to Father Bridgett's Our Lady's Dowry, which seems hardly to have met with the consideration it merits as a contribution to the history of religion in this country.

Mr. Swainson* gives us several proverbs connected with weather-lore which apply to Lady Day, which he says is called in Belgium "D'ons Lieve Vrouw Beklyving," i.e., Notre Dame de la Prospérité; because anything transplanted on this day easily takes root, and seed sown prospers. It is also believed that the year will be fruitful if before sunrise the sky is clear and the stars shine brightly. An Italian proverb tells us that if there be hoar frost on the morning of the feast, it will do no harm.

Se a la madona de Marz vèn giò la brina,

No la fa altra ruina ;"

though this contradicts some French weather sayings-e.g.,

S'il gèle le 25 Mars

Les prairies diminuent d'un quart.

S'il pleut le jour de la Bonne Dame, il pleut à toutes ses fêtes !

A Notre Dame de Mars

Si le soleil fait le luzer (ie., is not bright)
Il y a quarante jours d'hiver.

Mr. Swainson also gives a German saying, which has reference to the fact that in Germany farm-servants generally leave off candles in the evening, on this feast, and begin to use them again at Michaelmas :

Mariekelen pustet dat Licht uth, Michel steckt et wedder an ;t

which finds a parallel in the Italian:

A la Madona de Marz de scoven,

A la Madona de Setember se troven.+

Another proverbial saying, not however connected with the weather, may be added here: it has reference to the possible concurrence of Lady Day with Good Friday

When our Lord falls in our Lady's lap, Then shall England have great mishap. This coincidence, although not common, is not of very unfrequent occurrence. It happened in 1864 and in 1853, neither of which

*Weather Folk-lore, p. 64.

Mary blows out the candle, Michael lights it again.

At our Lady in March we put them by; at our Lady in September we take them up.

years, so far as we remember, were especially unfortunate, so that the fulfilment of this prophecy need not be dreaded.

One local custom connected with Lady Day is recorded in Notes and Queries, 4th series, xi. 412. We read there that certain cakes called "Pope Ladies," are, or then recently were, made and sold at St. Albans on this day. The story accounting for this is to the effect that "a noble lady and her attendants were travelling on the road to St. Albans (the great north road passed through this town) when they were benighted and lost their way. Lights in the clock-tower, at the top of the hill, enabled them at length to reach the monastery in safety, and the lady, in gratitude, gave a sum of money to provide an annual distribution, on Lady Day, of cakes, in the shape of ladies, to the poor of the neighbourhood. As this bounty was distributed by the monks, the 'Pope Ladies' probably thus acquired their name." Without being able to suggest a better, we venture to doubt whether this was the origin of the name: the well-known "Biddenden Cakes" afford another instance of cakes of this shape being made and distributed.*

This scant narration is all that we have been able to get together of interest about Lady Day, apart, of course, from its ecclesiastical history. It shows better than anything else could do, that although an early festival of the Christian Church, it is not one of those which became really popular in England, and which in so-doing left their impress upon the minds and customs of the people.

Old Rome.

T seems to me that your readers will be amused by a comparison of two abridgments of larger works on Ancient Romet (Mr. Burn's and my own) by seeing how remarkably we differ

Hone's Every-Day Book, i. 221-224; and Chamber's Book of Days, i. 427; see ante, p. 39 and p. 135, in this number.

Old Rome: a Handbook to the Ruins of the City and the Campagna. By Robert Burn, M. A., Fellow

in opinion on every point, although both are evidently honest in their views, and the difference is not intentional, only each sees every object from exactly the opposite point of view. The two works might almost be printed in parallel columns with the same result throughout; at the same time, a great deal of information that would be new to most English readers would come out during the process; but to do this would to some seem tedious. I propose, therefore, only to select the most salient points. At first sight it would appear that these two works must be very much alike; each is an abridgment of a larger work on the same subject. Mr. Burn is a Cambridge tutor of great experience, and no doubt is well "up to the mark" in scholarship; I am a well known architectural antiquary, and never pretend to much scholarship, but rely more on the evidence of the existing remains, which I have done much to bring to light and explain. Practically, the two books are as different as possible in every respect. Mr. Burn follows explicitly the German school, and believes the Niebuhr and Arnold theory to be the true history. I, on the contrary, consider it entirely a delusion of the scholars of the last half-century, whose views are demolished by the existing remains, chiefly brought to light within the last twenty years, since the time of Dr. Arnold, with whom I was personally acquainted; and I have often said that if Dr. Arnold were living now, and could go to Rome, he would see at once that Niebuhr's view was a delusion. This view is practically that the so-called "family legends of old Rome" are fabulous -a sort of historical romance of the time of Augustus-because the earliest written record of them that we have is in the histories of Livy and Dionysius, both of whom refer to Fabius Pictor as their earliest authority, he having been the first person to collect the family traditions and commit them to writing; and he lived, as we know from Livy's history, in the beginning of the sixth century of Rome. These traditions were handed down from father to son, for five hundred years, by word of mouth only, before they of Trinity College, Cambridge, being an epitome of his larger work, Rome and the Campagna.

The Architectural History of the City of Rome, abridged from J. H. Parker's Archeology of Rome, for the use of students.

were committed to writing. I admit this, but say, so were the "Homeric Hymns" and all other ancient works of that early period before the use of writing. The Jews were expressly ordered to commit their history to memory in this manner; the fathers should tell their sons the wonders they had witnessed, and the sons should repeat them to their sons, generation after generation. The only written copy of the Books of Moses and of the early prophets was enclosed in the Ark, or "Holy Box," which the Jews always carried with them, and to which so much importance was attached that it was protected even by miracles in case of need. The main point in the architectural history of Rome, is that the only possible mode of explaining the remains that have been brought to light is by the family legends, and all these agree in the most remarkable manner, including even the measurements of some of the most important buildings, as the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, and the great rampart and fosse of Servius Tullius. When Dionysius says that the fosse of Servius Tullius is one hundred feet wide, and thirty feet deep, every one formerly thought there must be some mistake. A part of this fosse has now been excavated under the direction of Signor Fiorelli, for the Italian Government, and the measurements are found to agree exactly. This great excavation, which is near the railway station, is left open, so that the most incredulous can go and measure it for themselves; this alone is decisive of the question. I wished to make the excavation ten years ago, but could not get permission from the Pontifical Government for this, although Cardinal Antonelli generally gave me permission to do all that I asked of this kind.

I will now begin the extracts, comparing one with the other. The Forum Romanum, the very heart of old Rome, is naturally the most interesting to begin with. Mr. Burn begins his description at the south end, from the Palatine. I have begun mine from the north, the Capitol; and as the latter appears to me the most easy and natural, I will follow that rule in my selections.

"Properly speaking, the Forum began outside the wall of the original Sabine fortress on the Mons Saturni, or Capitoline Hill, which was entered by the Porta Saturni; but this

wall of partition having been destroyed after the union of the two hills into one city, the buildings immediately under the south-eastern face of the Capitoline, and reared against it, are understood to be included in the Forum. The whole of that front towards the Palatine is occupied by the high and massive structure called the Tabularium, or Public Record Office, with which were connected the Ærarium, or Treasury, under it, and the Senate-house behind it.

"At its base are the remains of three buildings, filling up the whole space along its wall: that to the east, or extreme right in the plan, is the Temple of Concord, the central one the Temple of Saturn, and the third the Porticus of the Dei Concentes, with the Schola Xantha underneath it."-PARKER, ch. xi. p.

122.

"This ruin is generally called the Tabularium, but it has been shown by Mommsen that there is no ground for supposing that the name was ever applied to it in any ancient writings, and that the name is, more properly, Ærarium Populi Romani, or Ærarium Saturni, and that it was attached to the Temple of Saturn. Many of the temples in Rome had æraria attached to them, and it does not appear that any central place of deposit ever had the name of Tabularium alone, without further title especially applied to it."-BURN, ch. ii. p. 57.

The Tabularium is a long narrow arcade, all the arches of which were open to the market-place until they were built up in the sixteenth century to enable them to support two upper storeys, then added by the municipality, who still keep possession of the whole building, which they now call the "Municipio." Against the back wall of this arcade the marble tablets or tabula, with the names of the consuls, were fixed, whence the name. These tabula were removed to the house of the conservator, on the west side of the square on the top of the Capitoline-hill, in which many objects are preserved for which there was not room in the museum on the opposite side of the square. The Ærarium under it is a series of small chambers with extremely massive walls, and a single narrow light for a window to each; at the back was a passage only, with a doorway to each chamber. It would

be impossible to contrive a more safe place for keeping a large quantity of coin, and it was used for that purpose during the whole period of the Republic. The construction of this part of the building is of the time of the kings. It is recorded that when Julius Cæsar robbed the public treasury he found some of the money of Servius Tullius still remaining in it. What had these separate treasuries for each temple to do with the public treasury? A room over the porch, on the south side of the Royal chapel of St. George, at Windsor, was called the Ærarium; had that anything to do with the public treasury at Whitehall, or the cellars of the Bank of England, in which the coin is kept? I have never seen these, as the public is not admitted to them, but they must bear considerable resemblance to the Ærarium of the time of the later kings and the Republic, which consists of a series of vaulted cellars, as secure against robbers or fire as they could be made, under a great public building, which appears to me must be the same as the building which Tacitus calls the Capitolium, which contained all the public offices of the early city. In justice to Mr. Burn it should be mentioned that the old Ærarium in Rome had been filled up with rubbish for centuries, and was entirely forgotten, until about ten years ago, when the municipality had it cleared out at my instigation, with the help of my friend, Signor Rodolph Lanciani. It is probable that Mr. Burn has never seen it.

"Little doubt now remains that the ruin of the eight columns, the name of which has been so much discussed, belonged to the temple of Saturn."-BURN, p. 48.

"To the south of these three edifices,nearest the Tabularium, runs the pavement of the road called Clivus Capitolinus, which wound up from the Arch of Septimus Severus at the level of the Forum, in front of the Capitolium. On the southern side of that street is another temple, with eight columns of the Ionic order, and a considerable portion of its basement well defined. This is the Temple of Vespasian, or as it is called in the Regionary Catalogue, of Vespasian and Titus, as joint Emperors, The relative position of this and the central one of the three first temples is usually reversed, the name

SCULPTURE FROM ONE OF THE

MARBLE WALLS.

"The principal figure is the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (much mutilated); he is addressing the citizens, when they interrupt him by crying out octo! octo! demanding eight gold pieces, which he gave them (as related by Dion Cassius, lib. lxxi. c. 32). The figure of the Emperor is seen standing on the rostrum, with coins dropping from his right hand (which, with the head, are unfortunately destroyed); the two foremost figures of the citizens are each holding out a hand, one with five fingers extended, the other with three, and the money is seen falling into them.

"This engraving is from a photograph, taken at the time of the excavation of these marble walls in 1872.

have been unfortunately lost. Their original position has been restored as nearly as possible, and they stand parallel to each other in a line crossing the area of the Forum. On the inner sides of both of these sculptured screens, the sacrificial animals-the boar, sheep and bull-always offered up at the Suovetaurilia, are represented. The other sides, which are turned outwards, represent scenes in the Forum, and are commemorative of some public benefaction of one of the emperors, probably Trajan or Hadrian."BURN, p. 42.

"A little below this temple, eastward from it, and between it and the Arch of Severus, are the remains of the Rostra, from which orators addressed the people. There were two such stages or pulpits in the Forum, and this one was distinguished as the Rostrą Vetera.