Charles V. visited Como in 1541 with enduring result in Spanish rule.

The French Revolution struck this tiny paradise like a tidal wave in 1796. Equality and liberty electrified the atmosphere of the lake border with the donning of red caps. La Carmagnole was sung by all ranks. The town was re-baptised. The Piazza del Duomo became della Libertà; the Contrada Odelscalchi della Temperanza; Natta, veneration for the laws; Giovio, hatred of tyranny; and San Giacomo, brotherhood. When Bonaparte came he was welcomed as the Caporaletto, and shared the public enthusiasm. Russian and Austrian influ

ences have succeeded. The Latin colony has become a modern town with paved streets, gutters, street-lamps, Persian shutters, and crystal windowpanes. The sound of her silk mills is audible through the long hours of the summer day, and a thread may be chosen from the tangled skein of her varied history by the loiterer or the studious which will form a link with all her surroundings as well.

III

THE COUNTRY GENTLEMAN

P

LINY the Younger is ever the host

who welcomes the visitor to the shores

of Como. He is portrayed, with all

the skill of the Renaissance, on one

Chris

side of the portal of the Cathedral, while his worthy uncle, Pliny the Elder, flanks the other. tianity has unhesitatingly adopted these pagans. If they walked the streets of Como now they would doubtless inspire in their fellow-citizens the same respect for manifold virtues that fell to their portion with their contemporaries.

On a summer day we naturally relegate the senior to the shades, with a passing conviction of the guilty frivolity of our own age in comparison with his edifying example, in favour of the charming personality of the nephew. Every one is familiar with the awe-inspiring zeal in study of

Pliny the Elder.

The use of time with him was

fate, as with Marlowe. He made notes, or had a slave at his elbow on a journey jotting down memoranda. He served in Germany, returned to Rome, and spoke in the Forum. He was appointed procurator in Spain by Nero, and recalled. by Vespasian to command the naval armament at Misenium. He left his nephew one hundred and eighty books in fine writing; thirty six volumes of Natural History; twenty on the subject of the Roman wars in Germany; and thirty-one on the history of his own times. His style lacked the elegance of the Golden Age, we are told. He discussed the stars, the elements, geography, man, animals, plants, and minerals. Buffon said:

Pliny worked on a large canvas, and perhaps too vast: he wished to embrace all: he seemed to have measured nature and found it too small for the capacities of his mind. His Natural History comprises sky and earth, medicine, commerce, navigation, mechanics, the origin of customs; in fact, all human science and arts."

Pliny the Younger must have sadly needed

spectacles by the time he had perused his inheritance, if he ever conscientiously read those tomes. To the Plinys is attributed holding a heavy globe of glass, filled with water, to the eye to render objects larger and more distinct. Roger Bacon and Salvino degli Armati, of Florence, were as yet unborn. Also may one venture to infer that there was an element of consolation and relief when the fumes of Vesuvius stifled and extinguished the learned gentleman before he consigned more of his lucubrations to waxen tablet, or papyrus roll? There existed no printing-press and typewriter to keep the world going in his day.

Thus C. Plinius, son of a sister and Lucio Cecilio, a very ancient and noble family of Greek origin, belonging to the Diumvirus of the colony Julia Equestria, stepped on the stage at the age of eighteen years, with the death of his uncle. Let us cling to our idols while we may. The arrow of modern sarcasm has been launched at this paragon. He is pronounced a muff, a tiresome and pedantic prig. French wit terms him "that ninny of a Pliny the Younger, who

studied a Greek oration while Vesuvius engulfed five towns." From our point of view, and especially on the shores of Como, despite flippant aspersions, he shines in the mild radiance of one of the most interesting figures of antiquity. He was born at Como, A. D. 62, in the paternal mansion, situated in a suburb of the town, and approached by a long avenue of trees. Fain would we rebuild that home of the patrician Roman family which was his cradle, out of the fragments of marble columns, cornices, and slabs bearing inscriptions still found near the Lake Larius. Each new-comer may ponder on the matter in his own fashion, and behold rise before his eyes once more the ostium, the vestibule, which gave an entrance to the house, the external posts for the support of lamps, the door, not hung on hinges, but with wedge-shaped pins in the hollows above and below, or moved by means of bronze or iron rings, a portal not fastened during the day, and read the salve, traced in mosaic, on the threshold. Each can penetrate the inner circle of Roman life by the atrium, equivalent to the