of

Hard by the gate is the town-hall, Obcina, as it is now marked in the native speech. The mixed style-most likely of the seventeenth century—so characteristic of these parts comes out here in its fulness. Columns and round arches which would satisfy any reasonable Romanesque ideal, support square windows, which are relieved from ugliness by a slight moulding, the dentel-akin to our Romanesque billet-which is seen everywhere. But in a projecting building, which is all of a piece with the rest, columns with nondescript capitals support pointed arches. Opposite the town-hall is one of the smaller churches, most which are of but little importance. This one bears the name of Saint Michael, and is said to have formerly been dedicated to Orthodox worship. It shows however no sign of such use, unless we are to count the presence of a little cupola over the altar. We pass along the ridge, by a house where the projection for balconies, so abundant everywhere, puts on a specially artistic shape, being wrought into various forms, human and animal. Opposite the cathedral the houses display some characteristic forms of the local style, and we get more fully familiar with them as we plunge into the steep streets, following the regular order which has been already prescribed. Some graceful scrap meets us at every step; the pity is that the streets are so narrow that it needs some straining of the neck to see those windows which are set at all high in the walls. For it is chiefly windows which we light upon; very little care seems to have been bestowed on the doorways. A square or segmental-headed doorway, with no attempt at ornament, was thought quite enough for a house for whose windows the finest work of the style was not deemed too good. Indeed the contrasts are so odd that, in the finest house in Curzola, in one of the streets leading down eastward from the cathedral, a central story for which magnificent would not be too strong a word

is placed between these simple doorways below and no less simple squareheaded windows above. This is one of the few houses in Curzola where the windows are double or triple divided by shafts. Most of the windows are of a single light, with a pointed anogee, or even a round head, but always, we think, with the eminently Venetian trefoil, and with the jambs treated as a kind of pilaster. With windows of this kind the town of Curzola is thick-set in every quarter. We may be sure that there is nothing older than the Venetian occupation, and that most of the houses are of quite late date, of the sixteenth and even the seventeenth century. The Venetian style clave to mediæval forms of window long after the Renaissance had fully set in in everything else. And for an obvious reason; whatever attractions the Renaissance might have from any other point of view, in the matter of windows at least it hopelessly failed. In the streets of Curzola therefore we meet with an endless store of windows, but with little else. Yet here and there there are other details. The visitor will certainly be sent to see a door-knocker in a house in one of the streets on the western slope. There Daniel between two lions is sented in fine bronze work. some Venetian effigies, which would doubtless prove something for local history, may be seen in the same court. Of the houses in Curzola not a few are roofless; not a few have their rich windows blocked; not a few stand open for the visitor to see their simple inside arrangements. The town can still make some show on a day of festival; but it is plain that the wealth and life of Curzola passed when it ceased to be a Venetian arsenal. And poverty has one incidental advantage; it lets things fall to ruin, but it does not improve or

away

restore.

repre

And

Two monasteries may be seen within an easy distance of the town. That of Saint Nicolas, approached by a

short walk along the shore to the north-west, makes rather an imposing feature in the general view from the sea; but it is disappointing when we come near. Yet it illustrates some of the local tendencies; a very late building, as it clearly is, it still keeps some traces of earlier ideas. equal bodies, each with a pointed barrel-vault, might remind us of some districts of our own island, and, with nothing else that can be called mediaval detail, the round window does not fail to appear. The other monastery,

Two

best known as the Badia, once a house of Benedictines, afterwards of Franciscans, stands on a separate island, approached by a pleasant sail. The church has not much more to show than the other; but it too illustrates the prevalent mixture of styles which comes out very instructively in the cloister. This bears date 1477, as appears from an inscription over one of its doors. But this doorway is flat-headed and has lost all medieval

character, while the cloister itself is a graceful design with columns and trefoil arches, which in other lands one would attribute to a much earlier date. The library contains some early printed books and some Greek manuscripts, none seemingly of any great intrinsic value. A manuscript of Dionysios Periêgêtês is described as the property of the Korkyraian Nicolas and his friends. (Νικολάου Κερκυραίου καὶ τῶν φίλων.) Did it come from Corfu, or did any citizen of Black Korkyra think it fine to describe himself in this fashion?

On the staircase of the little inn at Curzola is still a print of the taking of the arsenal of Venice by the patriots of 1848. Strange that no Imperial, Royal, and Apostolic official has taken away so speaking a memorial of a deed which those who commemorate it would doubtless be glad to follow.

EDWARD A. FREEMAN.

Ir was Friday, the market-day at Galteetown, the hottest and sleepiest of August afternoons-the first Friday in August, with all the heat and venom of July in it, but with not a chance of the thunder-showers that drench and cool the fierce temper of the dog-days. It had been a crowded market-day, and though the press of business was now nearly over, the steam and dust that hung about was enough to make one envy the swallows as they soared overhead in the clear sunlight, giving the square of Galteetown a wide berth. The donkeys, of whom there were some hundreds, stood patiently resigned to flies and drought, waiting the leisure of their mistresses, whose white caps were visible in the semi-darkness of the shops as they made their weekly purchases before the start homewards. The sales were nearly all concluded, the hens and ducks had been all transferred from their original owners to the dealers," in whose crates they were now thrust. Sorely against their will, as testified by their lamentations, the egglers were busy getting ready their huge packing-cases for the road, sorting ducks' eggs from hens' eggs and ranging each kind in its layer of straw. The fish-cart which came every Friday from Waterford was emptied of its stock of spent cod and hake, and its owner was using all his eloquence to rid himself of a most odorous parcel of salted mackerel at the rate of fourpence per dozen, an abatement of twopence upon their morning price. The rag merchant, who was also a second-hand clothes dealer, had packed and tied up one donkey-load, and smoked lazily as he watched a couple of girls finger the

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odd lengths of coloured cottons and stuffs which, with queer old gowns and faded shawls, the cast-offs probably of English peasants, formed his stockin-trade. The drowsiness begotten of sun heat and long exertion had rather dulled the ardours of commerce, which, in its primitive form of barter, had but a few hours before rivalled in hot intensity the noon-tide fever of the Stock Exchange. The flies buzzed sleepily around the fish-cart, and pestered the unhappy donkeys at their will, for the creatures were too wearied and sleepy to move an ear or tail in protestation. There was a drinking fountain in the middle of the square, a round iron trough-placed unfortunately too high for the accommodation of animals of the four-footed species. This was furnished with a half-dozen faucets, which could be turned on at will, and drinking cups. It was visited almost every minute by the market people, but no one thought of filling a bucket for the poor, patient, gray beasts. It was nearly time to start, half a dozen carts were climbing already the hilly road that led from Galteetown towards the Waterford mountains. Some others were taking their way by the Dublin and Tipperary roads, but the crowd was scarcely diminished. At the first glance it seemed a mere assemblage of people without any appreciable central rallying point; but a closer inspection showed that near the fountain and in front of the hotel, as the leading public-house of the town was called, was a part of the square where the leading dealers and their customers most resorted. Blaney's fish-cart was always drawn up there, and the pedlars' carts of old clothes and rags.

or

As

The tin-ware merchant and the dealer in wicker baskets and dishes were seldom far off, and to the right and left of them stood, as if by right, the ass carts of the most considerable frequenters of the place. It was the hottest spot in the town that afternoon, and the hot sun drew out all the varied odours, salt fish vying among them with the omnipresent turf smoke in which the clothes of the country people seem to be soaked. Blaney's garron had been taken out of the fish-cart and tied to the back of the next cart, which belonged to a Mrs. Roche, a farmer's wife from the mountain district. Mrs. Roche was eating a piece of dry bread. She could very well afford to eat her own butter if she chose, and she did when at home, but it is not wise to be luxurious in public, and that commodity was now, owing to a spell of dry weather, fetching too good a price to be wasted within sight of the neighbours. she leaned against the wheel of her cart and bit at the tough bread, she was talking to a changing group of women on the other side of the vehicle. The centre figure of this group was a stout woman of about sixty, who had a black shawl folded over her head instead of a white frilled cap like the rest of the women. She also wore silver rimmed spectacles, and it was easy to see from her manner, and the deferential address of the others, that she was a person of some importance. She was in fact the parish priest's housekeeper, the leading gossip of the town, and its great oracle upon all matters of intelligence. Between her head-gear and her dress, which was of thick black stuff, she had a quasi look of some kind of religious. She had on a white apron, but that badge of servitude was twisted up so as to be out of sight. She was busy purchasing fowls for her master, feeling the breast-bones and pinching the thighs of the struggling chickens, and declaiming loudly the while as to their shortcomings.

"You can say what you like, Mrs.

Murphy"-she was talking to an old woman who was standing a little apart from the group. "You can!" repeated the priest's housekeeper, "but your chickens are dear-five shillings for that half-dozen is expensive, ma'am. Mrs. Ready beyand got four good young cocks for half-a-crown this morning that were better fed than yours-much fuller."

"Oh, ma'am,” replied Mrs. Murphy, "it is of no use your telling me. I would rather take my little chickens home again so I would."

"Very well then, for me," returned the housekeeper, letting the chicken fall from her hands without more ado, as she addressed herself to another of the group. "The butter is to be had good at Bowles' shop beyont for ninepence, so I will not trouble you to leave it with me for elevenpence," went on the housekeeper in a tone of dignified irony. Then, dropping her voice discreetly into the frills of a cap close by, "I would not, thin, be the person that would tell the Cliffords, Lawder, the agent, is bringing home his new wife to-night, eh, Mrs. Ahearne?"

"To-night, thin!" echoed Mrs. Ahearne, a stout, red-faced woman of about forty. "And it is to-night! It was this day fortnight they was married! Oh, good God, den-get married on Friday and come home on Friday! Saints be about us, but I would not be in Lawder's shoes when Charley Clifford sees

A violent push from a neighbour made her look round suddenly and stop. The fish dealer, Blaney, was harnessing his horse, and a big constabulary man was standing close by, talking to him.

"Lawder is a divil-so he is indeed, my God!" whined a little stooped old woman, whose face between sunburn and wrinkles resembled nothing so much as-a baked potato. "Look at us served with the process to quit come Michaelmas. And it was my boy's grandfather built the house over our heads dere above

on Sheena Rinkey, and carried de lime up dat mountain on his back dere too. Forty years I am sleeping in dat house now, and I never can sleep in any other house. No! I will die! And dere is my son James comin' home next week, can get no work in England-an' we all to be put

out.

An' look at me, dat used always to have my own side car to go to mass on, and dat brought the Heffernans a hundred pounds fortune and two of the finest heifers you ever laid eyes upon, and not to mention a feather-bed that it took four of us to haul into the house. And look at me now, has to be beholden to a neighbour to lift me down on her little ass-cart, or I never could get to the market at all. Oh dear! oh dear! if my good people, the Brophys, could see my state this day!" And she put her apron corner to her eye and cried aloud.

"Is this Mary-Mary-?" said the priest's housekeeper, hesitating for the name. She knew it perfectly well; it was only one of her ways of being dignified, to pretend not to know poor people.

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Mary Brophy is my name, ma'am," answered the little woman through her sobs; "but Heffernan they do be calling me." She had been married to Con Heffernan for forty years, but with the old tribal instinct that yet obtains among the Irish of her class, counted herself among the Brophys still. She half curtsied, as she spoke, with the tears running down her nose, to the priest's housekeeper, who surveyed her coolly through her silverrimmed spectacles. They were a cast pair of her master's, and fitted the ridge of her nose exactly; if they suited her eyesight as well may be matter of conjecture.

"What did you get for your chickens this day?" asked she.

"Fifteenpence for three, ma'am," replied Mary Heffernan. "I sold them to the bank manager there below, and," dropping her voice, "he's such a naygur he would not give me the eighteenpence."

"Ay, ay, ay," joined all the other white caps in chorus. "That's the way wi' them always."

They knew, as well as the speaker, that the chickens had been offered to the same bank manager at a penny each below market price, for the simple reason that Con Heffernan was endeavouring to get him to renew a bill for thirty pounds for another six months, and his wife thought to propitiate him thus. pitiate him thus. The thirty pounds had gone to the landlord in part, the other part had bought Indian meal, and a few pounds remained, and would perhaps stave off eviction this time, and the workhouse. There had been two bad years. The married son, with whom they lived, had found but half the usual employment in England, his wife had gone out to service, and, what was worse than of all, there had been hard times in America, and the daughters in New York, on whose earnings the Heffernans mainly depended, had not been able to send home any money. A respite of another six months made sure ofWho could tell what miracle, agricultural or political, might not take place in the time?

"I am told," said Mrs. Ahearne, fixing her eyes on the housekeeper's face, "that Lawder has got four thousand with this new wife of his."

"Four," assented the housekeeper, "it is quite true; but then," she went on, in a bitter, gibing voice, "Lawder, you know, is a strong man himself; he makes up to a thousand a year out of this place, so he does. Not but what he came here bare enough."

A silence fell upon the group; their eyes were all turned upon each other's faces.

"Four thousan'! repeated Mary Brophy or Heffernan, as blankly as if they had said four millions. It was a sum just as far beyond her calculations.

"Four!" sneered Mrs. Ahearne. "He'll be able to pay down money now, and send off poor Mary Clifford