you do not, the Lord's will be done, amen! and His grace follow you, young man!"

"Thank you," said Alick with emotion, getting up and shaking the pickle-stained and snuff-discolored hand.

"I have a message for Miss Leonora Darley," he then said after a pause. "Mr. Gryce told me I was to be sure and tell him how she was looking."

"Eh, poor bairn! she is not very first-rate," the old woman answered tenderly. At least it was tenderness in her: in another person her voice and manner might have been taken for crabbedness and impatience. "She's up by there, on the fell somewhere. She a'most lives on the fell-side, but it don't make her look as brisk as I should like. Have you seen the view from our brow-top? It is a real bonny one; and you'll maybe find Leonora not far off. I don't think she wanders far."

"I should like to see it," said Alick. "The country altogether looks splendid to-day."

"Ay, it's a bonny day enough if it would but last. Come your ways with me and I'll set you out by the back door. You can come in again the same road if you've a mind."

On which she bustled up, and Alick, escorted by her, went through the house and on to the fell-side.

It was, if possible, grander now than it had been in the earlier part of the day. The hot sun had cleared away the lingering mist, and the cloudless sky was like one large perfect opal, while the earth beneath shone and glistened as if it were a jewel set with various-colored gems. There was not a mean or sordid thing about. Touched by the splendid alchemy of the sun, the smallest circumstance was noble, the poorest color glorious. Alick stood on the fell-brow entranced: then turning, he saw slowly coming across the pathless green a young slight figure dressed in gray. He looked as it came near, and his heart beat with a force that took all power from him. It was absurd, he knew, but there was such a strange look of Leam about that girl! He stood and watched her coming along with that slow, graceful, undulating step which was Leam's birthright. Was he mad? Was he dreaming? What was this mocking trick of eyesight that was perplexing him? Surely it was madness; and yet--no, it could be no one else. Supreme, beloved, who else could personate her so as to cheat him?

She came on, her eyes always fixed on the distance, seeing nothing of Alick standing dark against the sky. She came nearer, nearer, till he saw the glory of her eyes, the curve of her lip, and could count the curling tresses on her brow. Then he came down from the height and strode across the space between them.

She lifted up her eyes and saw him. For an instant the sadness cleared out of them as the mists had cleared from the sky: her pathetic mouth broke into a smile, and she held out both her hands. "Alick, dear Alick! my good Alick!" she cried in a voice of exquisite tenderness.

"My queen!" he said kneeling, his honest upturned face wet with tears. "Lost and now found!"

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

THE ITALIAN MEDIÆVAL WOOD-SCULPTORS.

More or less during the whole of this century, and ever more during the recent years of it, the love of art, especially in what have been called the "industrial" manifestations of it, has been becoming a passion in Germany and in France, as well as in England and America. Museums for the collection and preservation of the works produced by the artists of those centuries which were the palmy days of art have been established in all these countries, and private amateurs have vied with them in enriching their respective countries with specimens of all the many kinds of art-industry which remain to us from those times when religion encouraged and surrounded itself with the beautiful and the cultivation of the beautiful was a religion. And it is mainly--indeed, almost entirely--to Italy that the lovers and admirers of mediæval art come in search of those remains of it which, it is hoped, will be (or rather are being) the means of producing a second art _renaissance_. The quantity of objects, more or less genuinely representing the mediæval art in all its many branches, which has been carried out of Italy within the last quarter of a century is something perfectly astounding, and far exceeds what any one would believe who has not remained in Italy long enough to observe the process. A considerable portion, no doubt, of the articles thus carried home with them by the lovers of art has consisted of modern imitations of ancient workmanship, but the quantity of genuine mediæval articles--pottery in its various kinds, furniture, carving in wood, in marble, in stone and in ivory, lace, bronzes, embroidery, metal-work, brocaded stuffs, etc.--has been so enormous as to reveal in a very striking manner the extraordinary wealth of the country in the days when it was the mistress of Europe in civilization, and the all-pervading love of the beautiful which caused so very large a portion of that wealth to be expended for the gratification of a refined taste.

Before proceeding to the more special subject of this article--certain interesting and recently-discovered notices of some of the most famous of the old carvers in wood--it may be well to say a word or two on the subject of the commerce in imitations of the mediæval works so extensively carried on in Italy. Of course, a trade based on deception is in every way to be condemned and regretted. It is not only immoral, but it generates demoralization. But it is to be observed that in very many cases--especially in those branches where art-industry approaches the most nearly to art proper--the artist or artisan who produced the works in question has neither co-operated with the fraud we are speaking of, nor has worked with any view to the perpetration of such by others. In the next place, it is to be noted that the mortification and humiliation which many purchasers are conscious of when it is brought home to them that they have been taken in, and have purchased as old that which is in truth of recent production, may well be spared to them. I do not mean, of course, as regards the money they may have been cheated of, but as regards the slight put upon their own connoisseurship. The art of imitating the old works in question has been brought to such a pitch of perfection that it needs a very special education of the eye and large practice to detect the imposture. A circumstance occurred a few years ago at Florence which curiously illustrates both the facts I have mentioned--the frequent innocence of the producer of the imitation and the extreme difficulty of detecting the modern origin of the work. The facts are very little known, because it was the interest of many persons to misrepresent and conceal them. They ought, nevertheless, to be known, and I do not see any good reason why I should not tell them here.

A young man at Florence of the name of Bastianini--it must be at least ten years ago now, or perhaps more--of very humble origin had shown a remarkable talent for modeling busts in terra-cotta. Having formed his taste for himself, not by means of any academical teaching, but by imbuing his mind with the examples of mediæval art which meet the eye on all sides in his native city, his works assumed quite naturally the manner and style of the artists who (in more or less direct line) were his ancestors. One day it happened to him to see a man--he was a common workman in the tobacco manufactory--whose head struck him as specially marked by the old Florentine mediæval type and as a remarkably good subject for a characteristic bust. From this man he made a terra-cotta bust which few could have pronounced to be other than a _cinque-cento_ work, and a very fine one. Bastianini, then quite unknown and much in need of wherewithal to live, sold this bust as the work of his hands to a speculative dealer for, if I remember rightly, five hundred francs. The man who bought it carried it to a dealer in antiquities--a very well-known man in Florence whose name I could give were it of any interest to do so--and proposed to sell it to him for a large sum. Eventually, a bargain was struck on this basis: The dealer, with perfect knowledge of the origin and authorship of the work, was to pay one thousand francs for the bust, and to pay the seller another thousand if and whenever he, the dealer, should succeed in reselling it for more than a certain price named. Thereupon, in accordance with the usual practice in such cases, the bust disappeared from sight. It was stored in the secret repositories of the _antiquario_ till the circumstances attending its creation should be a little forgotten, and dust and dirt should have corrected the brand-new rawness of its surface, ready to be produced with much mystery as a recent _trouvaille_ when a likely purchaser should loom over the Apennine which encircles "gentile Firenze." In due time, one of the largest and brightest of those comets whose return is so accurately calculated and eagerly expected by the Florentine dealers in ancient art made his appearance in the Tuscan sky--no less than a buyer for the Louvre. Those were the halcyon days of the Empire, and money was plenty. Poor Bastianini's bust was brought out with all due mystery, duly admired by the infallible French connoisseur, and eventually purchased by him for the imperial collection for, I think, five thousand francs--at all events, for a sum sufficiently large to give the man who had bought the bust from the poor artist the right to demand his supplementary payment. He did so. But the greed of the dealer prevailed over his prudence, and he refused to give his accomplice in the fraud the promised share in the plunder. Of course that ensued which might have been expected. The defrauded rogue "split." The bust sold to the Frenchman was easily identified with that which Bastianini had made, and which had been known to all artistic Florence, and the authorities at the Louvre were duly certified by many a loud-tongued informer that they had been gulled. The information, as is usually the case with information of the kind, came too late to be of service to the buyers, but not too late to give them serious annoyance. The bust had been exhibited at the Louvre in a prominent place; it had excited considerable notice; none of the savants presiding over that establishment had conceived the smallest suspicion of its genuineness; and it was excessively disagreeable to have to admit that they had all been deceived by a work made the other day by an unknown Florentine artist. It was so disagreeable that the gentlemen in question had not the courage to face the truth. They pooh-poohed their informants, professed to adhere without a doubt to their own first opinions, and the bust, to the great amusement of all the Florentine art-world, remained in its place of honor at the Louvre, exhibited as a cinque-cento terra-cotta for a long time after all Florence was perfectly cognizant of its real history, and after the young artist had produced three or four other busts all equally marked by unmistakable cinque-cento characteristics. One of these was a really remarkable bust of Savonarola, which may be seen any day in the (now public) gallery of St. Mark's at Florence. The original _teterrima causa belli_ has, I believe, disappeared from the Louvre Gallery. Poor Bastianini died shortly afterward, and it is due to his memory and undoubtedly great talent that it should be distinctly understood that from first to last he was no party to or profiter by the frauds to which his special talent had given rise.

To return, however, to what I was saying about that large portion of the works of art and art-industry every year exported from Italy, mainly by individual buyers for the gratification of their own taste, which consists of _imitations_. It may be remarked, especially as regards the objects belonging to the latter category, that these imitations, if bought as such, are not undesirable purchases. In many instances, particularly in those of iron- and bronze-work, intarsia, and carving in wood, the modern Italian artists, who began as imitators, have attained a degree of excellence which entitles them to take rank as the founders of a new artistic _renaissance_, while their familiarity with cinque-cento art and the loving study of it have led them to produce work in each of the above-named branches which is calculated to improve the taste of both workers and purchasers in countries beyond the Alps. As regards metal-work, whether in iron or bronze, avowedly modern, but of the true cinque-cento type and style, the amateur would do well to visit the foundries and workshops of Venice; for intarsia he may go to Milan; for wood-carving to Florence, Siena and Perugia; to the last also for intarsia. He will find in Perugia work both in carving and intarsia on which he might spend his money very much more advantageously than in buying second-rate bits of really old wood-work, or indeed any such bits as he is at all likely to meet with. And it is not surprising that the little Umbrian hill-city should have become a special home for this particular branch of art; for it contains some of the most remarkable works of the kind extant, the product of some of the most renowned masters of the craft in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is a mistake to suppose, as many persons do, that the fine works of this kind which we still admire were the product of men who were considered in their day as mere artisans, and whose names were not known beyond the boundaries of their native provinces. They were recognized as true artists, whose names were known from one end of the Peninsula to the other, and who were sent for from distant cities to execute works of importance. In many cases their names have perished: in more they are unknown to the present generation of art-lovers--_caruerunt quia vate sacro_. And in some cases--as a very notable instance, to be mentioned presently, will show in a remarkable manner--the higher portion of the merit which was wholly their own--the conception of their designs, with all the grace of fancy and cultured knowledge of the principles of the beautiful which it implies--has been assigned to others to whom the modern world has exclusively given the title of artists. But the increased and still increasing attention which the world is paying to all the details and all the branches of cinque-cento art--to good purpose, for it is due to it that we have emerged or are emerging from the eighteenth-century depths of ugliness in all our surroundings--has induced the useful Dryasdusts, whose nature and function it is to burrow in corporation and conventual muniment-rooms and the like promising covers, to search out with a very considerable degree of success a mass of facts, not only as to the real authorship of the work in question, but curiously illustrative of the status these artists held and the manner in which they lived and worked. Among the principal of these archive-hunters is the learned Professor Adam Rossi, the corporation librarian at Perugia, and it is mainly to his researches that the facts I am about to lay before the reader are due.

One of the finest specimens of cinque-cento wood-work extant in Italy--perhaps I might safely say the finest--is the choir of the monastic church of St. Peter at Perugia. The monks of St. Peter were Benedictines of Monte Cassino, and, like most of the families of that order, they were very wealthy and were liberal patrons of art. On the 9th of April, 1525, having determined to refit the choir of their church in a magnificent manner, they came to an agreement with a master-carpenter of Perugia for the execution of the work, and a detailed contract was signed by the parties. (I have called this cinque-cento work, and it will be observed that it was executed in the sixteenth century. It may be necessary, therefore, to explain to those who are unacquainted with the Italian mode of speaking in this respect that the Italians always speak of what we should call the fourteenth century as the "trecento," what we should call the fifteenth, as the "quattrecento," and so on. The period at which art in all its branches culminated in Italy was, in our language, the sixteenth century.)

Maestro Bernardino di Luca, the artist with whom the convent contracted for the fitting of the choir, is styled in the instrument _legnaiuolo_ (a "carpenter"). And no doubt Maestro Bernardino--or "Bino," for short, as he is called in the instrument when once at the beginning he has been named formally at full length--practiced all the more ordinary business of his trade. But there must have been carpenters _and_ carpenters, as to the present day there are painters _and_ painters, the same word indicating the calling of a Landseer and of a house-painter. This simple modesty of designation was a characteristic of the epoch. We find sculptors whose works are to the present day admired and studied as masterpieces styling themselves simply "stone-cutters." The contract is a long document, consisting of twenty-one clauses, the greater number of which are occupied with the most minute and detailed specification of the work to be done. It is to be executed "according to the model made by the said Bino, changing it or keeping it as it is according to the will of the fathers" (the monks of St. Peter's), "so as not to change the form and substance of the model." The prices agreed to be paid for each stall in the choir, with its arch above it, is ten golden ducats, which, allowing for the change in the value of the precious metals, may be considered to be about equal to three hundred and seventy-five dollars at the present day. The price does not seem by any means a small one. But Signor Rossi's researches have elsewhere shown that it is a mistake to suppose that the renowned professors of any branch of art were poorly paid in those days. The very reverse was the case. It would not be interesting to the reader to give him the details of the work which Maestro Bino bound himself to execute, but some of the stipulations must be mentioned, because they curiously illustrate the life of the times. The convent is to furnish all the wood--that which is required for the work itself, as well as all that may be needed, planks, scaffolding and the like, for the putting of it in its place. "_Item._ We give him rooms to work in and to sleep in and to cook in, as well as beds furnished with bedclothes. _Item._ Maestro Bino binds himself not to undertake any other work till the choir is wholly finished and put up, and he engages to do all the work within the walls of the convent. He is bound to keep four men at work under him, and more if necessary." The work is to be completed within two years should no impediment intervene by death or grave and manifest illness. The convent undertakes to furnish money from time to time as needed for the pay of the journeymen, and fifty ducats beforehand for the hiring of assistants and other necessary expenses.

Maestro Bino went to work at once, and on the 15th of that same April had from the convent what seems the very large sum of ten florins and eight soldi for glue. But, after all, this Maestro Bernardino di Luca was not the author of the exquisite carvings which people go to Perugia to look at at the present day. A very "grave and manifest infirmity" did intervene to prevent the execution of the work, for on the 19th of the following August, Maestro Bino discharged his workmen on account of the plague, which had begun to devastate Perugia; and there is reason to think that the maestro himself perished by it, for after that last entry the name of Bernardino di Luca vanishes into the abyss of darkness, and is no more heard of, and shortly afterward we find the convent entering into a new bargain with another maestro for the execution of the work. This was Maestro Stefano de Antoniolo da Zambelli of Bergamo, who agreed with the monks in July, 1533, to execute the required works in the choir for the price of thirty golden crowns each stall. It will be observed that this price is about fifty per cent. higher than that for which Maestro Bino had contracted to do the work, which is an indication of the then rapidly-falling value of the precious metals. But this increased price was still insufficient, for on the 17th of July, 1534, the monks enter into an amended contract with Maestro Stefano, in which the terms of the original contract are rehearsed, and it is then declared that Maestro Stefano having shown and proved to the abbot's satisfaction that those terms could not stand, and that he should be greatly the loser by the bargain, and it being by no means the wish of the fathers that Maestro Stefano should be deprived of a fair reward for his work, but rather that he should make a suitable profit by the job, it was now agreed that the maestro should undertake to labor uninterruptedly and with all possible diligence, that the convent should find all materials and tools, and should maintain Maestro Stefano and his wife and a journeyman, and should pay sixty golden crowns a year as long as the work was in progress. Further, the convent undertakes to pay half a golden crown monthly to the wife of the said Maestro Stefano, "on the understanding that the said wife of the maestro shall serve and cook and wash clothes for all the family engaged on the work of the choir;" and further, half a golden crown monthly to the journeyman. Under this arrangement it was of course the interest of the convent that the work should be completed as quickly as possible. And we find, accordingly, the abbot commissioning Antonio of Florence to carve six of the backs of the stalls; Battista of Bologna and Ambrose, a Frenchman, to carve the reading-desk; and Fra Damiano of Bergamo, who was then at Bologna, to execute the four sculptures in bas-relief which adorn the door. This Fra Damiano, who signs himself on his work "Fr. Damianus de Bergamo, Ordinis Predicatorum," seems to have been a brother of the principal artist, Maestro Stefano. But a curious peep at the manners of that time is afforded by the fact of a professed monk working for hire as a wood-carver. The main portion of the work, however, and the general design, were due to Maestro Stefano da Zambelli of Bergamo, and just two years and half from the signing of the contract the work was completed and signed in intarsia, as we see it to this day, "Hoc opus fecit M^{r.} Stephanus di Bergamo."

For a long time it was supposed that the very beautiful designs for the entirety and for each detail of this noble work was due to Raphael. The guide-books all copied the statement one after the other; and they were indeed excusable in doing so, for the large and magnificent folio which was published at Rome by the abbot and monks in 1845, containing engravings of every detail of the celebrated carvings, declares on the title-page that the work was executed "by Stefano da Bergamo after the designs of Raffaelle Santi di Urbino." The celebrated and learned Montfaucon, who was a member of the same order, seems to have been the first who made this mistaken statement. Once made on such authority, it was accepted and repeated without further investigation till the undeniable evidence of the archives of the convent, dragged to light from under the dust of centuries by the industry of Professor Rossi, showed that in truth the conception and design, as well as the execution, of this beautiful masterpiece, which has for so long been thought worthy of Raphael, was the work of the "carpenter, Maestro Stefano da Bergamo."

I do not believe that it is any longer possible to obtain a complete copy of the above-mentioned work. Many years ago I found the separate sheets of it lying about in the sacristy in a manner which gave one a vivid idea of the reckless carelessness which is so marked a characteristic of Italians. Bundles of the different plates, some containing forty or fifty copies, some twenty or so, and some not more than four or five, were thrust into cupboards with wax candles for the altar, tattered choir-books and old candlesticks. And here was the whole remaining stock of the work! I was at that time able, by the exercise of much patience, trouble and persuasion with the old sacristan--who seemed to consider the sale of the plates a very insufficient recompense for the trouble of looking for them--to get together a complete copy of the work; but when I was there the other day not more than twenty of the plates out of nearly twice that number were to be found. In the mean time, however, a complete set of photographs of every portion of the sculpture has been made in a smaller size, but sufficiently large to give a very satisfactory representation of the extreme beauty and elegance of the work. It is indeed impossible to doubt that this Master Stephen of Bergamo, the carpenter, whose wife was to have half a crown a month for doing the washing and cooking for all the family living in the rooms assigned to them in the monastery for a workshop and living-rooms, was a man of education and culture, and in every sense of the word an _artist_. The difference between his social position and that of any artist of corresponding eminence in our day would seem to consist wholly in that greater degree of personal and material luxury which civilization and increased wealth have brought with them. The payment which he was to receive for his year's work, besides having been maintained, lodged and fed at the cost of the monastery during the time, may, I take it, be considered equivalent to about twenty-two thousand five hundred dollars.

In 1494, on the 5th of April, Maestro Mariotto di Paola, "called Torzuolo," contracts with the canons of the cathedral to make a range of cupboards in the sacristy. Such masses of wood-work, very frequently richly carved and ornamented, are found in the sacristies of most of the larger churches in Italy. They generally consist of a range of deep drawers below, up to about the height of an ordinary table, and above this a series of cupboards reaching to the ceiling of the apartment, so much less deep than the drawers as to leave a large space of table on the top of the latter. The drawers are used mainly for the keeping of the sacred vestments; the table for the spreading out of such of these as are about to be or have just been used; and the cupboards above for the holding of all the treasures of the church--chalices for the altar, monstrances for the exposition of the sacrament, reliquaries of all sorts of shapes and sizes for the preservation of the relics of saints, ornamental candlesticks, and such like. In the richer and more important churches these objects are generally of the precious metals, and frequently richly adorned with gems, so that the amount of treasure stored in these repositories is often very considerable. Sometimes such a range of wood-work as has been described will be found filling one side only of the sacristy, but in many cases it runs round the whole apartment. And this piece of ecclesiastical furniture therefore presented a great field for the taste and ingenuity of the old _maestri_ in wood-carving to exhibit their skill both in design and in execution. At the Benedictine monastery of St. Peter, of the choir of which we have been speaking, this fitting up of the sacristy had been done previously; and it is accordingly much less rich in carving than the work in the choir. But some of the doors of the cupboards are still more preciously ornamented by some very finely-painted heads from the hand of the great Perugino.

Such as it is, however, this sacristy at St. Peter's was handsome enough to excite the emulation of the canons of the cathedral, for the contract made with Maestro Mariotto--who was nicknamed Torzuolo--specifies that the work is to be entirely of walnut wood, after the fashion of the sacristy at St. Peter's, and is to be executed "in the manner of a good, loyal and expert master." It is to be all done by his own hand, or at least in his presence and under his superintendence. The work is to be completed in one year, and the canons are to pay for it at the rate of ten florins every square braccio, Florentine measure. This was in 1494; and it will here again be observed that the price, as compared with that to be paid to Maestro Stefano by the monks of St. Peter's for their choir, even fully allowing for the greater richness of the latter, indicates the very rapid alteration in the value of money which took place at the beginning of the sixteenth century. But the canons, it would seem, were very careful hands at a bargain, for we find that it is provided in the contract that when the work shall have been completed it shall be examined by two experts, and that if it shall be found to be worth less than the price named, Maestro Torzuolo shall receive so much less; but that if it shall be found by the said experts and appraisers to be worth more, the maestro shall stand to his bargain and not receive more than the price named--an agreement which is frequently found in the contracts made about that period. When the work was completed it was accordingly examined and appraised by Maestro Mattia of Reggio and Maestro Pietro of Florence. The latter was brought from Città di Castello, a little city in the Apennines some twenty-five miles distant, express for the purpose. We do not find any statement of their award. But it would seem that Maestro Torzuolo did not keep to his contract in one respect, but was as unpunctual as the carpenters of the present generation, for the above experts were not called to appraise the work till the year 1497.

Maestro Pietro of Florence was evidently a man at the head of his profession, for at Città di Castello, when he was summoned to Perugia to appraise the work of Maestro Torzuolo, he was engaged in making for the canons there a wooden ceiling for the nave of their church, which was, by a contract dated 1499, to be ornamented with large roses similar to the ornamentation of the ceiling of the council-hall in the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence; giving us thus another indication of the degree of general interest and attention which these works excited in those days. The communication between city and city was difficult and comparatively unfrequent, yet the fame of any fine work of the sort we are talking of evidently not only reached far and wide among other cities, but forthwith excited their rivalry and led to the production of other _chefs-d'oeuvre_. Maestro Pietro was to receive for the ceiling of the nave at Città di Castello no less a sum than five hundred golden ducats, equal to at least seventeen thousand five hundred dollars at the present day. We find him also employed as architect to direct the construction of a cupola of the church of Calcinaio. This carpenter was, then, an architect also; and Professor Rossi remarks that it is by no means the only case of the kind.

Maestro Mattia, the other expert called to appraise the work done by Maestro Torzuolo for the canons of the cathedral of Perugia, was already well and favorably known in that city, for he had been employed in 1495 to appraise some work which had been done for the choir of the monks of St. Lorenzo; in that same year we find him executing some very elaborate work for the convent of St. Augustine; and on the 20th of December there was read at a meeting of the municipal council a petition from Maestro Mattia to be admitted to the freedom of the city of Perugia; which request the masters of the guilds, "taking into consideration the industry, the mode of life and the moral character" of the petitioner, were pleased to grant, on the condition that he, together with two other persons admitted to citizenship at the same time, should make a present to the corporation of a silver dish and forty pounds' weight of copper money, and, further, that he should give the masters and treasurers of his own guild a dinner.

The notices which Professor Rossi has collected from the various collections of archives explored by him show in a remarkable manner how much the best patron of art and artists in those days was the Church. By far the greatest number of the contracts cited are made by ecclesiastics, either monks or collegiate bodies of canons or the like, for the ornamentation of their churches and sacristies. The next best patrons are the different trade-guilds of the cities. Each of these had its place of meeting for the _priori_--masters or wardens, as we should say, of the company--and many of them a contiguous chapel. The sort of furniture needed for these places was generally a range of seats running round the principal room, a back of wainscoting behind them, a kind of pulpit for those who addressed the meeting, a raised and prominent seat for the "consuls" of the guild, and a large table or writing-desk for the transaction of business. All this, as will be readily perceived, afforded fine opportunities for the display of rich carvings and intarsia; and there was much rivalry between the guilds in the splendor and adornment of their places of meeting. Some of these works still remain intact, as in the case of the meeting-room and chapel of the company of exchange-brokers, which is celebrated wherever art is valued for the magnificent frescoes by Perugino which adorn the upper part of the walls above the wood-work. I think, however, that the Church was more liberal and magnificent in her orders. I have seen much fine wood-work in the different guild-halls and town-halls in various cities of Italy, but in no lay building, not even in wealthy and magnificent Venice itself, with all the splendor of its ducal palace and its Scuole, have I ever seen anything of the kind at all comparable to the wood-work in the choirs of the monastery of St. Peter at Perugia and of the cathedral at Siena. There is in the cathedral of Bergamo some intarsia, perhaps the finest things extant in that special description of work, but for carving the choirs I have mentioned are pre-eminent.

But there are a great number of beautiful works of this sort lurking in places where the traveler, however eager a lover of art, would hardly think of looking for them. The central districts of Italy are full of such. There is in the mountains to the south of Perugia, overhanging the valley of the Tiber, a little city, the very name of which will probably be new to many even of those who have traveled much in Italy. Still less likely is it that they have ever been at Todi, for that is the name of the place I am alluding to. It lies high and bleak among the Apennines, and possesses nothing to attract the wanderer save some notable remains of mediæval art which strikingly show how universal, how ubiquitous, art and artists were in those halcyon days. Todi has, moreover, the misfortune of being situated on no line of railway, and of not being on the way to any of the great modern centres. It is, therefore, completely out of the modern world, and nobody knows anything about it save a few lovers of ancient art, who will not be beat in their explorations by want of communications and bad hostelries. But the little hill-city possesses two churches, whose choirs well deserve a visit by the admirers of cinque-cento wood-work, I have mentioned it here, however, mainly because one of these, the choir of the cathedral, offers not so much in what may still be seen there, as in its records, a very curious example of the spirit of anti-ecclesiastical freethinking which was widely spread at that time through the artist-world, whose best patron was the Church. I mentioned some months ago, in the pages of this Magazine, some curious facts showing the real sentiments of the great Perugino on this subject while he was painting Madonnas and miracles for his ecclesiastical patrons. And the following singular extract from the archives of the cathedral church of Todi may be added to what was there written as a proof of the somewhat unexpected fact. The wood-work of the choir was begun by Maestro Antonio Bencivieni of Mercatello, in the duchy of Urbino, and was completed in 1530 by his son Sebastian, who finished his work by inserting in it a singularly haughty inscription in intarsia. The Latin of the original may be Englished thus: "Begun by the art and genius of Ant^{o} Bencivieni of Mercatello. This work was finished by his son Sebastian. Having kept faith and maintained his honor, he did enough." The worthy canons, however, discovered just one and forty years afterward that Maestro Sebastiano had done somewhat too much. For he had on the fourth stall, counting from the bishop's seat, on the right-hand side of the choir, inserted amid the ornamentation certain Latin words, inscribed over a carving of three vases intended to represent reliquaries, which may be translated thus: Over the first vase, "The shadow of the ass ridden by our Lord;" over the second, "The feet of the Blessed Virgin as she ascended into heaven;" over the third, "Relics of the Holy Trinity." These strange inscriptions remained where Maestro Sebastiano had so audaciously placed them till the May of 1571. At that date we find a record in the cathedral archives which, after rehearsing the words in question, and describing the position of them, proceeds: "Which words, placed there and written scandalously, and in a certain sort derisive of the veneration for holy relics, and in contempt of the Christian religion, the very reverend canons" (So-and-So--names rehearsed) "ordered to be removed and entirely canceled, so that they should no longer be seen or read." Can it be supposed that this very extraordinary inscription in a choir frequented daily by the canons of the church had entirely escaped notice for more than forty years? Surely this is impossible. Should we not rather see in the fact that the chapter of 1530 noticed the mocking words with probably a shrug and a smile, whereas the chapter of 1571 took care that they were removed, an interesting and curious commentary on the change which the intervening years had brought about in the spirit of the Church, and another unexpected indication of the difference between the Church of the worldly, pagan-minded Clement VII. and that of the energetic, earnest bigot Pius IV. That such a difference existed we know full well, but this passage of the Todi archives is a very curious proof of it.

T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE.

REST.

In deepest weariness I lay so still One might have thought it death, For hush of motion and a sleep of will Gave me but soundless breath.

And yet I slept not; only knew that Rest Held me all close to her: Softly but firmly fettered to her breast, I had no wish to stir.

"Oh, if," I thought, "death would but be like this!-- Neither to sleep nor wake, But have for ages just this _conscious_ bliss, That perfect rest I take."

The soul grows often weary, like the flesh: May rest pervade her long, While she shall _feel_ the joy of growing fresh For heavenly work and song!

CHARLOTTE F. BATES.

LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA.

BY LADY BARKER.

MARITZBURG, February 10, 1876.

In the South African calendar this is set down as the first of the autumnal months, but the half dozen hours about mid-day are still quite as close and oppressive as any we have had. I am, however, bound to say that the nights--at all events, up here--are cooler, and I begin even to think of a light shawl for my solitary walks in the verandah just before bedtime. When the moon shines these walks are pleasant enough, but when only the "common people of the skies" are trying to filter down their feebler light through the misty atmosphere, I have a lurking fear and distrust of the reptiles and bugs who may also have a fancy for promenading at the same time and in the same place. I say nothing of bats, frogs and toads, mantis or even huge moths: to these we are quite accustomed. But although I have never seen a live snake in this country myself, still one hears such unpleasant stories about them that it is just as well to what the Scotch call "mak siccar" with a candle before beginning a constitutional in the dark.

It is not a week ago since a lady of my acquaintance, being surprised at her little dog's refusal to follow her into her bedroom one night, instituted a search for the reason of the poor little creature's terror and dismay, and discovered a snake coiled up under her chest of drawers. At this moment, too, the local papers are full of recipes for the prevention and cure of snake-bites, public attention being much attracted to the subject on account of an Englishman having been bitten by a black "mamba" (a very venomous adder) a short time since, and having died of the wound in a few hours. In his case, poor man! there does not seem to have been a chance from the first, for he was obliged to walk some distance to the nearest house, and as they had no proper remedies there, he had to be taken on a farther journey of some miles to a hospital. All this exercise and motion caused the poison to circulate freely through the veins, and was the worst possible thing for him. The doctors here seem agreed that the treatment of ammonia and brandy is the safest, and many instances are adduced to show how successful it has been, though one party of practitioners admits the ammonia, but denies the brandy. On the other hand, one hears of a child bitten by a snake and swallowing half a large bottle of raw brandy in half an hour without its head being at all affected, and, what is more, recovering from the bite and living happy ever after. I keep quantities of both remedies close at hand, for three or four venomous snakes have been killed within a dozen yards of the house, and little G---- is perpetually exploring the long grass all around or hunting for a stray cricket-ball or a pegtop in one of those beautiful fern-filled ditches whose tangle of creepers and plumy ferns is exactly the favorite haunt of snakes. As yet he has brought back from these forbidden raids nothing more than a few ticks and millions of burs.

As for the ticks, I am getting over my horror at having to dislodge them from among the baby's soft curls by means of a sharp needle, and even G---- only shouts with laughter at discovering a great swollen monster hanging on by its forceps to his leg. They torment the poor horses and dogs dreadfully; and if the said horses were not the very quietest, meekest, most underbred and depressed animals in the world, we should certainly hear of more accidents. As it is, they confine their efforts to get rid of their tormentors to rubbing all the hair off their tails and sides in patches against the stable walls or the trunk of a tree. Indeed, the clever way G----'s miserable little Basuto pony actually climbs inside a good-sized bush, and sways himself about in it with his legs off the ground until the whole thing comes with a crash to the ground, is edifying to behold to every one except the owner of the tree. Tom, the Kafir boy, tried hard to persuade me the other day that the pony was to blame for the destruction of a peach tree, but as the only broken-down branches were those which had been laden with fruit, I am inclined to acquit the pony. Carbolic soap is an excellent thing to wash both dogs and horses with, as it not only keeps away flies and ticks from the skin, which, is constantly rubbed off by incessant scratching, but helps to heal the tendency to a sore place. Indeed, nothing frightened me so much as what I heard when I first arrived about Natal sores and Natal boils. Everybody told me that ever so slight a cut or abrasion went on slowly festering, and that sores on children's faces were quite common. This sounded very dreadful, but I am beginning to hope it was an exaggeration, for whenever G---- cuts or knocks himself (which is every day or so), or scratches an insect's bite into a bad place, I wash the part with a little carbolic soap (there are two sorts--one for animals and a more refined preparation for the human skin), and it is quite well the next day. We have all had a threatening of those horrid boils, but they have passed off.

In town the mosquitoes are plentiful and lively, devoting their attentions chiefly to new-comers, but up here--I write as though we were five thousand feet instead of only fifty above Maritzburg--it is rare to see one. I think "fillies" are more in our line, and that in spite of every floor in the house being scrubbed daily with strong soda and water. "Fillies," you must know, is our black groom's (Charlie's) way of pronouncing _fleas_, and I find it ever so much prettier. Charlie and I are having a daily discussion just now touching sundry moneys he expended during my week's absence at D'Urban for the kittens' food. Charlie calls them the "lil' catties," and declares that the two small animals consumed three shillings and ninepence worth of meat in a week. I laughingly say, "But, Charlie, that would be nearly nine pounds of meat in six days, and they couldn't eat that, you know." Charlie grins and shows all his beautiful even white teeth: then he bashfully turns his head aside and says, "I doan know, ma': I buy six' meat dree time." "Very well, Charlie, that would be one shilling and sixpence." "I doan know, ma';" and we've not got any further than that yet.

But G---- and I are picking up many words of Kafir, and it is quite mortifying to see how much more easily the little monkey learns than I do. I forget my phrases or confuse them, whereas when he learns two or three sentences he appears to remember them always. It is a very melodious and beautiful language, and, except for the clicks, not very difficult to learn. Almost everybody here speaks it a little, and it is the first thing necessary for a new-comer to endeavor to acquire; only, unfortunately, there are no teachers, as in India, and consequently you pick up a wretched, debased kind of patois, interlarded with Dutch phrases. Indeed, I am assured there are two words, _el hashi_ ("the horse"), of unmistakable Moorish origin, though no one knows how they got into the language. Many of the Kafirs about town speak a little English, and they are exceedingly sharp, when they choose, about understanding what is meant, even if they do not quite catch the meaning of the words used. There is one genius of my acquaintance, called "Sixpence," who is not only a capital cook, but an accomplished English scholar, having spent some months in England. Generally, to Cape Town and back is the extent of their journeyings, for they are a home-loving people; but Sixpence went to England with his master, and brought back a shivering recollection of an English winter and a deep-rooted amazement at the boys of the Shoe Brigade, who wanted to clean his boots. That astonished him more than anything else, he says.

The Kafirs are very fond of attending their own schools and church services, of which there are several in the town; and I find one of my greatest difficulties in living out here consists in getting Kafirs to come out of town, for by doing so they miss their regular attendance at chapel and school. A few Sundays ago I went to one of these Kafir schools, and was much struck by the intently-absorbed air of the pupils, almost all of whom were youths about twenty years of age. They were learning to read the Bible in Kafir during my visit, sitting in couples, and helping each other on with immense diligence and earnestness. No looking about, no wandering, inattentive glances, did I see. I might as well have "had the receipt of fern-seed and walked invisible" for all the attention I excited. Presently the pupil-teacher, a young black man, who had charge of this class, asked me if I would like to hear them sing a hymn, and on my assenting he read out a verse of "Hold the Fort," and they all stood up and sang it, or rather its Kafir translation, lustily and with good courage, though without much tune. The chorus was especially fine, the words "Inkanye kanye" ringing through the room with great fervor. This is not a literal translation of the words "Hold the Fort," but it is difficult, as the teacher explained to me, for the translator to avail himself of the usual word for "hold," as it conveys more the idea of "take hold," "seize," and the young Kafir missionary thoroughly understood all the nicety of the idiom. There was another class for women and children, but it was a small one. Certainly, the young men seemed much in earnest, and the rapt expression of their faces was most striking, especially during the short prayer which followed the hymn and ended the school for the afternoon.

I have had constantly impressed upon my mind since my arrival the advice _not_ to take Christian Kafirs into my service, but I am at a loss to know in what way the prejudice against them can have arisen. "Take a Kafir green from his kraal if you wish to have a good servant," is what every one tells me. It so happens that we have two of each--two Christians and two heathens--about the place, and there is no doubt whatever which is the best. Indeed, I have sometimes conversations with the one who speaks English, and I can assure you we might all learn from him with advantage. His simple creed is just what came from the Saviour's lips two thousand years ago, and comprises His teaching of the whole duty of man--to love God, the great "En' Kos," and his neighbor as himself. He speaks always with real delight of his privileges, and is very anxious to go to Cape Town to attend some school there of which he talks a great deal, and where he says he should learn to read the Bible in English. At present he is spelling it out with great difficulty in Kafir. This man often talks to me in the most respectful and civil manner imaginable about the customs of his tribe, and he constantly alludes to the narrow escape he had of being murdered directly after his birth for the crime of being a twin. His people have a fixed belief that unless one of a pair of babies be killed at once, either the father or mother will die within the year; and they argue that as in any case one child will be sure to die in its infancy, twins being proverbially difficult to rear, it is only both kind and natural to kill the weakly one at once. This young man is very small and quiet and gentle, with an ugly face, but a sweet, intelligent expression and a very nice manner. I find him and the other Christian in our employment very trustworthy and reliable. If they tell me anything which has occurred, I know I can believe their version of it, and they are absolutely honest. Now, the other lads have very loose ideas on the subject of sugar, and make shifty excuses for everything, from the cat breaking a heavy stone filter up to half the marketing being dropped on the road.

I don't think I have made it sufficiently clear that besides the Sunday-schools and services I have mentioned there are night-schools every evening in the week, which are fully attended by Kafir servants, and where they are first taught to read their own language, which is an enormous difficulty to them. They always tell me it is so much easier to learn to read English than Kafir; and if one studies the two languages, it is plain to see how much simpler the new tongue must appear to a learner than the intricate construction, the varying patois and the necessarily phonetic spelling of a language compounded of so many dialects as the Zulu-Kafir.

FEBRUARY 12.

In some respects I consider this climate has been rather over-praised. Of course it is a great deal--a very great deal--better than our English one, but that, after all, is not saying much in its praise. Then we must remember that in England we have the fear and dread of the climate ever before our eyes, and consequently are always, so to speak, on our guard against it. Here, and in other places where civilization is in its infancy, we are at the mercy of dust and sun, wind and rain, and all the eccentric elements which go to make up weather. Consequently, when the balance of comfort and convenience has to be struck, it is surprising how small an advantage a really better climate gives when you take away watering-carts and shady streets for hot weather, and sheltered railway-stations and hansom cabs for wet weather, and roads and servants and civility and general convenience everywhere. This particular climate is both depressing and trying in spite of the sunny skies we are ever boasting about, because it has a strong tinge of the tropical element in it; and yet people live in much the same kind of houses (only that they are very small), and wear much the same sort of clothes (only that they are very ugly), and lead much the same sort of lives (only that it is a thousand times duller than the dullest country village), as they do in England. Some small concession is made to the thermometer in the matter of puggeries and matted floors, but even then carpets are used wherever it is practicable, because this matting never looks clean and nice after the first week it is put down. All the houses are built on the ground floor, with the utmost economy of building material and labor, and consequently there are no passages: every room is, in fact, a passage and leads to its neighbor. So the perpetually dirty bare feet, or, still worse, boots fresh from the mud or dust of the streets, soon wear out the matting. Few houses are at all prettily decorated or furnished, partly from the difficulty of procuring anything pretty here, the cost and risk of its carriage up from D'Urban if you send to England for it, and partly from the want of servants accustomed to anything but the roughest and coarsest articles of household use. A lady soon begins to take her drawing-room ornaments _en guignon_ if she has to dust them herself every day in a very dusty climate. I speak feelingly and with authority, for that is my case at this moment, and applies to every other part of the house as well.

I must say I like Kafir servants in some respects. They require, I acknowledge, constant supervision; they require to be told to do the same thing over and over again every day; and, what is more, besides telling, you have to stand by and see that they do the thing. They are also very slow. But still, with all these disadvantages, they are far better than the generality of European servants out here, who make their luckless employers' lives a burden to them by reason of their tempers and caprices. It is much better, I am convinced, to face the evil boldly and to make up one's mind to have none but Kafir servants. Of course one immediately turns into a sort of overseer and upper servant one's self; but at all events you feel master or mistress of your own house, and you have faithful and good-tempered domestics, who do their best, however awkwardly, to please you. Where there are children, then indeed a good English nurse is a great boon; and in this one respect I am fortunate. Kafirs are also much easier to manage when the orders come direct from the master or mistress, and they work far more willingly for them than for white servants. Tom, the nurse-boy, confided to me yesterday that he hoped to stop in my employment for forty moons. After that space of time he considered that he should be in a position to buy plenty of wives, who would work for him and support him for the rest of his life. But how Tom or Jack, or any of the boys in fact, are to save money I know not, for every shilling of their wages, except a small margin for coarse snuff, goes to their parents, who fleece them without mercy. If they are fined for breakages or misconduct (the only punishment a Kafir cares for), they have to account for the deficient money to the stern parents; and both Tom and Jack went through a most graphic pantomime with a stick of the consequences to themselves, adding that their father said both the beating from him and the fine from us served them right for their carelessness. It seemed so hard they should suffer both ways, and they were so good-tempered and uncomplaining about it, that I fear I shall find it very difficult to stop any threepenny pieces out of their wages in future. A Kafir servant usually gets one pound a month, his clothes and food. The former consists of a shirt and short trousers of coarse check cotton, a soldier's old great-coat for winter, and plenty of mealy-meal for "scoff." If he is a good servant and worth making comfortable, you give him a trifle every week to buy meat. Kafirs are very fond of going to their kraals, and you have to make them sign an agreement to remain with you so many months, generally six. By the time you have just taught them, with infinite pains and trouble, how to do their work, they depart, and you have to begin it all over again.

I frequently see the chiefs or indunas of chiefs passing here on their way to some kraals which lie just over the hills. These kraals consist of half a dozen or more large huts, exactly like so many huge beehives, on the slope of a hill. There is a rude attempt at sod-fencing round them; a few head of cattle graze in the neighborhood; lower down, the hillside is roughly scratched by the women with crooked hoes to form a mealy-ground. (Cows and mealies are all they require except snuff or tobacco, which they smoke out of a cow's horn.) They seem a very gay and cheerful people, to judge by the laughter and jests I hear from the groups returning to these kraals every day by the road just outside our fence. Sometimes one of the party carries an umbrella; and I assure you the effect of a tall, stalwart Kafir, clad either in nothing at all or else in a sack, carefully guarding his bare head with a tattered Gamp, is very ridiculous. Often some one walks along playing upon a rude pipe, whilst the others jog before and after him, laughing and capering like boys let loose from school, and all chattering loudly. You never meet a man carrying a burden unless he is a white settler's servant. When a chief or the induna of a kraal passes this way, I see him, clad in a motley garb of red regimentals with his bare "ringed" head, riding a sorry nag, only the point of his great toe resting in his stirrup. He is followed closely and with great _empressement_ by his "tail," all "ringed" men also--that is, men of some substance and weight in the community. They carry bundles of sticks, and keep up with the ambling nag, and are closely followed by some of his wives bearing heavy loads on their heads, but stepping out bravely with beautiful erect carriage, shapely bare arms and legs; and some sort of coarse drapery worn across their bodies, covering them from shoulder to knee in folds which would delight an artist's eye and be the despair of a sculptor's chisel. They don't look either oppressed or discontented. Happy, healthy and jolly are the words by which they would be most truthfully described. Still, they are lazy, and slow to appreciate any benefit from civilization except the money, but then savages always seem to me as keen and sordid about money as the most civilized mercantile community anywhere.

FEBRUARY 14.

I am often asked by people who are thinking of coming here, or who want to send presents to friends here, what to bring or send. Of course it is difficult to say, because my experience is limited and confined to one spot at present: therefore I give my opinion very guardedly, and acknowledge it is derived in great part from the experience of others who have been here a long time. Amongst other wraps, I brought a sealskin jacket and muff which I happened to have. These, I am assured, will be absolutely useless, and already they are a great anxiety to me on account of the swarms of fish-tail moths which I see scuttling about in every direction if I move a box or look behind a picture. In fact, there are destructive moths everywhere, and every drawer is redolent of camphor. The only things I can venture to recommend as necessaries are things which no one advised me to bring, and which were only random shots. One was a light waterproof ulster, and the other was a lot of those outside blinds for windows which come, I believe, from Japan, and are made of grass--green, painted with gay figures. I picked up these latter by the merest accident at the Baker-street bazaar for a few shillings: they are the comfort of my life, keeping out glare and dust in the day and moths and insects of all kinds at night. As for the waterproof, I do not know what I should have done without it; and little G----'s has also been most useful. It is the necessary of necessaries here--a _real_, good substantial waterproof. A man cannot do better than get a regular military waterproof which will cover him from chin to heel on horseback; and even waterproof hats and caps are a comfort in this treacherous summer season, where a storm bursts over your head out of a blue dome of sky, and drenches you even whilst the sun is shining brightly.

A worse climate and country for clothes of every kind and description cannot be imagined. When I first arrived I thought I had never seen such ugly toilettes in all my life; and I should have been less than woman (or more--which is it?) if I had not derived some secret satisfaction from the possession of at least prettier garments. What I was vain of in my secret heart was my store of cotton gowns. One can't very well wear cotton gowns in London; and, as I am particularly fond of them, I indemnify myself for going abroad by rushing wildly into extensive purchases in cambrics and print dresses. They are so pretty and so cheap, and when charmingly made, as mine _were_ (alas, they are already things of the past!), nothing can be so satisfactory in the way of summer country garb. Well, it has been precisely in the matter of cotton gowns that I have been punished for my vanity. For a day or two each gown in turn looked charming. Then came a flounce or bordering of bright red earth on the lower skirt and a general impression of red dust and dirt all over it. That was after a drive into Maritzburg along a road ploughed up by ox-wagons. Still, I felt no uneasiness. What is a cotton gown made for if not to be washed? Away it goes to the wash! What is this limp, discolored rag which returns to me iron-moulded, blued until it is nearly black, rough-dried, starched in patches, with the fringe of red earth only more firmly fixed than before? Behold my favorite ivory cotton! My white gowns are even in a worse plight, for there are no two yards of them the same, and the grotesque mixture of extreme yellowness, extreme blueness and a pervading tinge of the red mud they have been washed in renders them a piteous example of misplaced confidence. Other things fare rather better--not much--but my poor gowns are only hopeless wrecks, and I am reduced to some old yachting dresses of ticking and serge. The price of washing, as this spoiling process is pleasantly called, is enormous, and I exhaust my faculties in devising more economical arrangements. We can't wash at home, for the simple reason that we have no water, no proper appliances of any sort, and to build and buy such would cost a small fortune. But a tall, white-aproned Kafir, with a badge upon his arm, comes now at daylight every Monday morning and takes away a huge sackful of linen, which is placed, with sundry pieces of soap and blue in its mouth, all ready for him. He brings it back in the afternoon full of clean and dry linen, for which he receives three shillings and sixpence. But this is only the first stage. The things to be starched have to be sorted and sent to one woman, and those to be mangled to another, and both lots have to be fetched home again by Tom and Jack. (I have forgotten to tell you that Jack's real name, elicited with great difficulty, as there is a click somewhere in it, is "Umpashongwana," whilst the pickle Tom is known among his own people as "Umkabangwana." You will admit that our substitutes for these five-syllabled appellations are easier to pronounce in a hurry. Jack is a favorite name: I know half a dozen black Jacks myself.) To return, however, to the washing. I spend my time in this uncertain weather watching the clouds on the days when the clothes are to come home, for it would be altogether _too_ great a trial if one's starched garments, borne aloft on Jack's head, were to be caught in a thunder-shower. If the washerwoman takes pains with anything, it is with gentlemen's shirts, though even then she insists on ironing the collars into strange and fearful shapes.

Let not men think, however, that they have it all their own way in the matter of clothes. White jackets and trousers are commonly worn here in summer, and it is very soothing, I am told, to try to put them on in a hurry when the arms and legs are firmly glued together by several pounds of starch. Then as to boots and shoes: they get so mildewed if laid aside for even a few days as to be absolutely offensive; and these, with hats, wear out at the most astonishing rate. The sun and dust and rain finish up the hats in less than no time.

But I have not done with my clothes yet. A lady must keep a warm dress and jacket close at hand all through the most broiling summer weather, for a couple of hours will bring the thermometer down ten or twenty degrees, and I have often been gasping in a white dressing-gown at noon and shivering in a serge dress at three o'clock on the same day. I am making up my mind that serge and ticking are likely to be the most useful material for dresses, and, as one must have something very cool for these burning months, tussore or foulard, which get themselves better washed than my poor dear cottons. Silks are next to useless--too smart, too hot, too entirely out of place in such a life as this, except perhaps one or two of tried principles, which won't spot or fade or misbehave themselves in any way. One goes out of a warm, dry afternoon with a tulle veil on to keep off the flies, or a feather in one's hat, and returns with the one a limp, wet rag and the other quite out of curl. I only wish any milliner could see my feathers now! All straight, rigidly straight as a carpenter's rule, and tinged with red dust besides. As for tulle or crêpe-lisse frilling, or any of those soft pretty adjuncts to a simple toilette, they are five minutes' wear--no more, I solemnly declare.

I love telling a story against myself, and here is one. In spite of repeated experiences of the injurious effect of alternate damp and dust upon finery, the old Eve is occasionally too strong for my prudence, and I can't resist, on the rare occasions which offer themselves, the temptation of wearing pretty things. Especially weak am I in the matter of caps, and this is what befell me. Imagine a lovely, soft summer evening, broad daylight, though it is half-past seven (it will be dark directly, however): a dinner-party to be reached a couple of miles away. The little open carriage is at the door, and into this I step, swathing my gown carefully up in a huge shawl. This precaution is especially necessary, for during the afternoon there has been a terrific thunderstorm and a sudden sharp deluge of rain. Besides a swamp or two to be ploughed through as best we may, there are those two miles of deep red muddy road full of ruts and big stones and pitfalls of all sorts. The drive home in the dark will be nervous work, but now in daylight let us enjoy whilst we may. Of course I _ought_ to have taken my cap in a box or bag, or something of the sort; but that seemed too much trouble, especially as it was so small it needed to be firmly pinned on in its place. It consisted of a centre or crown of white crêpe, a little frill of the same, and a close-fitting wreath of deep red feathers all round. Very neat and tidy it looked as I took my last glance at it whilst I hastily knotted a light black lace veil over my head by way of protection during my drive. When I got to my destination there was no looking-glass to be seen anywhere, no maid, no anything or anybody to warn me. Into the dining-room I marched in happy unconsciousness that the extreme dampness of the evening had flattened the crown of my cap, and that it and its frill were mere unconsidered limp rags, whilst the unpretending circlet of feathers had started into undue prominence, and struck straight out like a red nimbus all round my unconscious head. How my fellow-guests managed to keep their countenances I cannot tell. I am certain _I_ never could have sat opposite to any one with such an Ojibbeway Indian's head-dress on without giggling. But no one gave me the least hint of my misfortune, and it only burst upon me suddenly when I returned to my own room and my own glass. Still, there was a ray of hope left: it _might_ have been the dampness of the drive home which had worked me this woe. I rushed into F----'s dressing-room and demanded quite fiercely whether my cap had been like that all the time.

"Why, yes," F---- admitted; adding by way of consolation, "In fact, it is a good deal subdued now: it was very wild all dinner-time. I can't say I admired it, but I supposed it was all right."

Did ever any one hear such shocking apathy? In answer to my reproaches for not telling me, he only said, "Why, what could you have done with it if you _had_ known? Taken it off and put it in your pocket, or what?"

I don't know, but anything would have been better than sitting at table with a thing only fit for a May-Day sweep on one's head. It makes me hot and angry with myself even to think of it now.

F----'s clothes could also relate some curious experiences which they have had to go through, not only at the hands of his washerwoman, but at those of his temporary valet, Jack (I beg his pardon, Umpashongwana) the Zulu, whose zeal exceeds anything one can imagine. For instance, when he sets to work to brush F----'s clothes of a morning he is by no means content to brush the cloth clothes. Oh dear, no! He brushes the socks, putting each carefully on his hand like a glove and brushing vigorously away. As they are necessarily very thin socks for this hot weather, they are apt to melt away entirely under the process. I say nothing of his blacking the boots inside as well as out, or of his laboriously scrubbing holes in a serge coat with a scrubbing-brush, for these are errors of judgment dictated by a kindly heart. But when Jack puts a saucepan on the fire without any water and burns holes in it, or tries whether plates and dishes can support their own weight in the air without a table beneath them, then, I confess, my patience runs short. But Jack is so imperturbable, so perfectly and genuinely astonished at the untoward result of his experiments, and so grieved that the _inkosacasa_ (I have not an idea how the word ought to be spelt) should be vexed, that I am obliged to leave off shaking my head at him, which is the only way I have of expressing my displeasure. He keeps on saying, "Ja, oui, yaas," alternately, all the time, and I have to go away to laugh.

FEBRUARY 16.

I was much amused the other day at receiving a letter of introduction from a mutual friend in England, warmly recommending a newly-arrived bride and bridegroom to my acquaintance, and especially begging me to take pains to introduce the new-comers into the "best society." To appreciate the joke thoroughly you must understand that there is no society here at all--absolutely none. We are not proud, we Maritzburgians, nor are we inhospitable, nor exclusive, nor unsociable. Not a bit. We are as anxious as any community can be to have society or sociable gatherings, or whatever you like to call the way people manage to meet together; but circumstances are altogether too strong for us, and we all in turn are forced to abandon the attempt in despair. First of all, the weather is against us. It is maddeningly uncertain, and the best-arranged entertainment cannot be considered a success if the guests have to struggle through rain and tempest and streets ankle-deep in water and pitchy darkness to assist at it. People are hardly likely to make themselves pleasant at a party when their return home through storm and darkness is on their minds all the time: at least, I know _I_ cannot do so. But the weather is only one of the lets and hinderances to society in Natal. We are all exceedingly poor, and necessary food is very dear: luxuries are enormously expensive, but they are generally not to be had at all, so one is not tempted by them. Servants, particularly cooks, are few and far between, and I doubt if even any one calling himself a cook could send up what would be considered a fairly good dish elsewhere. Kafirs can be taught to do one or two things pretty well, but even then they could not be trusted to do them for a party. In fact, if I stated that there were no good servants--in the ordinary acceptation of the word--here at all, I should not be guilty of exaggeration. If there are, all I can say is, I have neither heard of nor seen them. On the contrary, I have been overwhelmed by lamentations on that score in which I can heartily join. Besides the want of means of conveyance (for there are no cabs, and very few _remises_) and good food and attendance, any one wanting to entertain would almost need to build a house, so impossible is it to collect more than half a dozen people inside an ordinary-sized house here. For my part, my verandah is the comfort of my life. When more than four or five people at a time chance to come to afternoon tea, we overflow into the verandah. It runs round three sides of the four rooms called a house, and is at once my day-nursery, my lumber-room, my summer-parlor, my place of exercise--everything, in fact. And it is an incessant occupation to train the creepers and wage war against the legions of brilliantly-colored grasshoppers which infest and devour the honeysuckles and roses. Never was there such a place for insects! They eat up everything in the kitchen-garden, devour every leaf off my peach and orange trees, scarring and spoiling the fruit as well. It is no comfort whatever that they are wonderfully beautiful creatures, striped and ringed with a thousand colors in a thousand various ways: one has only to see the riddled appearance of every leaf and flower to harden one's heart. Just now they have cleared off every blossom out of the garden except my zinnias, which grow magnificently and make the devastated flower-bed still gay with every hue and tint a zinnia can put on--salmon-color, rose, scarlet, pink, maroon, and fifty shades besides. On the veldt too the flowers have passed by, but their place is taken by the grasses, which are all in seed. People say the grass is rank and poor, and of not much account as food for stock, but it has an astonishing variety of beautiful seeds. In one patch it is like miniature pampas-grass, only a couple of inches long each seed-pod, but white and fluffy. Again, there will be tall stems laden with rich purple grains or delicate tufts of rose-colored seed. One of the prettiest, however, is like wee green harebells hanging all down a tall and slender stalk, and hiding within their cups the seed. Unfortunately, the weeds and burs seed just as freely, and there is one especial torment to the garden in the shape of an innocent-looking little plant something like an alpine strawberry in leaf and blossom, bearing a most aggravating tuft of little black spines which lose no opportunity of sticking to one's petticoats in myriads. They are familiarly known as "blackjacks," and can hold their own as pests with any weed of my acquaintance.

But the most beautiful tree I have seen in Natal was an _Acacia flamboyante_. I saw it at D'Urban, and I shall never forget the contrast of its vivid green, bright as the spring foliage of a young oak, and the crown of rich crimson flowers on its topmost branches, tossing their brilliant blossoms against a background of gleaming sea and sky. It was really splendid, like a bit of Italian coloring among the sombre tangle of tropical verdure. It is too cold up here for this glorious tree, which properly belongs to a far more tropical temperature than even D'Urban can mount up to.

I am looking forward to next month and the following ones to make some little excursions into the country, or to go "trekking," as the local expression is. I hear on all sides how much that is interesting lies a little way beyond the reach of a ride, but it is difficult for the mistress--who is at the same time the general servant--of an establishment out here to get away from home for even a few days, especially when there is a couple of small children to be left behind. No one travels now who can possibly help it, for the sudden violent rains which come down nearly every afternoon swell the rivers and make even the spruits impassable; so a traveler may be detained for days within a few miles of his destination. Now, in winter the roads will be hard, and dust will be the only inconvenience. At least, that is what I am promised.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

THE CABS OF PARIS.

Paris is without doubt, of all large cities, the easiest to get about in. Lines of omnibuses cross and recross its surface in every direction, and, better still, the streets swarm with cabs, in which for the small sum of thirty cents one can pass at will from any given point to any other far distant one within its limits. There are carriage-stands on every side and in every principal street, and unoccupied vehicles may be seen driven at a snail's pace, with their drivers keenly on the lookout for a possible fare. Yet, with all this provision, it is occasionally very difficult to secure a carriage in Paris. On a sunny Sunday afternoon, on the day of the Grand Prix de Paris, or during the prevalence of a sudden storm carriages are as scarce in Paris as they are in New York. Yet their number increases daily, thanks to the law of 1866, by virtue of which any coachman who can pass an examination as to his knowledge of driving and acquaintance with the streets of Paris can, if he likes, purchase a vehicle of the regulation style, have his number painted on it and set up for himself as a public cabman, subject always in the matter of pace, charges, etc. to the police laws regulating all such details.

It has taken two hundred and thirty years to bring the cab-system of Paris to the point of perfection to which it has now attained. In 1617 the only public means of locomotion was afforded by a company which let out sedan-chairs. In 1640 a certain Nicholas Sauvage, agent for the stage-coaches of Amiens, formed the plan of establishing carriages, harnessed and ready for use at certain designated points, for the accommodation of the public. These vehicles were christened _fiacres_, but the reason for their receiving this appellation remains unknown. Some say it was because Sauvage occupied a house the façade of which was decorated with an image of St. Fiacre: another and more probable solution of the mystery has been found in the fact that just at that epoch a monk of the Petits Pères, called Fiacre, died in the odor of sanctity, and his portrait was placed in all the new vehicles to protect them against accidents. Be this as it may, the new enterprise proved successful, and in 1703 a law was passed compelling the numbering of all public carriages. In 1753 there existed in Paris twenty-eight cab-stands and sixty livery-stables, containing in all one hundred and seventy carriages. At present, Paris possesses over eight thousand cabs and three thousand livery-stable carriages: these last are generally very handsome vehicles, drawn by spirited, well-kept horses and driven by stylish-looking coachmen. The public vehicles of Paris, exclusive of the omnibuses, may be divided into three classes. First, the _voitures de place_, which are permitted, on payment of an annual tax of three hundred and sixty-five francs, to stand at one of the one hundred and fifty-eight points designated by the police; these bear a yellow number. Secondly, the _voitures mixtes_, which may at will be hired from a livery-stable or stand or ply upon the public highway; these bear a red number. And thirdly, the _voitures de remise_, which can only be hired from a stable, and are prohibited from appearing on the stands; these also are numbered in red, but in a particular style, so that a policeman at a glance can distinguish the difference between the voitures mixtes and those of the last category. To this latter class belong the stunning and splendid equipages which may be hired for any period, extending from a few hours to an indefinite number of months, and which enable the stranger to make as fine a display of equipages and liveries as the wealthiest resident of the city. The first two classes, the cabs properly so called, are, however, the most interesting to the transient visitor to Paris or to the permanent resident with a purse of moderate dimensions.

The cabs of Paris, as a rule, are comparatively neat and comfortable, those belonging to the Compagnie Générale des Voitures (of which institution more anon) being carefully brushed and cleaned every day. In winter a two-seated coupé lined with dark cloth or with leather, and drawn by a single horse, is the usual style of vehicle offered for the accommodation of the public. The price of such a vehicle is thirty cents for a "course" or single unbroken trip, which may be from one side of Paris to the other, or forty cents an hour. The coachman is bound by law to give the person engaging him a square ticket on which is printed his number and the exact amount of his fare: this last, however, being stated as varying under certain conditions and at certain hours, is apt to be rather puzzling to the inexperienced traveler, particularly if he or she be ignorant of French. Four-seated carriages are hard to find in winter: they are drawn by two horses, and the fare is ten cents more on the course and by the hour than that of the two-seated ones. In summer the coupés are replaced by light, open, four-seated carriages, with a hood and with leather curtains, to be used in case of rain; and they are really pleasant and comfortable vehicles. The horses do not differ much from the style of cab-horses known all over the world, being thin, shabby and dismal-looking animals as a general thing, though exceptions to the rule are not uncommon.

The cabmen of Paris form a distinct class, a separate society, composed of all sorts of elements--a turbulent, indocile, rebellious set of men, always in revolt against their employers and against the law, which holds them with an iron and inflexible grasp. Most of them are Communists, though many of them are men belonging to the higher classes of society, whom dissipation, extravagance or misfortune has driven to this mode of gaining a living. Thus, it is a well-known fact that the son of a distinguished diplomat, an ambassador to more than one foreign court, is now a cab-driver, and not a particularly good one. Unfrocked priests, unsuccessful school-teachers, small bankrupt tradesmen, swell the ranks, the _personnel_ of which is mainly composed of servants out of place or of provincials who have come to Paris to seek their fortune. These last come mostly from Normandy, Auvergne and Savoy; and it has been noticed that the Savoyards are the most sober and docile of all. The Parisian cabman is always under the surveillance of the police: a policeman stationed on every stand watches each cab as it drives off, and takes its number to guard as far as possible against any overcharge or peculation. In case of a collision and quarrel or an accident the ubiquitous policeman is always at hand to take the numbers of the vehicles whose drivers may be concerned in the affair. Complaints made by passengers are always attended to at once, and immediate redress is pretty sure to follow. The cabman is generally gruff and surly, and, though seldom seen drunk, in the majority of cases is addicted to drink--a vice which the exposed nature of his calling palliates if it does not wholly excuse. Some cabmen are devoted to newspaper reading, and may be seen engaged perusing the _Rappel_ or the _Événement_ while awaiting the appearance of a fare or stationed before the door of a shop or a picture-gallery. Others prefer to nap away their leisure moments, and may be seen, half sitting, half lying on their boxes, and sound asleep. It is rather a curious process to pass slowly along the line of a Parisian cab-stand and observe the faces of the men. Every variety and type of countenance--from the Parisian "Jakey" with villainous eyes, sharp features and black soaplocks, to the jolly old patriarch, gray and stout, and somewhat stiff in the joints, who has been a cab-driver for over forty years perhaps--presents itself to your view. The best way to engage a cab is by observing the face of the driver, not the condition of the vehicle or that of the horse. The Parisian cabmen wear no uniform, the high glazed hat being the only article of attire which is universally adopted. Even the red waistcoat, once a distinctive mark of their calling, is gradually falling into disuse, and every variety of coat and overcoat may be seen, liveries past private service being very generally adopted. Any overcharge may be reclaimed by the passenger by the simple process of making a complaint before the nearest chef de police. In past days the coachman thus complained against was forced to go in person to the complainant to beg his or her pardon, and to pay over the extra sum demanded. A frightful catastrophe which occurred some twenty years ago put an end to this form of retribution. On the 16th of September, 1855, M. Juge, director of the normal school at Douai, took a cab in the Place de la Concorde and went for a drive in the Bois de Boulogne. The driver, one Collignon, insisted on being paid more than his legal fare, and M. Juge forwarded his complaint to the prefecture of police the next day. Collignon was condemned to make restitution in person to M. Juge. He sold his furniture, purchased a pair of pistols and went on the appointed day to the house of M. Juge in the Rue d'Enfer. No hard words passed between them, but while the gentleman was in the act of signing the receipt the coachman drew out one of his pistols and shot him through the head, killing him instantly. Collignon was at once arrested: he was tried and condemned to death, and expiated his crime on the scaffold on the 6th of December following. Since that event another system of restitution has been followed, the sum exacted in excess of the legal fare being deposited at the prefecture of police, whither the traveler is compelled to go in quest of it.

At the prefecture of police is likewise situated the storehouse of articles forgotten or left behind in public carriages. According to the law, every coachman is commanded to inspect carefully his carriage after the occupant has departed, and to deposit every article left therein, were it but an odd glove, in the storehouse above mentioned. Each object is inscribed in a register and bears a particular number, and the number of the cab in which it was left as well. These articles fill a large room, whereof the contents are ever changing, and which is always full. Umbrellas, muffs, opera-glasses, pocket-books (sometimes containing thousands of francs) are among the most usual deposits. In one year there were found in the cabs of Paris over twenty thousand objects, among which were six thousand five hundred umbrellas. Should the article bear the address of the owner, he is at once apprised by letter of its whereabouts; otherwise, it is kept till called for, and if never claimed it becomes the property of the city at the end of three years, and is sold at auction. A vast row of underground apartments is appropriated to the unclaimed articles--dim cellar-rooms, lighted with gas. There may be seen umbrellas by the hundred or the thousand, strapped together in bundles and stacked up like fagots. Everything is registered, numbered and catalogued, and if returned to the owner his address and the date of delivery are carefully noted. The strict surveillance of the police contributes greatly toward keeping the Parisian cabman honest. Instances are on record where costly sets of jewels, bags of napoleons and pocket-books crammed with bank-notes have been faithfully deposited at the prefecture by their finders. On the other hand, an anecdote is told of a cab-driver in whose vehicle a gentleman chanced to leave his pocket-book, containing fifty thousand francs which he had just won at play. He traced his cabman to the stable, where he was in the act of feeding his horse, opened the carriage-door, and found his pocket-book lying untouched upon the floor. On learning what a prize he had missed the coachman incontinently hung himself.

The great source of supply for public vehicles in Paris is the Compagnie Générale des Voitures, one of the most gigantic of the great enterprises of Paris. It possesses five thousand cabs and over two thousand handsome and stylish voitures de remise. It furnishes every style; of carriage for hire, from the superb private-looking barouche or landau, with servants in gorgeous livery and splendid blooded horses, or the showy pony-phaeton and low victoria of the _cocotte du grand monde_, down to the humble one-horse cab. This beneficent company will furnish you, if desired, with a princely equipage, with armorial bearings, family liveries, etc., all complete and got up specially to suit the ideas of the hirer. Nine-tenths of the elegant turnouts in Paris are supplied in this manner. There is a regular tariff for everything: each additional footman costs so much, there is a fixed charge for powder, for postilions, for a _chasseur_ decked with feathers and gold lace. You can be as elegant as you please without purchasing a single accessory of your equipage.

The cab-horses of the Compagnie Générale are usually brought from Normandy, and belong to a specially hardy race, such a one being needed to endure the privations and trials to which a Parisian cab-horse is exposed. Each horse has to be gradually initiated into the duties of his new calling: he has to be trained to eat at irregular hours, to sleep standing, and to endure the fatigues of the Parisian streets. Were the country-bred horse to be put at once to full city work, he would die in a week. He is first sent out for a quarter of a day; then after a week or two for half a day; then for a whole day; and when accustomed to that he is considered fit for night-work. The horses of the Compagnie Générale remain in the stable one day out of every three. If well fed, well kept and well looked after, the life of a Paris cab-horse may be prolonged from three to five years, but the latter is the extreme limit.

The Compagnie Générale not only buys its own horses, but constructs its own carriages. Its coachmen are obliged to pass through a preliminary examination, not only as to their capabilities for driving, but as to their knowledge of the streets of Paris. But the passage of the law of 1866 has let loose upon the community a swarm of ignorant coachmen, who, assuming the reins and whip, in some instances without any knowledge even of the great thoroughfares of Paris, will lead their unhappy hirer a pretty dance, particularly if he or she is a stranger on a first visit to the great city. I know of one instance where a lady, desirous of visiting the Pare Monceau, was taken to the extreme northern boundary of the city limits, and was only rescued by the intervention of the police. Then one must be very particular as to the pronunciation of the name of the street, as so many streets exist in Paris the names of which closely resemble each other when spoken, such as the Rue de Téhéran and the Rue de Turin, the Rue du Marl and the Rue d'Aumale, etc. And if your coachman _can_ make a mistake, you may rest assured he will do it.

The Parisian cab is not, like its London compeer, a prohibited pariah of a vehicle, excluded from parks or the court-yards of palaces. You can go to call at the Élysée or to attend a ball there in a cab if you like, and the Bois de Boulogne or the Pare Monceau is as free to that plebeian vehicle as to the landau of a prince. And if one attends a ball in Paris, there is no need to engage a carriage to return home in. Attracted by the lights, the cabmen station their vehicles in long lines in the neighborhood of any mansion where such a festivity is taking place, waiting patiently till three, four and five o'clock in the morning for a chance of conveying home some of the merrymakers. The only instance in which I ever heard of their failing to be on hand on such an occasion was at a large fancy ball where the German was kept up till six o'clock in the morning. The gay troupe issued forth into the golden glowing sunshine of the April morning, and found not a single cab in attendance; so powdered and brocaded Marquises, white-satin clad "Mignons," Highlanders, Turks and Leaguers were forced to walk to their homes, in many instances miles away, to the immense amusement of the street-sweepers and naughty little boys, the only Parisians astir at that hour of the city's universal repose.

L.H.H.

A NEW MUSEUM AT ROME.

A new museum of sculpture at Rome! One would have thought that it could hardly be needed. Besides three vast collections--that of the Lateran, that of the Capitol, and that wondrous world of antique sculpture at the Vatican, itself, in fact, three museums, and each of the three alone matchless in the world--we have the work of the hands that lived and worked here a couple of thousands of years ago in every villa, in every garden, almost at every corner. And yet we need, and have just established, another museum of ancient sculpture. We are now cutting new lines of streets--not, as you are doing, on the surface of a soil that has never been moved save by the forces of Nature since first the Creator divided the sea from the dry land, but--among the débris of the successive civilizations of more than three thousand years. The laying of our gas- and water-pipes breaks the painting on the walls of banquet-halls whose last revel was disturbed by the irruption of the barbarian. Our "main drainage" lies among the temples of gods whose godlike forms are found mutilated and prostrate among the fallen columns and tumbled architraves and cornices of their shrines.

But if no awe of the mighty past prevents the speculator and contractor of our day from marching his army of excavators in an undeviating and unyielding line impartially athwart the temples, the palaces, the theatres, the baths of the perished world beneath their feet, yet in these days of ours the work is done reverently, at least so far as not only to respect, but to gather up with the most scrupulous care, every available fragment of the art, and even of the common life, of those vanished generations. If the day shall come when some future people shall yet once again build their city on this same eternal site, and some future social cataclysm shall have overwhelmed the works and civilization of the present time, those future builders will not find walls constructed in great part of the fragments of statues and the richly-carved friezes of yet older builders and artists, as we have found. The Romans of the present day are, it must be admitted, fully alive to the inappreciable value of the wondrous heritage they possess in this kind; and every fragment of it is carefully and jealously gathered and stored. And hence is the need of a new museum, and hence will be the need of other new museums--who shall say how many? For truly this Roman soil seems inexhaustible in buried treasures. There seems no likelihood that the vein should be exhausted or die out. Every now and then the excavators come upon "a fault," as the miners say, but the vein is soon struck again.

And so the new museum at the Capitol has been rendered necessary. It was inaugurated on the 25th of February in this year. It consists of twelve rooms or galleries, part of which occupy the site of the apartments which used to contain the archives, now moved to other quarters, and part, including a large octagonal hall, the principal feature of the new museum, have been newly constructed on ground which used to be the garden of the Conservatori, the ancient municipal officers of the city, so called. The entrance is by the main staircase of the palazzo of the Conservatori, which is the building that forms the side of the square of the Capitol to the right hand of the visitor as he ascends the magnificent flight of steps from the Via di Ara Coeli. The steep sides of the Capitoline Hill on either side of these steps has been recently turned into a very well-kept and pretty garden, among the lawns and shrubberies of which the attention of the stranger, as he ascends, may be attracted by a neatly-painted iron cage in front of the mouth of a little cavern in the rock, which is inhabited by a she-wolf in memorial of the earliest traditions of the place. Memorials, indeed, are not wanting at every step, and from the first window of the staircase as the visitor ascends to the museum on the first floor he may look down on the Tarpeian Rock.

The public functionaries of all sorts here do so much of their work in a manner which gives rise to much discontentment among the Romans, and would by the people of better-ruled countries be deemed wholly intolerable, that it is a pleasure to be able to say that upon this occasion the municipality has done what it had to do thoroughly well. The galleries and rooms of the new establishment are decorated in admirably good taste in the Pompeian style, the walls being colored in panels and borders of blue and red on a buff ground. They are excellently well lighted, and the visitor is not hunted round the rooms by an attendant anxious only to get his tedious task over, but is allowed to wander about among the treasures around him at his own discretion, and to spend the whole day there, or as much of it as lies between 10 A.M. and 3 P.M., if he pleases. A sufficient catalogue, accompanied by a map of the place, is purchasable at the doors for a couple of francs, and the visitor is required to pay half a franc for his entrance. This last regulation is in accordance with a law recently passed by the legislature establishing an entrance-fee at the doors of all public galleries and museums throughout Italy. Heretofore the entrance to all such places was entirely free. But, seeing that the country really needs the assistance to be obtained from this source, it cannot be said to be acting otherwise than reasonably in making such a charge; and probably no one of the thousands who come to Italy to profit by her artistic treasures will ever grudge the payment of the small fee demanded; the only question being whether the measure is on the whole a profitable one financially, of which I do not feel quite sure.

The first landing-place of the vast staircase and the ante-room at the top of it are lined with the more interesting and perfect of the pagan inscriptions which the recent movements of the soil have brought to light. Of course, the majority of these present no specialties distinguishing them from the thousands of similar inscriptions with which the world has long since been familiar. But there are some among them which contribute useful fragments of knowledge to the attempts of our antiquaries to construct a satisfactory plan of the ancient city--dedications of statues, showing what god or goddess inhabited such or such a shrine, and the like. The letters of these inscriptions have been rendered more easily legible by restoring the scarlet coloring of them, as has been done in the case of those at the Vatican.

The visitor next enters a very long corridor or gallery giving access to the various halls and rooms, and adorned with a series of modern busts of the men of whom Italy has most reason to be proud. Some among them are of much merit.

Then comes the gallery of the bronzes. In this department the late finds have been very numerous and extremely interesting. Among the objects which will immediately attract the visitor's eye as he enters the principal room are a litter and a biga or chariot. In both cases of course only fragments of the bronze remain, but they are sufficient to have enabled skilled antiquaries to reconstruct the entire litter and the entire chariot. The latter is very specially interesting. The plates of embossed and chiseled bronze which encased the body of the chariot are figured with admirably-worked subjects in basso-rilievo, many of them relating to the "wondrous tale of Troy." This invaluable specimen was the gift to the museum of that eminent and liberal archæologist, Signor A. Castellani, of whose matchless collection of Etruscan jewelry I wrote in a former number of this Magazine. The remaining portions of the bronze- and iron-work of the litter, with its arrangement of poles for carrying it, somewhat after the fashion of a sedan-chair, though the whole of the apparatus is much lighter, are more fragmentary, but yet sufficient for the reconstruction of a specimen illustrative to the classical reader of many a passage in the ancient writers. Under No. 10 the visitor will find the small statue of an hermaphrodite in bronze, fashioned as the bearer of a lamp--a statue of very great delicacy and beauty.

The next room is that of the medals and coins, the number of which will probably surprise the visitor not a little. The gold coins and the better-preserved and more interesting specimens are shown single under cleverly-arranged glass cases. The more ordinary results of the finds which are almost daily being made have been consigned in promiscuous heaps to huge glass vases, whose tops, however, are carefully sealed down. The large collections of the _æs rude signatum_ of the consular and of the imperial families, in bronze, in silver and in gold, together with some mediæval specimens, are ranged around the walls.

Then we come to the sculpture, the main scope of the new museum, which is distributed in a large vestibule, in a noble octagonal central hall and in a long gallery. It was an excellent idea, adding much to the interest which every stranger in Rome will take in the museum, to place on each specimen a placard specifying the locality in which it was discovered and the date of the finding. And this information is admirably supplemented by a map hung against the wall showing in detail the relative positions of all the places which have yielded up these long-buried treasures. The number of specimens of sculpture is in all one hundred and thirty-three; and it is impossible, without letting this notice run to an immoderate length, to attempt to give an adequate account of the various objects, or even of the principal among them. There is a richly-ornamented and very characteristic head of Commodus, which really looks as if it might have come from the sculptor's hands yesterday. A colossal bust of Mæcenas, also the gift of Signor Castellani, a bust of Tiberius, a small statue of the child Hercules, a Venus Anadyomene, may be, and many others might be, mentioned. The last-named is a very lovely statue of a young girl entirely nude. The archæologists have chosen to call it a Venus, but it is to my thinking clear that it never was intended for the laughter-loving goddess. The expression of the face is perfectly and beautifully chaste, and indeed a little sad. I should say that it must have been a nymph coming from the bath, and just about to clothe herself with the drapery thrown over a broken column at her knee as soon as she shall have completed the arrangement of her tresses, with which her hands are (or, alas! were, for the arms are wanting) engaged.

Room No. 10 contains a very extensive and most interesting collection of ancient pottery. There are many of the painted vases with which the world has become so well acquainted, and which, as being the more showy objects, will on his first entrance attract the eye of the visitor. But if he will with loving patience examine the vast numbers of utensils of every sort which have been with the utmost care sifted, one might almost say, from out of the mass of débris which the recent excavations have thrown up, he will find an amount of suggestive illustration of the old pagan life of two thousand years ago which cannot fail to interest and instruct him.

T.A.T.

OUR FOREIGN SURNAMES.

It is interesting as well as amusing to read the foreign names upon the signs in the streets of our cities and towns, and observe the number of nationalities thereon represented, together with the peculiarities of form and meaning displayed by the names themselves.

German names meet the eye everywhere, and are usually very outlandish in appearance, while many of them have significations which are conspicuously and ludicrously inappropriate. For example, a lager-beer saloon in one of our large cities is kept by Mr. Heiliggeist ("Holy Ghost"); a cigar-shop in another place belongs to Mr. Priesterjahn ("Prester John"); while the pastor of a devout German flock in a third locality is the Rev. Mr. Wuestling ("low scoundrel"). The Hon. Carl Schurz, too, is hardly the sort of man to be named "apron," though it is certainly true that his name is in this country sometimes pronounced "Shirts."

Other branches of the great Teutonic family have many representatives among us, and their names seem, to the uninitiated, even more fearfully and wonderfully constructed than those of their German cousins. It produces a good deal of surprise in the mind of an American to see on the sign of a tradesman from Belgium the familiar name of Cox spelled "Kockx;" and the Norwegian patronymic Trondhjemer ("Drontheimer"), though a very mild specimen of the language, has a formidable aspect to the general beholder.

The German-Hebrew names display such an exuberant Eastern fancy in their composition as to suggest the inquiry whether they are not really but German translations of their possessors' original Oriental titles. It is not unlikely that this was the origin of names like Rosenthal ("Vale of Roses"), Lilienhain ("Meadow of Lilies"), Liebenstrom ("Stream of Love"), and Goldenberg ("Golden Mount").

The Teutonic names, whether German, Scandinavian or Flemish, do not, as a rule, seem by any means so unpronounceable as those pertaining to foreigners of Slavonic race. The Russian, Polish and Bohemian appellations, which occur frequently in some sections of our country, so often begin with the extraordinary combination _cz_ that many Americans, believing that nothing but a convulsive sneeze could meet the necessities of such a case, decline trying to pronounce them at all. But the difficulties which these Slavonic names apparently offer would, in a great measure, be removed by a uniform system of orthography. The combination _cz_, for instance, corresponds to our _ch_, and the Polish cognomen Czajkowski becomes much less exasperating when spelled, as it would be in English, "Chycovsky." The same thing is true, to a great extent, of the Hungarian names, which are not rare in our larger cities. They, too, would be greatly simplified to us by being spelled according to English rules. A very frequent combination in Hungarian names, that of _sz_ is really the same as our _ss_; while _s_ without the _z_ is pronounced _sh_. The Hungarian name Szemelenyi under our system of spelling would therefore be "Semelenye," which is less discouraging.

The foreign names in the United States that really present the most serious difficulties to the native citizen are unquestionably the Welsh. Some of the obstacles to easy pronunciation may even in their case be removed by adaptation to our orthography; as is shown by the name Hwg ("hog"), which would be spelled by us "Hoog." But there are so many sounds in Welsh that are not only unknown, but almost inconceivable to English-speaking people, that the difficulties would still be very far from being overcome. And some of these peculiar utterances are expressed in Welsh by combinations of the Roman characters which in English stand for familiar and simple sounds; so that an attempt to reduce the two languages to a common system of spelling would not be at all easy. The combination _ll_ stands in Welsh for a terrific gurgling, gasping sound, which when once heard swiftly puts an end to all the romantic associations that the name of Llewellyn has derived from history and poetry.

But all such foreign--or, more strictly speaking, un-English--names, after being in this country a generation or two, become, in a certain sense, "acclimated." They undergo a change in pronunciation, in spelling, or in both, which removes, in effect, the difficulties that originally characterized them. In this way the German names Schneider, Meyer, Kaiser, Kraemer, Schallenberger, Schwarzwaelder, and a host of others have become, respectively, Snyder, Myers, Keyser, Creamer, Shellabarger, Swartswelder, etc. Sometimes, too, an American name more or less similar in sound or meaning has been taken or given in place of the original German title; as when Loewenstein ("Lion-rock") was exchanged for Livingston, and Albrecht ("Albert") for Allbright.

The old "Knickerbocker" names of the Middle States have, in most instances, retained their Dutch spelling intact, but have generally been subjected to a similar process of adaptation in sound. The same may be said of the French names in this country. Their spelling has, as a rule, been preserved, while their sound has been Americanized. In this way De Rosset has acquired the pronunciation Derrozett, and Jacques has come to be called either Jaquess or Jakes. Many French patronymics, such as the old South Carolina Huguenot name _Marion_, exhibiting nothing peculiarly French in their forms, are now pronounced entirely in accordance with our rules, and their national origin is preserved by tradition alone. Some French titles, however, having undergone only a partial change in pronunciation, survive in a hybrid form as to sound, though their spelling remains unaltered. Specimens of this class may be found in such names as _Huger_, pronounced "Huzhée;" _Fouché_, commonly called "Fooshée;" and _Deveraux_ or _Devereux_, now converted into "Débro" or "Dévroo." The only very noticeable change that has taken place in the orthography of our French names is that the article has been joined to the noun in many cases where they were originally separate. In this way _La Ramie_, _La Rabie_, _La Reintrée_, etc. are now usually spelled Laramie, Larabie (or, in some instances, Larrabee), Lareintree, etc.; the pronunciation of the newer form being Americanized in the usual way. But this change in form is one which might easily have occurred even in France.

Most of these French and Dutch names have been in the country for a comparatively long time, and, indeed, many of them date back to the early colonial period. Like the Spanish-American names of Texas, California, Florida and Louisiana, to which the same rule generally applies, they belonged to members of organized foreign communities, proportionately large enough to preserve their names from a complete assimilation with the ideas of the English-American population. And in a lesser degree this is also true of those early German emigrants, mainly from the Palatinate, who settled in Pennsylvania, Western Maryland and the Shenandoah Valley.

The tendency at the present day, however, seems to be strongly in favor of the process mentioned first--that of changing the sound of the names to suit American ears, and altering the spelling so as to conform to the new pronunciation. There is every indication that this will be done with regard to a very large majority of the foreign surnames that have been introduced among us within the last fifty years, or which may be brought into our country in the future. And as the changes so made are quite arbitrary, the result will be that the future student of American nomenclature will often be sorely puzzled by some of the surnames to which his attention shall be drawn.

W.W.C.

THE NEW FRENCH ACADEMICIAN.

No institution of its kind holds so eminent a place in the esteem of a great country as the _Académie Française_. The elections are always a matter of interest, largely shared by the cultivated _Revue-des-Deux-Mondes_-reading world of both hemispheres; and the last election was one which excited fully as much attention as most of its predecessors. M. John Lemoinne, who at length summoned up courage to present himself as a candidate, was born in London in Waterloo year, 1815, and has for a long period, probably thirty years, been, through the _Journal des Débats_, in some sort a European power. His selection to fill the seat of M. Jules Janin is in every way appropriate. Indeed, it seems strange that he should have been contented to wait until he was sixty-one to come forward for that distinction.

The foundation of the Academy is directly traceable to the meetings of men of science at the house of M. Courart--who, early in the seventeenth century, was for forty years its first secretary--but it unquestionably owes to Richelieu a habitation and a name. It was formed with the special object of preserving accuracy in the French language, to which Frenchmen have been wont to pay an almost exclusive attention, but by the election of M. Lemoinne the Academy will have at least one member who is no less acquainted with another tongue.

Every one will remember old Miss Crawley's rage when she found that Becky was trading on her connection with the democratic-aristocratic spinster to make her way into the Faubourg St. Germain. Too impatient to write in French, the old lady posted off a furious disavowal of the little adventuress in vigorous vernacular, but, adds the author, as Madame la Duchesse had only passed twenty years in England, she didn't understand one word. It may be hoped that the new Academician will, in conjunction with the new minister of public instruction, Mr. Waddington, who is a Rugby and Cambridge man, have some effect in arousing his countrymen to the study which they have heretofore so strangely neglected of a tongue which threatens to obliterate in time the inconveniences occasioned by the Tower of Babel. English is every day more and more spoken, and French less and less.

In delivering his address of welcome to M. Lemoinne, M. Cavillier Fleury said: "You are one of the creators of the discussion of foreign affairs in the French papers: you gave them the taste for interesting themselves in the concerns of foreign countries. Few of us before steam had shortened distance really knew England. Voltaire had by turns glorified and ridiculed it; De Staël had shown it to us in an agreeable book; the witty letters of Duvergier de Hauranne had revealed the secrets of its electoral system. Your correspondence of 1841 completed the work." He might pertinently have added, "Because you are about the only French newspaper writer who ever thoroughly understood the English language, and could thus avoid ridiculous blunders."

It has been observed that the _Débats_ almost exclusively supplies the Academy with its contingent of publicists--a circumstance accounted for by that journal being jealous of the purity of its language, and in other respects preserving a high and dignified standard. It has, indeed, for an unusually long period enjoyed its reputation. French and Belgian newspapers are very much of a mystery to an Anglo-Saxon. They seem to flourish under conditions impracticable to American or English journals. The _Indépendance Belge_ and the _Journal des Débats_ lie before us. Neither of them contains sufficient advertisements to make up three of our columns, yet their expenses must, we should suppose, especially in the case of the _Débats_, published as it is where prices are so high, be very large. Both these papers contain articles evidently the work of able hands, and in the case of the _Indépendance_ the foreign correspondence must be a very costly item, forming, as it frequently does, five columns of a large page. The price of each is twenty centimes--high, certainly, for a single sheet.

It has often been observed, too, that French newspaper-men seem exceptionally well off. They frequent costly _cafés_, occasionally indulge in _petits soupers_ in _cabinets particuliers_, and, altogether, taking prices into account, appear to be in the enjoyment of larger means than their brethren of the pen elsewhere. Of course, the success of a French newspaper is, even in the absence of advertisements, intelligible in the case of the _Figaro_ or _Petit Journal_, with their circulation of 70,000 and 150,000 a day; but in the case of such papers as the _Débats_, whose circulation is not very large, it is difficult to explain.

The position of a journalist in Paris seems to stand in many respects higher than elsewhere. Of course, the fact of contributions not being anonymous adds immeasurably to the writer's personal importance, if it also gets him into scrapes. Elsewhere, _editors_ are men of mark, and certainly no one in the journalistic world can possibly be made more of than Mr. Delane in London. But the editorial writers in his paper, who would in Paris be men of nearly as much mark as rising members of Parliament in England, are completely "left out in the cold," gaining no reputation even among acquaintance, since they are required to preserve the strictest secrecy as to their connection with the paper. Altogether, we are disposed to believe that Paris--official "warnings," press prosecutions and possible duels notwithstanding--must be accepted as the journalist's paradise. To be courted, caressed and feared is as much as any reasonable newspaper writer can expect, and a great deal more than he is likely to get out of his work elsewhere.

R.W.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Cities of Northern and Central Italy. By Augustus J.C. Hare. New York: George Routledge & Sons.

Those who know Mr. Hare's _Walks in Rome_ and _Days near Rome_ will welcome another series of Italian itineraries from the same pen. These volumes are primarily guide-books; they tell us the best hotels, the price of cabs, the distances by rail or high-road. But the parts of traveler and manual are inverted: whereas you take your _Murray_ or _Baedeker_ in your hand and carry it whither you list, Mr. Hare takes you by the hand, leads you in the way you should go, makes you pause the requisite time before the things you are to look at, points to every view, lets you miss no effect, does not force his own opinions upon you, except now and then when he loses his temper a little on the debatable ground between religion and politics, repeats that quotation you are vainly trying to recall, or delights you by the beauty and aptness of a new one. He gives to a course of systematic sight-seeing the freedom and variety of a ramble with a cultivated and sympathetic companion. We would not be ungrateful to that inestimable impersonality, Murray, for all are his debtors, even Mr. Hare for the plan of his books; but, remembering how, with the latest edition in hand, we have panted up four or more flights of stairs in a Roman or Venetian palace in search of a picture removed years before, we are not sorry to find him here taken to task for leaving uncorrected statements which had ceased to be true. Moreover, Murray is no guide in matters of art; his authorities are often captains of the British Philistines; while Mr. Hare generally gives all that has been said by competent judges, sometimes imperturbably recording two conflicting opinions, and leaving the reader to decide. The range of quotation is indeed remarkable, from Dean Milman to Ouida, including many writers too little known in this country, such as Burckhardt, Ampère and Street.

But it is not to the actual traveler only that these volumes will be of use and give pleasure. They are not bad preparatory reading for those who are going abroad, suggesting what should be studied beforehand; they will be dear to those who sit within the blank limits of a home in this raw New World trying to revive the fading outlines and colors of scenes which, though unforgotten, tend to mingle with the visions of Dreamland; and they are capital wishing-carpets for those who can travel only in fancy. In the introduction there is an excellent passage on the distinctive differences between the great Italian cities: "Each has its own individual sovereignty; its own chronicles; its own politics, domestic and foreign; its own saints, peculiarly to be revered--patrons in peace and protectors in war; its own phase of architecture; its own passion in architectural material, brick or stone, marble or terra-cotta; ...its own proverbs, its own superstitions and its own ballads." Mr. Hare contrives to convey much of the characteristic impression of each town. Pretty little wood-cuts are called in to his aid, but the best illustrations of his text are the poetical quotations and exquisite prose-bits from Ruskin, Swinburne, Symonds and others whose pens sometimes turn into the pencil of a great painter. The author's own descriptions are extremely faithful and charming. To those who have made the journey from Florence to Rome a single fine page of the introduction brings back a thrill of that long ecstasy. In these few quiet words he spreads Thrasymene before us: "It has a soft, still beauty especially its own. Upon the vast expanse of shallow pale-green waters, surrounded by low-lying hills, storms have scarcely any effect, and the birds which float over it and the fishing-boats which skim across its surface are reflected as in a mirror. At Passignano and Torricella picturesque villages, chiefly occupied by fishermen, jut out into the water, but otherwise the reedy shore is perfectly desolate on this side, though beyond the lake convents and villages crown the hills which rise between us and the pale violet mountains beyond Montepulciano." Nothing can be more lifelike than the following picture of the tract around Siena: "Scarcely do we pass beyond the rose-hung walls which encircle the fortifications than we are in an upland desert, piteously bleak in winter, but most lovely when spring comes to clothe it. The volcanic nature of the soil in these parts gives a softer tint than usual to the coloring. The miles upon miles of open gray-green country, treeless, hedgeless, houseless, swoop toward one another with the strangest sinuosities and rifts and knobs of volcanic earth, till at last they sink in faint mists, only to rise again in pink and blue distances, so far off, so pale and aërial, that they can scarcely be distinguished from the atmosphere itself. Only here and there a lonely convent with a few black cypress spires clustered round it, or a solitary cross which the peasants choose as their midday resting-place, cuts the pellucid sky. Here in these great uplands, where all is so immense, the very sky itself seems more full of space than elsewhere: it is not the deep blue of the South, but so soft and aërial that it looks as if it were indeed the very heaven itself, only very far away."

The chapter on Ravenna is the best in the book: it is an admirable piece of work, a complete monograph. Everything is there--history, legends, art--and the quotations and illustrations are peculiarly beautiful and convincing.

Mr. Hare, like many gentlemen of similar tastes and tendencies, does not seem to have a strong sense of humor, although now and then he condescends to smile as he repeats some local legend, such as that of the crucifix at S. Francesco delle Cariere, which awoke an overwearied devotee, who had fallen asleep on his knees before it, with "un soavissimo schiaffo," the gentlest slap, and bade him go to sleep in the dormitory. He speaks of an ancient custom, not mentioned by _Murray_, of harboring lost cats in the cloister of San Lorenzo at Florence: "The feeding of the cats, which takes place when the clock strikes twelve, is a most curious sight.... From every roof and arch and parapet-wall, mewing, hissing and screaming, the cats rush down to devour." It sounds like a wicked parody on the poetic assembling of the Venetian pigeons at the daily scattering of grain in the square of St. Mark's.

There are a few little slips--so few that it is strange there should be any--among which is his mention of the "St. Christopher" of the doges' palace as "the only known fresco of Titian," forgetting the celebrated one in the Scuola del Santo at Padua, of which he has spoken in a previous volume. He occasionally makes an assertion to which many will demur; as, for instance, that "The real glory of the Italian towns consists not in their churches, but in their palaces." The best refutation of this paradox is in his own pages. Most people will be startled, too, by hearing of "the want of architectural power in Michael Angelo," although this remark is followed by a criticism which strikes us as extremely just on the stupendous slumberers on the monuments of the Medici: "The disproportionate figures are slipping off the pitiable pedestals which support them." Among the throng of indefinable emotions and sensations which beset one in the Medicean chapel of San Lorenzo, we have always been conscious of distinct discomfort from the attitude of these sleepers, who could only maintain their posture by an immense muscular effort incompatible with their sublime repose. As regards practical matters, few travelers or foreign residents in Italy will endorse Mr. Hare's statement that making a bargain in advance for lodgings or conveyances is not a necessary precaution, or his denial of the almost universal attempt to overcharge which is recognized and resisted by all natives. But Mr. Hare has illusions, and Italian probity is one of them. All his remarks about the present government of Italy (of which he speaks as "the Sardinian government" with an emphasis akin to the B_u_onapart_e_ of old French monarchists) are to be taken with the utmost reservation, as most readers will see for themselves after meeting his allusion to the massacre at Perugia in 1859 as in some sort a defensive action on the part of the papal troops. Mr. Hare's reasoning on all that relates to this subject is weak and illogical, sometimes puerile. Any one who loves what is venerable and picturesque must share the impatience and regret with which he sees so much beauty and antiquity disappearing before the besom of progress or the rage for improvement, especially in Rome. But we must remember that Italy is not the first, but the last, European country in which this has come about: in England, France and Germany what delights the eyes of the few has long been giving place to what betters the condition or serves the interest of the masses. Moreover, the Italians themselves, of whatever political complexion, black or red, are totally indifferent to these losses and changes which we lament so deeply. If there be a sad want of good taste and good sense in Cavaliere Rosa's management of the excavations, there is at least no lack of zeal. Formerly, next to nothing was done to preserve or protect the monuments, and many of the finest were irrecognizable and all but inaccessible from dirt and dilapidation. The reverence of the papal Romans for their treasures of either classic or Christian art is well illustrated by Retzsch's outline, in which a lovely statue of Apollo, broken and half buried, defiled by dogs and swine, serves as a seat for a loutish herd, who tries to copy a miserable modern Virgin and Child from a wayside shrine. Such a temper of mind in an intelligent, high-principled Englishman can only arise from a moral bias which distorts every view; but the discussion of these causes and effects would be out of place here, and we only smile in passing at the charge of "excessive cruelty" in the suppression of the monastery of San Vivaldo. Mr. Hare's treatment of the legitimate topics of his book deserves all admiration and praise. His style is simple, pleasant and picturesque; in future editions a few careless tricks should be corrected, such as the use of _from_, with _hence_, _thence_, _whence_, and a muddled sentence here and there, of which a very slight instance occurs in the pretty extract about Lake Thrasymene: there is a most confusing one about a girl who refused to kiss the emperor Otho, which reads as if she would not kiss her own father. It would be almost a pity to spoil a laugh by particularizing whether a tree or nut is meant in the story of "S. Vivaldo, who became a hermit and _lived in a hollow chestnut_, in which he was found dead in 1300."

_Books Received._

The Little, or A, B, C, Book of German; that is, High School Primer; Child's Story Book and Dictionary. By Professor C.C. Schaeffer. Philadelphia: Charles Brothers & Co.

Pocket Manual of Rules of Order for Deliberative Assemblies. By Major Henry M. Robert, U.S.A. Chicago: S.C. Griggs & Co.

Cabin and Plantation Songs, as sung by the Hampton Students. Arranged by Thomas P. Fenner. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

The Spectator. (Selected Papers.) By Addison and Steele. Edited by John Habberton. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Characteristics from the Writings of J.H. Newman. By Wm. Samuel Lilly. New York: D. and J. Sadlier & Co.

Brief Biographies. Vol. III. French Political Leaders. By Edward King. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

The Life of William, Earl of Shelburne. Vol. II. By Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice. New York: MacMillan & Co.

Jonathan: A Novel. By C.C. Fraser-Tytler. (Leisure-Hour Series.) New York: Henry Holt & Co.

Faith and Modern Thought. By Ransom B. Welch, D.D., LL.D. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Fetich in Theology; or, Doctrinalism Twin to Ritualism. By John Miller. New York: Dodd & Mead.

The American Kennel and Sporting Field. By Arnold Burges. New York: J.B. Ford & Co.

On Dangerous Ground. By Mrs. Bloomfield H. Moore. Philadelphia: Porter & Coates.

Filth-Diseases, and their Prevention. By John Simon, M.D. Boston: James Campbell.