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from Alexandria to Rome by his son. Raised by him in the centre of the Grand Circus, afterwards buried for centuries in the earth, it was exhumed by Sixtus the fifth, and planted there by his architect, Fontana. Thus, brought from Thebes to Rome, this monumental needle is the motionless image of the moving civilization of mankind. Both have travelled from the east to the west, and have a common destiny. Standing in front of the church, the glance may take in the vast solitude of the Latin fields. Saint John-de-Latran may be called the balcony of the desert; it commands the whole Campagna as far as the Albanian hills, whose glittering cities and gloomy volcanic forests bound the horizon. Crossed in every direction by the ancient ways, and aqueducts ruined or standing; strewed with crumbling temples and tombs, converted either into resting-places or stables, the plain is seen thence in all its grandeur and beauty. The small stream of the Marana descending from the Marina across the desert, flows at the base of the walls; it enters Rome by the ancient valley of Egeria, and loses itself in the Tiber, beneath the Aventine.

4. THE BATHS OF CARACALLA. The vast ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, the most picturesque of Rome, are of all the monuments of imperial magnificence in the best preservation. The Thermæ of the ancients were not merely baths, where the most refined luxury exhausted its delights; they were walks planted with trees; covered ways, where the indolent might enjoy the fresh air; they were stadia, where the wrestlers might harden and train themselves by gymnastic exercises; immense galleries, sumptuous museums, where painters exposed their pictures to view, and sculptors their statues; libraries and studious retreats, where the learned might come to read, philosophers to argue, poets and orators to recite their verse and prose. Such were the Baths of Caracalla. Those of Diocletian, on the Quirinal; of Titus on the Esquiline; and those of Nero, between the Agonal Circus, (now the square of Naroneci), and the Pantheon, were all appropriated to the same purposes; but none of them surpassed these in grandeur or beauty. They had not less than sixteen hundred bath-rooms, all separated and ornamented by costly marbles: they were reached by magnificent approaches, and porticos equally superb; the emperor himself had a palace and bath there.

Statuary has drawn, and still draws thence, her chefs-d'oeuvre; it was there that the Scipio of Belvidere was exhumed, as was also the Hercules of Glycon of Athens: the Farnesian Flora, and Bull, inestimable treasures, that Rome now envies Naples; for the queen of the world enriched other nations with her spoils, after having enriched herself with theirs.

Hewn down and scattered by the axe of the barbarians, the forest of oriental columns that ornamented the halls and sustained porticos, now adorn and support with their gorgeous ruins the churches of Rome. The last that was carried away from the soil, was given by the pope to Cosmo of Medici, and removed to Florence.

Although within the enclosure of the walls, and in the centre of ancient Rome, the Baths of Caracalla are now two miles from the Rome of to-day, and distant from every habitation. This isolation stamps them with a peculiar character of desolation and sadness. Bereft of their marbles and paintings, but crowned with wall flowers and lentisks, the high walls of red brick rise from the dense and rank herbage that grows beneath. The ivy tapestries them instead of bronze and gold; the clematis, twines around its graceful wreaths; a hall formerly redolent of perfumes and every delight corporeal and mental, now serves as the unclean harbour for poultry; and the solitary inhabitant of the desert, a peasant, meagre, wan, and wasted by malaria, guards the ruins, like a phantom seated on a sepulchre.

5.-THE SACRED MOUNT. The sun had risen on the Sacred Mount: coming down from the eastern heights of the Appenine, it already illuminated the cupola of Michael Angelo. The long chain of the Sabine hills that girdles the Campagna of Rome to the east, beamed in the early light, and the highest peaks here and there cast over the plain their gigantic shades. The risen sun drew out in strong relief the picturesque varieties of these aboriginal mountains, silvered with cascades, and fraught with remembrances; Tivoli, the residence of Horace and of Ariosto, shone white amongst the rocks on the woody declivity of Catillo.

The Albanian Mount, isolated like an enchanted isle in the midst of the barren and naked desert, but shewed the more in the fiery glow. The humble convent of the Passionists, glittering on the summit, recalled by its splendour the magnificent temple of Jupiter Latial, of

SALAMANCA.

[From the untranslated works of Cervantes.] (For the Parterre.)

which it has usurped the place. Tuscu- THE RATIONAL LUNATIC OF lum, the resting place of a Stuart, displayed its sumptuous marbles and patrician villas, the forests of Mount Algida, encircling with verdure its snowy brow, like a crown of misletoe round a Druid's head.

The Campagna weltered in flames. Winding up from the city to the mountains, six red aqueducts, ruined or standing, delineated in the distance, like aërial bridges, their light and fleeting arches, imparting to the Roman plain a character of grandeur and poetry peculiar to itself. The pines of Italy languidly waved in the sun their graceful fans; and nearer to Rome, the grave fir of the villas, reared its brown and motionless pyramid. On this side, and not far from the Sacred Mount, a villa, fresher and gayer than the rest, marked the boundary of the desert; the blue peak of Soractes completed its limit, whilst the shadowy outlines of the Cimiro floated far distant in the west. Some ravaged villages, feudal towers, and ruins of every kind and every age, strewed the hills and valleys with which the moving plain is furrowed; and in its brilliancy, surmounting the cupolas of the Holy City, the golden cross of the Vatican, the star of the world, beamed in the azure heaven like the Labarum of Constantine.

The point of beauty of these stern and sad perspectives, the Sacred Mount, was yellow with grain. Rather a hill than a mountain, the offspring of the extinct volcanoes of Latium, its base is washed by the Anio, whose green and rapid waters blend lower down with those of the slow and yellow Tiber. A mile higher up are lost in it, like two threads of gold, the famous rivulets of the Allia from Numentia, and the Cremere from the Veies, both wealthier in glory than in water.

The sun inundated and tinged the whole expanse, but it gave not voice to those mute fields. The grave of Roman grandeur, their silence is eternal as the silence of the tomb. A herd of white goats quenched their thirst in the Anio, near the picturesque bridge of Numen tia, whilst the shepherd on horseback, galloped, lance in hand, between two sepulchral ruins. Bedford.

B. E. M.

LOTS OF FATHERS AND MOTHERS.

A correspondent in the October number of the Gentleman's Magazine, states his opinion that the author of the book of Enoch "was a descendant of the ten tribes residing in Judea !!"

"Sounding in moral virtue was his speech." CHAUCER.

CHAP. IV. OUR licentiate's madness not only ren.. dered him insensible to the fear of exciting enmity by his strictures, but actually shielded him from the hostility which a satirist of perfectly sane mind is apt to awaken; so that all sorts of people would follow him, to hear the remarks which he made upon all trades and professions, without doing him mischief, and without suffering him to rest. Still he would not have been able to keep off the boys, but for the exertions of his keeper.

One asked him what he must do in order that he might have no one to envy.

He answered-" Sleep; for all the time that thou sleepest thou wilt be equal to him whom thou enviest."

Once, there was passing by the place where he stood, a judge who was going to try a criminal cause, and was taking with him a number of people, and two alguazils or peace-officers. He asked who that person was; and when he was told, he said-"I'll engage that that judge carries vipers in his breast, pistols in his ink, and thunderbolts in his hands, to destroy all whom he is commissioned to try. I remember that a friend of mine, in a criminal commission which he held, once passed so severe a sentence that it exceeded by many degrees the guilt of the delinquents. I asked him why he had passed so cruel a sentence, and done such manifest injustice; he answered, that he meant to grant an appeal; and that he should thereby give the members of the Council an opportunity of shewing their clemency in mitigating this his rigorous sentence, and reducing it to a measure proportioned to the offence. To which I replied, that it would have been better to have passed such a sentence as would have saved them that trouble, since they would then have considered him as an able and upright judge."

In the numerous circle of people, who, as has been said, were constantly listening to him, he observed an acquaintance of his in the habit of an advocate, whom another addressed as Mr. Licentiate: and Vidriera, knowing that he was not even so much as a bachelor, said to him

“Take heed, my good friend, that your title does not come in the way of the brethren of the redemption of captives, lest they should take possession of it as being astray."

To which the friend answered-" Let us not quarrel on that account, Mr. Vidriera, for you know very well that I am a man of both high and deep learning."

Vidriera replied "I know that thou art a very Tantalus among the learning; for what is high is just above thy reach, and what is deep is just below it."

Coming one day to a tailor's shop, he saw the tailor with his arms across, instead of his legs; and he said to him, "Without doubt, master, you are now in the way of salvation."

"Why do you think so?" asked the tailor. "Because," answered Vidriera, "since thou hast nothing to do, thou hast no occasion to lie."

He added" Wo to the tailor that does not lie every day of the week, and work on Sundays!"

Of shoemakers, he said that in their own opinion they never made an ill-fitting shoe; because when it fitted their customers too tight, they said that it must

be So, because tight shoes looked the most genteel, and that after an hour or two's wearing they would be as easy as a slipper; and if they happened to be too wide, then they would say, it was better that they should be so, on account of the gout.

A sharp lad, who was a writer in a provincial office, troubled him very much with questions; and told him the news of the town; as Vidriera descanted upon all topics, and answered all that was said to him. This youth once said, "Vidriera, last night there died in prison a man of the name of Banco (Anglice, Bench) who was condemned to be hanged."

He answered, "Then, Mr. Banco did well, to make haste and die before the hangman came and sat upon him:" alluding, as the reader is probably aware, to the practice, at Spanish executions, of the hangman's jumping upon the shoul ders of the criminals after they were turned off, in order, as was said, to dislocate the neck; a practice disgusting enough in appearance, but probably humane in reality, as shortening the struggles of the sufferer, though surely more decent means might have been employed to produce the same effect.

Another time, he met a shopkeeper's wife, taking with her a daughter of hers, who was very ugly, but loaded with

pearls and trinkets; and he said to the mother, "You have done well, to pave the way for her with abundance of stones; else she would have found it difficult to pass."

Against the titereros or puppetshowers, he had a great deal to say; he called them a vagabond set; and said that they treated sacred things with indecency, for that, by the figures which they exhibited, they turned devotion into ridicule; that often, they stowed the whole, or the greater part of the personages of the Old and New Testament into a bag, and sat down upon them to eat and drink in the taverns and eating-houses. In fine, he said, he wondered that their exhibitions were not either entirely suppressed, or banished from the kingdom.

One day, there happened to pass him in the street, a comedian dressed like a nobleman; and on seeing him, he said, I remember to have seen that man appear on the stage in a sheepskin doublet turned inside out, and having his face whitened with meal; and yet when he is off the boards, he is constantly swearing on the word of an hidalgo."

"No doubt he is one," replied one of the bystanders, "for many of the players are persons of very good birth."

"That may be," returned Vidriera ; "nevertheless there is nothing which the stage has less need of, than persons of good birth; of genteel figure I grant they should be, and of ready elocution. Moreover, it may be truly said of them, that they earn their bread in the sweat of their brow, with incredible toil, having constantly to get by rote their different parts, and wandering continually from place to place, ever exerting themselves to give pleasure to others, since on that pleasure depends their own profit. Besides, in their trade they deceive no one, as they constantly produce their goods to public view, submitting them to the inspection and judgment of everybody. The labour and care of the managers is inconceivable; and they should gain a good deal in the course of the year, to save them from turning bankrupt at the end of it; and yet their profession is necessary in the commonwealth, as are woods, groves, vistas, and other objects that afford harmless recreation."

He said that it had been the opinion of a friend of his, that the man who paid court to an actress, did, in her single person, do homage to a variety of mistresses, as for instance, to a queen, a nymph, a goddess, a waiting-maid, a shepherdess, and not unfrequently to a page or a

lacquey; as it often fell to the lot of one of those ladies, to personate all, and more than all those different characters.

When asked who had been the happiest person in the world, he replied, "NEMO,-because nemo novit patrem, nemo sine crimine vivit, nemo sua sorte contentus, nemo ascendit in cœlum."

Of professed fencers he once observed, that they were masters of an art, or science, in which, when they had most occasion for it, they were least skilful; and that they were somewhat presumptuous in striving to reduce to mathematical demonstration the motions and passionate impulses of their antagonists. Against men who dyed their beards, he had an especial hostility. There is a Spanish proverb, which they apply to any one who affirms a thing as beyond all doubt of which at the same time he is not certain, that he lies by one half of the beard. So Vidriera once said to an elderly man whose beard had been dyed, but from neglect was now half black and half white, that he would by all means advise him to beware of getting into a dispute with any one as in his present condition, they would be very apt to tell him that he lied by one half of the beard.

Respecting this trick of dying the beard, he once related the following anecdote :

"There was a certain young lady, possessed of a considerable share of wit, who nevertheless, in obedience to the will of her parents, consented to marry an old man, whose hair was perfectly grey, or rather white, who, on the night preceding the wedding-day, went, not to the river Jordan, as the old women say, but to the bottle of aquafortis and silver, wherewith he renovated his beard so completely, that it went to bed of snow, and rose the next morning of pitch. When the hour for the nuptial ceremony arrived, the young lady looked attentively in the face of the bridegroom; then turning to her parents, desired them to give her the same husband they had shewn her before, as she would not have any other. They answered, that the person she saw before her was the same whom they had shewn her, and chosen for her husband. The bride, however, persisted in declaring that it was not the same, and brought witnesses that the husband whom her parents had chosen, was a man of reverend aspect, covered with grey hairs, and that as the gentleman present had none, he could not be the same; and she com

plained that they wanted to deceive her. To this plea she clung so resolutely, that the man of the renovated beard was put quite out of countenance, and the match was broken off."

Duennas, or old maids, he likened to dried fish. He particularly remarked upon their primness, their shroud-looking head-dress, their squeamishness, their scruples, and their extraordinary parsimony; and ridiculed their qualms, their meagrims, and their mode of talking with more hems than there were plaits in their head-gear; and finally, he vented his spleen against their inutility, and their eyelet-holes.

He was once asked, "How comes it, Mr. Licentiate, that although I have heard you speak ill of many callings, yet I have never heard you say anything against the scriveners,* much as there is to be said?"

To which he answered-" Although I am of glass, yet am I not so frail as to allow myself to be carried away by the current of popular opinion, which generally sets in a wrong direction. It seems to me, that the subject upon which all novices in the art of detraction first exercise their powers, is that of the scriveners, alguazils, and other officers of the law; and yet the office of the scrivener is one absolutely necessary to the public security: so Ecclesiasticus tells us, 'In manu Dei potestas hominis est, et super faciem scribæ imponet honorem. The scrivener, I say, is a public officer, without whose ministration the office of the judge cannot be appropriately discharged. Scriveners must, by the law, be free; neither slaves nor the sons of slaves, legitimate children, and not sprung from any bad race. They swear secresy, fidelity, and to make no usury deed, and that no private interest or partiality shall induce them to perform their office otherwise than conscientiously, as honest men and Christians.

"But if this calling requires so many good qualifications, wherefore should it be thought that of upwards of twenty thousand scriveners which there are in Spain, the Devil sweeps off the whole as so many plants in his vineyard? I will not believe it, nor is it fit that any one

* In Spanish, escribanos. A numerous class, distinct from the procuradores or attorneys, their province extending not to the giving of advice, but simply to the making out of legal &c. They were literally, as their name imdeeds and instruments, the noting of evidence, ports, law-writers, and nothing more.

should; for, I once more repeat it, there is no set of men more necessary in a well-ordered commonwealth; and that if they take too many fees, it should at the same time be remembered that they are too often cheated."

Of the alguazils he said, that it was no wonder they found enemies, their office being to take a man's person or his goods, or to keep him in custody in his own house, and eat at his expense. He censured the negligence and ignorance of the attorneys and solicitors; comparing them to the physicians, who take their fee whether the patient recovers or

not.

One day, a wasp stung him on the back of his neck, and he was afraid to shake it off, lest he should shatter himself; but still he complained of the pain. A person who was by, asked him how he could feel that sting, if his body was of glass? To which he answered, that the wasp was a backbiter, against whose sting not glass, nor even brass, was proof.

A very corpulent monk happening to pass by, one of Vidriera's listeners said, "The good father can hardly carry himself along.'

To which the licentiate angrily replied "Let no one forget the words of the holy spirit-Nolite tangere Christos meos -touch not my anointed;" and raising his tone still higher, he desired them to observe, that of the many saints whom within a few years the church had canonized and beatified in that part of the world, not one of them had been called captain Don this, nor the secretary Don that, nor the count, marquis, or duke of such or such a place, but brother Diego, brother Yacinto, brother Raymundo, all holy monks and friars; for that the religious orders were the royal gardens of the king of heaven, whose fruits were served up to the table of God. He said that the tongues of detractors were like the feathers of the eagle, which eat into and destroy those of other birds which they happen to touch.

Of gamblers, and the keepers of gaming-houses, he had a good deal to say. He praised the patience of one gamester, who went on playing and losing a whole night, and who, although he was of a fiery temper, yet for fear his antagonist should rise and go away, did not let an angry word escape him, though he was suffering the torments of the damned. He also admired the consciences of some worthy gaming-housekeepers, who would on no account suffer

any unlawful game to be played in their houses, but who nevertheless got more in a quiet way, and without fear of the informer, than those who allowed the prohibited games.

In fine, he made so many sagacious observations, that had it not been for the loud cries which he made when any one touched him or ran against him, the peculiarity of his dress, the slenderness of his diet, his mode of drinking, and his sleeping constantly in the open air in summer, and in the straw heap in winter-all which clearly indicated the one strange idea, or mono-mania that possessed him-he appeared in every other respect a man of the soundest

sense.

CHAP. V.

Our poor licentiate's infirmity continued for two years or a little more, until a monk of the order of St. Jerome, who was particularly skilful in making the dumb understand, and, in a certain manner, speak, and in curing the insane, charitably undertook to cure Vidriera, in which he succeeded, and recovered him entirely from his strange delusion. As soon as he found him entirely sane, he dressed him as a doctor of laws, and sent him back to the capital, that, giving there as many proofs of his sanity as he had formerly done of his madness, he might exercise and succeed in his profession.

He accordingly went, calling himself the licentiate Rueda, instead of Rodaja; but he had scarcely entered the town, before he was recognized by the boys: however, seeing him in so different a dress from that which he had formerly worn, they dared not shout after him nor ask him questions, but they followed him and said one to another, "Isn't this the madman Vidriera? It must be he. He's dressed now like a man in his senses; but after all, he may be mad in a good dress as well as a bad one; let us ask him something, and then we shall find out. All this was overheard by the licentiate, and made him feel more abashed and confused than he had ever been in the time of his infirmity.

From the boys this recognition was soon communicated to the men; and before the licentiate arrived at the patio de los consejos, or square of the courts of law, he had more than two hundred people following him, of all descriptions. With this attendance, which, says our author, was greater than that of a professor, he arrived in the precincts of the

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