grassy path of even sward led through the forest, and taking one of those which skirted the stream, I strolled along, unconscious alike of time and place. Out of the purely personal interests which occupied my mind sprang others, and I bethought me with a grim satisfaction of the severe lesson Mary must have, ere this, read Rose upon her presumption and her flippancy, telling her, in stern accents, how behind that screen the man was standing she had dared to make the subject of her laughter. Oh, how she blushes! what flush of crimson shame spreads over her face, her temples, and her neck; what large tears overflow her lids, and fall along her cheeks. I actually pity her suffering, and am pained at her grief.

Spare her, dear Mary!" I cry out; "after all, she is but a child. Why blame her that she cannot measure greatness, as philosophers measure mountains, by the shadow ?"

Egotism in every one of its moods and tenses must have a strong fascination. I walked on for many a mile while thus thinking, without the slightest sense of weariness, or any want of food. The morning glided over, and the hot noon was passed, and the day was sobering down into the more solemn tints of coming evening, and I still loitered, or lay in the tall grass, deep in my musings.

In taking my handkerchief from my pocket, I accidentally drew forth the priest's letter, and in a sort of half-indolent curiosity proceeded to read it. The hand was cramped and rugged, the writing that of a man to whom the manual part of correspondence is a heavy burden, and who consequently incurs such labour as rarely as is possible. The composition had all the charm of ease, and was as unstudied as need be; the writer being evidently one who cared little for the graces of style, satisfied to discuss his subject in the familiar terms of his ordinary conversation.

Although I do not mean to impose more than an extract from it on my reader, I must reserve even that much for my next chapter.

THE COMMON ROMAN.

eye, some possible Rienzi, some undiscovered Brutus. I shall see

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At this moment, speculation ending, a slide is abruptly presented of an unsatisfactory description; and I grieve to say that, by the time my whole collection is complete, I am helped to this tame and dismal conclusion:-that the highly moral and sternly virtuous Roman plebeian, waiting in patient resignation for the day of his regeneration, is no more than a sad imposture. No vamping of him up into a severe ancient Roman will do. He fits but awkwardly into the classical suit his friends and admirers have provided for him; and to put him as a lay figure through the traditional poses plastiques, arrange him as Marius among the ruins, or Curtius at the edge of the gulf, or as the stoical pattern Roman sitting at his hearth, newly come in from his plough and waving off the deputation from the republic, is a hopeless and dispiriting task. Let us, however, give him full credit for his playing of Belisarius, with the piteous Date Obolum refrain, and expressively extended hat -a poor washed-out article, a pinchbeck Palais Royal imitation of the fine old material-the blood of the Romulus and Remus vagabondage has come down faithfully; yet that other nobler mixture which came in later and fortified the impure current, is drained away altogether.

Shall I look for it in the cheeks of this noble reverend-looking ancient, who comes along leaning feebly with both hands upon his long that matchless staff? With those gentle eyes; beard flowing in such soft lines; that picturesque dress of the sugar-loaf hat (which can never be repeated too often); and the blue toga with the jacket and coloured stockings; he appeals to my warmest sympathies, and rather still to that silver treasury of Pauls which I take abroad with me in an eternal city. I can fancy him a prince of nobles, a marchese, an eccellenza, who has had a palazzo of his own, and broad lands. I am, indeed, heartily and without invitation, inclined to pity the sorrows of this poor old man, whose trembling steps have borne him to my door; likewise, to speculate (adapting a well-known ballad to the situation) of what is the old man thinking as he leans on his oaken staff? But when I turn my eyes on Ir being long since settled on competent the little woman who clings to the sire's blue authority that the noblest study for mankind is toga helplessly: an actual miniature, with tazoman, I go forth one fresh morning into the elastic letto snowy white, and little tawny neck just Roman air, with a social stereoscope to my peeping out of the linen gathers, with the eyes, casting about for slides. From among bodice and coloured skirt all complete: and the lower ranks and inferior strata, where again turn to the little man who balances her alone the live embers of a nation's nobility may on the other side-a little pocket brigand with be found smouldering, though extinct else- Guy Fawkes hat and jacket, and leggings wound where, I will draw my model and matchless round plentifully, all on a reduced scale—the plebeian, in contrast to the Noble Roman re-appeals to my silver sympathies become clapresented in my last. "I shall see," I say to myself, warming with a generous enthusiasm "I shall see in the Common Roman a noble heart bowed down, striving to assert itself. I shall see a brave race, patient in suffering, but full of hope for the future, waiting for the hour, and perhaps the man. I shall see passing in the open street, with downcast yet sadly expectant

morous. Suddenly a thought of recognition; and, it strikes me, that I have seen the face and flowing beard of the reduced nobleman before now, Ridiculous localities, such as Regent-street and the Boulevard des Italiens obtrude themselves with an absurd improbability, and yet with a curious persistency. Surely not grinding at the distracting organ, O reduced nobleman? I re

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are the

collect it now, and he comes back upon me pho- cruel circumstances, shall cast his skin of rags, tographically. He has been a notability in that and be revealed at the footlights, a beatified walk of art, and an effective study. I grow dis- pastoral being; when I can barely walk a trustful of the reduced nobleman, and of his pic-street's length without his proving personally turesque offspring. I look coldly at this out to me, in a hundred ingenious ways, his utter door group of Laocoon mendicancy, though disinclination for such a metamorphosis? With Laocoon himself at this moment is pathetically passionate declamation we would bid him arise feeding his young from a sort of theatrical gourd or be for ever fallen-but here he is, asleep in or bottle slung round him. And presently it the sun at noontide, and will not hear. It is to all comes out that the reduced nobleman is a be feared that his bosom is not responsive to the gentleman in large practice at his profession; glorious bit of blank verse which enforces the that he has made moneys, now out at in- principle that such as desire to be free must themterest in bank, "Consolidati," or other places selves strike the blow. Our noble guild of begof safe investment; that he rides down to garmen would doubtless be free; but would his place of business on a special donkey of his have the striking business transacted vicariown, returning in the same luxurious fashion; ously by other parties. that he dresses his little auxiliary mendicants forth at noonday when the sun is strikat a costumier's; that he lives on the fat (anding down in the dull fierce way he does here, lean) of the land; that he lets out his noble fea- and I pass by many a church, duplicate San tures, including his beard and almost divine ex- Andreas, San Carlos, and San Gregorios, with pression of resignation, to be modelled, photo- their tall hulking fronts and lanky pillars graphed, painted, frescoed, rubbed in with chalk, toasting and browning steadily under the oven and otherwise artistically dealt with-in short, heat. I know them to be cool as ice-houses, that he is a sleek and adroit impostor, who has breezy and refreshing, inside; but the great deservedly attained to the highest walk in his flapping mats are not lifted, nor profession. The dejected mournful fashion in doors opened, until four o'clock. Still the which the model head droops to one side, together steps afford handsome accommodation, and are with the hand extended after the Date Obolum converted temporarily into open air dormitories; pattern of the unhappy Belisarius, and the and here I see and do respectful homage to the little innocent lips murmuring plaintively, slumbering village Hampden, and to the mute "Sign-or! Signori-no! Signorino mio!" make inglorious Milton, disguised temporarily in a up a composition worthy of a better cause. mendicant's garb. A score of tattered brethren lie about him, in erratic postures-crosswise, upside-down, diagonally-picturesque certainly as a composition, but distasteful in a political economy view; some have recently dined, and, suffused with a grateful sense of repletion, are discoursing most sweet music. One, pursues his profession, mechanically as it were, through uneasy dozes; and when the stranger's footstep is heard, puts forth, with a sort of drowsy instinct, the inverted brigand's hat, held feebly in a tawny brick-red hand. The tawnier face does not so much as lift itself to see what fruit this exertion has borne. Would his mendicancy with the glorious black beard (ex-model doubtless)-would he condescend, for the consideration, say of a Paul, to charge himself with this letter for the post, not two streets away? Answer (blinking languidly at the silver piece, with brigand hat extended): "A baioccho, for the love of Heaven" (chanted in the old regulation whine). "O sweetest signor! O eccellenza! dear little signor! Signorino mio! A baioccho for the love of

Later on, when the stranger's face has grown familiar, the little woman becomes insolent and rampant; and, on the least encouragement, thrusts violet bunches on you with importunity, clinging to your hand. Turning impish and a perfect object of hate, she is at last only to be bought off. Yet there is something novel in this mendicancy, on principles of the sublime and beautiful; something stimulating in a poetic beggary which tenders a bunch of violets with one hand and prays a baioccho, only a baioccho, with the other; at the same time assuring you, in endearing tones, that you are its own dearest little signor. Alack! whispers are borne to me already, mysterious whispers, foreshadowing dimly the fate of the little woman with all her pretty ways and innocent prattle. Griping Belisarius will sell her as model first, then sell her into a sadder captivity. O Romans! O plebs populusque Romanus! I have no faith in your millennium. Can I force upon myself any utopian picture of a Noble Roman regenerated, of that noble individual's being fitted out liberally with parliaments, and free presses, and respectable three per cents., and balance at banker's, with spinning jennies, and throbbing steamengines; with boards of health, and metropolitan drainage committees, and perhaps with clean linen? Can I put faith in his bursting on us one day, a magnificent alliteration, great, glorious, and free, a first flower of the earth, competing horticulturally with other old-established produce? Can we have hope in this marvellous transformation, when, at a touch of the fairy queen's silver wand, the noble creature, now debased by

Sleep is gradually sealing up his eyelids, and the words dying off into a murmur, the brigand's hat drops softly from the tawny fingers, and rolls away down the steps. O begging epicurians, waiting to be regenerated, not even in the degraded round of your own profession can you show some heart or earnestness; how shall it be when the millennium comes about?

There is another slide in the stereoscopic series, exhibiting the Epicurean Labourer as he appears earning his daily crust by the sweat of his brow. Let us wait on this gentleman,

sons of toil are idle six days of the week and rest on Sundays.

Yet another slide in this social stereoscope, still further illustrating the extravagant holding by the faith that all work and no relaxation will result in making Jack, or Giacomo, a dull boy. I stand looking over the parapet of one of the melancholy bridges, corroded out of

by all means. So, striking out of the long lean Corso, sharply to the left, and pushing resolutely past the palace of the Colonnas, where, between two tawdry shields hung out like sign-boards, flaunts the flag of three colours; and debouching suddenly on the monster area where Patagonians must have been playing at gigantic ninepins some time before the Flood, so quaintly suggestive of that pastime are the files of blue all shape and beauty, beyond its mere purbroken pillars tumbled over in the dust, snapped off short, and crowded together in the huge forum called after Trajan, let us make for the great old established original concern — the grand blighted Forum. In that blasted heath of a place which has gotten enclosed somehow in a sober city; where lorn columns stand up piteously abandoned to their loneliness, and a file of stunted trees stretch away with a melancholy gravity; I see our Noble Roman navvy, with all his best energies aroused, busy excavating. Some hundreds of his brethren, having some leisure moments disengaged, cheer him by their presence. I see him and his fellows disposed in tiers along the side of a great earthen hollow which is being cleared out, plying spade and shovel, indeed, but after the most lounging and loitering system of husbandry that can be conceived. It is the very dolce far niente of digging; the procedure being something in this wise. First navigator, who has been in earnest discourse with a friend above, leaning on his spade top, as it might be a brigand standing at ease, suddenly bethinks him that it is time to make some show of action. Accordingly, the implement is slowly brought to the rest, a little pinch of dust or clay which another languid land has cast up from below is scraped together, amounting to perhaps a teaspoonful. Rest and refreshment is surely needed after this exertion, and perhaps a little quiet conversation with sympathiser above; then the teaspoonful being lifted on high with infinite pains, the overtasked labourer wipes his brow and sinks exhausted on the bank. The brethren perform this manual exercise with a faithful scrupulosity, scraping up their respective portions of dust in successive acts. Sometimes labour is suspended generally along the whole line, and a scout being placed on a commanding eminence, dirty packs of cards are produced. The monotony of toil is then pleasingly diversified by games of skill or the more exciting finger gambling.

The loading and general management of a barrow, as applied to scavengering, is a matter of serious moment, and requires the service of four or five men one, to gather the street dust into suitable ant-hillocks; two, furnished with light egg-spoons suited to their strength, to bear the hillocks (by relays) to their vehicle; a fourth, to overlook despondingly the general performance. I have often seen the whole society taking its rest, bestowed, Heaven knows how, on the various projections of the barrow, with one asleep on the wheel. It is the old story, the well-worn joke, of Beppo doing nothing, and Giacomo helping Beppo. Both those worthy

pose of being a bridge and nothing more. I look down at the river below-of a rich coffee colour-gurgling and eddying through the arches, and discover with surprise that industrious Beppo and Giacomo, with a strong force of brethren, are emulating the little busy bee on the old poco curante principles. Beppo and friend, in brigand hats and jackets, have the fee of one parapet; Giacomo and friends have the fee of another; all are carrying on the trade and business of fishing, disposed in shady corners of the piers, fast asleep! Beside each, the coffee-coloured current turns languidly a huge clumsy wheel, and with the clumsy wheel revolves a sort of broad landing net, by which ingenious device Flavus Tiberis is made to fish his own waters. The rickety wheel might have some of the sluggish plebs element in him, so drowsily does he work round, now moving with a creak and spasm, now sticking fast altogether, until some bough or drowned dog is tided full against him, and sets him in motion once more. I wait a full half-hour, looking up and down the river: at St. Peter's yellow casket, glistening afar off in the sun: at the labyrinth of slums to the left yonder, where is the Old Jewry of Rome: at the fringe of tall soiled houses which line the river, all fouled and crusted at their base, like the hulls of old vessels-and am sent off into reveries, as you must infallibly be, should you ever stop to think, even for a minute, in this eternal city. Thence coming down to the sad-coloured bridge again, I find the old wheel turning, turning, creaking as before, with the net still fishless. It revolves many times more with like result. Happy Giacomo and Beppo! They will sleep on, indifferent to what Fortune, fickle jade, may have in store for them. Rusticus expectat (the old worn-out saw), and Rusticus waits, and dreams, and waits, until the river shall go by, and he shall start up regenerated.

But for a reasonable bit of inexpensive luxuriousness-not by any means to be sourly dealt with-commend me to that stereoscopic slide (of the lazy series) depicting light-hearted cocchiere -Roman Jehu-sitting aloft on his box and fencing off the sun with a green umbrella: partaking of his halfpenny cigar, too, with an infinite relish. It is no surprise to see him driving furiously through the shower and protecting himself with the same engine of shelter; but it does verge a little on the comical, when the weary stranger, tramping at sultry noontide into cheerful Spanish Place, finds that the whole line of conveyances has deserted its authorised standing place, and is drawn up on the footway in the cooling shade, in utter obstruction of

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all foot passengers' rights of way and other pri- time, good ecclesiastical red herring, I may vileges. Yet who is there but must cheerfully so deal with him without irreverence. give place, and step round into the road as a is much grimed, very shiny and greasy, and thing of course? for there is no such buffo, entreats your alms with so smug a smirk and quaint, racy, and most diverting class as these air of confidential sanctity, that I am always Ischvok's (?) pilots of the eternal city-inclined to tell him my mind roughly, and ask Leporellos of the box. They have the most why he has left the appropriate hut on the curious affinity to brethren of the same guild mountain where respectable regular hermits are who "direct jaunting cars far away down always to be found at home by the faithful broad Sackville-street, Dublin. From the Corso when they call.

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to Sackville-street, from the august to the fa- I find Plebs standing behind my chair at miliar, and yet the grand column round which great hostelries, proffering dishes and disruns spirally an embroidered belt of metal, isguised as a waiter. His heart is not in the busicommon cab-stand. They are true gos-ness, and he is to the full as languid in his callsoons," and invite you rollickingly with the ing as are the epicurean mendicants, navvies, and bare twinkle of their eye, making that fea- fishermen just described, in theirs; in fact, he ture work on you persuasively. Even as his is one of that company, thinly varnished over brother of Sackville-street, he will put eloquence and disguised in the white neckcloth and jacket into the very top of his whip, and will seduce of the profession. Grattez-le-scrape him with you with a light joke. Do you stop or hesitate your nail (figuratively)—and the old sluggard's at a street corner doubtful of the road? The skin will show through. An hour out of horizon is on the instant clouded with wheeled employment, and he will be blinking and dozing cars converging on you as upon a focus. "Olà! on the church steps. Dolce far niente is tattooed Ho!" Ecco, signor!" "Hi! hi!" "Voitu, upon his wrist also. In the half-hour's lull bem'sieu ?" "Tak a coatch, sair ?" is the Babel of fore the din and flurry of the monster dinner invitation showered on the inoffensive stranger, sets in, I see him and all his fellows out in the Leporello showing his white teeth all the while sun, hanging round the great porch; some, refrom under his moustache pleasantly, gyrating lishing the fragrant cigar; some, chattering and round you adroitly, cutting out his neighbour grimacing; but most, by preference, dozing dexterously, making his highly-trained per- profoundly. Anon the bells ring, the sleepers forming animal describe circles, vehicle and all, awake, eyes are rubbed, and the ministering of the smallest conceivable diameter. The boxes elves who bear round the baked meats yawn seem of a sudden peopled with Murillo boys. over you profoundly. Oftentimes the proffered They invite you in with smiles, they awe you delicacy waits at your elbow, disembowelled humorously with their horses' heads, they go long since by your hands; but the ministrant's on performing surpassing feats of drivership. thoughts are far away, feebly scanning that There is no help for it-you must ascend; two bella donna Inglese, who sits far down the table. Pauls-tenpence is not appalling even to insol- You call to him, and he does not come bounding vency, and your walking virtue is broken down to you like a ball of caoutchouc, rather walks up with a calembour in mellow Italian. So when with a certain stateliness, and, learning your making proposals to a fierce Ischvok, bearded pleasure, says it is well. He is utterly Boeotian like a Calmuck for a pilgrimage to Villa Doria, in matters of direction, and will deal in wretched and the Calmuck being gently remonstrated argot, which he calls French. I am with a poor with for what seems an exorbitant demand, is sick gentleman, on whom some of the unwholeit possible to resist his sudden adaptation of some malaria vapours have settled heavily, and the laws of political economy to the situation? who is feebly bespeaking an invalid's apology "Hark you, signor," Calmuck whispers, gut- for a dinner. Boeotic waiter stands before him. turally, and speaking fast, "I am extortionate, "Just the wing of a fowl, cameriere," says the but with a purpose. I demand more than my poor sick gentleman, with a strange trusting faith brothers. But why?" (Calmuck here folds that in the hostelry economy there is room for his arms, aud pauses for a reply.) See little sick-room delicacies which the indisposed these steeds, these noble generous Arabians, may "pick;" "I think I could manage the they will fly the whole way. They cannot be wing, with a bit of fried ham, and an orange." held in. They will do the hour's work in half" The signor will take soup, of course ?" an hour. I shall be the loser. I shall be "Soup!" shrieks sick man; "avaunt! you make ruined in the end. But what matter? Enter, me ill." "At what hour?" asks Boeotian. signor!" With Leporello we must deal lightly," Four o'clock." "It is well, signor." Baotian for the sake of his sly tricks. But for the hermit from the cell in Vauxhall Gardens, who hangs about hotel entrances in a very fair theatrical suit, and who has his cord and serge and snuffy beard and other appointments got up with tolerable appropriateness, I have no manner of toleration. In very plain speech, I look on him as an unmitigated humbug. He is an amphibious bore; and being neither secular fish, flesh, nor fowl, nor, at the same

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retires. Sick gentleman protests that Boeotian is an extra thorn in his sorrows, a hindrance to his being made whole. Reappears Boeotian. "Did the signor say he would take soup? Maître d'hôtel desires to know." No!" shrieks sick gentleman. "It is well," Boeotian says again, retiring; "the signor shall be served punctually at six.' Four, four!" gasps sick gentleman, resignedly. The Roman waiter is not trim and smart, like his kind of other lands,

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but sadly loutish. If there be a crooked wrong places. See into what a mo del figure all these end to your message, as there will be to most touchings are combining to fashion our Common messages, he is pretty sure to tender it with Roman!

that wrong end uppermost.

About the familiar domestics there is a waggish stupidity almost diverting. At a crowded soirée not so long since, the Bishop of X, then abroad from his English diocese, presents himself in his proper magnificence of apron and stockings, together with Mrs. X-, and the Misses X- Wondering openmouthed domestic receives the full style and titles of the dignitaries and those of the accompanying ladies, gasps, rubs his eyes, and has styles and titles repeated to him many times. Finally, in utter despair, he proceeds to his duty, and chants aloud to the astonished company the advent of Il Vescovo Secolare! (the secular bishop). He was mystified with Mrs. Bishop. Another gentleman of Irish extraction-softening down the consonants of his patronymic to fit the Italian mouth-unconsciously scatters terror and consternation among an inoffensive family party by being heralded as Il Vice Re, or the Viceroy. The names of these familiars are sometimes quaintly barbarous, and curiously pagan. Scipio comes to take down your boots; Julius Caesar will rise drowsily from his seat in the hall, where he sleeps through the day and receive your key. The baked meats which do so furnish forth the elegant table of a friend of mine, were once dressed by a skilful "chief," known awfully as Alcides Hercules !

Here is that mysterious perambulator again, which I have encountered so many times before, making triumphant progress through the city, with an admiring company of the great unemployed waiting on it. The perambulator will be drawn in lottery-open-air lottery-and Romulus and Remus, and their scrubby brethren (what concern, in the name of Jupiter Capitoline, can they have with such a vehicle?), are busy taking tickets. I have a dim suspicion that the child's perambulator will never be "drawn," for I meet it again and again, and always doing a brisk business.

It were well, indeed, if Romulus and Remus did not go beyond this harmless dissipation. But have we not remarked in our walks strange significant little temples, sown thickly in every street at first a mystery, but presently, from their frequency, mere things of course? The temples are covered from top to bottom with large numbers, have little frames standing out in the street with special figures of their own. Dark spirits are seen inside, pen in hand, entering unholy contracts; and here again are Romulus, Remus, and Company, in their torn shabby suits, entering in a stream. Figures, frames, familiars, all are at the sign of the Lotteria Pontificie. Plebs Romanus spends much of his disengaged hours at these unholy sanctuaries. The business done is surprising indeed, though the local establishments are scarcely equal to the run, and room is found for agencies from Leghorn and Naples and other

WET WEATHER.

UMBRELLAS from the East, wet weather from the West, and, in this year one thousand eight hundred and sixty, see the jubilee they keep together in Great Britain! It is hardly fair that the Monster Festival should have been held in our part of the world. The attractive example of the Crystal Palace may, indeed, have helped in bringing it about; but although this may be, very possibly, the thousandth, or three thousandth anniversary of the umbrella in India or China, that would be the anniversary of it as a sun-shade, and it is but eighty years—still a score short of the centenary-since it has been used to protect Englishmen from rain. Our girls, indeed, took to it earlier, for they were using it a century and a half ago, when Gay, with manly British scorn of sun and rain, exclaimed,

Let Persian dames th' umbrella's ribs display,
To guard their beauties from the sunny ray;
Britain in winter only knows its aid

To guard from chilly show'rs the walking maid.

All very well for seventeen twelve; but had this poet been singing-if it were in man to sing-under the summer drip and chill of eighteen sixty, would his note have been the same? By what right the umbrellas have appointed to hold during a whole winter, spring, and summer this great festival among us, putting themselves over everybody's head, and sticking out their ribs so ostentatiously, we shall make bold to ask. They could not, of course, meet in Morocco, if it be true that, there, the emperor's umbrella is the only one permitted in the land. In this showery land everybody must have an umbrella, whatever the fatigue of holding it. If it be true, as most people think, while this is being written, that a cycle of rain having set in, there will be no more fine weather until the year nineteen sixty, we accept the rain we cannot stop, as a condition of life; but the umbrella, let it be warned, we do not accept. We cannot give the labour of our right arms to its support for ever.

Our chief rains come from the condensing touch of a chill current of air on the warm moist winds flowing from the southern seas. Rain, says an early pundit, is water that drops down on us out of the sky. The sorts of rain are natural (as cat-and-dog rains, showers and mizzle) and unnatural; the unnatural being divided into hard, as of stones and iron; soft, as of frogs; and fluid, as of blood or milk. Having thus treated of the matter scientifically, we will take it practically. Let it be understood that a fall of an inch in twenty-four hours represents what we in this country consider four-and-twenty hours of heavy rain. Now the regular average allowance of London or Edinburgh is but twenty-five inches a year. The average fall, if