Mathieu Ropars: et cetera Part 16

"Just as you please, Madam," said the sculptor.

"Well, let it be a bust, that's--determined!"

Two months later, the artist, carrying the bust, encountered on the stairs a merry party. The widow, giving her hand to the elegant dandy who had caused the statue of the deceased to be cut down, was on his way to the Mayor's office, where she was about to take a second oath of conjugal fidelity.

If the bust had not been completed, it would willingly have been dispensed with. When, some time later, the artist called for his money, there was an outcry about the price; and it required very little less than a threat of legal proceedings, before the widow, consoled and remarried, concluded by resigning herself to pay for this funeral homage, reduced as it was, to the memory of her departed husband.

RAMBLING RECORDS.

THE GENTLE ARLESIANS.

**With one exception, however, I gleaned nothing of information that is not already chronicled in the guide-books; and that one piece of information I only set down, because I think it contains a hint that may be made practically useful in certain enterprising circles of New York.

We were in the Arena at Arles. It was a splendid day--barring the Mistral, that windy nuisance, which, as it eddied through the antique and ample Roman corridors, brought to my recollection certain North-Westers experienced on a fine March day in Union Square. In fact, it was far too cold for sentimentalizing or tracing measurements. But the guardian, it seemed, had not latterly had much chance of exercising his vocation, and his tongue was too nimble to be frozen. And so at it he went. Only, being himself more interested in certain proceedings that had lately taken place within a boarded fence that now encloses the arena, than in historical or legendary lore, his subject was by many centuries more fresh than the ruins whereon we stood, sunning ourselves and crouching out of the wind's way. Arles, it appeared, had been favoured with a bull fight, real Spanish matadors doing the beastly honours; but to the credit of the city, be it said, the spectacle was received with intense disapprobation. The gentle Provencals, whose tastes are more Italian than Spanish, could not brook the sport dear to their fair Empress who sets fas.h.i.+ons in Paris. Indeed, the beauteous Eugenie, I fear, will hold them to be the merest milk-sops, for when the grand climax of a disembowelled horse was exhibited before them, the Arlesians, male and female--in place of shouts of triumphant approval--gave vent to loud cries of shame and execration, and in short hissed the Spanish heroes incontinently from the scene of their performance.

But what has all this to do with the future of New York, it may be asked by any reader of these rambling reminiscences. Stay, a moment; I am only at the commencement. I, too inquired if this were all. "By no means, Sir," was the reply. "We had then the real _courses aux taureaux_, and excellent they were." Now I must own that my notions of this branch of the tauromachia were somewhat indistinct. I knew it was not precisely the same thing as buffalo-hunting on the prairies, or as a steeple-chase in Warwicks.h.i.+re or Yorks.h.i.+re; but I could not have defined it to save my life. "Perhaps, Monsieur, has never seen one" was the next appropriate suggestion, and it led very naturally to my enlightenment. Briefly, then, after the torture of the quadrupeds, and the indignant dismissal of the Spanish matadors, the young gentlemen of the town took the place of the latter, and began a diversion, which must have been infinitely amusing, and which, I humbly submit, might be adopted on a different soil. A lively young bull was turned into the arena, and was followed by a number of lively youths, armed only with light staves whereon fluttered blood-red pennons. The fun consists in provoking the excitable animal by the red flags thrust before his face, and eluding the consequences by a run, a dodge, or a jump. The fence, which was a barrier for the bull, could easily be vaulted by a nimble-footed youth--and none but such would venture upon the field. There was just enough danger to make the game piquant; scarcely enough to make it objectionable. One indiscreet young fellow did indeed narrowly escape a catastrophe on the occasion described to me; but the fault was entirely his own. He had been breakfasting at some Arlesian Delmonico's, and had partially lost his wits before coming to the encounter, while retaining all his courage. Therefore it happened--and I only tell the story as it was told me--that the youth, when pursued by the bull, tripped and fell, and the horns of the brute were immediately thrust into the fullest part of his peg-top trousers. A great sensation among the spectators! The bull succeeded in raising and throwing over his head the object of his attack, but by no means in disentangling himself therefrom. His frantic efforts to bring about a summary toss were for some minutes unsuccessful; and the reader may conceive the mingled sense of the ludicrous and the fearful, that pervaded the a.s.sembly. Finally--for even French ca.s.simere will give way in the end--he, the bull that is, achieved his aim, and threw his unconscious tormentor a summerset, being diverted from ulterior measures of vengeance by fresh attacks made upon him, while the crest-fallen hero of the adventure was promptly bundled over the paling. To sum up this sketch of the sport, in the humane and pithy words of the guardian of the Amphitheatre--"it does no harm whatever to the bull, and very little to the young gentleman."

Now then, Mr. Niblo; why should you not establish a Tauro-drome in the centre of civilization? The leaning of the day is toward athletic exercise. In England, at present, there is a run upon rifle-corps; and the boldest riders are all bent upon becoming the crackest shots. In New York, I have read since my absence in Europe, that the great English Eleven have begotten a very rage for cricket. An excellent move this; but then the climate is against it, and the summer is short, and the game is utterly incomprehensible to the gentler s.e.x, who are always prompt to encourage the manly prowess of their admirers. Besides, for lack of a permanent Bude light of adequate strength, we have not yet achieved the desideratum of playing cricket during those special hours when the youth of a commercial community finds itself p.r.o.ne to relaxation. The _courses aux taureaux_ might just as well take place by gas-light and in a New York circus, as amid Roman ruins and under the blaze of suns.h.i.+ne. The dandies of Broadway have the two main requisites for brilliant success in this suggested entertainment. Their pluck may not be doubted; and who that has seen them, agile and unwearied in the German or the _valse a deux temps_, could question their ability to outfoot the fleetest bull that Andalusia itself could supply? I commend the matter then to the serious consideration of Managers in search of novelties, and to belles who would discover what stuff their beaux are made of.

AT NUREMBURG.

For these thirty-eight years past, the _Albion_ hath been protesting once a week, in the Latin tongue, that they who skip over the water change only their sky, not their mental existence. Nor did I ever doubt--indeed I ought to have faith therein--the truth of this motto, until I found myself yesterday in one of the streets of this old city of Nuremburg, with no promenaders at the moment save myself. There was not a man in sight, tiled with a black beaver chimney-pot; nor a woman redolent of the Rue de la Paix or Regent Street. Then it was that I incontinently asked myself if I were truly a Briton by birth and an Anglo-American by local ties; or whether I were not in fact a German burgher of the middle ages. I should scarcely have been surprised at sight of grave Albert Durer himself coming round the corner, or at hearing Hans Sachs, the cobbler poet, trolling one of his six thousand ditties.

To say this, is simply to add the testimony of another witness to that which has set down Nuremburg as the city of all Europe least changed with changing times. The very little that has been done of late years in the way of repairing and rebuilding, within the walls, has been done in strict accordance with the prevalent mediaeval style. The result is that--whereas elsewhere, when you stumble upon a private dwelling of moderate proportions showing plainly that it was built some two or three or four or five centuries ago, you congratulate yourself upon having discovered a curiosity (as such a one really would be in Paris, for instance)--here the difficult search would be for a house, modern and spruce. Not that a rectangularly-ornamented gable-end is the quintessence of architectural beauty, or that a bas.e.m.e.nt front of low iron-barred windows suggests an agreeable or hospitable interior. By no means. If this were all, there would be considerable quaintness, and nought beyond. But it is otherwise. Some of the decorative bits that catch the eye right and left, are absolute gems in their way--whether oriel windows, or fantastic turrets, or figures and devices embossed and sculptured. Taste, generally for the Gothic, but diverging at a later date into the Renaissance style, seems to have run riot here in wilful playfulness.

Of the regular sights set down in the hand-books, and explored by conscientious Englishmen with their Murrays under their arms, it would not be appropriate to speak at length. I may however indulge in an allusion to the different material, whereof are constructed two of the most highly-laboured marvels, here exhibited. Now the city itself is divided into two nearly equal parts by the small river Pegnitz, these parts bearing the names respectively of the princ.i.p.al church that stands in either. The one is dedicated to St. Sebald, the other to St.

Lawrence. The former, as its chief curiosity, contains the shrine of its patron Saint, an elaborate and most exquisitely wrought fretwork canopy, about fifteen feet in height, beneath which repose his remains. The design is in a measure architectural, and Gothic of course; but the ornamentation is its great glory, though one is staggered somewhat at the irreverent juxtaposition of the twelve Apostles with Cupids and Mermaids, and at sundry Fathers of the Church disporting themselves amid cl.u.s.ters of fruit and bouquets of flowers. This monument of artistic skill was the work of Peter Vischer, one of the worthies of Nuremburg, and has been completed three hundred and forty years. The able worker, having dispensed with consistency in the admixture of Christian and Pagan accessories, as I have mentioned, was at least justified in introducing a figure of himself as one of the human animals; and a very fine statuette he makes, with chisel in hand and his working ap.r.o.n about him. Now mark, if you please, O attentive reader, this shrine of St.

Sebald is entirely cast in bronze. To say that the effect is beautiful, is too limited praise. It is harmonious; thoroughly satisfying to the eye; perfect.

Cross with me now, if you be not weary, one of the dozen picturesque bridges over the Pegnitz, and let us see what Adam Krafft, another great Nuremburger of that same age, has done in the same line of Gothic decoration for the Church of St. Lawrence. His work is a shrine, or I should rather say a repository for the sacramental wafer of the Roman Catholic rite. It is an open-work spire, tapering to the height of sixty feet, with an infinity of graceful detail, and rare sculptures in high and low relief. One fantasy is, I think, unique of its kind. The roof is a little too low to admit the crowning summit fairly; and the top, therefore, has been made to bend over. The effect--purposely designed, I cannot doubt--is odd; nor can I agree with the fantastic remark of Murray's Handbook, that it "has the air of a plant which is chocked in its further growth." Spires and plants are not endowed with equal pliability, and the idea of one of the former waving about, or nodding gracefully, suggests an immediate "stand from under." And this all the more in this instance, because--which brings me thus round-aboutedly to my main point--the material hereon employed is stone, a clean and white-toned stone, that looks as though its excellent carvings and mouldings had been completed only for the last Crystal Palace Exhibition. The apparent newness is downright provoking; and if Adam Krafft could peep at it from his honoured grave, he would never dream that he has lain therein three centuries and a half. Let me say further--having thus stumbled upon personalities--that he too made himself as durable as his work. And with more modesty than Master Peter Vischer above named, who moulded for himself a niche in his monument corresponding, in size and position, to the one a.s.signed to the patron Saint, though being at the opposite end of the shrine, the glorifier and the glorified could not be taken into one glance and a comparison forced. There was more modesty, I say, in Adam Krafft's mode of travelling down the stream of Time as showman of his show, though he was not methinks without a dash of _craft_, as befits the bearer of his name. Down upon their marrow-bones (as the school boys have it) with rounded backs grope Adam and his two apprentices, the three backs forming a base of operations, or in plainer words upholding the sixty-feet structure, and doing for it that which is done beneath his rival's shrine by a snail at each of the four corners. Perhaps, after all, the sculptor-architect was wiser than the bronze-caster, in his mode of identifying himself with his work. Amid a mult.i.tude of figures and emblems, Peter Vischer, as well as St. Sebald, may be overlooked, for they are small in size; but you can scarcely avoid asking "who are these three?" when you note how lofty is the edifice that the large quasi-Atlases bear.

Enough, touching these minor differences. The essential one, whereof I intended to speak, is the material in which the pair wrought respectively. I have said that the bronze entirely satisfied my critical eye, which is tantamount to saying that it charmed me. Not so with the stone. It is obviously ill-adapted for detached ornamentation, needing the solid adjunct of b.u.t.tress, window, wall, or pillar, just as ivy needs the oak, or (may I utter such a term?) lace the woman. Indeed, with all my admiration for sundry mediaeval specimens of Gothic architecture, wherein I scarcely yield to John Ruskin himself, I confess that the famous Eleanor's Crosses in England never quite pleased me, because therein the tracery and dainty delicacies of the design are not backed by anything ma.s.sive. The greater part of my readers will not agree with me. I am sorry, but can't help it. Only, I don't want to see any more open-work baskets in stone. Give me the most fantastical of Gothic devices, as many as you please, so long as they have something to cling to.

Finally, I have fallen quite in love with this quaint, irregular old place. Nor do I know how long I might have loitered, had not the inevitable disillusion come, as come it will over so many promising things and fair. Otherwise I might have gone back--in imagination--to those honest old times of Durer, Vischer, Krafft, and Company, and imagined myself a free burgher of a free city. But the spell was doubly broken. At the old castle--whereof some small apartments are unpretendingly fitted up for the King and Queen of Bavaria--there comes upon one, in another part thereof, a vision of certain instruments of torture, used undoubtedly in those good old times to keep the burghers submissive to their oligarchy of merchant princes. And again at the Rath-haus, or Hotel de Ville; the maidenly show-woman lighted us by lanthorn-light through a set of subterranean dungeons, too numerous to have been destined for offenders only against the criminal laws, too horrible to be sanctioned under our creed of comparative gentleness. And so, on the whole, I returned back to actual existence, and to all the boredom of Parliamentary conflicts and Presidential elections, with a certain sense of relief.

ROMAN NOMENCLATURE.

By dint of many rambles I am become fairly versed in the topography of Rome; but its history, as elucidated by monuments or relics, is a perpetual riddle to the beholder. The Republic, the Empire, the Barbarian Invasions, Free Lances, Barons, Kings, and Popes--all are suggested; all come before you in confused array; not unfrequently, three or four at once. You shall go into a church to hear ma.s.s amid modern tawdriness, entering through a mediaeval porch, taking your place between walls that were put up long before the Christian era, and under a roof supported by pillars whereon the sun of Phrygia has shone. Pagan and Christian--all is jumbled; until finally, unless you have the patience of Job and the zeal of an antiquarian, you begin to doubt all legendary and historic lore, and to measure what you see by its external attractiveness alone. One thing, however, is clearly marked.

You are groping about, in a state of vexed uncertainty; suddenly you come upon an inscription, conspicuous, in large legible letters, often gilded. Now you are grateful. You stride up; and lo, there stands, emblazoned before you the interesting fact that such or such a Pontifex Maximus, some Benedict, or Clemens, or Pius, or Leo, or Gregory, restored, excavated, ornamented, or built, as the case may have been, the object upon which you have been pondering. Neither, in the dearth of desirable information, are you compensated by the opportunity of picking up chronological knowledge in regard to the Papacy. These fulsome records omit, not only all description that might be useful; they fail to mention the year of the World, or the year of Grace, altogether. In place thereof, you learn that the digging or decoration in question took place in a certain year of the reign of a certain Pope; but as the chair of St. Peter has had one hundred and sixteen occupants, between A.D.

1000 and A.D. 1860, "Anno VI. of Innocent VI." or "Anno II. of Julius II." does not materially aid the memory as to dates. This petty craving after chiselled or painted immortality is nowhere more contemptibly exhibited than in Raphael's famous Loggie at the Vatican, where, over each separate window, one reads in staring type, "Leo X., Pontifex Maximus." Surely there is something strangely inconsistent, in a power that boasts its remote origin and its endowment in perpetuity, thus taking infinite pains to isolate its historical fragments.

A smile only--not a grunt of indignation--is elicited by another peculiarity of Rome, which comes under the lounger's notice. Something of the same sort is perhaps also observable in all large cities; but it never struck me so strongly. I allude to the names of the streets and squares and public places, which names by the way are carefully and prominently labelled. The jumble is curious, though one starts a little at times from what to Protestant eyes seems irreverent. Take a sample, dispensing with the t.i.tles in Italian. You may stroll through the street of the Three Virgins, of the Three Robbers, of Jesus, of the Tarpeian Rock, of the Two Butchers' Shops, of the Baboon, of Divine Love, of the New Benches, of the Prefects, of the House-tops, of Jesus and Mary, of the Greeks, of the Tower of Blood, of the Triton, of the Guardian Angel, of the Strumpet, of the Soul, of the Scrofula, of the Eagle, of the Lion's Mouth, of the Five Moons, of Minerva, of the Incurables, of the Wind, of the Wolf, of St. John Beheaded. You may halt in the square of the Mouth of Truth, in that of the Field of Flowers, in that of the Satyrs, in that of Consolation, in that of the Goose. It is evident that no ruling mind or principle has regulated this public nomenclature. _Tot homines, quot sententiae._

And is it not the same thing in private affairs? What variety of tastes!

Here is a specimen. Two young men of my acquaintance, who have been campaigning in India, arrived here, the other day, on their first visit. One of them had a relative here, of a scholastic turn of mind, who was bringing a protracted sojourn to a close; and to him the cavalry officers were in a measure consigned. "Can you tell me what's to be seen at Ostia and Veii?" said one of them to me, forty-eight hours after their arrival. "Our friend, B., is going to take us a day's excursion to each place, to-morrow and the following day." I could scarcely keep my countenance. The poor innocents were sold to an antiquarian. Ostia is dest.i.tute of any objects that would repay a half-hour's walk. As for Veii, the learned have only agreed of late whereabouts that ancient city stood.

BRIGANDS, BEGGARS, AND SOUVENIRS.

My last communication was from Rome. It was piquant, on the day of departure thence from Naples, to dine at Terracina with a Prussian family, who had been stopped and robbed by brigands, at eight o'clock the previous morning, at a spot between Velletri and Cisterna. There was however no _Fra Diavolo_ in the case. The respectable _pere de famille_, who with his sons and daughters had been laid under contribution, informed us that the fellows were evidently peasants unused to the trade; that they presented guns, in exacting their demand for money; but that they were nervous in their brief operation, and that they did not ransack the trunks, nor even carry off the watches and rings of the party. The chief sufferer was the vetturino, whom fright and the loss of thirty-six dollars had thrown into a fever, causing the detention which brought us into contact with the narrators. We pa.s.sed on our way, without adventure; the safest period, there as elsewhere, being that which immediately follows one. I incline to think that extreme dest.i.tution induced this recourse to a practice almost obsolete, as it probably gave rise to the personal robberies, unattended with violence, which have been recently rife in Rome itself.

And in connection with this point, I may swell the laments of late travellers as to the chronic prevalence, throughout Southern Italy, of those other unceasing robberies of extortion and mendicancy, which are so much more difficult of toleration. I declare that of all the mythical personages of cla.s.sic lore brought back to one's memory by local a.s.sociation, whether in the Elysian Fields or on the borders of Lake Avernus, the Harpies are those who alone survive, and who obtrude themselves always and everywhere, in season and out of season. The foul brood have a.s.sumed human semblance, and haunt you in all varieties. The unbidden cicerone, or the st.u.r.dy beggar--it is hard to say which is the worse.

How I anathematized them both at Sorrento, where there are certain souvenirs of Ta.s.so, not so direct and tangible as those preserved in the Convent of San Onofrio at Rome, but which are worth the tracing. You will remember that the hapless poet found a resting place here in the house of his sister, after he escaped from his seven years' imprisonment at Ferrara. To be adjured, for charity, in the name of the Virgin and every Saint in the calendar--to have a jacka.s.s and a guide, or a jacka.s.s of a guide, thrust upon you, _nolens volens_ for an excursion that you have no mind to take, or to be importuned to "put out, put out, put out to sea," when you know that March winds and waves make the azure grotto of Capri totally inaccessible--these diversions, I say, do not a.s.sist one in gathering up one's reminiscences of Ta.s.so, however much they may chasten and so improve the temper.

And here I may observe also upon a peculiarity that marks the research of certain travellers, somewhat akin perhaps to the taste which induces certain readers to trace history through personal memoirs, in place of studying broader narrations. If truth were told, there are a hundred who commune with Pepys and Horace Walpole, to ten who find delight in Hume.

So is it--though by no means in the same proportion--with sight-seers on ground that is rich in historical a.s.sociations. All their sympathies, or the larger portion of them at least, are with individuals, as though there were no grappling with a race, a nation, an age that is past.

Stories, wholly or in part fict.i.tious, are their hand-books. To them the Capitol of Rome is the scene of Rienzi's rise and fall, as interpreted by Bulwer Lytton. At Pompeii their chief care is to find out the abode of Glaucus and Ione. Nor can it be denied that there is an additional charm in this mode of viewing localities that are new to us, if it be not the most philosophical. In my own case, without needless parading of the degree in which I share this gentle weakness or disapprove it, I must own that its exercise gives at times an unexpected zest to a ramble. Whilst in Rome, for instance, I do not think that one's serious views of history or art are in any manner jarred upon, because here and there one stumbles upon relics that savour of individuality. At any rate I should not like to have missed the old mansion of the Anviti family, near the bridge of St. Angelo, mentioned by that old gossip, Benvenuto Cellini, as the frequent rendezvous of Michael Angelo, Raffaele, Cardinal Bembo, and other choice spirits of his day. I should have been sorry to have omitted a visit to the boudoir of Lucrezia Borgia, in the Convent close beside the church of St. Pietro in Vincolo, once the residence of Pope Alexander VI., and now mainly converted into a barrack for the troops of "the elder son of the Church." The part however in which is placed this small apartment, decorated with frescoes of the period, is still applied to conventual purposes. There is no legend about the matter, at least so far as regards the possession of the Borgia family; and the room being small in size, and unique in situation and style of ornament within and without, it is not difficult to believe that it was the chosen resort of a young lady in days when there was less gadding about than now. Still, to be candid, I must own that in musing here, as in looking at the lock of the same amiable woman's hair preserved in the Ambrosian Library of Milan, one is apt to have one's recollections of mediaeval depravity not slightly tinctured by visions of Giulia Grisi in the prime of her voice and beauty, to say nothing of Victor Hugo's grand drama, and old Mademoiselle Georges' unrivalled performance therein.

Again, and lastly--lest the reader imagine that when once I get back to Rome, I am spell-bound and cannot leave it--what traveller has not cast a pleased eye upwards towards the window whence the baker's daughter, A.

D. 1515, or thereabouts, ogled the young prince of painters as he pa.s.sed by on his way to, or from his work, at the Farnesina Palace? You know the precise spot, O Viator, in a small piazza very near the Ponte Sisto?

The house is white-washed or yellow-washed now; but there is the old Ionic pilaster, yet embedded in the wall, and the ornamental architectural mouldings yet shut in the Fornarina's window. And here it occurs to me to make one more digression, for the purpose of suggesting a theory of my own touching one of the many portraits of La Fornarina that have come down to us, and that vary so much in expression though all evidently intended for the same person. Between the fine one in the Tribune at Florence, and the filthy one in the Sciarra Palace at Rome, there is the widest possible difference. The former is evidently enough a woman unrefined, though beautiful; but there is neither coa.r.s.eness nor indelicacy in the portraiture. The latter has both these characteristics, pushed to an extreme that is repulsive. It is said to be a copy from Raffaele by Giulio Romano. Now my belief is, that it was painted as a quiz upon his master's grace and delicacy, by the scapegrace pupil who ran counter to those special attributes.

Meretricious, ugly, and vulgar, this wretched creature bears emblasoned in large letters on the bracelet upon her arm the name of Raffaele Sanzio d'Urbino. This piece of impudence seems to me the crowning touch.

I can't credit that such a Fornarina ever came from Raffaele's easel. I do think that a coa.r.s.e-minded and coa.r.s.e-handed young artist may have made fun of his superior in oil--as modern literary wags have sometimes done in ink--and that Raffaele therefore is in no way answerable for that caricature in the Sciarra, which affects to be a reproduction from himself.

LIVRES DES VOYAGEURS.

Verily there is no lack of the plainer symbols of humanity, to remind the wanderer that Childe Harold was bitterly truthful, when he appended to his inimitable descriptions of the Alps the a.s.sertion that they

"serve to show, How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man below."

The impertinences and follies that are penned by men and women in the various Livres des Voyageurs, wherein they record their names, were alone sufficient proof of this. It is true that enthusiasm and fine feeling cannot endure for an indefinite period; and that he would be a sorry companion who always brought his stilts to the dinner-table.

Still, one must regret that a certain craving for notoriety seems to impel so many a tourist to write himself down an a.s.s, whilst no sense of fairness restrains others from commenting, appropriately or inappropriately, upon the names or remarks of predecessors. There is a cowardice and cruelty herein which has, I confess, sometimes made me angry, when the ident.i.ty, characters, and conduct of the individuals concerned were alike unknown or indifferent to me. In place, however, of prolonging this digression, and without the least notion of proving anything whatever by the citation, I beg to offer the reader a brace of extracts from the visitors' record book at the Montanvert.

The first tickled me exceedingly, as a genuine specimen of the so-called Irish Bull. Mr. Somebody had entered his name, and added thereto this valuable bit of information: "Walked up from Chamouni in four hours and a-half, _having lost the greater part of his way_?" The italics are mine, of course; but is not the _mot_ worth its s.p.a.ce in print?

My other extract concerns some of my young countrywomen, and I trust that their countrywomen who may read it will forgive me for putting it into circulation. They are very poor laughers, who never laugh when the joke tells against themselves; in this instance it is we who pay the piper. A party of English school girls had been lately at Montanvert with their governess, and had set down their names one after another in the big book, as is the custom there. A waggish Frenchman, waiting of course until their backs were turned, had bracketted the list, and written against the conclave this pithy and caustic criticism: "_Teint rouge; appet.i.t geant; langage embarra.s.se._" What an ungallant scamp! Yet it must be owned that the same absurd alb.u.m is rich in provocatives. A running fire of sarcasm, exchanged between English and French tourists, marks almost every page.

A SINGULAR ANAGRAM.

Among the curiosities--not of literature--but of letters, the Anagram was wont to be a favourite in the days of a by-gone generation. Who, for instance, has not smiled blandly over that famous transposition, which aptly converts "Horatio Nelson" into _Honor est a Nilo_?

The taste, however, for this sort of laborious trifling has almost pa.s.sed away; nor do we propose to re-open the subject of cabalistic lettering. Our only purport is to offer a new specimen of its eccentricities, which came upon us recently during a vain attempt to solve certain mysteries, that occupy just now many serious minds. It is commended alike to snappers-up of unconsidered trifles, and to readers who chance to be imbued with a little tinge of superst.i.tious sensitiveness. We strive to hope that, though almost as curious, it is not so unimpeachably appropriate as the one quoted above. The name, so much in men's mouths, "Louis Napoleon Bonaparte," may by this method be converted into, _An open plot--arouse, Albion_!