mountains, in April or May the evenings | the rest of the world along with them in in Florence are sometimes a thought icy. their smart, business-like survey of the In one sense, to visit Florence in spring pictures in, say, an hour and a half. is not so much of a change as it might be There is then no sentimental dallying be. to the travelling Briton. Wherever one fore the gems of the Tribuna Chamber of turns one hears the English tongue or the gallery. Most people spend their the American, which is not quite the same hours here; but with the "personally conthing. There's no need to practise that ducted "it is an affair of five minutes at little stock of Italian which has been accu- the outside; and in their ardor to see in mulated with such difficulty, and yet has a the five minutes all the various mastertendency to diminish so fast upon the least pieces of the great artists here collected, encouragement. Why, the beggars them- they dislodge from their vantage positions selves prattle their words of English student after student without much prepicked up in the restaurants or at the tence of apology. The guide, meanwhile, porches of the hotels. Of course every is fiendishly laconic: "The Madonna del waiter and tradesman who knows his Cardinello,' by Raphael; Titian,' mesbusiness is eager to spare you the travail sieurs; this is by Guido Reni; the statue of talking in his own language-and to is the 'Venus de Medici.' And now, genadvance his knowledge of your language tlemen, if you please, move on to the next by forcing it upon you. room!" The more fortunate, because less preoccupied, visitors to Florence look after these bustling, perspiring tourists with an expression in which contempt and pity have a very decided part. There's no end to the social attractions of Florence at this time of the year. By day the blue sky smiles serenely upon the city, its domes, and towers, and gardens, and at night Lung' Arno sees not a little cheerful revelry. There are balls in the pensioni devoted to visitors, and balls in the palazzi which still bear great names. If you do not care for such superlative excitement as this, are there not conven Besides, one is perpetually dropping upon people as familiar as the New Law Courts of Temple Bar. It is either among the flowers stacked by the pavement, or in Vieusseux's library, or in one's own hotel, or at a friend's house, a café, a picture gallery, or a theatre. The "who would have thought of seeing you here?" becomes a commonplace phrase for use in Florence in spring. This is especially so with our American cousins, who appear to have a surprising acquaintance with each other. It is nothing in objection that when at home they live as far apart as is San Francisco from Boston. They allient stone balconies to the windows of all seem to know each other, and to be on the most intimate terms with a multitude of mutual friends. Yet one is disposed to suspect that if they were to return to their own little continent by the same ship, most of them would have nothing more to say to each other-until they met again in Florence in spring. the drawing-rooms which look upon the gliding river? The curtains to the windows are civilly thick, and you may be left undisturbed while you whisper tender words in the ear of the girl who has ensnared your heart, while you glance from each other to the long highway jewelled with lamps, the bridges also resplendent This bustle and brightness is very agree- with many lights, and the bright stars able for a few weeks; but towards the above. Against, one Florentine habit, end of May, if not sooner, one is apt to however, at such a time one has the right yearn for a retreat of a different kind. to protest in all earnestness. There are Tourists are picturesque enough objects, wandering bands of minstrels then abroad especially some of those who come to in the roads professionals and titled Florence in spring, with extraordinarily amateurs. If they espy you in your balcheap tour tickets from Germany, as mem-cony, 'tis ten to one they will form a bers of a pilgrimage bound for the Vati- beneath the window and twang their mancan, or for the pleasures of honeymoon; dolines loudly in your honor and that of yet even tourists become a weariness to the fair lady who is with you. To the unthe soul at length. In particular, one experienced this is apt to be trying, and, grows to loathe the set terms in which moreover, it brings interruption in its the ciceroni explain to the ignorant the train; for straightway there is a rush from แ "sights" they have come to see. within to the balcony, and then your sweet solitude is destroyed. a square This is especially so in the picture-galleries of the Pitti and the Uffizi. There The spring months introduce the senare days when the influx of the "person-sation-loving Florentines to divers relially conducted "is so great that they carry gious festivals which tend to enliven their lives. One after the other the churches | they do and spending their money so celebrate the anniversaries of their patron freely. saints. The masses in the morning are remarkable for the lavishness of the candles, and, perhaps, for the chorister or two borrowed for the occasion from the papal choir, and in the evening the exterior of the church is hung with lamps from the base of its façade to the lofty point of its campanile -a spectacle much to the taste of the Florentines, who come to it in crowds with the unvarying adjective, bella! upon their eager lips. One gets used to this word in Florence. Everything in the city is bella, from the heavens to the flower-girl who is so very positive that the one thing needful to make your own attractiveness complete is the pale pink rosebud she insists on pinning to your coat. The speech of the Florentines is notoriously bella. It is classic Italian, if classic Italian can be said nowadays to exist in the face of the demoralizing influence of newspaper Italian. Some say that outside the Santa Croce gate is the only spot in the peninsula where you may still hear the Italian of Boccaccio. At any rate, Italian scholars may make much of the peasants who here live by the city walls. Raineri, for example, during a ten years' residence in Florence, used to talk with them every day as regularly as he ate his dinner. Unfortunately for the foreigner who desires in like manner to improve his attainments, though the speech of these peasants may be delightfully pure and archaic, their pronunciation is not quite as clear as it might be. The lingua Toscana is there; but the bocca Romana by no means. - Bella, too, in the judgment of the generous Florentines is the conduct of the many crowned and discrowned heads that come here in the spring of the year. Florence annually has a debauch of sovereignty. The people ask each other, when they see a magnificent equipage in the streets with an imposing personage within the carriage, "What king," or, "What queen is that?" And they are as ready to lift their hats and bow smilingly as if the monarch in question were their Own dearly beloved Humbert or Queen Margarita. Their photograph shops are full of the pictures of kings and queens. When Queen Victoria was at the Villa Palmieri, they gave her an ovation whenever they caught her in the streets; and at the railway station their vivas would have been reckoned loud in British throats. The titled world of Europe do well for Florence in visiting the city as Nowhere outside England does one hear so much entertaining gossip about our British celebrities as in Florence - in spring. It seems as, if they all came to the fair city at one time or another. Some, as we know, make it a home. Their names are as familiar in Florentine houses as with us. People point at them from the cafés and clubs as they pass on foot or in their carriages, and tell the latest news about them. Some of this news is sad, scandalous stuff. It could hardly be otherwise in a city that teems, like Florence, with gilded idle youths and unmarried ladies- middle-aged and more who find it vastly cheaper and more agreeable as a residence than any British watering-place. One must not be too credulous in Florence. It Unfortunately the spring does not last forever, even in Florence. By and by, when May has well advanced, the words comincia far caldo (it begins to grow warm) are in every one's mouth. serves as a sort of expanded morning salutation, and the rosy, heated faces of the interlocutors sufficiently suggest that there is truth in the words. The flower feste are over, and the last rose-leaf from the slaughter of so many innocent blossoms has been swept from the street-way by the energetic municipality. There is talk of green figs to supersede the dessert of tiny strawberries, which have for the past fortnight told of the coming summer. Ice comes to table now, as regularly as the mosquito, who has somehow got domiciled in your bedroom, begins to buzz just when you are falling asleep. 'Tis time to pack up and go. If the homeland is too far away, at least one may speed to Vallombrosa, or the coast. Anon, when the torrid days of July and August have died of inflammation, it may not be so very injudicious to think of returning to the heated city. But you would do more wisely to stay away until the winter, or until the first week of April brings spring into full fair birth again. From The Spectator. THE NUMIDIAN POMPEII. TILL I went to Algeria last winter, I had no idea of the number and importance of the remains of Roman civilization still existing in north Africa. For instance, I had read of Thamugas as "a city of Nu midia, near the Aures Mountains," but | fit a vault. Many are lying where they had never heard of the interesting discov- fell. The street runs east and west; we eries lately made there under the direction turned to the right, or west, to visit the of the French Ministry of Education, in principal monument of the city. This is consequence of which the title of the a triumphal arch, erected by the Decurions "Numidian Pompeii is not unjustly of the colony in honor of Trajan, who is claimed for this remote border settlement called its founder. The principal arch of the empire of Trajan. I visited the crosses the street, and there are smaller place on March 7th; perhaps a short ac- openings at each side for foot passengers. count of what I then saw may interest | It is strange to see such beautiful archiyour readers. Algeria is now traversed tecture in this wild and lonely region, by excellent roads in every direction. We where there are now no dwellings but the left the railway, to Biskra from Constan- tents of Arab herdsmen. However, we tine, at Batna Station, and about twenty- have examples of Gothic architecture in two miles from thence, noticed a number of England among the Yorkshire valleys short white pillars standing out against equal to anything in our grandest cathethe dark side of a not very high hill, with|drals. It was the solitary situation of somewhat the effect of a cemetery. An inscription on what looked like a milestone by the wayside, intimated that here was a "Historical Monument, the Roman city of Thamugas," so we turned off by a rough lane across the desolate pasture land, descended into the deep bed of a brook, which we forded, and climbing out on the other side, presently found ourselves surrounded by a multitude of hewn stones scattered among the rank herbage. Some massive foundations and pavements, on which rested large Corinthian capitals, denoted the position of one of the city gates; and further on, we came to the row of pillars already mentioned. Here was the "street called Straight," the principal thoroughfare, wonderfully well preserved, considering that twelve hundred years have elapsed since it was deserted by its inhabitants. This African Pompeii was not overwhelmed by a volcano, but gradually desolated by war, and at last burned by the barbarians of the Aures, to restrain whose inroads it was originally founded. Quantities of charred timber were discovered among the rubbish which covered it; but when this was removed, the great stones of the ancient pavement appeared, neatly joined together, and showing by the tracks of wheels what busy traffic had once passed over it. There was a little ridge raised in the middle, difficult to explain-no marks of horses' hoofs, and none of the steppingstones at corners so remarkable at Pompeii. A colonnade of monoliths bordered this street on each side. Their bases, raised on steps, are entire, but the tops are all broken off, though some are still twenty feet high. Behind the pillars were low shops, like those in the bazaars of Tunis, lined with marble slabs, and roofed over with earthenware jars made for the purpose, without bottoms, and turned to Thamugas that saved it from the fate of Carthage, which served as a quarry to build Tunis and Cairwan. The Corinthian pillars and capitals of Trajan's Arch are of singular elegance, and the varied color of the marbles of different kinds, softened by the exposure of centuries to African suns and showers, adds greatly to its charm. Nothing of the kind that I have seen in Rome itself has given me more pleasure. A statue of white marble has been replaced in one of the niches above. There are several tolerably perfect figures remaining at Thamugas, where, in their ancient drapery costume, they seem to represent the vanished population of this splendidissima civitas, as it was termed. Antique statues have always more effect among their original surroundings than in modern museums. Near the arch is the macellum, or market, a square surrounded by an arcade on columns. The pillars are all fallen, but the stone tables remain in the shops between them. On a hill behind, surrounded by a sort of cloister (some of the pillars are still erect), is the Temple of Jupiter, the only one in the city. It had been damaged by an earthquake in the reign of Valens and Valentinian, when the magistrates repaired it. But it must have been finally overthrown by another shock, as the enormous fluted drums of its columns, and their elaborately carved Corinthian capitals of great size, lie as they fell. It, one would imagine, might be easily restored. One of the four city churches stood a little below this noble temple. They were all small, and of inferior architecture. It is only at Carthage that traces remain of a great basilica like those of Rome. Returning through the Arch of Triumph, we notice a marble fountain, its edges chipped by the frequent dipping into it of bronze and earthenware pitchers. There is no water in the place t now, but the Romans had a neighboring stream conducted to it, and when the hills, now so bare, were covered with forests, the two rivulets not far off were better filled than now. rich and luxurious little commonwealth; even the latrina, near the Forum, are handsomely finished and ornamented. A small square is surrounded by stone seats like the stalls in a church, divided from each other by neat little marble dolphins with their tails in the air, and these fish had plenty of water running round them. Unlike the military Lambessa, Thamugas had no amphitheatre. The baths are in the quarter of the city not yet excavated. What has been uncovered is carefully preserved, very clean, and not disfigured by names scribbled on the walls, as is too common. There are no Europeans in the neighborhood; an Arab peasant is the keeper in charge. We are accustomed to think of the Byzantine reconquest of Africa under Belisarius as a mere brief period of transition; but it has left many monuments in the country, from rude watch-towers to large castles. There is a huge Byzantine fortress near Thamugas, to construct which the public buildings of the city and the tombs of the citizens were ruthlessly despoiled. It was run up in haste in the last agony of Roman rule in Numidia. But the tide of barbarism was too strong, and Kahinna, the Berber priestess, as her name signifies, came down with her wild followers from the snow-clad mountains near and burned Thamugas to save it, it is said, from those yet more savage conquerors, the Saracens, then in the first fury of conversion to Islam. The main street has been cleared to near the east end of the little city, where we can study how the chief civil buildings of a Roman town were arranged. A handsome portico, already referred to, led to the right, into the Forum, a small square with a pulpit for orators at one side; off this were the Basilica and the Senate House, adorned with curious, twisted columns, ending in little darts. The theatre was behind; its seats, excavated in the hillside, are quite perfect, and all the arrangements of the stage, though the pillars of the scena have been broken off. The magistrates' chairs, the mosaic pavements, are all in their places, and I could even read a sportive inscription, traced on the floor of the Forum with some sharp instrument: "To hunt, to bathe, to play, to laugh; this is to live." A lazy fellow had added "to rest; " and another wag "the life of a duck." As the "h" in hoc is omitted, there is a precedent here for the English custom of dropping the aspirate. A table, with little holes for some game, is also carved in a corner of this pavement. May not the Donatist fanaticism to which the first ruin of Thamugas is attributed, have been partly an ascetic reaction against this easy-going, pagan view of life? I suspect, too, that it was a Numidian revolt of the fierce African temper against the rather servile loyalty of the Roman colonists, devoted to the distant Cæsar. The ruins of Thamugas are full of inscriptions, mostly the pompous titles of the reigning emperors. I noticed, both here and at Lambessa, how Geta's name bad been erased by deep cutting into the IN 1603, King James I. was thus aposmarble after his murder. M. Moliner trophized in the Poor Man's Petition: Violle, of Batna, has published a useful "Good king, cut off their paltry licenses little book giving all these inscriptions in and all monopolies! Fie upon close biting full. They illustrate the life of a Roman knaveries!" It was a wasted prayer. city, and show that ambition and vanity Oppressive as the grievance had grown to were as powerful motives then as now. be, the practice of granting royal licenses Some give the cursus honorum, a list of the successive promotions of a great man; others his pollicitatio, the promises of gifts to the city by which he gained his rank, or bought a living," as we say. For priestly dignities among the pagan hierarchy were eagerly coveted, and might be obtained by judicious liberality to the public. One very long inscription records the names of sixty-eight members of the Corporation of the "Republic," as it is called, in the reign of Valens. It was a 66 N. G. BATT. From Chambers' Journal. OF OLD LICENSES. conferring exclusive manufacturing and trading privileges to individuals, either out of court favoritism, as a reward for services rendered to the crown, or in return for a monetary consideration, was too convenient and profitable to the royal grantors to be readily abandoned out of regard for the general good. We do not purpose, however, to dilate upon the mischief caused by the ordinary run of such abuses of the royal prerogative, but simply to note some of the more curious and in teresting examples of the licensing system | pany for whaling on the English coast; in vogue in old days. but very early in the last century, Arthur Says Glapthorne in his play "Wit in a Kemp, Robert Corker, and Valentine EnConstable :" "The Dutch yonder took her nys, believed they could make a good baul up into a what do you call ita sedan." that way. Accordingly, in 1707 they The word, like the thing, was then new to prayed for the royal leave and license to town's-folk, the sedan having just been fish and take whales, crampoes, bottleintroduced into London streets by Sir nosed whales, and other large fish belongSanders Duncombe, under a license he ing to her Majesty by virtue of her royal obtained in 1634, giving him the sole prerogative, on the north and south seas privilege of using, putting forth, and let-adjoining the counties of Devonshire and ting on hire, in London and Westminster Cornwall; her Majesty to retain the power and their suburbs, certain covered car-to cancel the license at the end of two riages, the like whereof being used in for- years, if they neglected to carry out their eign countries, prevented the unnecessary undertaking, or failed to succeed therein. use of coaches, with the multitude of The sanguine three got their license; which the streets were so pestered and whether they got their whales and other encumbered, that many of his Majesty's large fish is not recorded. subjects were exposed to much peril and danger; and the use of carts and carriages for the provisions of the two cities much hindered. Duncombe provided some fifty specimens of the sedan for the use of the public, who took quickly and kindly to the novel conveyances; although, when the Duke of Buckingham, a few years before, imported one for his own personal convenience, he was subjected to hearty vituperation for making beasts of burden of his fellow-creatures. In 1671, Prince Rupert obtained the exclusive right of using an invention for converting into steel all sorts of iron wire, and all manner of edged tools, files, and other instruments forged and formed of soft iron; for preparing and softening cast and melted iron so that it might be filed and wrought like wrought iron; and like wise for tincturing copper upon iron in such a manner as seemed meet in his discretion. Supposing the processes Prince Rupert desired to employ were of his own devising, no injustice was entailed in so privileging him for fourteen years. In 1706, Robert Aldersey was licensed to construct a floating dam to carry barges, lighters, and other vessels over the greatest flats and shallows of navigable rivers, his dam having received the approbation of several of the most eminent mathematicians. At this period the provision of lighthouses and beacons appears to have been left to private speculators, for in 1711 we find James Everard and his wife Rebecca the recipients of a license which was to endure fifty years-empowering them to newly erect, alter, maintain, and improve certain lighthouses and beacons upon Hunston Cliff, Norfolk, with lights to be kept continually burning therein in the night season, for the security of seafaring men passing that way. By way of recompense, the Everards were authorized to demand and take eightpence for every twenty chaldrons of coals, and every twenty tons of other goods in and upon all English ships; and one penny per ton of all foreign vessels passing by their lighthouses, and trading to and fro between King's Lynn and Boston. There was similar justification, too, for In 1709 the readers of "The Tatler " Queen Anne securing Robert Pease, of were informed that a new sort of light, Kingston-on-Hull, against others reaping called a Globe Light, which enlightened the fruits of his ingenuity in concocting a the street and all parts near it with a bright, soft soap for bleaching linen, which had steady light, noway offensive to the eyes, the additional merit of being eatable; as was to be seen at St. James's Coffee-house, it may have been good policy to encourage near St. James's Palace, where the person native industry by giving William Corr who contrived and set it up might be heard the sole right of making "lamb-black, not of, he having obtained her Majesty's patent made before in England, much cheaper and for the same. Probably this was the new better than any brought from abroad; "kind of light, quite different from any yet and allowing Jane Tasker the monopoly used, composed of one entire glass of a of working her own invention for making globular shape, with a lamp giving a flask-cases, and covering flask-glasses with flags, rushes, and straw, in imitation of those brought from Florence. clearer and more certain light, without any dark shadows or anything else confounding to the sight, for which, a year The pluckiest of modern promoters before, Michael Cole of Dublin obtained would flinch at attempting to float a com- a license, with the proviso, that the inven |