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One has to remind oneself, as one's wrath rises, that no more practically useful work has been accomplished since the days of the Cloaca Maxima and of the Roman aqueducts. would have been not less useful if the architectural opportunities which arose along its line had been better utilized by the descendants of Servius and of Claudius.

But when one has admitted all this and a great deal more, and when one has even exhausted all the charges which architect or engineer, historian or poet, artist or bric-a-brac man may bring against those who have been endeavoring to shape old Rome to the needs of a modern city, one must still in fairness return to the old conclusion that there is no nation in Europe, and no municipality within any nation, which, judging by their results in far less difficult undertakings, would have made fewer mistakes than have been made in carrying out a task which has had no parallel in the previous record of cities. Something has been lost undoubtedly; at given points more has been lost perhaps than need have been; but preservation, not annihilation, has been on the whole the keynote of the transformation. The cry which goes up from other countries, but especially from England, from time to time, that Italy is indifferent to and negligent of her art and her antiquities, is curiously unjust to a nation which, out of a not overflowing exchequer, spends very large sums upon these objects, and occasionally spends a portion of it badly. It is perhaps in one sense fortunate for us that Italians do not travel in large numbers in our country. An educated Italian who wandered through England and noticed how the restorations of the last fifty years have robbed us of some two-thirds of our noblest memorials as effectively as if they had been swept into the rivers, might be inclined to ask on what superiority in these matters

we in England rest our claim to tell Italy how a nation ought to deal with her national birthright.

Having said this, I shall not be misunderstood when I express regret for the loss, the inevitable loss, of so much that gave to Rome its peculiar charm, its flavor-I fear the word may be used in more senses than one-in the days when, forty years ago, she was still looking back in many respects to the Renaissance rather than forward to the twentieth century. It was then still the Rome of Nathaniel Hawthorne, of Charles Dickens, of William Story. Mark Twain's jest that you could not fall out of a two-pair window in Rome without killing a monk or a soldier had some point in it then, for the streets still swarmed with the various orders. They were a typical feature, naturally, of Rome. Numerous in the city ever since the days of St. Francis and St. Dominic, they were perhaps never more numerous than in the years which immediately preceded the fall of Rome. In the mornings the lay brothers went forth armed with their large copper vessels of hat-box shape to gather in the gifts of the faithful or the charitable. Naturally the rich strangers' quarter about the Piazza di Spagna was a favorite hunting-ground for them, though the poorest quarters were not omitted. A very familiar figure to those who lived in Rome at that time was a magnificent dark-bearded Capucino, whose beat in the early mornings lay along the Babuino. The browncowled, stately figure drew many an admiring stare from the passing forestiere, a compliment which he never failed to acknowledge by crossing himself, either as a protection against the inroads of vanity or, more probably, as a safeguard against the evil eye. I often wonder what his fate was at the suppression of the monasteries, whether he was one of those who went forth into the world again, or whether he had

already found a quiet rest in the city of his soul before the evil day came. One may be allowed to hope that the latter was his fate. To-day these picturesque figures are as rare in Rome as in any other town of Italy. They may be seen, silent kneeling figures, in the church of Araceli, most Roman of all Roman churches, but the streets and public places of Rome know them no more save as occasional visitors.

The markets of Rome, in old days almost the most interesting of Europe, have fallen into line with the less picturesque but more regulated markets of the great capitals. The great cattlemarket just outside the Porta del Popolo, a position which it shared with the extemporized Anglican Church-for no Protestant place of worship was allowed within the walls-has migrated to a corner of Rome not far from the old Protestant cemetery, but nearer to the Tiber. The wild Campagna horsemen, with their goatskin aprons and long ox-goads, no longer form a feature of the Piazza del Popolo, nor do the unseemly vehicles piled high with the quaking carcases of pigs and oxen any longer rumble down the Ripette or the Babuino. Gone, too, is the people's market in the Piazza Navona, where everything that flew or ran or crawled, from turkeys and pheasants to porcupines and hedgehogs, squirrels and tortoises, and even green snakes, could be purchased by the frugal housewife in search of variety. It was a favorite resort, too, of the coin-hunter and bibliophile, for here the simple-minded dealer set forth his "Roba di Campagna," and here the equally simpleminded buyer bought his bargains or his experience. For though the peasant did no doubt often deliver here the coins which he had ploughed up from the soil of the Campagna, the antiquity dealer likewise used it for the output of his industries. The stalls have migrated now to the Campo dei Fiori, at

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no great distance. to-day is either less skilful or more unblushing-perhaps both.

But even more interesting was the market, hardly reckoned as such, in the Piazza Montanara, under the Theatre of Marcellus, where every Sunday morning from time immemorial the weekly hiring of laborers had taken place, and on a smaller scale does so still. But those were the days of Italy's "analfabetismo," when few of the field laborers could be trusted to write his own name and none his own love-letter. And the letter-writing scribe did a roaring trade at a little table on the corner of the piazza, while an open-air barber or two shaved their victims with a celerity which savored of sleight of hand. The skill of these practitioners was equal to any emergency which could arise in their craft, but at times the hollow cadaverous cheeks of the victims of malaria, chiefly from Ostia and its neighborhood, tried their resources very highly. But even this difficulty had vanished before the discovery that a walnut inserted in the cheek restored the general level of the countenance. There was no more entertaining spot in Rome in the morning hours; but before midday the blue-coated conical-hatted throng had melted away. There were few after that hour left sitting idle in the market because no man had hired them, and as the various groups, with their sacks flung over one shoulder and a long staff filled with ringloaves on the other, had tramped forth to fresh fields and pastures new, one could realize that the raw material of Italy is as fine as that of any country in the world.

But nowhere has a cleaner sweep been made of houses, men, and manners than in the Ghetto. Of this nest of dirt and unsavoriness, of apparent poverty which often concealed wealth, of squalor inconceivable, of pictur

esqueness unforgettable, the Government have now made an almost entire clearance. The fish market within the portico of Octavia-to the artist's eye Rome had hardly such a subject as that-went years ago. Gradually the rookeries which lay around have followed, and to-day there is very little to tell that this was once the place where the Jews of Rome, herded together like swine, insulted, hated, robbed, and even locked in at night into their ill-savored prison, multiplied and grew rich through many a century. The church of S. Angelo in Pescheria, in which in former days the elders were compelled once a year to listen to a sermon preached against their own faith, still remains, but the whole of the quarter which lay between that church and the river has disappeared. In severe floods there was no part of Rome which suffered so much as the Ghetto. In the flood of 1869 I saw the sight, which has been so often described, of the inhabitants shifting their goods in boats in the Via della Pescheria, into the upper stories of the houses. Men said that these same upper stories concealed treasures of bric-a-brac known only to those daring connoisseurs who had penetrated thither ready "in more senses than one to pay through the nose." I know not. I knew it only through its ground-floor squalors, which were open to the eye of every passer-by. In the cavern-like recesses sat old and wolf-eyed hags amid piles of sour clothing and cheap second-hand furniture. They are scattered now fairly evenly through the va rious quarters of Rome, save that a good many still hang fondly about their ancient home.

But not in the Ghetto alone, though there chiefly, were sanitary methods conspicuous by their absence. There were side streets leading even out of the best thoroughfares, where walking was well-nigh impossible; one such in The Cornhill Magazine.

the Piazza Trajana especially comes to my mind. The primitive method of casting all domestic refuse into the open street had come down with many allied habits from very ancient days. Even to-day they are by no means extinct in Rome, but they have retired from the more fashionable thoroughfares. In those days they gave occupation, or at any rate an interest, to an army of effete and very incapable dustmen who with heart-shaped shovels and Noah's Ark hand-carts, and wearing the inspiring inscription "S. P. Q. R." upon their red hat-bands, followed the contemplative rather than the active life, and longed for the day when they should be promoted to be licensed beggars, and rich beyond the dreams of avarice. The life of the Roman dustman of to-day has been made more strenuous for him, and it is only fair to say that Rome is now a clean town, as well looked after as most capitals of Europe. I do not know of one in which life can be more comfortable. It is of course easy to cry that "Rome is spoilt" every time that we find that something has disappeared from the Rome which we knew when we were young, and before it had once more renewed its everlasting youth. Rome will take a great deal of spoiling. It is safe to prophesy that a thousand years hence it will still be the most interesting city in the world, no matter what changes may have come to it in that time. It has indeed already a very long start-a city of continuous and vital historical interest from its birthday till to-day, and not likely to play a less interesting part in the history that lies ahead than any other capital in the modern world. The Romans do well when they show that they cherish every stone that can remind them of their ancient greatness; they do equally well to fit their city to take its part in the greatness that yet awaits it in the days to come.

Gerald S. Davies.

VI. The end of the fifth year of his exile in Europe found Saleh a very different being to the little, scared, halfsavage boy who had been thrust, like a trapped animal, into Mrs. Le Mesurier's drawing-room. Regular hours, quantities of good, plain, English food, plenty of open air and violent exercise at all seasons and in all weathers, had wrought a great improvement in his physique. He was small of stature, judged by English standards, as are most men of his race; but his beautifully built frame was spare, and hard and active. Each limb was developed to the full, every muscle stood out in a rounded cord beneath the glossy skin. The blood ran warm under cheeks of which the olive tint was hardly more dusky than that of a Neapolitan; his hair, which of old had been so stiff and straight that it had resolutely declined to allow itself to be parted in the European fashion, was now silky and abundant, and, for all its blackness, grew with a slight wave in it, as an Englishman's hair should grow. His great dark eyes were clear and bright, lighting up readily with facile merriment, although there still lurked in them, when his face was in repose, that soft and dreamy melancholy which ever seems to me to speak of the dumb agony of a race doomed to early extinction.

Saleh had always been a pretty boy, and his beardless face still caused him to appear incredibly youthful; but now, at nineteen years of age, he was more completely a man than any of the English youngsters with whom his days were passed. Also he was handsome, -not with the soft, foreign, almost feline beauty that distinguishes so many Orientals, but with good looks of a

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sturdier cast, bred of clean-cut features, manly independence, and self-respect, which approximate far more nearly to English standards of taste. The discipline to which he had been subjected, to which he had resigned himself as to one of the inevitable facts of life, had not succeeded in eradicating all the natural indolence of his character. was still "slack," incurably "slack," more especially whenever anything in the nature of an intellectual effort was demanded of him; but he was not alone in this, for the failing was shared by many of his English comrades. games, however, this weakness did not show itself for the sporting instincts of his race came to his rescue. He pulled a good oar for one of his size and weight; he was a pretty bat, and the neatest of fielders; his activity and dexterity stood him in good stead at Association football and at hockey; he was a beautiful gymnast, and, as a swimmer, no one in his set could touch him. That peculiar form of discipline which is best taught by games, in which a man plays for the side, not for his own hand, had helped to strengthen his character, and he owed far more than he knew to the constant exercise which, demanding so much of his energies, left little over to tempt him to less wholesome things. In this direction, too, climate dubtless aided him, climate and the whole tone of the family of which he had become a member, for Saleh had fitted into the new life so perfectly that he now was seemingly nothing save just what that life had made him.

Moreover, his whole outlook had undergone a change, and women had ceased to be regarded by him as inferior beings, mere playthings given to their master, Man, for his amusement.

He had lived with the Le Mesurier girls as brother and sister; Mrs. Le Mesurier had come to be his mother in everything but fact; and the girls with whom he from time to time associated were often his superiors in education and intelligence, and all now commanded his respect simply by reason of their sex.

Five years before this mental attitude towards women would have seemed to him the veriest topsyturvidom, but now it appealed to him as a matter of course. The change had come about so gradually, was the result of such daily accretions of experience, that he was conscious of no alteration in his point of view. It seemed to him that he had always thought of these matters as he thought of them now; and when he danced with a pretty girl -and he danced quite beautifully-his pleasure was as natural and as little sullied by unholy dreams as that of any right-minded English lad.

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And with all this Saleh was thoroughly, if unconsciously, happy. loved his adopted family dearly, without troubling to ask himself why he loved them; he revelled in the games; he delighted in balls and parties; he was without a care in the world, for his intellectual failures, which were indeed colossal, did not greatly trouble him. Also, during the first five years of his life in Engiand he had no ambitions, no aspirations that were not easily satisfied by a success in the playing-fields or the gym., while his adoption into the family and social circle of the Le Mesuriers had been so complete that he had forgotten that he was divided from them by the accident of color.

Saleh had been transformed into an Englishman, and had himself accepted the fact of his inner transformation so unreservedly that to him it stood in need of no demonstration. His simple paganism, which only by an excess of courtesy could be called Muhammadan

ism, had been scrupulously respected. It formed no part of the white men's scheme that the lad should abandon the Faith of his fathers, wherefore, loyally observing the letter of the bond, the Le Mesuriers had carefully abstained from making any attempt to convert their charge to Christianity. Had they been minded to effect this change, it is probable that they would have encountered little difficulty; but as matters stood, Saleh's opinions concerning things spiritual-if indeed he entertained any-had been suffered to take care of themselves. None the less the sincerely religious atmosphere of the household had made a deep impression upon his sensitive and receptive mind: it had given him new standards, new ideals, and, all unknown to him, had become a prime factor in the regulation of his conduct. He detested reading, hating the mere laborious drudgery of it, and the Bible is a stout volume. He was neither expected nor invited to study it, and save under compulsion it was not his custom to study anything. Even if he had been made to enter that great treasure-house of Oriental wisdom, however, he was at this time too little given to introspection to have made any personal application to himself of aught that he would have found therein. The text which propounds that grim question, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?" would have held for him no special augury. The bitter meaning of those taunting words was to be revealed to him in all its bearings in days which as yet were hidden by the merciful mystery of the future.

VII.

Of that fugue of distracting discords, which in the end was fated to bring to Saleh a dreary enlightenment, the first jarring note was struck, I think, by the little Princess.

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