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of abbés. The Abbé Sertori, author of the drama of the Conclave, was another type of his class. The one was a courtly, inoffensive gentleman, who asked nothing of a Government save protection from annoyance, moderation in taxes, and all possible facility for those pleasures of social intercourse which seemed devised specially for the satisfaction of men like himself. As a boy he was page in the great house of Colonna, and as such saw all the notables who visited Rome, from a very near standpoint. He was specially attached to the Princess Mariana Colonna, and tells us how one day his lady allowed him to kneel in the road and give her his leg to serve as a step to her coach. He loved the Colonna family through good and evil report, and when married, and with three fine daughters—whom he uncavalierly kept to himself, so that they had no chance of husbands—and when Rome was as different as it well could be from the Rome of Ganganelli, or the early years of Braschi’s reign, his diary bore witness to his interest in the Colonna as much as to his quaint concern in the anarchic changes around him. When the French have disturbed the old order of days, he thus relieves his mind in his diary: “Good-bye to the calendar and the saints! There are no more weeks, and no more Sundays. I thought it was the 21st of the month of March in the year of the Lord 1798: it is, however, the 1st of Germinal in the sixth year of the Republic.” Again, when the rumor gets abroad of the statues of the Virgin in different churches miraculously opening their eyes: “I wonder,” he whispers to his diary, “who wouldn’t open his eyes in these times!” On the absurdity of the paper money of Rome: “Forty crowns worth of the cedulas will buy forty-two figs in the Piazza Navona!” He is altogether, indeed, an interesting figure; and one can readily conjure him to the mind, in his black coat, waistcoat, breeches and stockings, silk cloak fastened at the shoulders, dainty Brussels lace at the wrists, conspicuous shirt-frill, and refined manners, which last were, however, a distinguishing feature of most abbés at a time when in Roman salons they formed the majority of the guests. The Abbé Sertori, on the other hand, represents the bitter-

tongued wit, who was worth conciliating by those in authority. There was also the literary or archæological trifler of an abbé, who made himself ridiculous by his erotic verse and enthusiasm over a cameo or enigmatic inscription, and was a fit subject for the mordant scourge of Parini’s pen. The Abbé Benedetti’s favorite literature was Macchiavelli’s “The Prince.” This, too, is significant of the tone of thought in Rome during the latter half of the eighteenth century.

All men of ability in Rome at this time who were not ecclesiastics aspired to become abbés. That was not a difficult feat. In spite of Papal bulls to prevent people dressing indiscriminately as abbés, doctors, advocates, poets, men of letters, and even dentists, claimed this harmless distinction. It seems to have been a species of popular self-ennoblement—perhaps an unconscious concession of the spirit of the time to the latent craving for at least the husks of that equality and general brotherhood which was soon to be proclaimed so sensationally in Paris. The old nobility, who had the right of creating “cavalieri,” could afford to look leniently on this assumption of those whom we now call the middle classes; but there was more danger in them than either the Pope or Rome’s hundreds of princes and dukes seemed to think there might be. Even as the abbés were the professional enliveners of the princely drawing-rooms, also they ruled the roost intellectually in the coffee-houses of the Corso, and especially in the Café Veneziano. Here Rousseau’s notions were bruited and discussed, and here the leaven of republicanism swelled in many minds; and when France’s emissaries came south with their boxes of tri-color cockades a welcome was assured for them. There was little luxury in these cafés, and a single spoon passed from tumbler to tumbler among the coffee-drinkers; but the cafés were beginning to supersede the old mutilated statue near the Piazza Navona as a mirror of public opinion. The Rome that for two centuries and a half had complained about and criticised its rulers only through the mouth of Master Pasquin was amassing strength in this new direction. The childish saying of wonder of the Princess Santacroce

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to her governess—"I thought there were only gentlemen and servants in the world"—might have come from the mouths of many adult Romans a hundred years ago. The abbés and their successors were to bring enlightenment.

It was to conciliate the irresponsible, light-hearted, and ignorant pleb., that to the very last the Popes surrounded themselves with a pomp and glamour that made the people cry "Bella!" as if they had received a fine gift from a Fate. In his coronation procession to St. John Lateran to the roar of cannon and the clashing of all the bells of Rome's innumerable churches, his Holiness was attended by a bodyguard of four-and-twenty pages with long hair, in vestments of silver embroidery, white silk hose, and with white plumes on their heads. Of course, further, there was his regiment of Swiss, in helmets and breastplates of glittering steel, with their breeches and hose of the Papal colors—red, black, and yellow. Of nobles and princes and cardinals, in all the splendor of their wardrobes, there seemed no end, as the long line of them passed through the Forum—then a mere cow market, with the heads and stumps of temples and triumphal arches protruding from the mire, and with a barber's shop insinuated under the stately porch of Septimus Severus. One could fancy the more pensive and cultured of the abbés, in watching the dazzle of this sparkling magnificence attendant upon Christ's Vicar, thought in words much like those of Taine a century later:
> "Modern life is perched upon all these great relics of old time like a mushroom on a dead oak."
Mark, too, the de meanor and satellites of the various cardinals and prelates on their mules, with violet and black housings, their valets carrying scarlet portfolios embroidered with their Graces' coats of arms in gold and silver, and their mace-bearers supporting silver maces of rich and admi rable workmanship. Preceded by the cross raised aloft, and guarded by sol diers in scarlet and soldiers in blue silk from the loins downward, the Holy Father himself appears, on a white mule, draped with crimson velvet, em broidered with gold, and himself superb in scarlet velvet and ermine, surmounted by a stole of heavy gold embroidery

ornamented with huge pearls. Of old it had been the custom to scatter silver to the crowd on these occasions; but this sop from greatness to insignificance was discontinued, because of the forty persons who were crushed to death in the struggle for the coins in the time of Paul IV. On this particular day, yet another time-honored (and also too often dishonored) privilege was withheld. The basalt lions on the Campidoglio were wont to spout wine gratis while the Pope thus traversed his faithful city. Ganganelli put a stop to the practice: not grudgingly, but from a paternal interest in his subjects. The pleb. did not forget this sin of omission in the Pontiff. After his death the Jesuits stirred the city with their epigrams about his "meanness and av Rice." Ganganelli was too wise and too good, in being also too simple-minded, for his age. His words on several subjects are worth remembering, notably these: "The Holy See will not perish, because it is the base and centre of purity; but the Popes will be made to surrender just as much as has been given to them." So on toward the Basilica. It was on the incline thitherward that the accident happened which appalled so many of the devout, who were as full of superstition as of devotion. The Papal mule stumbled, and his Holiness fell off, prone upon the ground. Here also, however, Ganganelli showed the resource that marked him no ordinary Pope, and therefore, perhaps, an extraordinary man. "This," he exclaimed, as he rose to his feet, "is Paul's way of taking possession, not Peter's;" and his smile soothed the by standers even more than his words.

Clement's depreciation of the Church's interest in temporalities might well have been extended in a more personal way to the cardinals themselves. No wonder the Emperor Joseph II. despised the Papacy when he saw on what a pedestal it rested, and from what roots its head proceeded. We would not imply that there was much, if any, of that open profligacy of the worst kinds which made Rome infamous under earlier Popes; but there was enough and to spare of scandalous extravagance and levity. Innocent XI. shed tears while taking their eminences to task on

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this very subject in a private conclave a century before. Their eminences were not to be persuaded. They drove in state coaches that shone with gilding, and kept miniature courts of their own. The gems on their fingers were sometimes priceless, and they demanded from the world of the laity an humble respect that their conduct and calling ought of themselves to have commanded.

Of the more luxurious of these dignitaries, our Cardinal Duke of York, De Bernis, the French Ambassador, and Cardinal Maurice of Savoy, must be individualized. The Cardinal of York was not satisfied to enter Rome from his episcopal see of Frascati in an ordinary manner. Foot-runners preceded him to clear the way; and his eminence, with his many followers, passed through the gate at a gallop. The Cardinal of Savoy, on public occasions, had a train of two hundred coaches, and an army of gentlemen attendants. Lastly, the Cardinal de Bernis, whom the Cardinal de Albani loathed, introduced so much luxury into Rome that his villa was reckoned a fair miniature of Versailles itself. Under Pius VI. Rome was the gayest city in Europe. Her palaces were nightly a blaze of torches; and the common people thought themselves happy indeed in the fireworks and music and the fine show of coaches and well-dressed ladies which fell to their share. The cardinals, unless they were decrepit or serious-minded, enjoyed these revels to the full. As it was a maxim in Rome that religion, politics, and philosophy should not be mentioned in society, their eminences diverted themselves on the frivolous footing common to the rest of the nobility. They might not dance; but they formed the warmest of platonic attachments. They played basset and faro with their jewelled fingers, and lost and won piles of gold without scruple.

Here is a pretty picture of the times, in which our Cardinal of York has a share. It was the 3rd of March, 1782, and the French Ambassador was giving a profuse entertainment in honor of the Dauphin's heir just born (to die seven years later). Rome was in a whirl with gorgeous lumbering coaches in its unlit streets, and the lights of the torch-

bearers flashed against one another. At the portal of the Ambassador's palace the coaches of the Cardinal of York and of the Princess Rezzonico chanced to clash. The Princess was the chief guest of the evening. Naturally, therefore, the coachman strove for precedence of entry into the courtyard. This was not to the Cardinal's mind. One of his runners held a torch under the noses of the Princess's horses, and forced them back. Thus the Cardinal passed in. The Princess was so chargrined that she publicly sulked all the evening, and declined to occupy the seat of honor prepared for her. To be sure, the following day the Cardinal sent her a formal apology for his servant's conduct; but, in return, she gratified the Cardinal with this message of resentment: "Tell his eminence that I will have his lackey flogged by my servants, and that he himself is not a gentleman like his brother who, though a claimant to the crown of England, when he met the Duke of Gloucester in the Piazza Navona, gave way to him."

The modern visitor to the Palazzo Colonna may be glad to realize in a measure something of the splendor of the house a hundred years ago, when the head of the family was Grand Constable of the Kingdom of Naples, and the name Colonna was still dear and reverend to the Roman pleb. Its glory now seems to have departed. Even the famous Sala dei Specchi, with its mirrors, flower-painted by the famous Mario, does not please, save for its eccentricity. There is nothing in the palace now of supreme interest, except Gaspar Poussin's landscapes.

The Abbé Benedetti has left us a very intimate account of one of the great Colonna receptions, which it may be worth while to reproduce.

It is the 28th of June, 1776—the day on which the Pope was wont to receive in state the Neapolitan tribute from the hands of the Constable, as representing the Neapolitan king. The seven thousand ducats have been duly brought to St. Peter's on a valuable white mule. The mule has obsequiously bent its knees to the Pope, who has in person acknowledged the tribute ("for our dominion of the two Sicilies"), and has afterward been led to the Vatican stables as a

["1894.", "ROMAN SOCIETY A CENTURY AGO.", "401", "perquisite over and above the ducats. It is now for the Colonna to rejoice Rome with a festival after its own heart.", "The palace front, and the street in both directions, are illuminated. A platform has been built for a band, which discourses sweet music while the guests arrive, and for the amusement of the populace, who keep good order—thanks to the soldiery and their own sober instincts. Coach after coach rolls into the great courtyard; and their occupants are welcomed by twelve stout porters in livery with silver staves in their hands. Moorish slaves and family retainers in the Colonna colors, give diversity to the staircase (lit by countless wax candles), by which the guests, followed by their servants, ascend to the State apartments. From a first anteroom the visitors pass to a second, where a bevy of major-domos, in black caps, bow them on to a third. Stewards, or gentlemen of the Colonna family (in black, with swords, valuable lace, silk cloaks, and girt at the neck by massive gold collars), take them in charge, and introduce them into the Sala dei Specchi, where each guest has his place allotted him, strictly according to his rank.", "The Princess goes through her ordeal of welcoming near the door of the great hall. She is seated, and supported in her trials by her cavalier servente, a man whose good looks and manners are a byword. Attended by six domestics bearing waxen tapers, ambassadors and cardinals approach her. Nobles give their arms to the ladies they are privileged to chaperon; ordinary gentlemen guide their lady companions by the finger tips. The cardinals are followed by caudatori, tail bearers, who have charge of the long folds of their red cloaks. Ladies' trains are upheld by pages. The ceremony of saluting the Princess is methodical. The ladies curtsey low to her; and the gentlemen kiss her hand, bowing profoundly, with a backward slide of the right foot and a bend of the left knee.", "Parini has written of \"those two sad and tiresome spirits, Ennui and Punctilio, born of Ease and Vanity.\" One may doubt if Parini's noble contemporaries were so much in thrall to ennui as he would have us believe. He, a poor poet, regarded their lives from a stand-", "point apart; and no one felt the imperturbability and insult of class distinctions more. Still, it is hard not to think that there was a vexatious amount of punctilio then current in the world of fashion. For example, here in the Sala dei Specchi a man might be plagued with a malady that made standing a martyrdom to him; but, unless he were an ambassador or a cardinal prince of the blood, he would not presume to sit by the side of the lady whom he favored with his conversation.", "At about half-past ten another piece of ceremony has to be endured. The guests have been introduced to the Princess. Now they must pay their respects to the Prince. A door is flung open, and the great man crosses the threshold with a smile, salutes his guests, all standing, gives his arm to a lady (for once dispossessed of her faithful cavalier), and conducts her to a throne seat which they occupy in common. Again, in exact order of precedence, the guests go through the trials of introduction. It is quite the vogue for a cavalier servente to present a lady if her husband happens to be otherwise engaged, but most ladies are for the moment (the mere moment) taken in hand by their lawful spouses, who for once are not accounted ridiculous in being seen in company with their own wives.", "Now at least there is a certain amount of free intercourse among the guests. Lackeys pass to and fro with refreshments on huge silver trays: roseate ices, strawberries in snow, and choice wines from the Colonna vineyards. The scene becomes animated. On all sides the mirrors reflect the magnificence of powdered heads and the gleam of diamonds and of other jewel he

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Toward midnight the scene changes again. The Prince leads the way into the large gallery, whence great windows look upon the palace gardens, with their oaks and pines and firs rising darkly against the starlit summer sky, and the buildings of Rome beyond. For a moment all talk is hushed, as the music of a pastoral, by Metastasio, or some other master, breaks forth from the garden. There are string instruments, flutes, and clarionettes, and now and then the singing of a master tenor, or a chorus. The guests, steeped in artificiality, listen with restrained breath to the sentimental rhapsody about shepherds and shepherdesses, and afterward resume their conversation. Conjurers, mountebanks, wizards, and a multitude of other attractions, afterward present themselves in brisk sequence. So, with frequent refreshments, the night passes; and when the dawn has well declared itself upon Rome's hills, and the thick pines in the garden have lost their sombre awesomeness, the festival is over.

Metastasio and his melodious trifles were in this age so much the fashion that ladies loved to be painted clasping a volume of his works. Formerly, in their portraits, they held a flower or a bird. The change was welcome, if only as a change.

Another and greater genius for a time contested with Metastasio his hold upon the affections of society. This was Alfieri, whose oddities, pride, talents, and extraordinary devotion to the Countess of Albany made him conspicuous even in Rome. In 1781 he hired the Villa Strozzi, furnished, with the use of the gardens and stabling attached, for ten crowns a month. Nowadays one pays more than that for a single room in an unmentionable street, so vastly have the expenses of living in Rome increased. Here the great dramatist wrote "Merope," "Saul," and other of his plays, dividing the rest of his time between his horses and the great lady who was as proud as himself, and would hardly condescend to speech with any but the very best blood of Rome. Parini must have had Alfieri in view in his lines on "the invincible horse-tamer"—now pressing the warm hand of his lady, and now patting the glossy back of his steed. No man had a more dangerous temper—

as the Pope himself was easily persuaded. One day, visiting his horses (of which he had brought thirteen from England), he found his stable-boy on his favorite barb; nor was his anger appeased until he had thrashed the lad so that his pig-tail, torn from the fellow's head, stayed in his hand. In his autobiography, he tells us how potent was his passion in another direction. The force of his love was such that he had himself tied to his chair that he might not leave his house to return to that of his mistress. It must have been a memorable experience to have heard Alfieri recite his own tragedies. Benedetti was present at one such reading. The play was "Virginia," and the author terrified his audience. He seemed, says Benedetti, like a second Cola di Rienzo. Again, in 1782, at the Palazzo di Spagna, the great man took part in his own "Antigone" before a most noble audience. The Princess Rospigliosi, wearing diamonds worth a million francs, contested with the Countess of Albany the honor of being the chief lady present. The Countess had so little doubt in the matter that she declined even to sit by the side of the Princess. The other ladies marked with evident envy the complete understanding that existed between the Countess and her talented cavalier.

Alfieri's sojourn in Rome was destined to be brief. The Villa Strozzi and the Fountain "di Trevi" (to which he owed many sublime ideas as he ate his simple breakfast of bread and cheese by its side) knew him no more after 1783. In May of that year he was exiled from the Holy City. The Cardinal of York was spiritually antipathetic to this thoroughbred republican, the accepted lover of his sister-in-law; and his influence did the work. Rome was not quite ripe for any but a *dilettante* appreciation of the virile stimulus to political change in Alfieri's sentiments. Ten years more had to pass before it was possible here to amuse one's guests at supper with crackers in the shape of Phrygian liberty caps whence tri-color cockades proceeded.

Celebrities of many kinds came to Rome, like the Popes themselves, to puzzle and divert the Romans, and then pass away forever. Among others, Cagliostro and Corilla should be noticed

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briefly. It had been a piece of ill-breeding unpardonable a hundred years ago to give the famous charlatan precedence over the famous improvisatrice.

The institution of Arcadia in Rome was an eloquent witness to the fanciful revolt in many noble minds against the prevalent luxury and duplicity of society. Men and women who had made love and danced and talked scandal in Roman drawing-rooms and ball-rooms, until these exercises had become habitual to them, suddenly conceived the idea of aping the primitive order of things according to the poets. Nothing would serve their turn but that they must assume pastoral names, and be as nearly pastoral, idyllic, and innocent in their intercourse with one another and the fair sex as their somewhat corrupted natures would let them be. Thus the Duke B. and the Countess C. were known in Arcadia as Strephonito and Clorinda, or something of the kind. At the worst it was not so very culpable as a species of dual existence, even although it was pure affectation.

Corilla Olimpica was the pastoral name of one Maddalena Morelli, a talented young lady whose reputation for beauty and versification extended throughout northern Italy. She was invited to Rome, examined by the pastoral poet-asters, and pronounced marvellous. It was determined to crown her with a laurel wreath, and the élite of Rome were, of course, invited to witness the ceremony. Corilla is described as tall and fair, with long loose blonde hair, vivacious blue eyes, rather large of mouth (as one would expect), gay in expression, with shapely arms and bust, which (after the manner of shepherdesses) she exposed to view. She appeared thus before the most critical and pungent audience the world could show; and her dress of white satin, with a light crane mantle studded with silver stars, much enhanced her appearance. Her examiners had already put her to the test by interrogating her off-hand on twelve subjects, among which were sacred history, revealed religion, physics, metaphysics, harmony, etc. Like one inspired, she had immediately answered, in verse, in the most satisfactory manner. Now, therefore, she was

first formally crowned. Then, being required to improvise "In Praise of Rome," she straightway chanted on this theme to the accompaniment of violins, with a success and enthusiasm that put her audience almost beside themselves with delight. She sang on two other themes taken at hazard. Her fame was established. At the reception which followed, she was congratulated by cardinals and princesses, and, among others, by the Duke of Gloucester; but the poor lady, thus strung to so high a pitch, was doomed to realize that the Arcadians and the nobility were not all Rome. The entertainment over, she was escorted to a gilded senatorial carriage. Here the populace began to hiss her, and home she went to a continued salvo of hisses. Not even the fireworks which, for the mob's sake, had been sent up during her coronation, could convince the conservative Roman pleb. that it was advisable for young women to show conspicuous talent and vaunt their talents in public. Pasquin followed suit to the mob. In short, poor Corilla was so much distressed that she left Rome as suddenly as she had come to it. Perhaps it is well she did so. She was thus, at any rate, spared the mortification of the neglect and ridicule of her aristocratic admirers also, which must have been her lot after the first novelty of her apparition had worn off.

In 1789, Cagliostro appeared in Rome, to end his eventful and iniquitous career. As we read of this arch rogue in Dumas's presentment, it is impossible not to sympathize with him, and feel respect for his powers; but the novelist shows us one side of his life only, and, of course, exaggerates that. It is as well to know that the man who, in September, 1789, claimed to have supernatural powers in the presence of some of the most conspicuous and influential noblemen, ladies, and ecclesiastics of Rome had been a rogue and vagabond from his boyhood. The wife who accompanied him was his confederate. Her beauty had been another source of income in the different European countries through which they had travelled with baleful effect. Born in 1743, Cagliostro or Balsamo (to give him his common name) was thus forty-six when

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he had the audacity to issue invitations in Rome for a séance in his Hall of Mysteries.

The séance was two hours after sunset in the large room of a villa near the Pincian gate. Guests were admitted by a password, and thus ushered into a well-lighted room, on the walls of which the ordinary masonic symbols had been painted in profusion. Statues of Egyptian, Assyrian, and Oriental idols were set here and there, and Latin phrases were written on one of the walls. At the end of the room was a platform, or kind of altar, agreeably furnished with skulls, mummies, live serpents, parchments, crucibles, and powders.

Cagliostro is described at this time as a man of middle height, fat, with a stern evil air, and a suspicious look. His wife was still beautiful, shapely, and of an animated countenance. Entering the room, this accomplished charlatan mounted a tripod and began as follows:

> "I ought to tell you something of my life, reveal to you my past and tear the veil which prevents you from seeing it. Enter, therefore, and listen. . . . I see the vast desert, huge palms casting their shadows on the sand, the tranquil Nile in its course, the Sphinxes, the obelisks, and majestic columns. . . . It is Memphis, the Sacred City; and there is the glorious King Thothmes III. entering it in triumph, after having conquered the Canaanites and Syrians. I see—"

Then, in the presence of the high priests of Roman Catholicism, the fellow pretended that he was with Christ at Cana, and a witness of the miraculous change of water into wine.

Suddenly altering his voice, he cried: "And I, too, will perform this miracle. I will reveal hidden mysteries to you. Nothing is concealed from me. I know all things. I am immortal—antediluvian. *Ego sum qui sum!*"

That said, he let a few drops of a certain chemical fluid fall into a bowl of water, and declared that Falernian wine was the result. The liquor was tasted, and pronounced excellent. Of course, too, he prated of his elixir of life and rejuvenescence. This he brought forth, and tried on several ladies "of a certain age," whose eyes sparkled, and cheeks straightway gained a youthful flush.

Then he went a step farther, and those who remembered his association with the famous diamond necklace ought to have taken warning from history. He claimed to enlarge precious stones, and asked his audience to put his powers to the test. Nothing loath, the Cardinal De Bernis offered a diamond ring from his hand, and cried like a child with delight when the jewel (or something like it) was returned to him twice its original size.

Balsamo was now to give the French Ambassador a shock of another kind. Summoning his "pupil," or medium, he bade the girl look into a crystal bowl filled with water, and relate what she saw there. There and then, on this fifteenth of September Cagliostro told the startled Romans of the ruin that was coming upon Louis XVI.; of the crowd shouting "Down with the king" as they marched to Versailles headed by a duke; of the fall of the monarchy, the levelling of the Bastille, and the liberty that was to succeed.

No wonder the French Ambassador exclaimed:

> "Does the girl mean that these things shall happen to my sovereign?"

To which Cagliostro replied, "I am sorry; but it is so."

This was the sensation of the evening. The after-proceedings consisted mainly of a lecture on freemasonry. Even as it was, the noblemen and ladies present had much to wonder about. If they could have known that, on the 5th October following, Versailles would actually see just the events foretold, their astonishment would have been immeasurable.

Cagliostro had considerable success in Rome after October 5; but his career was suddenly brought to an end. On December 27 he was arrested, with his wife, and indicted as a heretic and worker of spells. His wife confessed the many misdeeds of her husband, and both suffered sentence of lifelong detention. Still under this sentence, on August 28, 1799, Balsamo, Cagliostro, or the Count de Phœnix, left a world that will not soon forget him and his rogueries.

This roughly-drawn picture of Roman society near the end of the eighteenth century would be quite ineffectual if it gave no hint of the general life of the man of fashion at a time when the Pope

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himself loved luxury and an *entourage* of "handsome perfumed youths" more than he regarded the Apostolic traditions of the Church. On many counts, Pius VI. was a respectable Pope. He was not vicious, nor, except in his exactions from his flock, was he tyrannical. Nevertheless, in no way can he be said to have been a blessing to Rome—save in his taste for architecture and antiquities (at his people's expense), whereby the stream of tourist travel Romeward from the north was induced to flow as it had never flowed. The chief shepherd of the Church, driving about in a gilded coach, drawn by six milk-white steeds, did not strike the pleb. of Rome as an anomaly. Their love of spectacle was tickled by the sight. The draining of the Pontine Marshes — Braschi's one thoroughly excellent work—was not appreciated by the pleb. Even that cannot be said to have had its origin in pure philanthropy: of these recovered lands, His Holiness made vast estates for his own family. In many respects it was the most eventful reign for centuries. A rage for excavations took hold of the nobility, resulting in marble "treasure trove" of priceless value. Well might it have been said, just before the French Revolution, that "there were as many statues in the city as living beings." In short, externally, life went on smoothly and enthusiastically; and even after the march to Versailles there were few who dreamed that anarchy would soon set her odious feet in the city dedicated to St. Peter. To some, however, there were fateful signs and portents even in Rome. It was enough to make heads shake when it was told how the Pope was using Church property for purposes commonly reputed secular. His Holiness's spoliation of the Santa Casa of Loreto, to the extent of 3,000,000 francs, was another unpleasant fact. Men who bore this in mind could find plenty of excuse for the French, when, in their turn, they sacked the same treasury, as well as the Vatican halls and library, and all else in Rome they could lay hands upon.

Let us return to the Roman of fashion. The inimitable satirist of the period has perpetuated him for us, and with him has of necessity castigated the Roman ladies whose faithful satellite

he was. He has shown us the dainty dandy from the moment of his awaking in the morning, when his thoughts fly straight to the charmer who has enslaved him, to the last minute of his fashionable day, when he stops and kisses his lady's hand, as, with a sigh, he resigns her, sighing like himself, into her tasteful husband's keeping for eight or nine mortal hours. No sooner have his valets agreed to admit that his toilet is complete than he betakes himself to the lady's house. "Behold how humbly thy domestics fall into double line to welcome thee! Others hasten into the streets to tell the world of thy coming, and others, on timid arms, support thee!" Once again in the familiar pace, he is at home. The husband's rule is over until the fresh dawn breaks. When the company proceed to the dining room, the cavalier leads the way, with the lady, and the husband brings up the rear. The cavalier seats himself as near to his companion as possible. If she declines to distribute the good things to her guests, it is his business to do it, not the husband's. Openly during the meal, the engrossed pair toast each other, and exchange looks of affection. The cavalier applauds the wit of the guests who please the lady, and showers cutting contempt upon those toward whom she feels indifferent. When the meal is ended, it is for the cavalier to touch the hostess lightly on the arm, that she may rise to be guided ceremoniously by him into the adjacent salon.

Here his devotion is continued—"for the faithful cavalier must never leave his mistress's side"—and while they sip their coffee the lovers discuss the weather and the carriage they shall use (they twain alone) for their afternoon exercise in the Corso. In due time they go forth, the gentleman rerevently carrying either the pet dog or the fan and smelling-bottle of the lady. If the dog chooses to lie on the lap of the cavalier, it is but another proof of the man's fidelity. A call or two of ceremony have to be made; and, of course, fan and smelling-bottle or lap-dog in hand, the cavalier follows the lady. The conversation is as piquantly and naively scandalous as can be imagined. Afterward the drive is continued;

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and why should not the amiable pair sit side by side and hand in hand, enjoying it?

Later, who but the cavalier must accompany the lady to the gayeties of the evening? It is his affair to see that her carriage takes all possible precedence of other carriages in entering palace courtyards, and to avenge her if she is slighted in this particular. She enters the reception-rooms on his arm, responding duly to the intelligent and affectionate pressure of his elbow. If, on the other hand, she receives visitors at home, the cavalier must stand by her side to support her and smile with her upon her guests. Perchance she fancies a quiet game in the midst of the babble of frivolous talk around her. If so, it is for the cavalier to oppose her at chess, "a pastime specially invented for the annoyance of jealous husbands." Thus the day wanes toward midnight, when, or soon after, it behoves the cavalier to bid a tender and touching adieu to the sorrowing woman, until a new day is established. If his grief and despair be overwhelming, he may seek to drown them in the gaming rooms. Then either a new distress will oust the earlier one or his woe will be forgotten in the pleasure of the bank-notes with which his pockets are stuffed.

Such was the life of the Roman "young blood" a century ago. His modern descendant is but a thought less ridiculous in his amorous infatuations.

As for the commonalty of Rome in those days; they were the impulsive men and women that they are under Leo XIII., with the same vigorous instincts of loving and hating. Their abounding ignorance and superstition differentiated them from their great-grandchildren of our day. Even now the old dread of bewitchment, evil spirits, and evil eyes, is not dead among them. Then, however, it was as ordinary a note of their life as is the daily newspaper in this enlightened age. In some respects they had more freedom than they have now. They had to be propitiated by the higher powers, to whom, except when it seemed politic to pretend otherwise, they were of no more account than the mud under foot. They had divers harmless enthu-siasms which were not ruthlessly crushed by the cold hand of superior knowledge.

Thus, when in their bacchanals and dances, dressed in their ancient picturesque costumes, they sang proudly "Semo sangue O'Enea" ("We are of Trojan blood"), the cardinals who chanced to hear them would show their incredulity merely by a sage nod of the head as they pinched snuff from their jewelled boxes with their jewelled fingers. They could neither read nor write; but they could love and quarrel, and drink to their hearts' content. In the pitchy darkness after sundown, the wine-shops teemed with disorder, and, we are told, "every alley and porch served as a brothel." They did not think themselves wronged because the ecclesiastics and nobility of Rome dazzled their eyes with the splendor of their dresses and equipages—coaches inlaid with guinea gold, and horses decked with silver harness, and clothed in saddlery rich with gold-and-silver embroidery. The hospitals and pensions and dowries for poor girls, which the nobility cast to them from their abundance, were accepted with sufficient gratitude. Nothing less than a cataclysm could have bred in them disaffection with the Pope and the Papal rule.

Even when the cataclysm came, and revolutionary talk was in the air, the pleb, still clung to the old order of things. So far from welcoming the sowers of sedition, they tore the revolutionary arms from the French Academy, and on the 13th January, 1793, hunted Bassville and his friends with the tri-color cockades through the streets, finally giving Bassville that death-wound which France so amply avenged.

Upon the whole, they lived easy lives under the later Popes of the last century. They could beg, borrow, and steal, even murder, with great impunity. It is computed that in the ten years 1758-69, four thousand homicides were committed in the Holy City. History does not tell us for how many of these crimes the guilty were brought to justice; but, at a time when churches and ambassadorial houses were inviolable asylums of refuge for felons, manifestly a murderer's security from the gallows depended only upon the intimacy of his acquaintance with those sanctuaries themselves.

Lastly, the middle class must again

1894.

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briefly be noticed. Here, at any rate, there was scope for ferment; and it was just among these despised lawyers and doctors, and writers of verse and of prose, that the envoys from "liberated Paris" found themselves at home. The middle-class education a hundred years ago was well adapted to infuriate the more high-spirited of its victims. The whipping-block was used in the priestly schools even more than in the places of public punishment. The influences to which the child was subjected from babyhood seem to have been deleterious. He was hung with charms of several kinds, to guard him from the various evil agents which (he was taught to believe) were constantly hovering about him. To quiet his childish tempers, his mother appealed to goblins and other awful phantasms. Ghosts, demoniacs, the resuscitated dead, and Satanic imps, were an inevitable part of his creed; and he was constantly menaced with the devil in person, who was supposed to be able and willing at a moment's notice to transport naughty children, body and soul, to the infernal realms. Add to all this the deadly dulness and repression of the home life—the wife addressed her husband as "Signor," and the children addressed their parents respectively as "Signor Padre" and "Signora Madre," rigorously conforming to the code of conduct which forbade them to speak unless they were questioned, and compelled them to sit bolt upright in their chairs, and never with crossed legs;—and it will be seen that, if children then had the innate aspirations of children now, they must have had more cloud than sunshine in their lives. Grown to manhood, these Romans constituted the revolutionary leaven in the city; but

their acrimony against those in authority was untarnished by the brutality which made Paris infamous.

Many of the Romans could hardly believe their eyes and understandings when they beheld the French in possession of their beloved city, and existing institutions suddenly and sensationally overturned. "What is Rome," they asked one another, "without her Pope?" Bishops and nuns were now to be seen side by side in the theatres. It was criminal to be caught abroad undoll-adorned with the tri-color cockade. Cardboard and tinselled ornaments of a new kind were flaunted in the public places, with half-naked men, women and boys to symbolize the virtues for which Rome was to be indebted to France—Rome, the inspired source of all earthly virtue! The populace, however, took heart of grace. They hissed these foolish puppet shows, even as they had hissed Corilla and many another distasteful novelty. They cared not a jot to hear that a reign of liberty, equality, and fraternity had begun. Indeed, to them and many of their betters, it seemed as shocking for a cardinal to sign a manifesto, "Citizens So-and-so," as for a bishop to be seen in the theatre, with real women acting on the stage before him. Still, some could live through these years of trouble comforted by a philosophy that told them of the iron inevitability of class distinctions although the empty titles which indicated them might be burned in their register before the eyes of the people.—

"Rogues are still rogues, gentlemen remain gentlemen; the nobility are not the less noble because they are called citizens, and the pleb. will always be the pleb."—National Review.

## OLD WENLOCK AND ITS FOLKLORE.

BY LADY CATHERINE MILNES GASKELL.

THE old town and borough of Much Wenlock, in Shropshire, lies at the foot of the Edge and is encircled by hills. To the east of the little town rise the stately ruins of St. Milburg's Church, while beside them stands the prior's

house, still a dwelling-house, in good preservation. Mediæval customs and traditions have lingered on later than in most places, and the names of many of the streets savor of the past. There is even now a Bull Ring and a Spital

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Street (a corruption of Hospital Street).

The Spital in the days of the abbey was an asylum where the poor and sick could go for a night's lodging, and also served as a shelter for wearied travellers and pilgrims. Above the vicarage rises a green meadow still called the Cockpit. Here in old days the whole village used to turn out and witness the cruel sport that took place there.

In a fine old stone house which was formerly called Ashfield Hall (the town house of the Lawleys, and which was afterward turned into an inn, and known as the "Blue Bridge") some workmen who were repairing the house found, in 1853, a roll of parchment. The house at that time belonged to Dr. Brookes. Unfortunately only one sheet was saved, as the men destroyed the rest, alleging that they were sure "none of the quality would wish to soil themselves with such old rubbish." The document saved related to the resignation of the priory of Bermondsey by John of Cusancia to Henry, superior of the priory of Wenlock, and is dated 1360.

Sir Thomas Botelar, the first Protestant vicar of Much Wenlock, gives a charming description of an entertainment held there, "by desire of the burgesses of the town, at the house of Mr. R. Lawley of the Ash, to my Lord Bishop of Worcester, President of the Marches of Wales, and Justice Townsynde, on their way to Bridgnorth," in 1554. We are told that "the mansion was decked in the best manner, and that silver plate was placed before them, and that they partook of cakes, fine wafers, wyne white and claret, and sack," and that when they rose the distinguished guests "gave great and gentle thanks." Charles I. dated some despatches thence, and tradition says slept one night there.

Wenlock still has its stocks, and formerly had its pillory. The whipping-posts and irons can be seen in the lower part of the old market hall. The gal-lows was on the Edge top. "Scolds" and "shrews" as a punishment were made to wear a bridle. This was a kind of iron helmet which fitted on tightly to the mouth and prevented any movement of the tongue. There was also a cuck-ing or cockold stool, for ducking women of evil life.

The old folk can many of them re-

member seeing women wear the bridle, men whipped round the town, and boys and men punished for milder delinquencies by imprisonment in the stocks.

An old friend of mine, Mrs. Swyney, said to me, "Often have I seen poor Judy Cookson walked round the town in the shrew's bridle. 'Er was said to be the best abuser in the borough, and 'er wud go and curse anybody for three-ha'pence—that was the fee." Mrs. Swyney's mother once, moved to generous pity at the sight of this brutal punishment, exclaimed that she "didn't care how much a woman 'ad sinned, no living soul could deserve that torture;" for I heard "it punished a Christian terrible," and once during the operation of wearing it "the poor creature's face streamed with blood, and two teeth fell out in removing the bridle." Prisoners were whipped from the dungeon below the Guildhall to the White Hart Inn, and so round the town. After they were whipped their stripes were washed with salt and water, and they were let go. All punishments were inflicted on Mondays—market days. Mrs. Swyney was wont to say, "Judy used to abuse Sir Watkin's agent something terrible, 'im as they called ' King Collins,' for 'e did what 'e listed and none durst say 'im may. She was a fearsome pelrollick, it is true, was Judy, but I never knowed as the bridle did 'er any good. It makes me swimey-headed," the old lady would add, "only to think of those Mondays, with the relatives all cursing and crying, the lads laughing and jeering, and the lawyer men looking on to see as their law was carried out."

Every intelligent foreigner believes that during the last century English-men habitually bought and sold their wives at Smithfield. A similar case took place at Wenlock some sixty years ago. Mrs. Swyney has often told me the story of how "a man by the name of Yates sold his wife, 'Mattie,' to a man called Richards." Yates brought in "his missus in a cart, with a halter round her neck, from Brocton, and sold her for 2s. 6d. When Yates got to the market-place 'e turned shy, and tried to get out of the business, but Mattie mad' un stick to it. 'Er flipt her apern in 'er gude man's face, and said, 'Let be, yer rogue. I wull be sold; I wants a