ground of inexperience and incompetence in public speaking. He did not consider that he was at all likely to make a figure in parliament. Even when he became War Minister he said, 'The business of the department will, I take it, be quite sufficient to occupy one's time without attending cabinet councils.' This is characteristic of Lord Palmerston's persiflage: The Persian ambassador was highly pleased with his reception the other day, and, on passing a long stand of hackney coaches soon after leaving his house, he was told they were equipages drawn up ready to follow in his train, at which he expressed himself much flattered.'

The most interesting correspondent of the second volume is General Bowles, whose informal letters are well worthy of collation with the formal military history of the immortal Napier. Like Napier he has some sharp strictures on the Duke,' but he would probably re-echo Napier's laconic reason for dedicating to him the 'History of the Peninsula War,' because he knew why the soldiers of the tenth legion followed Cæsar.' His letters abound with the details which the grave muse of history omits, but which nevertheless enable us to realize things historically. We will bring together some life-like touches of campaign life: Considering that this is a ruined country, we contrive to manage pretty well in the eating way. Soup, fish, a joint of mutton, and beef, hashes, tarts, custards, &c., is the sort of dinner to which one generally sits down. The art of housekeeping is wonderfully improved during the last two years, and if I wanted to make a good housewife, I should certainly send her to make a campaign in this country.' He was not so fortunate in his quarters, which consisted of 'a stable, out of which I turned the donkey belonging to the inhabitants of the house.' He says of Abrantes: 'One of the Spanish women belonging to Don Julian's corps was very remarkable both for her beauty and her dress, which was a sort of uniform with epaulettes, and a sabre and sash, the latter thrown over

'It

one shoulder. She was attended by two orderlies, and examined everything with great attention.' Passing on from Abrantes, he passed the time very pleasantly, as there was tolerably good shooting, hares, partridges, and abundance of quails and sometimes wolves.' He gives a vivid account of the Duke's battles, including Salamanca, which Napier considers was far away the Duke's best battle in point of military science. Then followed the triumphant march on Madrid and the occupation of the royal palace. is, I believe, by far the most superb, both inside and out, in Europe, and Lord Wellington, who has seen almost every palace in Europe and Asia, declared himself lost in admiration of it.' There has seldom been a vaster booty than that taken at Vittoria, including a million of money, half of which fell to the soldiers. The Hussars were tossing up gold for the infantry to scramble after. The Portuguese boys and our butchers, &c., were for some days going about in French generals' full-dress uniforms, &c. . . . Nearly the whole of the female establishment of the French army was captured.'

Subsequently Bowles's narrativo shifts to the Waterloo campaign. General Bowles has subjoined an original memorandum respecting the Duchess of Richmond's ball and Wellington's surprise. This, and the letter describing Waterloo, are true historical documents of the highest moment. The Duke owned that he never knew what fighting was before. General Bowles gives a note to the effect that the Duke three times told Sir John Byng to hold Hougomont to the last man. Here is what Lord Palmerston says on the matter: 'I trust the Allies will not be duped by this second rehearsal of the farce of abdication, but will move on straight to Paris and put Le Désiré to bed in the Tuileries, and hang Buonaparte on one of his own triumphal arches. I should be very glad to see the military part of George Bowles's letter, whenever it has finished its family circulation. Wellington said, "The troops behaved most wonder

fully," and added, "but good God! only think of the Guards!"'

We now turn to the letters written by the late Mr. Dallas when he was the American minister at the Court of St. James. They are not despatches; for the publication of despatches would be unauthorized, and what is worse, such a publication would be dull, but they are familiar letters pervaded by a very strong flavour of the diplomatic despatch. Our American cousins do not possess the gift of reticence, and we have often observed that Americans are privileged to know more things about England than the English do. We cannot say that Mr. Dallas impresses us as belonging to a very high order of diplomatic genius. or even as being a very sagacious and wide-minded man. He is always straining after visionary objects on the horizon, and his own mental eyesight is disturbed by prejudice. In 1856 he declares that 'experience has not taught us to rely upon the plausible professions of British statesmen,' and he requests that the commander of the American squadron in the Mediterranean may be prepared for any emergency. Though dazzled by the splendour of Queen Victoria's Court, he considers that it is 'fast being undermined by our republican principles, and before any one of your children reaches fifty it will have vanished, like the hues of a rainbow, for ever. Let them see it before it fades away.' We like Mr. Dallas better in his social than in his political relations. According to our usual mode, we select some extracts from this correspondence:

Lord Lytton.-'The week before this last was spent at Knebworth, in Hertfordshire. A more interesting piece of antiquity I have not come across spacious halls, picture galleries, ancient armour, old oak staircases, and grotesque monsters innumerable. It is seated within, and domineers over some thousand acres of park, woodland, garden, and farm. No wonder this man writes so exquisitely, on the margin of his own lake, and in a retired cottage, and with all the appliances of comfort, silence, and sweet air about him. I found

him the very soul of hospitality; a republican in his philosophy, a polished gentleman, and yet made by domestic trials peculiar, if not somewhat eccentric. He is laboriously intent on high political fame and position, which he cannot fail to reach.'

A breakfast at Lady Morgan's.— 'Close on my right was Macaulay, the fullest and fastest man in conversation I ever met: his only defect an uncontrollable effort, arising from excessive self-esteem, to monopolize the talk. On the left of Lady Morgan were Lord Carlisle, the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland (Morpeth). Then came Hallam (Middle Ages), a most interesting person in appearance and manners, suffering to such an extent from disease as to be unable to walk without help, and perhaps evincing a partial loss of mental energy. There, too, was that most excellent historian of Greece, Grote, whom I like and respect the more every time I see him. Near him, and opposite the hostess, twinkled away the pink eyes of Albino Lowe, the only highlygifted individual of that species perhaps in being; and we rounded off with Charles Villiers, a true, talented, and uncompromising Liberal, albeit the brother of Clarendon; Monckton Milnes, a poet, politician, parliamentary speaker, and ready converser; and though last, far from least, Lady Comber

mere.

Sir Roderick Murchison.—' Sir Roderick Murchison now and then walks me through his rich collection of fragments of ores, spars, rocks, &c., and I take it for granted that they are all very curious, very valuable, and very instructive, but, "chacun à son goût," and mine never ran in that direction.'

Mr. Bright.-'Mr. Cobden brought Mr. Bright to see me about a week ago. The latter looks the type of florid health; but I doubt its entirety and permanency. He several times in the course of an hour's talk (for visits here are very prolonged), put his hand to his head, as if to aid the process of thought; once, perceiving that I remarked the gesture, he said that he still felt

a remnant of his complaint in being unable to push vigorously to concentration the course of his ideas; that he was apprehensive he would find it hard, if not impossible, to take his old position in parliamentary debate; that in other respects his restoration was perfect.'

con

Lord Palmerston.-'I was quering the conqueror of Derby at billiards, and by outshooting him marvellously during a five hours' tramp after partridges: he in the finished jaunty style of costume of a thoroughbred English sportsman; I under my heavy beaver, in common frock-coat and light thin boots. It was glorious to see how this veteran managed to keep up his animation and brisk step to the very last, dressing and coming to dinner too in an hour afterwards, as if he had been upon a satin sofa all day.'

Napoleon III.-'The Duke of Malakoff is still here, and possibly may linger for several days; but he has left what I take to be his farewell words. He has often said that the Emperor was no general, and never could be one.'

The Queen's Autograph.-'I would personally prefer entering upon a complicated question of peace or war, to manoeuvring for the mere autograph of her Majesty. The request, no matter how meritorious its purpose, involves considerations of extreme delicacy. Its gratification would set a precedent of which millions would be eager to avail themselves.'

Napoleon III. again.-'Louis Napoleon has certainly the art of concentrating upon himself the universal gaze. No one else in Europe is just now visible, and everybody intently watches each successive movement. He is another Blondin, whose figure is strongly delineated in the sky, advancing steadily upon a tight-rope over a boiling and unfathomable abyss.... Is it purely the attitudinising of a skilful acrobat-a profound Napoleonic policy -the ultimately fatal thrust of the French rapier into the British cuirass?'

Mr. Gladstone.-' On Monday last his throat refused its mellifluous

force to the eulogy of the Budget. He dared not venture with a croaking voice on a permanent incometax of ninepence, a one-sided tarifftreaty with France, and an appropriation of thirteen millions sterling for the navy alone! It is announced as possible that he may undertake the task this evening. In the mean time discontent has so accumulated as to be dangerous, if not altogether impracticable.

The delay has given opportunity to coalition; thence a substantial condemnation of Cobden's arrangement, thence a change in the government, thence coldness or quarrel with France, and thence, finally, a general war. Extravagant as this may seem, I do assure you that the dismal foreboding is seen, felt, and expressed by every kind of politician at the now numerous soirées; and all the series of disasters unanimously attributed to the sore larynx of Mr. Gladstone.'

THE CATACOMBS.*

It is now some three hundred years ago that some Italian labourers, working in a vineyard just outside Rome, came unexpectedly on a subterranean chamber. It was a cemetery adorned with inscriptions, paintings, and sculptured sarcophagi. Multitudes of people crowded to see the sight. Rome discovered that she had other cities unknown to herself buried beneath her own suburbs. The term 'catacombs' is a very arbitrary one. There was a particular cemetery, easily accessible, known from very early days as 'Ad Catacambos,' a barbarous corruption of a Greek term, and this became a generic name for all the cemeteries subsequently discovered. The true Columbus of this subterranean world

*Roma Sotteranea; or, Some Account of the Roman Catacombs, especially at the Cemetery of San Callisto.' By Rev. J. Spencer Northcote, D.D., and Rev. W. R. Brownlow, M.A., Trinity College, Cambridge. London: Longmans. 1870.

"The Testimony of the Catacombs, and of other Monuments of Christian Art.' By Rev. Wharton B. Marriott, B.D.. late Fellow of Exeter, and Assistant Master of Eton. Hatchards. 1870.

was Antonio Bosio. He devoted himself with the utmost enthusiasm to the investigation of the catacombs. Whenever he saw any reason to conjecture that there might be a cemetery in the neighbourhood of some public road, he would explore all the vineyards in the neighbourhood to see if he could discover any entrance below the soil. He often ran a real peril of his life while exploring the galleries of these subterranean labyrinths. On one occasion he penetrated so far that he could not rediscover his path, and his light failed him. 'I began to fear,' said Bosio, naïvely, 'that I should defile by my vile corpse the sepulchres of the martyrs.' Bosio's great work was received with the greatest enthusiasm by literary and archæological men. Our English Evelyn was twice led to visit the catacombs. 'They led us down into a grotto, which they affirmed to be at divers furlongs under ground. The sides or walls which we passed were filled with bones and dead bodies, laid as it were on shelves, whereof some were shut up with broad stones, and now and then a cross or a palm cut in them. At the end of some of these subterranean passages were square rooms with altars in them, said to have been the receptacles of primitive Christians in the times of persecution, nor seems it improbable. Here, in all likelihood, were the meetings of the primitive Christians during the persecutions, as Pliny the Younger describes them. Thus, after wandering two or three miles in this subterranean mæander, we returned almost blind when we came into the daylight, and even choked by the smoke of the torches.' In the present age a worthy successor has been found to Bosio in De Rossi. He has done more than has been achieved during the whole of the last two centuries. He has been the most active member of that Commission of Sacred Archæology which has done so much for the investigation of the catacombs. He has trod in Bosio's steps with signal success, and with enlarged plans of his own. De Rossi has published two volumes on the cata

combs, entitled 'Roma Sotteranea,' besides his contributions to the Roman Journal of Sacred Archæology. His work is a perfect mine of the erudition of the subject, and on it all writers on the catacombs simply subsist.

It was hardly to be expected that De Rossi's sumptuous work could be reproduced in England at the same size and cost. But Messrs. Northcote and Brownlow have embodied in their beautiful book De Rossi's main results, barring the inscriptions on the gravestones in the catacombs, where De Rossi's labours are not yet complete. They bring clearly before their readers De Rossi's wonderful discoveries, which are based not on books but on a systematic examination of the catacombs themselves, which are made to yield their own story. The chief discoveries were made in the cemetery of San Callisto on the Appian Way, which stands to all other cemeteries in the same relation in which St. Peter's stands to all other churches. It is here that the bodies of . Peter and Paul are supposed to have lain for many years. It would be beyond our limits to give even an outline of the immense amount of illustration thrown by these remains on ecclesiastical history and Christian art. The subject of symbolism alone would be exceedingly interesting, as in the anchor, the sheep, the dove, and, above all, the Fish, the period of whose use is measured by the ages of persecution. The fish, from the Greek letters which make up the word-letters which are the initials of sacred titles-was the recognised conventional symbol of the Saviour. We accordingly find a multitude of little fishes, in crystal, ivory, mother of pearl, and precious stones, often used in conjunction with a dove, or anchor, or bread, or ship, personifying the church. The biblical, allegorical, and liturgical paintings are described in an extremely interesting way. Most of the great museums of Europe contain objects of interest found in the catacombs-rings, coins, lamps, scourges, and gilded glass. Most of the glasses were

drinking-cups. Their peculiarity consists in a design having been executed in gold leaf on the flat bottom of the cup, in such a manner as that the figures and letters should be seen from the inside, like the designs on the glass bottoms of the ale tankards so popular at Oxford and Cambridge.' It seems probable that the art of manufacturing this glass was only known at Rome, and it has even been conjectured, since the subjects were most frequently Christian, that the art was confined to the Roman Christians their examination yields many interesting results. Similarly the Christian sarcophagi, as opposed to the heathen sarcophagi, show us the tardy development of Christian sculpture. The book has a set of gorgeous plates at the end, and there is a profuse wealth of illustration scattered over the pages.

But these long streets of tombs teach much beyond their lessons in history and art. It will readily be understood that they have a direct reference to contraverted theological opinions. Mr. Marriott, who is so well known at Eton and throughout the diocese of Oxford, has just published some severe strictures on the English interpreters of De Rossi. We are afraid that we cannot profoundly regret the occasion which has elicited another able and beautifully-embellished work on the catacombs. Mr. Marriott charges against Messrs. Northcote and Brownlow that they have departed from the exact impartiality of De Rossi, who states all facts fully and fairly, and have given a Romanised interpretation of them. On the theological aspect of the controversy we have not a word to say; but on the literary and historical side of the matter there are a few words to be said. The zeal of De Rossi's interpreters, transcending his own, seems to have led them rather astray from the safe path of historical accuracy. It is not correct to speak of Bishop Lucius reigning at Rome in the year 252. They believe that the jurisdiction over other churches implied by the Roman pallium was

held up in funeral inscriptions as the consolation of mourners. They claim that the figures of the Madonna are very numerous, whereas those figures are simply the common 'oranti' men, or more frequently women. It is certainly unhistoric to attribute to the earliest ages ideas which were the growth of a later age.

It

It is more interesting to turn to the constructive rather than the controversial aspect of this literature of the catacombs. This literature would embrace, besides the names before our readers, the names of Mr. Hemans, Mr. Burgon, and others. There are many ancient monuments of Christian art besides those in the catacombs which ought to be collated with them. One of the most famous of these is the remarkable Autun inscription of which Mr. Marriott gives a full criticism and account. was discovered some thirty years ago in the immediate vicinity of the town of Autun, and according to the authorities of the British Museum belongs to the fourth or the fifth century. It is written in Greek, and Mr. Wharton Marriott explains this by the fact that in the first ages of our era Autun was a kind of Latin Eton, where the study of the Greek language and literature was brought to high perfection. The most remarkable characteristic of the inscription is the use of the symbolism of the fish. Mr. Marriott concludes his set of the readings and revisions with one which Dr. Wordsworth, the Bishop of Lincoln, has recently sent to him. We do not enter into any discussion of the doctrinal teaching sought to be educed from the language used. The two books, however contrasted in their points of view, will doubtless be placed side by side on the library shelf, and ought to be carefully studied for their instructive contents. History is often a somewhat dry and repellent study, but it cannot be undertaken under more favourable conditions than in connection with Christian art and with the story of Christian heroism.