Chapter 13

ON WINGS OF HOPE.

When Trelyon arrived late one evening at Penzance he was surprised to find his uncle's coachman awaiting him at the station: "What's the matter, Tobias? Is the old gentleman going to die? You don't mean to say you are here for me?"

"Yaäs, zor, I be," said the little old man with no great courtesy.

"Then he is going to die if he sends out his horse at this time o' night. Look here, Tobias: I'll put my portmanteau inside and come on the box to have a talk with you--you're such a jolly old card, you know--and you'll tell me all that's happened since I last enjoyed my uncle's bountiful hospitality."

This the young man did: and then the brown-faced, wiry and surly little person, having started his horse, proceeded to tell his story in a series of grumbling and disconnected sentences. He was not nearly so taciturn as he looked: "The maäster he went sün to bed to-night: 'twere Miss Juliott sent me to the station, without tellin' en. He's gettin' worse and worse, that's sure: if yü be for giving me half a crown, like, or any one that comes to the house, he finds it out and stops it out o' my wages: yes, he does, zor, the old fule!"

"Tobias, be a little more respectful to my uncle, if you please."

"Why, zor, yü knaw en well enough," said the man in the same surly fashion. "And I'll tell yü this, Maäster Harry, if yü be after dinner with en, and he has a bottle o' poort wine that he puts on the mantelpiece, and he says to yü to let that aloän, vor 'tis a medicine-zart o' wine, don't yü heed en, but have that wine. 'Tis the real old poort wine, zor, that yür vather gied en--the dahmned old pagan!"

The young man burst out laughing, instead of reprimanding Tobias, who maintained his sulky impassiveness of face.

"Why, zor, I be gardener now, too: yaäs I be, to save the wages. And he's gone clean mazed about that garden--yaäs, I think. Would yü believe this, Maäster Harry, that he killed every one o' the blessed strawberries last year with a lot o' wrack from the bache, because he said it wüd be as good for them as for the 'sparagus?"

"Well, but the old chap finds amusement in pottering about the garden--" said Master Harry.

"The old fule!" repeated Tobias, in an under tone.

"And the theory is sound about the seaweed and the strawberries; just as his old notion of getting a green rose by pouring sulphate of copper in at the roots."

"Yaäs, that were another pretty thing, Maäster Harry, and he had the tin labels all printed out in French, and he waited and waited, and there bain't a fairly güde rose left in the garden. And his violet glass for the cucumbers: he burned en up to once, although 'twere fine to hear'n talk about the sunlight and the rays and such nonsenses. He be a strange mahn, zor, and a dahmned close'n with his penny-pieces, Christian and all as he calls his-sen. There's Miss Juliott, zor, she's go-in' to get married, I suppose; and when she goes no one 'll dare spake to 'n. Be yü going to stop long this time, Maäster Harry?"

"Not at the Hollies, Tobias. I shall go down to the Queen's to-morrow: I've got rooms there."

"So much the better--so much the better," said the frank but inhospitable retainer; and presently the jogtrot old animal between the shafts was pulled up in front of a certain square old-fashioned building of gray stone which was prettily surrounded with trees. They had arrived at the Rev. Mr. Penaluna's house, and there was a young lady standing in the light of the hall, she having opened the door very softly as she heard the carriage drive up.

"So here you are, Harry; and you'll stay with us the whole fortnight, won't you? Come in to the dining-room--I have some supper ready for you. Papa's gone to bed, and he desired me to give you his excuses, and he hopes you'll make yourself quite at home, as you always do, Harry."

He did make himself quite at home, for, having kissed his cousin and flung his topcoat down in the hall, he went into the dining-room and took possession of an easy-chair.

"Sha'n't have any supper, Jue, thank you. You won't mind my lighting a cigar--somebody's been smoking here already. And what's the least poisonous claret you've got?"

"Well, I declare!" she said, but she got him the wine all the same, and watched him light his cigar: then she took the easy-chair opposite.

"Tell us about your young man, Jue," he said. "Girls always like to talk about that."

"Do they?" she said. "Not to boys."

"I shall be twenty-one in a fortnight. I am thinking of getting married."

"So I hear," she remarked quietly.

Now he had been talking nonsense at random, mostly intent on getting his cigar well lit, but this little observation rather startled him. "What have you heard?" he said abruptly.

"Oh, nothing--the ordinary stupid gossip," she said, though she was watching him rather closely. "Are you going to stay with us for the next fortnight?"

"No, I have got rooms at the Queen's."

"I thought so. One might have expected you, however, to stay with your relations when you came to Penzance."

"Oh, that's all gammon, Jue," he said: "you know very well your father doesn't care to have any one stay with you--it's too much bother. You'll have quite enough of me while I am in Penzance."

"Shall we have anything of you?" she said with apparent indifference. "I understood that Miss Rosewarne and her mamma had already come here."

"And what if they have?" he said with unnecessary fierceness.

"Well, Harry," she said, "you needn't get unto a temper about it, but people will talk, you know; and they say that your attentions to that young lady are rather marked, considering that she is engaged to be married; and you have induced your mother to make a pet of her. Shall I go on?"

"No, you needn't," he said with a strong effort to overcome his anger. "You're quite right--people do talk, but they wouldn't talk so much if other people didn't carry tales. Why, it isn't like you, Jue! I thought you were another sort. And about this girl, of all girls in the world!"

He got up and began walking about the room, and talking with considerable vehemence, but no more in anger. He would tell her what cause there was for this silly gossip. He would tell her who this girl was who had been lightly mentioned. And in his blunt, frank, matter-of-fact way, which did not quite conceal his emotion, he revealed to his cousin all that he thought of Wenna Rosewarne, and what he hoped for her in the future, and what their present relations were, and then plainly asked her if she could condemn him.

Miss Juliott was touched: "Sit down, Harry: I have wanted to talk to you, and I don't mean to heed any gossip. Sit down, please--you frighten me by walking up and down like that. Now, I'm going to talk common sense to you, for I should like to be your friend; and your mother is so easily led away by any sort of sentiment that she isn't likely to have seen with my eyes. Suppose that this Miss Rosewarne--"

"No, hold hard a bit, Jue," he said imperatively. "You may talk till the millennium, but just keep off her, I warn you."

"Will you hear me out, you silly boy? Suppose that Miss Rosewarne is everything that you believe her to be. I'm going to grant that, because I'm going to ask you a question. You can't have such an opinion of any girl, and be constantly in her society, and go following her about like this, without falling in love with her. Now, in that case would you propose to marry her?"

"I marry her!" he said, his face becoming suddenly pale for a moment. "Jue, you are mad! I am not fit to marry a girl like that. You don't know her. Why--"

"Let all that alone, Harry: when a man is in love with a woman he always thinks he's good enough for her; and whether he does or not he tries to get her for a wife. Don't let us discuss your comparative merits: one might even put in a word for you. But suppose you drifted into being in love with her--and I consider that quite probable--and suppose you forgot, as I know you would forget, the difference in your social position, how would you like to go and ask her to break her promise to the gentleman to whom she is engaged?"

Master Harry laughed aloud in a somewhat nervous fashion: "Him? Look here, Jue: leave me out of it--I haven't the cheek to talk of myself in that connection--but if there was a decent sort of fellow whom that girl really took a liking to, do you think he would let that elderly and elegant swell out in Jamaica stand in his way? He would be no such fool, I can tell you. He would consider the girl first of all. He would say to himself, 'I mean to make this girl happy; if any one interferes, let him look out!' Why, Jue, you don't suppose any man would be frightened by that sort of thing?"

Miss Juliott did not seem quite convinced by this burst of scornful oratory. She continued quietly, "You forget something, Harry. Your heroic young man might find it easy to do something wild--to fight with that gentleman in the West Indies, or murder him, or anything like that, just as you see in a story--but perhaps Miss Rosewarne might have something to say."

"I meant if she cared for him," Trelyon said, looking down.

"Granting that also, do you think it likely your hot-headed gentleman would be able to get a young lady to disgrace herself by breaking her plighted word and deceiving a man who went away trusting in her? You say she has a very tender conscience--that she is so anxious to consult every one's happiness before her own, and all that. Probably it is true. I say nothing against her. But to bring the matter back to yourself--for I believe you're hot-headed enough to do anything--what would you think of her if you or anybody else persuaded her to do such a treacherous thing?"

"She is not capable of treachery," he said somewhat stiffly. "If you've got no more cheerful things to talk about, you'd better go to bed, Jue. I shall finish my cigar by myself."

"Very well, then, Harry. You know your room. Will you put out the lamp when you have lit your candle?"

So she went, and the young man was left alone in no very enviable frame of mind. He sat and smoked while the clock on the mantelpiece swung its gilded boy and struck the hours and half hours with unheeded regularity. He lit a second cigar, and a third; he forgot the wine. It seemed to him that he was looking on all the roads of life that lay before him, and they were lit up by as strange and new a light as that which was beginning to shine over the world outside. New fancies seemed to awake with the new dawn. For himself to ask Wenna Rosewarne to be his wife! Could he but win the tender and shy regard of her eyes he would fall at her feet and bathe them with his tears. And if this wonderful thing were possible--if she could put her hand in his and trust to him for safety in all the coming years they might live together--what man of woman born would dare to interfere? There was a blue light coming in through the shutters. He went to the window: the topmost leaves of the trees were quivering in the cold air far up there in the clearing skies, where the stars were fading out one by one, and he could hear the sound of the sea on the distant beach, and he knew that across the gray plain of waters the dawn was breaking, and that over the sleeping world another day was rising that seemed to him the first day of a new and tremulous life, full of joy and courage and hope.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

ON THE VIA SAN BASILIO.

In Rome, 1851; a cold, dreary day in December--one of those days in which a man's ambition seems to desert him entirely, leaving only its grinning skeleton to mock him. Depressing as was the weather to a man who had cheerfulness as a companion by which to repel its blustering attacks, and raise his mind above the despondency it was calculated to produce, how much more so to one whose hope had gone out as a flickering lamp in a sudden gust of wind, and the sharp steel of whose ambition had turned to pierce his own heart!

Such a man, on the day mentioned, was walking along the Via San Basilio. He was small in stature, poorly clad, and so thin, and even cadaverous, that the casual observer might have been under apprehension lest a gust of wind a little stronger than the average might blow him entirely away; yet his air and manner were proud and haughty, and what little evidences of feeling peered through the signs of dissipation too apparent on his naturally attractive face were those of genuine refinement. He was accompanied by a cicerone, or servant, as villainous-looking a fellow as one often meets, even in Italy, where an evil expression is so often seen stamped on handsome features.

Along the Via San Basilio the two men walked until they stood opposite the door of No. 51. Sacred ground this, and historical as well. Art had her votaries here, as the tourist of to-day will find she still has, at whose shrines pilgrims from afar and from near worshiped, and grew better and stronger for their ministrations. Crawford, then at the acme of his fame, had his constantly-thronged studio in the immediate vicinity, while those at No. 51 embraced, among others, that of Tenerani, the famous Italian sculptor, whose work is always in such fine dramatic taste, although he never sacrifices his love and deep feeling of reverence for Nature, combining that with the most delightful charms of Greek art. Among this artist's most noted works will be remembered his "Descent from the Cross," which tourists visiting the Torlonia chapel in the Lateran never gaze upon without a thrill. The house was owned and also occupied by Bienaimé, a French sculptor who afterward became famous.

In the immediate vicinity stands the famous Palazzo Barberini, begun by Urban VIII. (Maffeo Barberini), who sat in the pontifical chair from 1623 to 1644, and finished by Bernini in 1640. This palace contains many paintings of historical interest by Raphael, Titian, Guido, Claude and others. The one by the first-mentioned artist is a Fornarina, and bears the autograph of the painter on the armlet. But the picture that attracts the most attention here is one of world-wide reputation, copies, engravings and photographs of which are everywhere to be met with--Guido's Beatrice Cenci. A great divergence of opinion, as is well known, exists in regard to the portrait. It bears the pillar and crown of the Colonnas, to which family it probably belonged. According to the family tradition, it was taken on the night before her execution. Other accounts state that it was painted by Guido from memory after he had seen her on the scaffold. Judging from the position in which the poor girl's head is represented, one would more readily give credence to the latter story, and think the artist's memory had preserved her look and position as she turned her head for a last look at the brutal, bellowing crowd behind.

In the piazza of the palace is a very beautiful fountain, utilized by one of the oldest Roman statues, representing a faun blowing water from a conch-shell.

But we must return to the Via San Basilio, and the two wayfarers we left standing in front of No. 51. After gazing a moment at the number to assure themselves that they were right, they entered, and knocked at the first door, which was opened by the occupant of the apartment. He was an artist and a man of very marked characteristics. Seven years later Hawthorne wrote as follows of him: "He is a plain, homely Yankee, quite unpolished by his many years' residence in Italy. He talks ungrammatically; walks with a strange, awkward gait and stooping shoulders; is altogether unpicturesque, but wins one's confidence by his very lack of grace. It is not often that we see an artist so entirely free from affectation in his aspect and deportment. His pictures were views of Swiss and Italian scenery, and were most beautiful and true. One of them, a moonlight picture, was really magical--the moon shining so brightly that it seemed to throw a light even beyond the limits of the picture; and yet his sunrises and sunsets, and noontides too, were nowise inferior to this, although their excellence required somewhat longer study to be fully appreciated."

After this introduction by our sweet and quaint romancer, the reader will hardly need be told that the two strangers stood in the presence of America's now illustrious artist, George L. Brown. But one seeing him then, as he stood almost scowling at the two strangers, would hardly have idealized him into the artist whose pencil has done so much of late years to give American art a distinctive name through his poetical delineations of the rare, sun-tinted atmosphere that hovers over Italian landscapes. However, our apology for him must be that the day was raw and blustering, and that he had no sooner caught sight of the men through his window, as they hesitatingly entered the door, than his suspicions were aroused.

The Italian acted as spokesman, and inquired if there were any rooms to let in the building. Brown, thinking this the easiest way of ridding himself of the visitors, went in search of the landlord, who came, and after a moment's conversation the whole party entered the studio, much to its owner's displeasure.

The cicerone did most of the talking, though now and then the other made a remark or two in broken Italian. But this was only for the first few moments. He soon became oblivious of all save art, of which one could see at a glance he was passionately fond. One of Mr. Brown's pictures--a large one he was then engaged on--particularly attracted his attention. He drew closer and closer to the canvas, examining it with a minuteness that showed the connoisseur, and finally remarked: "It is very fine in color, sir, and the atmosphere is delicious. Why have I not heard of you before?" examining the corner of the canvas for the artist's name, but speaking in a tone and with an air that gave Brown the impression he was indulging in the random flattery so current in studios. So, ignoring the question, he asked with a slight shrug of the shoulders, "Are you an artist?"

"I paint a little," was the reply, with an air of modesty which Brown mistook for the bashful half-assertion of some daubing amateur.

Just then the cicerone came forward and announced that the bargain was completed and the room ready for occupancy.

"I shall be happy--no, _happy_ is not a good word for me--I shall be glad to see you in my studio when I have moved in, and perhaps you may see some things to please you."

So saying, the stranger departed, leaving Brown not a whit better impressed with him than at first.

The next morning the two called again, when the gentleman made an examination of the room selected the day before, having met Mr. Brown in the hall-way and invited him in. On entering, the new occupant took from his pocket a piece of chalk and a compass and made a number of circles and figures on the floor to determine when the sun would shine in the room. Brown watched him with a certain degree of curiosity and amusement, and finally, concluding he was half crazy, returned to his own studio.

The next day the cicerone called alone to see about some repairs, when Brown hailed him: "_Buono giorno. Che è questo_?" ("Good-day. Who is that?")

"_Non sapete_?" ("Don't you know?"), was the Italian's response. "Why, that is the celebrated Brullof."

Brown started as though shot. First there flashed through his brain the remembrance of how cavalierly he had treated the distinguished artist, and then a quick panorama of his recent history, which had been the gossip of studios and art-circles for some time back. "I must go to him," he said, "and apologize for not treating him with more deference."

"_Non, signore_," was the cicerone's response. "Never mind: let it rest. He is a man of the world, and pays little heed to such things. Besides, he is so overwhelmed with his private griefs that he has probably noticed no slight."

However, when the great Russian artist took possession of his studio his American brother of the pencil made his apology, and received this response; "Don't waste words on so trivial a matter. Do I not court the contempt of a world that I despise to my heart's core? Say no more about it. Run in and see me when agreeable; and if you have no better callers than such a plaything of fate as I, maybe you will not refuse me occasional admittance."

The Russian artist now shunned notoriety as he had formerly courted it. Little is known of his history beyond mere rumor, and that only in artistic circles. He was born at St. Petersburg in 1799 or 1800, and gave himself to the study of art at an early age, becoming an especial proficient in color and composition. One of his most widely-known works is "The Last Days of Pompeii," which created great enthusiasm a quarter of a century ago. This, however, was painted during his career of dissipation, and its vivid coloring seemed to have been drawn from a soul morbid with secret woes and craving a nepenthe which never came.

The young artist was petted and idolized by the wealth and nobility of St. Petersburg, where he married a beautiful woman, and became court-painter to the czar Nicholas about the year 1830. For some years no couple lived more happily, and no artist swayed a greater multitude of fashion and wealth than he; but scandal began to whisper that the czar was as fond of the handsome, brilliant wife of the young court-painter as the cultivated people of St. Petersburg were of the husband's marvelously colored works; and when at last the fact became known to Brullof that the monarch who had honored him through an intelligent appreciation of art had dishonored him through a guilty passion for his wife, he left St. Petersburg, swore never again to set foot on Russian soil or be recognized as a Russian subject, and, plunging headlong into a wild career of dissipation, was thenceforth a wanderer up and down the continent of Europe.

It was when this career had borne its inevitable fruit, and he was but a mere wreck of the polished gentleman of a few years previous, that Brullof came to the Via San Basilio, where, as soon as the fact became known, visitors began to call. Among the first were the Russian ambassador and suite, who were driven up in a splendid carriage, with liveried attendants; but after the burly Italian had announced to his master who was in waiting, the door was closed, and with no message in return the representatives of the mightiest empire on the globe were left to withdraw with the best grace they could muster for the occasion. Similar scenes were repeated often during the entire Roman season. He saw but few of his callers--Russians, never.

The Russian and the American artists became quite intimate during the few months they were thrown together, and Mr. Brown has acknowledged that he owes much of the success of his later efforts to hints received from the self-exiled, dying Russian.

"Mr. Brown," he said on one occasion, while examining the picture on the artist's easel, "no one since Claude has painted atmosphere as you do. But you must follow Calamé's example, and make drawing more of a study. Draw from Nature, and do it faithfully, and with your atmosphere I will back you against the world. That is bad," pointing to the huge limb of a tree in the foreground: "it bulges both ways, you see. Now, Nature is never so. Look at my arm," speaking with increased animation, and suddenly throwing off his coat and rolling up his shirt-sleeve. "When you see a convexity, you will see concavity opposite. Just so in Nature, especially in the trunks and limbs of trees."

This criticism made such an impression on Brown that it decided him to go into more laborious work, and was the foundation of his habit of getting up at daybreak and going out to sketch rocks, trees and cattle, until he stands where he now does as a draughtsman.

The painting which Brullof had first admired, and which had induced him to compare Brown to Claude in atmospheric effects, was a view of the Pontine Marshes, painted for Crawford the sculptor, and now in possession, of his widow, Mrs. Terry, at Rome.

During this entire season the penuriousness exhibited by Brullof is one of the hardest phases of his character to explain. Though he was worth at least half a million of dollars, his meals were generally of the scantiest kind, purchased by the Italian cicerone, and cooked and eaten in his room. Yet a kindness would touch the hidden springs of his generosity as the staff of Moses did the rock of Horeb.

Toward the close of the Roman season, Brullof, growing more and more moody, and becoming still more of a recluse, painted his last picture, which showed how diseased and morbid his mind had become. He called it "The End of All Things," and made it sensational to the verge of that flexible characteristic. It represented popes and emperors tumbling headlong into a terrible abyss, while the world's benefactors were ascending in a sort of theatrical transformation-scene. A representation of Christ holding a cross aloft was given, and winged angels were hovering here and there, much in the same manner as _coryphées_ and lesser auxiliaries of the ballet. A capital portrait of George Washington was painted in the mass of rubbish, perhaps as a compliment to Brown. In contradistinction to the portrait of Washington were seen prominently those of the czar Nicholas and the emperor Napoleon; the former put in on account of the artist's own private wrong, and the latter because at that time, just after the _coup d'ètat_, he was the execration of the liberty-loving world.

In the spring the Russian artist gave up his studio, and went down to some baths possessing a local reputation situated on the road to Florence, where he died very suddenly. Much mystery overhangs his last days, and absolutely no knowledge exists as to what became of his vast property. His cicerone robbed him of his gold watch and all his personal effects and disappeared. His remains lie buried in the Protestant burying-ground outside the walls of Rome, near the Porto di Sebastiano. His tomb is near that of Shelley and Keats, and the monument erected to his memory is very simple, his head being sculptured upon it in _alto relievo_, and on the opposite side an artist's palette and brushes.

EARL MARBLE.

A CHRISTMAS HYMN.

The air was still o'er Bethlehem's plain, As if the great Night held its breath, When Life Eternal came to reign Over a world of Death.

The pagan at his midnight board Let fall his brimming cup of gold: He felt the presence of his Lord Before His birth was told.

The temples trembled to their base, The idols shuddered as in pain: A priesthood in its power of place Knelt to its gods in vain.

All Nature felt a thrill divine When burst that meteor on the night, Which, pointing to the Saviour's shrine, Proclaimed the new-born light--

Light to the shepherds! and the star Gilded their silent midnight fold-- Light to the Wise Men from afar, Bearing their gifts of gold--

Light to a realm of Sin and Grief-- Light to a world in all its needs-- The Light of life--a new belief Rising o'er fallen creeds--

Light on a tangled path of thorns, Though leading to a martyr's throne-- Light to guide till Christ returns In glory to His own.

There still it shines, while far abroad The Christmas choir sings now, as then, "Glory, glory unto God! Peace and good-will to men!"

ROME, Christmas, 1871.

T. BUCHANAN READ.

THE PARSEES.

Hanging in my study is a noteworthy portrait, generally the first object observed by those who enter. It is an exquisite painting on glass, the work of Làng Quà, the best artist China has produced in our day, and it delineates the form and features of a singularly handsome young man. But it is the quaint Parsee garb that first attracts attention; and the weird romance that attaches to the history of the Fire-worshipers gives this work of art its real value, rather than its lines of beauty or the celebrity of the painter's name. This delicately-featured portrait _may_ depict the countenance of Musaljee Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, the first-born son and heir of the late Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, baronet, of Bombay, India. That he really sat for this portrait I cannot, however, positively assert, since I obtained the painting from an English officer, who bought it of the artist, but had "forgotten the strange, outlandish name of the Indian nabob," as he said. It is certainly the portrait of a _Parsee_--true to the life in features and garb, and it bears a striking resemblance to the young Musaljee when about eighteen years of age. He was not then a personage of any great celebrity, though the worthy son of a most remarkable sire, the latter long known and honored in Europe for his liberal and enlightened charities, and especially for his munificent donations, that saved the lives of thousands of British subjects, during the terrible famines that occurred in India between the years 1840 and 1846. It was in grateful recognition of this noble philanthropy that Queen Victoria conferred upon him the honor of a baronetcy, sending out a nobleman to act as her proxy in the presentation of a sword which had been handled by more than one British monarch. Sir Jamsetjee was the first East Indian who ever received a title from a European sovereign. During the terrible famines alluded to he not only distributed daily from his own palace a plentiful supply of food to all who came, but he made also large donations of provisions to the English governor of Bombay for the supply of his starving troops. When, subsequently, pestilence followed in the footsteps of famine, this true-hearted philanthropist, overstepping all prejudices of creed and clan, built and endowed at his own expense a free hospital for the sick of all nations and religions. Temporary bamboo cottages at first received the sick till there was time for the erection of the present elegant structure, which is built in the Gothic style, and is capable of accommodating some six or eight hundred patients, besides nurses and attendants. The physicians have been from the beginning of the enterprise all English, as are many of the nurses, and the supplies in every department are the very best the country can furnish. Since the death of the noble founder, the son, who inherits his name and title, has continued to foster with loving devotion the institution which stands as a lasting monument of the fame and virtues of his illustrious sire. The conception of such a charity tells not only of a generous heart, but of far-reaching intelligence, while the energy and perseverance of both father and son in carrying on, year after year, so vast a system of benefactions, challenge our warmest admiration.

The name of the late Sir Jamsetjee stood for more than a score of years at the very head of the list of merchant-princes and ship-owners in Bombay, where he was born, and where his ancestors for many generations resided. He came of an old and wealthy family, who trace their genealogy back to the Parsee exodus of the eighth century; and it is said that the "sacred fire" has never once during all that time burned out upon their altar. Sir Jamsetjee himself, though probably faithful in the observance of the actual requirements of his creed, was assuredly less strict than the majority, and being a man of large intellect, cultivated mind and great independence of character, he did not hesitate to borrow from other nations any customs, institutions or inventions that might tend to the improvement of his own people. His stately mansion was built and furnished in European style; his children, even his daughters, were carefully educated in foreign as well as native lore; and his own associations were with refined and cultivated people, without any regard to their nation or creed. It was while visiting at his house, in familiar intercourse with his family, and with other Parsees of similar position, that I gleaned many items of interest concerning the history and practices of the Fire-worshipers. Other facts were added from time to time during several years of frequent association with these singular people, in whose glorious though unsuccessful struggles for home and liberty it is impossible not to feel an interest.

As a race, the Parsees are intelligent, active and energetic. With business capacities far above the average, they are usually successful in amassing wealth, while they are extremely benevolent in dispensing their gains for both public and private charities. For private benefactions they have, however, little call among themselves, since a Parsee pauper would be an unheard-of anomaly. Their style of living is princely but peculiar. In the reception-rooms of the wealthy--and most of the Parsees in the city of Bombay are wealthy--one finds a rather quaint mingling of Oriental luxury and European elegance--brightly-tinted Persian carpets placed in Eastern fashion over divans strewn with embroidered cushions and jewel-studded pillows, among which recline, with genuine Oriental indolence, some of the members of the family; while in another part of the same room half a dozen more may be grouped about a table of marble and rosewood, occupying velvet chairs that have traveled unmistakably from London or Paris. French mirrors and Italian statuettes may have for their _vis-à-vis_ the exquisite mosaics, the massive gold vases and the costly bijouterie of the Orient, strewn so profusely around as to startle unaccustomed eyes; and a genuine Meissonier will be just as likely to be placed side by side with a Persian houri as anywhere else. The Parsees drive the finest Arab steeds, but on their equipages there is a more lavish display of ornament than we should deem quite in accordance with good taste. The same is true in regard to personal decoration. They wear immense quantities of costly jewelry, and nearly all their garments are of silk, generally richly embroidered in gold, and often with the addition of precious stones. Even little children wear only silk, infants from the very first being wrapped in long, loose robes of plain white silk that are gradually displaced by others more elaborate and costly; while the toilette of a Parsee lady in full evening-dress is often of the value of a hundred thousand rupees (or forty-five thousand dollars). The female costume consists of silk or cotton skirts gathered full round the waist, and long, loose robes of silk, lace or muslin, all more or less decorated according to the wealth of the wearer. The dress of the men is composed of trousers and shirts of white or colored silk and long caftans of muslin, with the addition of a fanciful little scarf fringed at the ends, and worn jauntily across one shoulder and under the other arm. Their caps are made of pasteboard covered with gay-colored silk, embroidered and studded with precious stones or pearls. The form of a Parsee's shirt is a matter of vital importance, both in regard to respectability and religion. It must have five seams, neither more nor less, and be made to lap on the breast exactly in a certain way. Both sexes wear around the body a double string, which they loosen when at prayer, and which a Parsee is never, under any circumstances, permitted to dispense with. No engagement or business transaction is legally binding if by any chance this talismanic cord was left off by either party when the contract was made. The cord is first placed on children when they have completed their ninth year, and this serves to mark the most important epoch of their lives. Before the investiture the eating of food with Christians or heathen does not defile the juvenile Parsee, and girls may even go about in public with their fathers; but after the bestowal of the sacred cord the girls must be kept in seclusion and the boys eat only with their own people.

Only the most liberal Parsees will permit those of other creeds to eat under the same roof with themselves, and even these never eat at the table with their guests. The table is first covered for the visitors, and they are waited on with the utmost assiduity, often by the members of the family in addition to the servants. When the guests leave the board not only is the cloth changed, but the table itself is washed before being recovered: salts, castors and other similar articles are all emptied and washed, and the table newly laid in every particular. Small flat cakes are distributed round the board to do service as plates, and the various dishes arranged in the centre within reach of all. The family then wash hands and faces and the father says a short prayer, after which all take their seats and the meal begins. Neither knives nor forks are used, but the meat is torn from the bones with the fingers only, and with the left hand each one dips, from time to time, bread, meat or vegetables into the broth or gravy as he wishes, and then tosses it into his mouth, without allowing his fingers to touch his lips. This requires some dexterity, and children are not permitted at the family board till they have learned thus to acquit themselves. If, however, the fingers of any one, child or adult, should chance to come in contact with the lips, though ever so slightly, he is required to leave the table instantly and perform his ablutions over again, or else to take the dish from which he was eating to himself, and touch no other during the meal. In drinking they exercise the same caution, adroitly throwing the liquid into the mouth or throat without touching the lips with the cup or glass. The left hand is the one with which food is always taken; and the reason assigned is, that the right, having of necessity to perform most labor, is more frequently brought in contact with things unclean.

I once made a voyage with an American lady and gentleman in a Bombay ship that was owned and commanded by a wealthy Parsee merchant, though the real sailing-master and mate were Englishmen. Our party ate at one table, and the Parsee nabob had his own in solitary state. I was then quite a youthful wife, and, as my husband was not of the party, the Parsee supposed me unmarried, and overwhelmed me with the most gallant attentions, among which were frequent invitations to our party to dine in his cabin. But, though he would stand at my side all the time I was eating, fill my cup or glass with his own hands, and urge me to partake of certain dishes that were favorites of his own, nothing could induce him to eat or drink in our presence, even after we had left the table. And I learned afterward that the costly service of rare china, silver and glass from which we had eaten and drunk at his table, though carefully laid aside, was never again used by the owner. One evening, as we sat on the upper deck inhaling the balmy air, he invited me to smoke. Of course I declined, and when he insisted I told him that it was contrary to the customs of good society in our country for ladies to use tobacco in any form. He laughed heartily, and said, "Did you suppose I would ask a lady to pollute her fragrant breath and dewy lips with so foul a thing as vile tobacco? Taste and see." He brought his splendid hookah, which I found filled with the "fragrant spices of Araby" perfumed with attar of roses, while a long slender tube rested in a vessel of rose-water at my feet; and the fumes were certainly as agreeable as harmless. But this, my first experiment in smoking, cost my Parsee friend three hundred dollars, the estimated value of his gold-mounted hookah, with its complicated array of tubes and vessels of the same precious metal, none of which he durst ever use again.

As we sat chatting together in the bright moonlight our ears were suddenly greeted by the sound of sweet music--wild, unearthly melody that seemed to rise from the very depths of the ocean just below our feet. At first it was only a soft trill or a subdued hum, as of a single voice: then followed what seemed a full chorus of voices of enchanting sweetness. Presently the melody died away in the distance, only, however, to burst forth anew after a brief interval. All the time we were being regaled with the music we could see nothing to enlighten us as to its source, and were inclined to pronounce it a trick played by our fun-loving sailing-master. He, however, denied all agency in the matter, but counseled us to "keep a close look-out on the lee bow" if we wanted to see a mermaid. We had noticed a sort of thrilling motion on the lower deck, not unlike the sensation produced by the charge of an electro-galvanic battery; and this, the Parsee captain gravely assured us, was the mermaids' dance, and their efforts to drag down our ship. "But I'll catch one of them yet--see if I don't," he said energetically as he caught up something from the deck and ran forward, and was presently, with two of the Lascars, leaning over the bow. Half an hour afterward he returned, and with a merry laugh laid in my lap two little brown fish, informing me that they were singing-fish, and that the music we had heard had been produced by shoals of these tiny vocalists then clinging to the bottom of our ship. Our Parsee friend told me that the Arabs and Persians always speak of the singing-fish as "tiny women of the sea;" but he had never heard our version of their long hair, and their twining it about hapless sailors to drag them down to their coral caverns beneath the ocean's wave. He showed me how to preserve the fish by drying in the sun after repeated anointings with an aromatic oil, which he gave me for the purpose; and I have still in my cabinet these two specimens as a reminder of the incident.

The manner in which the Parsees dispose of their dead seems to us too shocking to be tolerated by a people so gentle and refined. But they have grown familiar with a custom that, generation after generation, has been observed by their race till it has ceased to be repugnant. They call it "consigning the dead to the element of air." For this purpose they have roofless enclosures, the walls of which are twenty-five or thirty feet high, and within are three biers--one each for men, women and children. Upon these the bodies of the dead are laid, and fastened down with chains or iron bands. Presently birds of prey, so numerous within the tropics and always waiting to devour, pounce upon the corpse and quickly tear the flesh from the bones, while the skeleton remains intact. This is afterward deposited in a pit dug within the same enclosure, and which remains open till completely filled up with bones; after which another is dug, and when the enclosure can conveniently contain no more pits a new one is selected and prepared. None but priests and bearers of the dead may enter, or even look into, these walled cemeteries. The priests, by virtue of their holy office, are preserved from defilement, but the bearers are men set apart for this express purpose, and they are considered so unclean that they may not enter under the roof of any other Parsee or salute him on the street. If in passing a bearer do but touch one's clothes accidentally, he is subject to a heavy fine, while he who has been thus contaminated must bathe his entire person and burn every article of raiment he wore at the time of his defilement.

I was anxious to visit one of their temples, but this, Sir Jamsetjee assured me, was impossible, as none but the initiated are allowed even to approach the entrance, still less to get a glimpse of what is passing within. He, however, volunteered the information that, so far as the sanctuary itself was concerned, there was little to be seen, only naked walls, bare floors, and an altar upon which burns the sacred fire brought with the Parsees from Persia, and which, he said, had never been extinguished since it was kindled by Zoroaster from the sun four thousand years ago. Of the form of service I could not induce the baronet to speak, but I learned afterward from my ship-friend that the altar is enclosed by gratings, within which none but the priest may enter. He goes in every day to tend "the eternal fire," when he must remain for the space of an hour, repeating certain invocations, with a bundle of rods in his hand to repel any unclean spirits that should venture to approach the sacred fire. Meanwhile, the assembled multitudes prostrate themselves without and offer up their silent adoration. "Yet, after all," musingly said the Parsee, "the universe is the throne of the invisible God, of whom fire is but the emblem, and we worship Him most acceptably with our eyes fixed on the east when the sun rides forth at morning in his celestial chariot of fire." This form of worship those curious in such matters may see on any bright morning at Bombay, where whole crowds of Parsee men, women and children rush out at sunrise to greet the king of day and offer up their morning oblations. I was not surprised at the avowed preference of my Parsee friends for out-door worship, since it is well known that the ancient Persians not only permitted few temples to be erected to their gods, and held in abhorrence all painted and graven images, but they laid it to the charge of the Greeks, as a daring impiety, that "they shut up their gods in shrines and temples, like puppets in a cabinet, when all created things were open to them and the wide world was their dwelling-place." It was probably religious zeal, even more than revenge against the Greeks, that induced the burning of the temple at Athens by Xerxes, led on, as he may have been, by the fanatical zeal of the Magi who accompanied him.

Plutarch speaks of the Persians, in common with the Chaldeans and Egyptians, as worshipers of the sun under the name of Mithra, whom they regarded as standing between Ormuzd, "the author of good," and Ahriman, "the author of evil," occupied alternately in aiding the former and subduing the latter. So do the Parsees of our own day regard him; and their only hope for the ultimate triumph of Ormuzd is in constant sacrifices and prayers and propitiatory offerings to the sun as the fire that is to burn out and utterly consume all evil from our earth. Fire is to the Parsees now, as it has ever been, the holiest of all holy things, carried about by princes and great men for safety; by warriors, as that which is to give them the victory over their foes; and by all, as their sole and ever-present deity. Sir Jamsetjee assured me that the _intelligent_ Parsees regard the sun and fire as only the symbols that are to remind them of the God they worship. But there can be no doubt that the mass of the Parsees literally worship the sun and the "sacred fire;" and hence arise the utter repugnance many of them have to celebrating their religious rites within closed walls, and the decided preference ever shown for out-door worship. I have often heard them say that the Fire-god shows his aversion to confinement by drooping when he is shut up, and growing vigorous just in proportion as free scope is given him. The sun appears everywhere on the shields and armor of the ancient Persians, as on some of the old-time monuments that have come down to us; while occasionally Mithra is depicted as a youthful hero, with high Persian cap, his knee on a prostrate bull, into whose heart he seems plunging a dagger--symbolically, "the power of evil" in complete subjection to the victorious sun, and about to be for ever annihilated.

Zoroaster (called by the Persians _Zerduscht_) was not, the Parsees say, the _founder_ of their sect, but only the reviser and perfecter of the system as it now exists among them. Living in the reign of Darius Hystaspes, he was the contemporary, probably an associate, of the prophet Daniel. Before the advent of this reformer the Magi acknowledged two great First Causes--i.e., the light and the darkness, the former the author of all good, the latter of every evil, moral and physical--and these they believed were at perpetual war with each other. Zoroaster taught, as he may have learned from Daniel, that there was One greater still, who created both the light and the darkness, making both to subserve His own will. He also inculcated the duty of building temples for the preservation of the sacred fire from storm and tempest, when "by sudden extinction of the light the powers of darkness do gain often a signal victory." The Parsees hold in supreme veneration the name of Zoroaster as the most noted of all their Magi for wisdom and virtue. They believe that the sacred fire was lighted by him miraculously from the sun--that it has burned steadily ever since, and can never go out till it has consumed all evil from the earth and the good has become universally triumphant. They claim also that from the reforms wrought by Zoroaster there was never the slightest change in any of their observances until about twelve centuries ago, when Persia was overrun and conquered by the Mohammedan Arabs. But not the fiercest persecution could induce the Fire-worshipers to change their religion for that of the Koran. Preferring liberty and their altars in a foreign land to the alternative of apostasy or persecution at home, the aboriginal Persian inhabitants fled to other lands, settling immense colonies in Surat and Bombay, where their descendants form in our day a large and valuable element of the population. Their integrity, industry and enterprise are proverbial all over the East; and while they live strictly apart from all other races, the Parsees are never wanting in sympathy and help for those who need them. Dwelling amid nations who are almost universally destitute of veracity, the Parsees are eminently truthful; surrounded by polygamists and sensualists, they maintain habits of purity and virtue; and accustomed to every-day association with those who make a boast of cheating, my memory fails to recall the case of a single Fire-worshiper who was not strictly upright and honorable in his dealings.

Commencing with the worship of the sun, and of fire as his emblem, the Parsee grew into a sort of reverence for the elements of air, earth and water. The air must not be contaminated by foul odors, and of necessity no filth could be tolerated anywhere in house, street or suburb; and to this reverence for the purity of the atmosphere may be traced the absolute cleanliness for which Fire-worshipers are everywhere noted. As the earth must receive no defilement, the Parsees would deem it sacrilege to deposit therein their dead for corruption and decay; and hence have doubtless originated their strange rites of sepulture, as they believe that the body is thus more readily and rapidly reduced to its original elements. Streams of water, even the tiniest rivulets, are deemed too holy to be desecrated by washing or spitting in them, and still less would they make the water the receptacle of offal of any sort. To each of these elements, as well as to the fire, the Parsees still make oblations on their high-days. It is true that their ceremonies now are less imposing than those described by Xenophon, when a thousand head of cattle were immolated at a single festival, four beautiful bulls presented to Jupiter, or the sky, and a magnificent chariot, drawn by white horses crowned with flowers and wearing a golden yoke, was offered to the sun; while the king in his chariot was escorted by princes and great nobles, two thousand spearmen marching on either side, and three hundred sceptre-bearers, armed with javelins and mounted on splendidly-caparisoned horses, bringing up the rear. But those jubilant days have passed: the Fire-worshipers are in exile, and have no king to lead them, either in battle against their foes or in triumphal processions in honor of their gods. Yet is Parseeism not dead, nor even on the decrease. Sacrifices, numerous and costly, are still piled upon their altars, the finest cattle are dedicated to their gods, the flesh being cut up and roasted for the people, while the Magi cast the caul and a portion of the fat into the fire as emblematic of the souls of the victims being imbibed by the gods, while the grosser portions are rejected.

The sacrifices and those who offer them are always crowned with flowers, but the pontifical robes of the Magi, though of pure white silk, are severely plain in style and utterly devoid of ornament. In their lives the Magi claim to practice a rigid asceticism, making the earth their bed and subsisting wholly on fruit, vegetables and bread, besides submitting to frequent painful penances from fasting, scourging and the endurance of fatiguing exercises. "Wine, women and flesh" they are commanded to eschew as "special abominations to those who aspire to minister before the gods." The most remarkable feast of the ancient Parsees was one called by them the "sack-feast." On the appointed day a condemned malefactor was clothed in royal robes, seated on a kingly throne and the sceptre of regal power placed in his hand. Princes and people bowed the knee in mock homage before this king of a day, and he was suffered to glut his appetite with all manner of sensual delights till the sun went down, and then he was cruelly beaten with rods, and forthwith executed. (Were the crown and sceptre, the purple robe and mock reverence, that were the antecedents of the Redeemer's crucifixion, a reproduction of this barbarous custom?) The modern Parsees, though recognizing this feast as a legitimate part of their worship, say that they have not observed it since their flight from Persia in the eighth century, because since then, being under a foreign yoke, they have had no jurisdiction over human life, and durst not sacrifice even those who chanced to be in their power. This may be one reason for the renunciation of this barbarous practice of the olden time, but there has been wonderful progress in civilization during the last twelve hundred years; and certain it is that scenes of cruelty that suited the ferocious tastes of the eighth century could not possibly be repeated in the nineteenth.

FANNIE ROPER FEUDGE.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

A SWEDISH PROVINCIAL THEATRE.

It is not so magnificent as the Scala and San Carlo, and still, after seeing both those famous theatres, I must confess I preferred that of Carlstad to either. It is small and different in form from the generality: it reminded me, in fact, of a hall in a certain New England town where I used to go to the panorama as a child. There was a gallery like that in which the men and boys sat who tramped the loudest and kissed their hands, to the confusion of their neighbors, when the lights were turned down to enhance the effect of the burning of Moscow; only, at my panorama the gallery was unfashionable on account of the noisy male element, whereas at Carlstad it was the dress-circle. We--a party of Americans, the only foreigners in the house that night--occupied orchestra-stalls, as I presume the two or three front benches in the parquet may be called. There was a white cape in our vicinity, as well as one in the balcony; so our seats were probably as fashionable as those in the first and only circle; but behind us, stretching out to the doors and in under the gallery, was a dense mass unrelieved by opera-cloaks of any description; and that was the region of the unpretending---of those who came simply to enjoy, to see and not to be seen.

As we spent a good part of a day at Carlstad, I should, perhaps, relate something more of the place than merely how we went to the theatre there; but that delightful evening effaced all other impressions, and after the interval that has since elapsed _Fleur de Thé_ and our commissioner are the only things that have retained somewhat of their original savor.

The railway from Stockholm to Christiania ceased at Carlstad on Lake Wener, which gave us a day's drive to Arvika to strike the track again; and while we stood consulting where we were to get carriages, and whether we should go directly on, there came up a flourishing specimen of the genus _valet de place_, who took possession of us and laid out a plan that he had apparently prepared over night for our especial benefit. It is a way those persons have, and one that gives them a tremendous advantage over travelers weakened by a long journey, that they act as if they were there by appointment to meet you, or as if you had telegraphed precisely what you wished to do, and they were merely carrying out your intentions. "You want to go to the Black Eagle Hotel: I take you there. You would like to dine: you can have dinner at the hotel, or I shall show you a nice restaurant." We had not expected to find a member of the great European brotherhood just there in a little town in the heart of Sweden, and, taken unawares, fell an easy prey. However, they do not invariably succeed in that way: sometimes, if their officiousness is excessive, their English very exasperating and the traveler a little fractious as well as tired, they get the tables turned on them. A lady just arrived at Genoa, when halfway to the hotel with one of these persuasive personages snatched her bag out of his hand and walked into the rival albergo because he said with an aggravating accent, "I sall get you a ticket for de steam-er." "No you sha'n't, either: I have got it myself," she said; and so they parted company, to his infinite amazement. My friend--it was a friend of mine--turned back, on second thoughts, to offer the man something for having carried her belongings, but he put on offended dignity and declared that he didn't want her money. She was rather sorry afterward that he didn't do violence to his feelings and take it; and so, no doubt, was he.

Our Carlstad commissioner beguiled the length of the way to the inn, at which we were a little inclined to grumble, by pointing out everything of note in our walk through the town. We had been reading up in the train, and knew that Carlstad was the capital of a district, had five thousand inhabitants, and was nearly destroyed by fire in 1865; but he, a son of the place, and seeing in his mind's eye its rising glory when the railroad should be completed, did not let us off with that. We had to look and admire just where he told us. "Wide streets," he would say in his finely-chopped English. "Houses all very high--new since the fire. See here! there's the telegraph-office."

At which, to answer in the style he understood best, we must have responded, "Oh, I say! Well. Very good! All right!"

"You shall go to the theatre if you want to," he remarked at last, in that sweet, protecting way peculiar to his class from the habitual confounding of _can, shall_ and _will_, and that put us into good humor directly. To go to the theatre would be just the thing.

"Oh yes, everybody goes," he said. It was a Danish company--very good actors--very pretty piece; but we rather expected to care more for the _everybody_ than either the piece or the actors; and so it proved.

We went early, and established ourselves in the orchestra-stalls, as already stated, while our guardian accepted an unpretending seat for himself, where he remained in readiness to tow us home after the performance. And then the spectators began to come in, and positively some of the very people who used to be at the panorama. I know there was a lady in front of me, in Mechanic Hall, who wore her hair in just such a little knot--_pug_ is, I think, the classic name for that coiffure--and her dress cut as low in the throat and adorned with precisely such a self-embroidered collar as the lady rejoiced in who occupied the seat before me at the theatre. That she was one of the fashionables of Carlstad could be seen in the lofty pose of that pug, and in the curious structure of ribbon and lace that sat astride of it and hung down at each side. Her husband, a small, rather dried-up gentleman, had the look of a town oracle who was oppressed at home, and her daughter was one of the prettiest girls in the house. The overgrown boy, the son and heir, was not pretty: he sat beside his sister and kept nudging her. I could not exactly understand what he said in Swedish, but I know it must have been of this nature: "There's Jim Davis over there. Look, sister, look!"

Sister only glanced at him with a reproving air of "Don't push me so," and then gazed steadfastly in the other direction; but she was not left long in peace. Tom's elbow began again in a minute: "He's looking right at you, all the time. You'd better turn round and bow to him." And the color would creep up in her cheeks, do all she could to prevent it, so that she had to lean across mamma and say something to her father, just so as not to bow to Mr. Davis, which would have been such a simple thing to do, after all.

Everybody who came in nodded and spoke to everybody else, and then shook hands across the seats; and we felt quite out of our element under the inquiring but superior glances that fell to our lot. It was all very well for us to make our little observations and smile at each other on the sly: we had the consciousness all the while of not belonging to the first society in Carlstad, and of being viewed as intruders in that select circle.

We had been studying one family party after another as the seats filled around us, for the audience collected by families, when, with a little rustle and stir attending her progress, and a whispering behind her as she advanced, the Bride appeared, for she had arrived from Stockholm by our train. It was the first time any one had seen her since she started on the wedding-tour, and the bows and smiles she dealt out on every side were not to be numbered. Our pretty girl got one--they were school-friends--and the horrid boy another, which he barely answered with a solemn nod of his head, being as shy of her, apparently, in her blue silk and white cape, as his sister was of Mr. Davis. It was really a very pretty dress of the Bride's, and one that made our traveling costumes look uncommonly shabby: it was taken up behind in the approved style, and only needed a bustle to have been truly effective. Doubtless she had seen plenty of those articles in Stockholm, only her husband said, "I hope, dear, you will never put on one of those horrid things;" and she told him certainly not if he did not like them; but I think she found afterward she needed one for that blue dress, and sent for it at the first opportunity. The young husband was not got up for show, knowing very well that no one would mind him, but he looked beamingly happy; and if he was not in a dress-coat with a flower in his buttonhole, like the _habitués_ of the Comédie Française or the Italiens, he understood how they use an opera-glass there. The glass was a new acquisition that he had brought home with him, and after practicing with it at the Royal Theatre in the capital, he was fully prepared to stand up between the acts, with his arm behind him in a negligently graceful attitude, and study the balcony. His acquaintances there must have found it rather embarrassing, for it was not a usual thing in Carlstad to look at one's friends through an opera-glass: he was the only person who did it, and they probably all talked about it when they went home.

We were so occupied with our surroundings that we hardly thought of the piece, though it was given with considerable spirit, if I remember rightly. The sailors were fine, jolly tars, and the Chinese ladies and gentlemen toddled about in flowered dressing-gowns and talked with their thumbs, as it would appear the inhabitants of the Celestial Empire usually do; but the house did not allow itself to be betrayed into unseemly enthusiasm. There was an involuntary laugh now and then, and once somebody said _bravo_, but as a general thing a discreet reticence prevailed, and the actors might have gone through the piece on their heads in an extravagant desire to elicit signs of approval: they would only have received a cool little round of applause when the curtain fell.

We, at all events, had no hesitation in telling the commissioner that we had enjoyed ourselves immensely; and so, it appeared, had he. He was even bold enough to call it a very fine company, and as we walked back to the hotel at half-past nine in broad daylight, he told us what they were going to play the next evening, possibly in the hope that we should stay for it and he should get another seat. That was out of the question, however, sorry as we were to disappoint him. He had to tuck us into the carriage the following day, and let us drive away and leave him bereft of his charges. "You shall have a good ride," were his parting words, kind and fatherly as he was to the last; and so we had. But we found no one again to care for us so tenderly as our old friend, nor did any one take us to the theatre throughout the remainder of the journey. G.H.

VENETIAN CAFFÈS.

It is years since so lovely an autumn as that of 1874 has been seen in Europe: people say not since the last great comet year, and they credit the erratic visitor of last summer with the exceptional beauty of the weather. As in the case of other marked comet years, the vintages of which still bring extraordinary prices, Italy has had exceptionally fine harvests of all kinds this year. The grain has been abundant, the vintage has been superb, the olives have escaped the danger of unseasonable frosts, and the still more important crop of foreigners seems to be pretty well assured. The charming weather in October and November made the interesting blossoms sprout plentifully; and boat-loads and train-loads came in with an abundance promising an unusually fine winter for _la bella Italia_. Venice, indeed, may be said to have pretty well housed her crop in this kind already. It has been a magnificent one, and the Queen of the Adriatic admits that due homage has been done to her. The _forestieri_ season sets in earlier in her case than in her sister cities. The real "Carnival de Venice" is in August, September and October now-a-days, let the calendar say what it may. Some flaunting of gaudy-colored calico, some dancing on the Piazza of St. Mark, there may be on the eve of Lent in obedience to old usages, but the dancing that really glads the Italian heart is the dancing for which the _forestiere_ pays the piper, and the true Lenten time is that when his beneficent presence is wanting.

Venice, then, has already brought her Carnival to a conclusion; and it has been a splendid one. English, Americans, Germans, all came in shoals--all thronged the galleries, the churches and the palaces in the morning, sauntered or bathed on the outer shore of the Lido in the afternoon, and met at Florian's in the evening. "What is Florian's?" will be asked by those who have never been at Venice--by some such, at least. For probably the fame of the celebrated _caffè_ may have traveled across the Atlantic, just as many who have never crossed it westward are no strangers to the name of Delmonico. Florian's, however, in any case, deserves a word of recognition. It is the principal, largest and most fashionable caffè on the Piazza di San Marco. But the singular and curious specialty of the place is that it has never been closed--no, not for five minutes--day or night, for a period of more than a hundred and thirty years! Probably it is the only human habitation of any sort on the face of the globe of which that could be said.

But the caffè in itself is in many respects a specialty of Venetian life, and has been so since the days of Goldoni. The readers of his comedies, so abundantly rich in local coloring, will not have failed to observe that the caffè plays a larger part in the life of Venice than is the case in any other city. Probably no Venetian passes a single day without visiting once at least, if not oftener, his accustomed caffè. Men of business write their letters and arrange their meetings there. Men of pleasure know that they shall find their peers there. Mere loafers take their seats there, and gaze at the stream of life, as it flows past them, for hours together. And, most marked specialty of all, Venice is the only city in Italy where the native female aristocracy frequents the caffè. Indeed, I know no place in all the Peninsula where so large an amount of Italian beauty may be seen as among the fashionable crowd at Florian's on a brilliant midsummer moonlight night.

Venice is of all the cities in the world the one which those who have never seen it know best. The peculiarities of it are so marked and so unlike anything else in the world, and the graphic representations of every part of the city are so numerous and so admirably accurate, that every traveler finds it to be exactly what he was prepared to see, and can hardly fancy that he sees the Queen of the Adriatic for the first time. I may therefore assume, perhaps, that my readers are acquainted with the appearance of that most matchless of city spaces, the Piazza di San Marco. They will readily call to mind the long series of arcades that form the two long sides of the parallellogram which has the gorgeous front of St. Mark's church occupying the entirety of one of the shorter sides. Well, about halfway up the length of the piazza six of the arches on the right hand of one facing St. Mark's church are occupied by the celebrated caffè. The six never-closed rooms, corresponding each with one of the arches of the arcade, are very small, and would not suffice to accommodate a twentieth part of the throng which finds itself at Florian's quite as a matter of course every fine summer's night. But nobody thinks of entering these smartly-furnished little cabinets save for breakfast or during the hours of the day. Some take their evening ice or coffee on the seats under the arcade, either immediately in front of the cabinets or around the pillars which support the arches, and thus have an opportunity of observing the never-ceasing and ever-varying stream of life that flows by them under the arcade. But the vast majority of the crowd place themselves on chairs arranged around little tables set out on the flags of the piazza. A hundred or so of these little tables are placed in long rows extending far out into the piazza, and far on either side beyond the extent of the six arches which are occupied by the caffè itself. A London or New York policeman would have his very soul revolted, and conclude that there must be something very rotten indeed in the state of a city in which the public way could be thus encumbered and no cry of "move on" ever heard. Assuredly, it is public ground which Florian, in the person of his nineteenth-century representative, thus occupies with his tables and chairs. Probably, if a Venetian were asked by what right he does so, the question would seem to him much as if one asked by what right the tide covers the shallows of the lagoon. It always has been so. It is in the natural order of things. And how could Venice live without Florian's?

But it is not Florian's alone which is thus a trespasser on the domain of the public. The other less celebrated caffès do the same thing. One immediately opposite to Florian's, on the other side of the piazza--Quadri's--has almost as large a spread of chairs and tables as Florian himself. But it is a curious instance of the permanence of habits at Venice, that though at Quadri's the articles supplied are quite as good, and the prices exactly the same, the fashionable world never deserts Florian's. The only difference between the two establishments, except this one of their customers, that is perceptible to the naked eye, is that at Quadri's beer is served, while Florian ignores the existence of that plebeian beverage, which assuredly was never heard of in Venice in the days when he began his career and formed his habitudes.

I am tempted to endeavor to give the reader some picture of the scene on the piazza on a night when (as is the case almost every other evening) a military band is playing in the middle of the open space, and the cosmopolitan crowd is assembled in force--to describe the wonderful surroundings of the scene, the charm of the quietude broken by no sound of hoof or of wheel, the soft and tempered light, the gay clatter, athwart which comes every fifteen minutes the solemn mellow tone of the great clock of St. Mark with importunate warning that another pleasant quarter of an hour has drifted away down the stream of time. It is a scene that tempts the pen. But the well-dressed portion of mankind is very similar in all countries and under all circumstances, and perhaps my readers may be more interested in a few traits of the popular life of Venice, which the magnificent Piazza of St. Mark is not the best place for studying, for some of the most characteristic phases of it are absolutely banished thence. The strolling musician or singer, who may be heard every night in other parts of the city, never plies his trade on the piazza. Mendicancy, which is more rife at Venice, I am sorry to say, than in any other Italian city, except perhaps Naples, is not tolerated on the piazza.

But if we wish for a good specimen of the truly popular life of Venice, it will not be necessary to wander far from the great centre of the piazza. Coming down the Piazzetta, or Little Piazza, which opens out of the great square at one end, and abuts on the open lagoon opposite the island of St. George at the other, and turning round the corner of the ducal palace, we cross the bridge over the canal, which above our heads is bridged by the "Bridge of Sighs," with its "palace and a prison on each hand," as Byron sings, and find ourselves on the "Riva dei Schiavoni"--the quay at which the Slavonic vessels arrived, and arrive still. The quay is a very broad one, by far the broadest in Venice, paved with flagstones, and teeming with every characteristic form of Venetian life from early morning till late into the night. There are two or three hotels frequented by foreigners on the Riva, for the situation facing the open lagoon is an exceptionally good one; and there are three or four caffès at which the cosmopolitan and not too aristocratic visitor may get an excellent cup of coffee (for the Venetians, thanks to their long connection with the East, know what coffee is, and will not take chiccory or other such detestable substitutes in lieu of it) for the modest charge of thirteen centimes--just over two cents--and study as he drinks it the moving and ever-amusing scenes enacted before his eyes. His neighbor perhaps will be an old gentleman, the very type of the old "pantaloon" whose mask was in the old comedy supposed to be the impersonation of Venice. There are the long, slender and rather delicately-cut features terminating in a long, narrow and somewhat protruding chin; the high cheek-bones, the lank and sombre cheeks, the high nose, the dark bright eye under its bushy brow. He is very thin, very seedy, and evidently _very_ poor. But he salutes you, as you take your seat beside him, with the air of an ex-member of "The Ten;" his ancient hat and napless coat are carefully brushed; his outrageously high shirt-collar and voluminous unstarched neckcloth, after the fashion of a former generation, though as yellow as saffron, are clean; and his poor old boots as irreproachable as blacking--which can do much, but, alas! not all things--can make them. His expenditure of a penny will entitle him not only to a cup of coffee, as aforesaid, but also to a glass of fresh water, which has been turned to an opaline color by the shaking into it of a few drops of something which the waiter drops from a bottle with some contrivance at its mouth, the effect of which is to cause only a drop or two of the liquor, whatever it may be, to come out at each shake. Our old friend is also entitled, in virtue of his expenditure, to occupy the chair he sits on for as many hours as he shall see fit to remain in it. And after the coffee, which must be drunk while hot, has been despatched, the sippings of the opaline mixture aforesaid may be protracted indefinitely while he enjoys the cool evening-breezes from the lagoon, the perfection of _dolce far niente_, and the amusement the life of the Riva never fails to afford him. An itinerant vender of little models of gondolas and bracelets and toys made out of shells comes by, seeking a customer among the folk assembled at the caffè. He does not address Pantaloon, for of course he knows that there is nothing to be done in that line with him. But spying with a hawk's glance a _forestiere_ among the crowd, he strolls up to him, holding up one of his gimcrack bracelets daintily--and he thinks temptingly, poor fellow!--between his finger and thumb. "Un franco! Un sol franco! è una beleza per una contesa!" ("One franc! only one franc! It would be beautiful on the arm of a countess!") he murmurs in his soft lisping Venetian, which abolishes all double consonants, and supplies their place by prolonging the soft liquid sound of the preceding vowel. One franc! It is wonderful how the thing, worthless as it is, can be made even by the most starving fingers for such a price. Yet after dangling his toy for a minute, and gazing, oh, so wistfully! the while out of his big haggard eyes, he says, "Seventy-five centimes! half a franc!" and still lingers ere he turns away with a sigh, a weary movement of his emaciated figure and a longing look on his poor hollow face that make one feel that the drama we are witnessing is not all comedy. But it is all supremely interesting to our neighbor, Si'or Pantaleone. He has been keenly watching the attempted deal, and no doubt wished that his countryman might succeed. But there was no element of tragedy in the matter for him, a condition of semi-starvation is too much an ordinary, every-day and normal spectacle. He looked on more as a retired merchant might look on at the progress of a bargain for the delivery of a shipload of grain. Presently, a middle-aged woman and a girl of some fourteen years station themselves in front of the audience seated outside the caffè. The elder woman has a guitar, and the girl a violin and some sheets of music in her hand. The woman has her wonderful wealth of black hair grandly dressed and as shining as oil can make it. She has large gilt earrings in her ears, a heavy coral necklace, and a gaudy-colored shawl in good condition. Whatever might be beneath and below this is in dark shadow--"et sic melius situm." She is not starved, however, for, as she prepares to finger her guitar, she shows a well-nourished and not ill-formed arm. The young girl has one of those pale, delicate, oval faces so common in Venice: she also has a good shawl--an amber-colored one--which so sets off the olive-colored complexion of her face as to make her a perfect picture. This couple do not in any degree assume an attitude of appealing _ad misericordiam_. They pose themselves _en artistes_. The girl sets about arranging her music in a business-like way, and then they play the well-known air of "La Stella Confidente," the little violinist really playing remarkably well. Then the elder woman comes round with a little tin saucer for our contributions. No slightest word or look of disappointment or displeasure follows the refusal of those who give nothing. The saucer is presented to each in turn. I supposed that the application to Si'or Pantaleone was an empty form. But no. That retired gentleman could still find wherewithal to patronize the fine arts, and dropped a centime--the fifth part of a cent--into the dish with the air of a prince bestowing the grand cross of the Golden Fleece. Then comes a dealer in ready-made trousers, which Pantaloon examines curiously and cheapens. Then a body of men singing part-songs, not badly, but to some disadvantage, as they utterly ignore the braying of half a dozen trumpets which are coming along the Riva in advance of a body of soldiers returning to some neighboring barracks. Then there are fruit-sellers and fish-sellers and hot-chestnut dealers, and, most vociferous of all, the cryers of "Acqua! acqua! acqua fresca!" There, making its way among the numerous small vessels from Dalmatia, Greece, etc. moored to the quay of the Schiavoni, comes a boat from the Peninsular and Oriental steamer, which arrived this morning from Alexandria, with four or five Orientals on board. They come on shore, and proceed to saunter along the Riva toward the Grand Piazza, while their dark faces and brightly-colored garments add an element to the motley scene which is perfectly in keeping with old Venetian reminiscences.

T.A.T.

A NEW MEXICAN CHRISTMAS EVE.

It is Christmas Eve in Albuquerque. Blazing fagots of mesquite-roots placed on the surrounding adobe walls illuminate the old church on the plaza. There is a grand _baile_ at the fonda, to which we and our "family are most respectfully invited." The sounds of music already invite us to the ball-room. We enter. The floor is full; a hundred couples are gliding through the graceful "Spanish dance," or "slow waltz," as it is termed here. Not a few blue-and-gold United States uniforms are to be seen in the throng. A full-uniformed major-general of volunteers adds the éclat of his epaulettes to the occasion. The ranchos have poured in their señoras and señoritas, and three rows of the dark-eyed creatures sit ranged around the room.

The Mexican women look their best in a ball-room. Their black eyes, black hair and white teeth glisten in the light; they are dressed in the gayest of gay colors; ponderous ornaments of gold, strongly relieved by their dusk complexions, shed around them a rich barbaric lustre. Not that they eschew adventitious means to blanch their sun-shadowed tints. For days some of the señoras and señoritas have worn a mask of a white clayey mixture to give them an ephemeral whiteness for this occasion. Those who could procure nothing else have worn a pasty vizard kneaded of common clay, to effect in some degree a like result by protecting their faces from the sun and wind. Should you visit New Mexico, and as you ride along slowly in the heat of midday meet a señorita who gazes at you with a pair of jet black eyes through a hideous, ghastly mask of mud or mortar, do not be frightened from your accustomed propriety. The señorita is preparing her _toilette de bal_.

The New Mexican women cannot be considered pretty, generally speaking. In artistic symmetry of feature, in purity of complexion, they are not to be compared with our countrywomen. These can bear the searching light of day, when delicacy of detail can be distinguished and appreciated. Those look their best in the artificial light of the ball-room. There the blue-black hair, the brilliant black eyes, the well-traced eyebrows, the magnificently white and regular teeth, the richly-developed forms, produce a general effect before which our blond and delicate beauties seem pale and _fades_. But the Mexican's coarser skin--her _teint basané_--is too plainly visible in the light of the sun: you should see her only by the lamps. It is doubtless rather from an instinct of coquetry than from any other feeling that in the day-time the Mexican women shroud their dusky traits in the folds of their _rebosas_, leaving only one pilot eye to look upon the outer world.

No introductions are necessary at the public bailes. Saunter around the room, inspect the show of expectant partners, and when you see one who suits your fancy ask her to dance, without more ado. If she be not engaged she will at once accept your proffered arm. She will not say anything. Ten to one she will not breathe a syllable during your evolutions. Conversation is not the forte of the señoritas. But she will smile and smile, and you will have no reason to complain of her waltzing. The Mexican _caballero_, when he seeks a partner, will not put himself out so far as to have any words about it. He merely beckons the chosen one, as the sultan might throw the handkerchief, and she comes to him at once.

Each dance concluded, you lead your partner to a sort of bar where refreshments are furnished, and ask her whether she will take _vino_ or _dulces_--wine or candies? She will take _dulces_--"Gracias, señor!" This is _de rigueur_. You pay for them of course, and conduct her to her seat. She pours the _dulces_ into the awaiting pocket-handkerchiefs of the old people, her _comadres_, and of her younger brothers and sisters.

In a little room adjoining the ball-room, with door invitingly open, is the shrine of _monte_. The revelry of the ball-room is unheeded by the preoccupied votaries of the changeful deity as they sit around the green table watching the dealer as he turns the cards, and nervously fingering their little piles of red or white "chips." We have no business and no pleasure here. Let us merely look in and pass on.

Waltzes, "round" and "slow," are the _pièces de résistance_ of a Mexican baile: quadrilles are not relished by the dusky danseuses. There are some New Mexican dances which do not lack prettiness. Of these, the Cuna is the most popular. It commences with a see-saw movement suggestive of its name--cuna- or cradle-dance. For the rest, the waltz enters much into its composition.

The orchestra generally consists of one or more violins and a guitar or two. The New Mexican guitar is strung conversely: the base-string is where we put the treble, and _vice versâ_. The strings are generally struck with the thumb-nail or with a piece of horn or wood like the ancient _plectrum_. This produces a harsh metallic sound, without any rotundity. Few New Mexican fiddlers or guitar-players are capable of playing in any time except dancing time, and the character of the baile, funeral and sacred music is the same. The only distinction is the addition of a continuous _tremolo_ to the latter two, which produces the same unpleasant effect on the nerves as a comic song chanted by the shaky, cracked, piping and quavering voice of senility. As the fiddles invariably play their parts in funerals as well as on festive processions, it requires some familiarity with the customs of the country to distinguish one from the other. The music to-night is much better than the ordinary baile music. A native harpist adds the music of his many strings; and not bad music either, though he does not know a quaver from a semibreve, and his harp is of his own manufacture. The sameness, however, caused by playing always and everything in the same key is perceptible. But dancing critics are not disposed to be very severe.

The enjoyment of the evening is at high pressure. The dancers are swinging, surging, spinning through the Spanish dance. Everybody who can find a partner and a place on the floor--there are many who cannot find the latter--is dancing. It is a gay, a brilliant scene. All is going as merrily as a whole chime of marriage-bells when a deep and solemn peal from the church close by breaks in over the music, the laughter and the dancing. It is midnight! It is the _Noche Buena_, and the bell summons the faithful to the midnight mass. The effect is electric. The last twirl of the waltz is suspended, half executed. The dancers stop as suddenly as if they were puppets moved and stilled by the cunning of some wire-pulling hand. A general rush is made for the church: in a moment the ball-room is empty. The church is filled as instantaneously, and the wildly gay dancers of a moment ago are now kneeling, hushed and down-bent, in devotional attitudes.

The scene is impressive: the bright ball-toilettes contrasted in a "dim religious light," the sudden change of place and mood, from gay to grave, from ball-room to sanctuary, strikes a stranger's eye with thrilling effect. At the conclusion of the service the dancers return to the ball-room, to change from grave to gay, and dance _ad libitum_ till daylight.

J.T.

ENGLISH BIBLE TRANSLATIONS.

The first complete translation of the Bible into our language was made about the year 1380 by John de Wycliffe, or Wickliffe. There are several manuscript copies of it in the Bodleian and other European libraries. This great work unlocked the Scriptures to the multitude, or, as one of his antagonists, bewailing such an enterprise, worded it, "the gospel pearl was cast abroad and trodden under foot." Long before the appearance of this translation various versions of portions of the Bible had appeared, specimens of which, of every century from the reign of Alfred to Chaucer's time, are preserved in the British Museum and elsewhere. Sir Thomas More says: "The Holy Byble was longe before Wycliffis daies by virtuose and well-learned men translated into the English tongue, and by good and godly people with devotion and soberness well and reverently read." This statement is further corroborated by Foxe, the martyrologist, who remarks: "If histories be well examined, we shall find both before and after the Conquest, as well before John Wickliffe was borne as since, the whole body of the Scriptures by sundry men translated into this our country tongue." Wycliffe's Bible was first printed at Oxford in 1850, previous to which the New Testament appeared in 1721 and was reprinted in 1810.

In 1526, William Tyndale completed and published in English his translation of the New Testament. He also translated and printed the Pentateuch and the book of Jonah, and was preparing them for publication when he was put to death in Flanders, being strangled and burnt for heresy. Tyndale's translation, with his latest revisions (1534), was republished in the English Hexapla in 1841. A copy of his translation of the Pentateuch which had belonged to Bishop Heber was sold in 1854 for $795. Four years later another copy sold for within twenty dollars of that amount.

The first English translation of the entire Bible was made by Miles Coverdale, who afterward became bishop of Exeter, and was printed in folio in the year 1535. In 1538 a second edition of Coverdale's Bible was printed at Paris, but the Inquisition interfered and committed the whole edition of twenty-five hundred copies to the flames. No perfect copy of Coverdale's version is known to exist, but one lacking the original title-page and first leaf was sold in 1854 for $1725. Another, at the Perkins' sale, in June, 1873, brought $2000.

Two years after the appearance of the first edition of Coverdale's Bible, John Rogers, the first martyr in Queen Mary's reign, published his version of the Scriptures. He made some emendations, but the text is chiefly that of Tyndale and Coverdale. It was printed by Grafton and Whitchurch in 1537, and the title runs: "The Byble, which is all the holy Scripture: in which are contayned the Olde and Newe Testament truely and purely translated into Englysh by Thomas Matthew." For safety, Rogers assumed the name of Matthew, whence it is known as Matthew's Bible. Seven hundred and fifty dollars have been paid for a copy.

The third version of the Bible, known as Taverner's, was published in 1539. Richard Taverner was a learned man who published many translations during the sixteenth century. Horne says of his translation, "This is neither a bare revisal of Cranmer's Bible nor a new version, but a kind of intermediate work, being a correction of what is called 'Matthew's Bible.'"

The first edition of Cranmer's Bible, the printing of which was begun in Paris in 1538 and completed in London in 1540--the Inquisition having interposed by imprisoning the printers and burning the greater part of the impression--is excessively rare. Cranmer's Bible--or the Great Bible, as it was called--is Tyndale's, Coverdale's and Rogers's translations most carefully revised throughout. This was the first sound and authorized English version; and as soon as it was perfected a proclamation was issued ordering it to be provided for every parish church, under a penalty of forty shillings a month. A second edition of Cranmer's Bible appeared in 1560, a copy of which brought, at a recent sale in England, the sum of $610.

The Genevan version of the Bible was made by several English exiles at Geneva in Queen Mary's reign--viz., Cole, Coverdale, Gilby, Knox, Sampson, Whittingham and Woodman--and was first printed in 1560. It went through fifty editions in the course of thirty years. This translation was very popular with the Puritan party. In this version the first division into verses was made. It is commonly known as the "Breeches Bible," from the peculiar rendering of Genesis iii. 7--" breeches of fig-leaves." To the Geneva Bible we owe the beautiful phraseology of the admired passage in Jeremiah viii. 22. Coverdale, Matthew and Taverner render it, "For there is no more treacle at Gilead?" Cranmer, "Is there no treason at Gilead?" The Genevan first gave the poetic rendering, "Is there no balm in Gilead?"

In the year 1568 another translation appeared, which is indiscriminately known as "Matthew Parker's Bible," the "Bishops' Bible" and the "Great English Bible." This version was undertaken and carried on under the inspection of Matthew Parker, second Protestant archbishop of Canterbury. Of the fifteen translators, six were bishops, hence this edition is often called the Bishops' Bible, though it is sometimes designated the Great English Bible, from its being a huge folio volume. In 1569 it was published in octavo form. There is a well-preserved copy of the first edition of Matthew Parker's Bible in the possession of a gentleman residing in New York City. This was the authorized version of the Scriptures for forty years, when it was superseded by our present English Bible.

The English Roman Catholic College at Rheims issued in the year 1582 a translation of the New Testament, known as the "Rhemish New Testament." It was condemned by the queen of England, and copies imported into that country were seized and destroyed. In 1609 the first volume of the Old Testament, and in the following year the second volume, were published at Douay, hence ever since known as the Douay Bible. Some years since Cardinal Wiseman remarked that the names Rhemish and Douay, as applied to the current editions, are absolute misnomers. The publishers of the edition chiefly used in this country state that it is translated from the Latin Vulgate, "being the edition published by the English College at Rheims A.D. 1582, and at Douay in 1609, as revised and corrected in 1750, according to the Clementine edition of the Scriptures, by the Rt. Rev. Richard Challoner, bishop of Debra, with his annotations for clearing up the principal difficulties of Holy Writ."

Theodore Beza translated the New Testament out of the Greek into the Latin. This was first published in England in 1574, and afterward frequently. In 1576 it was "Engelished" by Leonard Tomson, under-secretary to Sir Francis Walsingham, and was afterward frequently annexed to the Genevan Old Testament. The following is a copy of the title-page of the New Testament, _verbatim et literatim_: "The New Testament of our Lord Jesus Christ, translated out of Greeke by Theod Beza: with brief summaries and expositions upon the hard places by the said authour, _Ioach Amer and P Loseler Vallerius_. Engelished by L Tomson. Together with the Annotations of _Fr Junius_ upon the Revelation of S. John. Imprinted at London by the Deputies of Christopher Barker, Printer to the Queene's Most Excellent Majestie--1599." The volume opens with a primitive version of the Psalms in verse, then follow the Old Testament, the Apocrypha and the New Testament, as in Bibles of the present day.

The version of the Scriptures now in use among Protestants was translated by the authority of King James I., and published in 1611. Fifty-four learned men were appointed to accomplish the work of revision, but from death or other causes seven of the number failed to enter upon it. The remaining forty-seven were ranged under six divisions, different portions of the Bible being assigned to each division. They entered upon their task in 1607, and after three years of diligent labor the work was completed. This version was generally adopted, and the former translations soon fell into disuse. The authors of King James's version of the Bible included the most learned divines of the day; one of whom was master of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac and fifteen modern languages.

Among other rare and highly-coveted editions of the Bible is one printed in England in the seventeenth century, in which the important word _not_ was omitted in the seventh commandment, from which circumstance it has ever since been known as "The Adulterer's Bible." Another edition, known as the Pearl Bible, appeared about the same time, filled with errata, a single specimen of which will suffice: "Know ye not the ungodly _shall inherit_ the kingdom of God?" Bibles were once printed which affirmed that "all Scripture was profitable for _de_struction;" while still another edition of the sacred volume is known as the "Vinegar Bible," from the erratum in the title to the twentieth chapter of St. Luke, in which "Parable of the Vineyard" is printed "Parable of the Vinegar."

J.G.W.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Life and Labours of Mr. Brassey, 1805-1870. By Sir Arthur Helps, K.C.B. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

The "captains of industry," who constitute in our day so distinct and notable a class of worthies, are doubtless as well entitled to have their achievements recorded and their fame sounded throughout the lands as were the doughty men of war who of old were deemed the only fitting heroes of chronicle and epic. Few of them, however, can hope to have their deeds commemorated by a "veray parfit, gentle knight"--of the quill, not of the sword, albeit the letters which he writes after his name would once have indicated the possession of military rank and distinction. Sir Arthur Helps is not a man of few words or of a very stern or passionate temperament. It is the graces of chivalry, not its fiery ardor, that he cultivates and reflects, and though "arms and the man" have often been his theme, the soft and delicate strain was ever more suggestive of the pastoral pipe than of the bardic lyre. Essayist, historian, biographer, novelist, he is always intent to smooth away the asperities of his subject, and, like some stately grandame enthroned in high-backed chair, he remembers that his simple auditors are to be not merely entertained by the matter of his discourse, but impressed by the suave tones and high-bred prolixity of the speaker. With a dignified courtesy unknown in these latter times--when biographers and historians do not scruple to take liberties with their heroes to the extent even of designating them by nicknames--the subject of the present memoir is introduced to us as _Mr_. Brassey, a form not only adopted on the title-page, but preserved in the body of the work, where we read that "Mr. Brassey was born November 7, 1805," that "Mr. Brassey, at twelve years of age, went to a school at Chester," and that, being afterward articled to a surveyor, "Mr. Brassey was permitted by his master" to assist in making certain surveys. It is only from a side whisper to the American public, which is honored with a preface all to itself, that we are permitted to learn that the great contractor owned to the Christian name of Thomas. Besides the two prefaces there is a dedication to the queen, an introduction telling how Sir Arthur Helps made the acquaintance of Mr. Brassey and what impressions he received from the interview, and a preliminary chapter containing a brief outline of Mr. Brassey's character as "a man of business;" so that we get at the substance of the book by a process like that which in a well-conducted household precedes the carving and distribution of a Christmas cake, any eagerness we might feel to "put in a thumb and pull out a plum" being kept in check by a proper amount of ceremony and tissue-paper.

Plums, however, there are, though not perhaps in full proportion to the frosted coating, or of just the kind that are best agglutinated by the biographical dough. Of anecdote or gossip, glimpses of "life and manners" or personal details, there is nothing. Nor can we justly take exception to this. On the contrary, it gives a unity to the subject by excluding whatever had no relation to the enterprises with which Mr. Brassey's name is connected, and which absorbed his time and thoughts to a degree that can have left him but little opportunity for intercourse with mankind except in a business capacity. It is these enterprises--not in their entirety or with reference to the objects with which they were designed, but as evidences and illustrations of the working force, mental and physical, demanded for their execution--that form the real subject of the book, the matter of which has been chiefly furnished by the various agents entrusted with the immediate supervision of the labor and outlay of the capital employed. The details thus brought together afford perhaps a more vivid idea of the industrial energy and activity of the nineteenth century, and of the resources they have called into play, than could have been obtained from a survey of any other field in which the like qualities have been displayed. It was chiefly with railway enterprises, and this almost from their inception, and to an extent far beyond the rivalry of any other constructor, that Mr. Brassey was engaged; and the railway system, not only by its own immense demands on capital, labor and inventive skill, but still more by the stimulus and aid it has given to industrial enterprises of every kind, must be regarded as the main lever of a material progress that has outstripped the conceptions and possibilities of all previous ages. With the development of a system so different in its nature from the great undertakings of any former period came the need of the contractor, entrusted with the direction and laden with the full responsibility of works which no government "boards" or similar machinery would have been competent to carry through under the conditions imposed by the novel circumstances of the movement and the exacting spirit by which it was impelled. To attain the foremost place in the new career thus created demanded, obviously, no ordinary powers--special knowledge of various kinds, equal facility in mastering details and grasping a general plan, tact in the choice and management of subordinates, courage and promptness in encountering unforeseen obstacles and disasters, and skill and clearheadedness in the general control of enormous and intricate financial interests. To these qualities must be added in the present case what is not so invariably associated with the names of succesful contractors--a faithfulness and integrity which merited and received the fullest confidence. Whether working at a gain or at a loss, Mr. Brassey was ever resolute to execute his engagements to the letter, and he declined to make demands for extra compensation when his contracts proved unprofitable, though it was customary with him to make good the losses of his sub-contractors. He amassed a colossal fortune, not through excessive gains, but by a small profit--"as nearly as possible three per cent."--which accrued to him from all his enterprises taken as a whole, and the accumulations consequent on an inexpensive mode of life.

The railways constructed by Mr. Brassey, generally in partnership with some other contractor, between the years 1834 and 1870, comprised between six and seven thousand miles in all parts of the globe, including Australia and in almost every civilized country except Russia and the United States. "There were periods in his career during which he and his partners were giving employment to 80,000 persons, upon works requiring £ 17,000,000 of capital for their completion." Yet a large part of his time and of the time of his agents was spent in the investigation of schemes which he either decided not to undertake or for which he tendered unsuccessfully. It was necessary at times to transport materials, a large staff of employés and an army of laborers from one country to another. In some cases works were prosecuted in regions occupied or threatened by hostile armies, in others under all the embarrassments and gloom of a great financial revulsion. In countries where commercial transactions were usually very limited the great difficulty was to obtain coin for the payment of wages, while in others there was the danger of the supply of labor failing through the enticements of superabundant capital or the more dazzling temptations of gold-digging. It is needless to mention the usual accidents and impediments to which all such undertakings are liable, and which the skill and ingenuity of the modern engineer never fail to overcome; but it is certainly not a little remarkable, when the multiplicity of Mr. Brassey's contracts is remembered, as well as the early period from which they date, to find that they were invariably completed within the specified time.

Personal Reminiscences of Barham, Harness and Hodder. (Bric-à-Brac Series, edited by Richard Henry Stoddard.) New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co.

Why we should love so dearly a fresh anecdote of a literary celebrity, a new quip by Talleyrand, a new stutter of Lamb's, a new impertinence of Sheridan's, may be not hard to understand, but it is rather hard to defend, any regard being paid to our dignity. The best stories about that particular line of authors who have possessed _bonhomie_ and become classic for it are long since told. What remains is the dregs. Yet the other day we found ourselves smiling with real delight over a new "bit" of Cowper. It was merely that his barber, being late with the poet's wig, said, "Twill soon be here, it is upon the road;" and that Cowper had smiled, with a "Very well, William," or a "Very fair, Thomas." The _mot_, like most of the stories that crop up now, was not good; it did not exhibit the author of "John Gilpin" in a brilliant light; it was not even uttered by the poet--he had merely smiled at it; yet it had the effect of rekindling the vapid embers about the dear old hearthstone of Olney, and the shy, gentle creatures that used to disport there among the hares when nobody was looking became for a moment more real from the citation. Now, the question is, What is the superiority of a new piece of gossip like this, which involves no witticism and confers no wisdom, over the next bit of history that will be exchanged between the heroines of the alley-gate? When Mrs. Jones tells Mrs. Baker that Mrs. Briggs has delivered a daughter, and that Mr. Briggs said he had rather she had given him a wooden leg, the epigram is quite as good as a _Bric-à-Brac_ anecdote, the people are quite as worthy as Cowper's barber, and the effect upon the history of letters quite as close and important. With this demurrer, we will apply ourselves for a moment to Mr. Stoddard's last collection, which of course we relish as much as anybody. We could wish that, after discharging his very well-executed duty of writing the preface, he could find some further time for elucidating the text. The present book being about three people, whose memoirs are taken from three volumes, it is confusing to the reader to find on a page headed "Rogers" or "Scott" a foot-note about what "my father" said or what "my friend" remembered, without anything to point out that the authority is other than Mr. Stoddard's father or friend. Other peculiarities, too, suggest that the pretty little volume is clipped instead of edited: on page 134 we find that "William, who had lived many years with Hook, grew rich and saucy. The latter used to assert of him that for the first three years he was as good a servant as ever came into a house; for the next two a kind and considerate friend; and afterward an abominably bad master." And on page 240, that when _Rogers_ was condoled with about the death of an old servant, he exclaimed, "Well, I don't know that I feel his loss so much, after all. For the first _seven_ years he was an obliging servant; for the second _seven_ years an agreeable companion; but for the last seven years he was a tyrannical master." This duality of epigrams seems to show a discrepancy somewhere; or are we to believe that the wits of the Regency used to drive their jokes as hired hacks, like the livery carriages employed by faded dowagers in Hampton Court? The rest of the little book is perhaps free from duplicates. It is a good one to turn over for an hour in the cars, which is perhaps all it claims to be. The anecdotes are good old familiar anecdotes, but it is pleasant to have them strung on a thread. We are reminded that the original Bride of Lammermoor was a Miss Dalrymple; that the "laughing Tom" of Thackeray's "Ballad of Bouillabaise" was Thomas Frazer, Paris correspondent of the _Morning Chronicle_; that the dramatist of _Nicholas Nickleby_, so savagely assaulted by Dickens in the course of the work, was a Mr. Moncrief, who would never have prepared the story for the stage if Dickens had intimated his objection.

_Books Received._

The American Educational Annual: A Reference Book for all matters pertaining to Education. Vol. I., 1875. New York: J.W. Schermerhorn & Co.

The Song-Fountain: A Vocal Music-book. By Wm. Tillinghast & D.P. Horton. New York: J.W. Schermerhorn & Co.

My. Sister Jennie: A Novel. By George Sand. Translated by T.S. Crocker. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

Democracy and Monarchy in France. By Charles Kendall Adams. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

Egypt and Iceland in the year 1874. By Bayard Taylor. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Elements of Geometry. By W.H.H. Phillips, Ph. D. New York: J.W. Schermerhorn & Co.

The Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe. By Amanda M. Duglas. Boston: William F. Gill & Co.

The Lily and the Cross: A Tale of Acadia. By Prof. James De Mille. Boston: Lee & Shepard.

Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible. By John W. Haley, M.A. Andover: Warren F. Draper.

History of the United States. By George Bancroft. Vol. X. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.

Roddy's Romance. By Helen Kendrick Johnson. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

My Life on the Plains. By Gen. G.A. Custer, U.S.A. New York: Sheldon & Co.

American Wild-Fowl Shooting. By Joseph W. Long. New York: J.B. Ford & Co.

Hazel-Blossoms. By John Greenleaf Whittier. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.

Losing to Win: A Novel. By Theodore Davies. New York: Sheldon & Co.

Linley Rochford: A Novel. By Justin McCarthy. New York: Sheldon & Co.

A First Book in German. By Dr. Emil Otto. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

What of the Churches and Clergy? Springfield, Mass: D.E. Fisk & Co.