tablets of wood, tabella, covered with wax, or on parchment, bound together with linen threads, or sealed with a ring, brought by couriers and messengers. Also, his pocket note-book consists of small tablets, with ornamented covers of gold, silver, or ivory, and a stilus, pointed at one end, and blunted for erasure at the other.

The youngest Pliny is the finest fruit of civilisation, but he can scarcely follow a more noble model than the ancient Roman gentleman. Consider the delicacy of consideration in his gift to Quintilian of a dowry for his daughter, when the philosopher had lost his son. The mode of bestowing a benefit is as much as the donation.

"No one knows better than I, my venerated master, the moderation of your wishes; I know, also, that your daughter has been reared in all the virtues worthy of the child of Quintilian and the granddaughter of Tutilius; but whom to-day you give to Nonius Celer, a very worthy man, honoured with important duties. Our child should be surrounded by those belongings suited to the rank of her husband; this distinction without augmenting our dignity gives us independent

ease. You are rich in gifts of the soul, and other fortune you have always disdained; suffer therefore, my second father, in the name of the many benefactions you have heaped upon me that I give to your dear daughter fifty thousand sesterces. I count on the modesty of the little present to obtain the permission which I solicit of your indulgence."

Consider the munificence and Christian kindness of his last testament. He did not possess the wealth of a Marcus Crassus, yet he paid the debts of a friend, gave portions to faithful servants, bestowed three hundred thousand sesterces on Romanzio Fermo, the land to the old nurse, and public benefits to Como. He was the friend of Tacitus, and these two upheld the antique creed that honour and probity still remained among men.

Pliny the Younger, beside the portal of the Como cathedral, is ever the host welcoming all comers to this summer Eden.

IV

A VANISHED HOUSE

WILIGHT on Como is the calm

T

transition hour when the rich colour

ing of day, flaming in amber, copper,

and golden hues on the peaks, has

been quenched in soft, pearly-grey tones about the base of cliffs, where a silvery veil already gathers with the mists of night. Stars begin to sparkle in the vault of sky above the lake, and a ray of light trembles here and there on the surface of the water.

The Berlin professor wanders apart, responsive to the spell of the spot. He is a quiet man, large, bearded, and spectacled, affable in manner to all in the casual intercourse of travelling acquaintance, Reisebekamtschaft, and fond of talking with the natives of a country in out-of-the

way nooks. All day he has walked and botanised with his wife, a buxom dame of the Frau Buchholtz type, and smiling daughters. Now he enters the boat of Memory, and steers his way on the unruffled lake to a shrine of fancy. Already the fishermen have prepared their nets in the depths, guarded by an empty boat, with a bell adjusted to ring with every motion caused by a passing ripple. The bell guides his course. That fitful cadence, the merest tinkle of a prosaic warning to respect the rights of a humble neighbour, is symbolical to the savant, calling to him from the immeasurable distance of the Past.

Pliny the Younger built his Villa of Comedy on the brink of the tide. Tradition places the site at Euripus, the lower portion of the Tremezzino, beyond the promontory of Balbinello, or Lavedo, where wall and column have settled beneath the current. The vague outline of possibility in skirting curves of the shore only enhances the charm of endless speculation as to the actual site of the famous residence. All the witchery appertaining to submerged towns, and

church towers that still chime their own knell in ghostly fashion, whether of sea-coast, or inland rivers, belongs to Pliny's vanished home. When the level of the Lake Celano, the ancient Fucinus, was unusually low, in 1752, a city was uncovered, and the statues of Claudius and Agrippina revealed. Thus may Pliny's Villa rise once more as perfect as the fabric of a vision.

The Berlin professor is not solitary in the craft of memory. A spectral crew of kindred souls have already boarded his skiff in sympathetic unison. Salmasius, Casaubon, Lipsius, and Becker share his reveries in this branch of archæology, the study of antiquities.

"Take my glass of intuitive intelligence and spy at the boundaries of Pliny's mansion," quoth Becker.

Strive to live over again Pliny's daily life here," echoes Lipsius.

"Yes; decide for yourself, if this delicious retreat served Pliny to attain the felicity of wellbeing of Horace in realising all his dreams: honourable leisure, a modest fortune equal to