show people the beauty of a common brick | I could get close behind him and give a wall when the red winter sunset shines sudden vell! Would he fly into bits? along it. But perhaps that is only my ignorance, and I may learn better before Mr. Lemuel has done with me." When Macleod first read this passage, a dark expression came over his face. He did not like this new project. Would he be so startled into naturalness as to swear? And all the time that papa and he talked, I dared scarcely lift my eyes; for I could not but think of the effect of that wild Hi!' And what if I had burst into a fit of laughter without any apparent cause?" ་ Apparently Miss White had not been much impressed by her visit to Mr. Lemuel's Palace of Art, and she made thereafter but slight mention of it, though she had been prevailed upon to let the artist borrow the expression of her face for his forthcoming picture. She had other things to think about now, when she wrote to Castle Dare. For one day Lady Macleod went into her son's room and said to him, "Here is a letter, Keith, which I have written to Miss White. I wish you to read it." pressed the hope that Miss White and her father would next summer visit Castle Dare. The young man threw his arms round his mother's neck and kissed her. "That is like a good mother," said he. when she receives this message from you?" "And so, yesterday afternoon," the letter continued, "papa and I went to Mr. Lemuel's house, which is only a short way from here; and we entered, and found ourselves in a large circular and domed hall, pretty nearly dark, and with a number of closed doors. It was all hushed and mysterious and dim; but there was a little more light when the man opened one of these doors and showed us into a chamberor, rather, one of a series of cham-| bers that seemed to me at first like a big child's toy house, all painted and gilded with red and gold. It was bewilderingly full of objects that had no ostensible pur- He jumped to his feet, and hastily ran pose you could not tell whether any one his eye over the letter. It was a trifle forof these rooms was dining-room, or draw-mal, it is true; but it was kind, and it exing-room, or anything else; it was all a museum of wonderful cabinets filled with different sorts of ware, and trays of uncut precious stones, and Eastern jewelry, and what not; and then you discovered that in the panels of the cabinets were painted" Do you know how happy she will be series of allegorical heads on a gold background; and then perhaps you stumbled on a painted glass window where no window should be. It was a splendid blaze of color, no doubt; one began to dream of Byzantine emperors, and Moorish conquerors, and Constantinople gilt domes. But then mark the dramatic effect! away in the blaze of the further chamber appears a solemn, slim, bowed figure, dressed all in black the black velvet coat seemed even blacker than black-and the mournful-eyed man approached, and he gazed upon us a grave welcome from the pleading, affected, tired eyes. He had a slight cough, too, which I rather fancied was assumed for the occasion. Then we all sat down, and he talked to us in a low, sad, monotonous voice; and there was a smell of frankincense about no doubt a band of worshippers had lately been visiting at the shrine; and, at papa's request, he showed me some of his trays of jewels, with a wearied air. And some drawings of Botticelli that papa had been speaking about would he look at them now? Oh, dear Keith, the wickedness of the human imagination! As he went about in this limp and languid fashion, in the hushed room, with the old fashioned scent in the air, I wished I was a street boy. I wished Lady Macleod left him the letter to address. He read it over carefully; and though he saw that the handwriting was the handwriting of his mother, he knew that the spirit that had prompted these words was that of the gentle cousin Janet. This concession had almost been forced from the old lady by the patience and mild persistence of Janet Macleod; but if any thing could have assured her that she had acted properly in yielding, it was the answer which Miss Gertrude White sent in return. Miss White wrote that letter several times over before sending it off, and it was a clever piece of composition. The timid expressions of gratitude; the hints of the writer's sympathy with the romance of the Highlands and the Highland character; the deference shown by youth to age; and here and there just the smallest glimpse of humor, to show that Miss White, though very humble and respectful and all that, was not a mere fool. Lady Macleod was pleased by this letter. She showed it to her son one night at dinner. "It is a pretty hand," she remarked critically. Keith Macleod read it with a proud heart. "Can you not gather what kind of woman she is from that letter alone?" he said eagerly. "I can almost hear her talk in it. Janet, will you read it too?" Janet Macleod took the small sheet of perfumed paper and read it calmly, and handed it back to her aunt. "It is a nice letter," said she. "We must try to make Dare as bright as may be when she comes to see us, that she will not go back to England with a bad account of the Highland people." That was all that was said at the time about the promised visit of Miss Gertrude White to Castle Dare. It was only as a visitor that Lady Macleod had consented to receive her. There was no word mentioned on either side of anything further than that. Mr. White and his daughter were to be in the Highlands next summer; they would be in the neighborhood of Castle Dare; Lady Macleod would be glad to entertain them for a time, and make the acquaintance of two of her son's friends. At all events, the proud old lady would be able to see what sort of woman this was whom Keith Macleod had chosen to be his wife. It And so the winter days and nights and weeks dragged slowly by; but always, from time to time, came those merry and tender and playful letters from the south, which he listened to rather than read. was her very voice that was speaking to him, and in imagination he went about with her. He strolled with her over the crisp grass, whitened with hoarfrost, of the Regent's Park; he hurried home with her in the chill gray afternoons the yellow gaslamps being lit-to the little tea-table. When she visited a picture-gallery, she sent him a full report of that even. "Why is it," she asked, "that one is so delighted to look a long distance, even when the view is quite uninteresting? I wonder if that is why I greatly prefer landscape to figure subjects? The latter always seem to me to be painted from models just come from the Hampstead Road. There was scarcely a sea-piece in the Exhibition that was not spoiled by figures, put in for the sake of picturesqueness, I suppose. Why, when you are by the sea, you want to be alone, surely! Ah, if I could only have a look at those winter seas you speak of!" He did not echo that wish at all. Even as he read he could hear the thunderous booming of the breakers into the giant caves. Was it for a pale rose-leaf to brave that fell wind that tore the waves into spindrift and howled through the lonely chasms of Ben-an-Sloich? To one of these precious documents, written in the small neat hand on pinktoned and perfumed paper, a postscript was added. "If you keep my letters," she wrote, and he laughed when he saw that if, "I wish you would go back to the one in which I told you of papa and me calling at Mr. Lemuel's house, and I wish, dear Keith, you would burn it. I am sure it was very cruel and unjust. One often makes the mistake of thinking people affected when there is no affectation of any sort about them. And if a man has injured his health and made an invalid of himself through his intense and constant devotion to his work, surely that is not anything to be laughed at. Whatever Mr. Lemuel may be, he is at all events desperately in earnest. The passion that he has for his art, and his patience and concentration and self-sacrifice, seem to me to be nothing less than noble. And so, dear Keith, will you please to burn that impertinent letter?" Macleod sought out the letter and carefully read it over. He came to the conclusion that he could see no just reason for complying with her demand. Frequently first impressions were best. From Fraser's Magazine. "L'ECOLE FRANCAISE" AT ATHENS AND AT ROME. BY THE REV. W. WOLFE CAPES. IN 1846, M. de Salvandy, the French minister of education, established what was called the "Ecole Française," at Athens, to maintain a few young graduates who had already won distinction in their studies, and seemed likely to turn to good account the opportunities of residence at Athens. The boon was little prized at first, and few competed for the vacant places; those who gained them were not always thought to turn their leisure to much profit. So, in 1850, a new rule was made, that every student should send home a memoir on some theme of ancient scholarship or letters, and two years later the academic colony rose to sudden fame by the success of its member, Beulé, afterwards professor and minister of France. A notable discovery which he made took the fancy of the world of letters; the school of Athens rose in general esteem with the studies which it represented. Small as were its numbers, we shall find upon its roll the names of nearly all the French authors who have since done anything for classical antiquities or art. MM. more encouragement upon the soil of Italy. Meantime the foundations of old Rome were being ransacked, and on all sides the work of discovery was going forward, and the new-comers could not fail to be stirred to enthusiastic study by all the incentives which they felt around them. For a year or so the branch at Rome consisted of three members only, but in 1875 the number was increased to six, besides one or more of riper years engaged on special missions. A decree definitely organized the institution, and brought it into regular relations with the Ecole Normale Supérieure, the Ecole des Chartes, and the Facultés des Lettres at Paris. It also defined with the help of the Academy the subjects of examination which future candidates must pass before election. As an experiment thus tested and approved seems worthy of our imitation here in England, it may be useful to justify some of the statements made, and to enter more into detail as to the nature and results of the work which has been thus far carried Fustel de Coulanges, Perrot, Foucart, | claim their share of interest when the Dumont, Wescher, Heuzey, Burnouf, Geb- advantages of great libraries with all their hart, and others passed a year or two as store of manuscripts were ready to their members of the school, though proved to hands. Roman epigraphy was making be ripe scholars already. Here and there every year great strides, and it had at perhaps the residence at Athens was only Paris in M. Léon Rénier, the professor, à pleasant interlude in a literary life, and one of its ablest living representatives, left no lasting traces on the professional but the interest which he had roused in work of later days. To those who have younger scholars had been diverted seemsince read the writings of the lively pam-ingly to other fields of study, and needed phleteer and novelist About, it may be a surprise to find that he began his career of letters with a grave memoir on the island of Ægina, submitted to the approval of the French Academy. But commonly we find the year or two there spent gave a lasting bias to the future tastes. Essays were sent regularly home for the judgment of a committee of the French Academy, abstracts of which were published in the Archives des Missions, or in the Revue des Sociétés Savantes, and of late in the Comptes Rendus de l'Académie. These have been in many cases since expanded into the works which fill a place upon our shelves. Among the old monuments of Athens and the many associations of the past they gained a truer insight into the principles of Hellenic art and a fresher enthusiasm for its literary stores. They had there an easy startingpoint for antiquarian tours, in which the familiar knowledge of the language and the customs of the modern Greeks was of itself a signal gain. The friendly interest of the Academy at home gave a on. We may first notice the department definite aim and stimulus to their studies. It was no slight advantage to be guided to the subjects which would best repay research, to the districts where the explorer's services could be most useful, and to the authorities who had opened up without exhausting the fields of study thus proposed. Year by year intelligent guidance and encouragement were offered, while the students for the most part availed themselves with ardor of their opportunities for travel and self-improvement. The experience of nearly thirty years convinced the learned world of France of the value of this institution, and in 1873 the government decided to grant the same encouragement to classical archæology at Rome, by forming there a branch of the French school at Athens. It was thought that a year or two of study in the great museum and galleries of Italy would form a valuable introduction to the special treatment of Hellenic art and history, while questions of philology and literary criticism, to which scant time as yet had been devoted by the members, would of topography in connection with the architectural study of classical antiquities, for it was in this that the earliest success was won by the French school. The Acropolis of Athens had been hopelessly disfigured in the course of ages. The soldiers of Sulla, medieval dukes, Venetians and Turks, had all done their part in destroying the beauty of the scene which Phidias had planned, till bastions and ruins blocked up to the height of forty feet the old approaches to the Propylæa. But Beulé with the insight of genius pictured to his mind the earlier scene so clearly as to discern the point at which research would be rewarded, and had the happiness to lay bare the line of ancient walls, with the towers which flanked the gate through which the road led up to the great flight of steps crowned by the pillars of the Propylæa. His book on the Acropolis, published shortly afterwards, combines a history of its great monuments, as drawn from ancient sources, with an account of all the discoveries of works of art and of inscriptions made under his guidance. A few years afterwards the famous sanctuary of Delphi was successfully explored by two members of the school, MM. Foucart and Wescher. While wandering among the ruins of the temple, one of them was struck by an old peasant's talk about a subterranean access to the ravine which on one side the building overlooked. Following the track thus opened up to view, they not merely succeeded in uncovering the face of the old wall which served as the foundation of the temple, and thus laying bare a large area of masonry covered with long rows of marble tablets, but they also made their way into some chambers of the lower storey which were probably connected with the prophetic machinery of the ancient oracle. After researches so successful at the great shrine of Delphi, it was natural to hope for some discoveries in the sacred isle of Delos. Accordingly in 1872 M. Lebègue, with the encouragement and help of M. Burnouf, the director of the school, made a careful survey of the island, and found what they believe to be the oldest sanctuary in Greece, a little temple of the Cynthian Apollo near the place described in the Homeric hymn as the god's birthplace, in the highland of Mount Cynthus. Its floor and some of its sides consist of native rock, while its roof is formed by five pairs of enormous tiles, carefully fitted to each other, and then covered over with loose blocks of stone, which disguise the masonry below them. So rude is the whole indeed as to be easily mistaken for the cave dwelling of some prehistoric race, were it not for the rough monolith within, and the traces of archaic sculpture, and the indications of the chasm over which the tripod of divination may have rested. At the same time M. Rayet, another member of the school, was carrying on the work of exploration at Miletus and at Hierouda on the site of the temple of the Didymæan Apollo. Among the monuments discovered were some statues of women seated in the ancient Milesian style, which recalls the Egyptian type. Another result gained was the scientific reconstruction of the plan of the great temple, which Vitruvius calls a model of Ionic art, and which Strabo and Pausanias considered almost the first religious edifice of Asia Minor. In this case the expenses of the search were borne by the munificence of two Rothschilds, and it is evident indeed that the modest means of the students cannot bear the strain of ex plorations such as those undertaken at Halicarnassus and at Ephesus under the auspices of our own museum, or such as those which have excited so much interest of late to the work of Schliemann at Mycena and of the German scholars at Olympia. They can rarely hope to be pioneers in those costly fields of enterprise, but it is no slight advantage to have eager students near at hand to gather up the information which is constantly accruing. Greece is one large necropolis. A peasant's plough, a mason's tool, at any moment and in any spot, may give the clue to some discovery of value, and the sense of all this cannot fail to stimulate the energy of antiquarian research. At Rome meantime the work of exploration has been steadily going forward, and the privileged members of the new institute will find a largely increasing store of antiquarian data. In the Forum the rubbish piled to the height of many feet is removed at last and the ancient pavement opened up; there as on the neighboring Capitol the unsolved problems of topography are being set at rest, and we may realize how tiny was the famous Forum in which all the currents of free life met for ages, and how closely the narrow streets, and shops, and temples, hemmed it in till the ambition of the imperial rulers gave it light and room. Building societies are raising new quarters round the Esquiline, and the laborer's pickaxe has constantly brought some fresh relics of the past to view: remains of the old temples, a lecture hall where Mæcenas may have been listened to by his poet friends, and, older still, the cemeteries of the ignoble dead; below them again the remnants of a prehistoric Rome, where a yet earlier race built tombs long before the days in which we read about the City of the Seven Hills. The municipality has taken care throughout to stipu late with the contractors to enjoy an exclusive right to all the antiquities which may be found; it has appointed an archæ ological commission, and set apart a museum to receive the stores which are being rapidly collected. Like efforts have been made in many another part of central Italy. To speak only of one, the old port Ostia has risen from its tomb, like the more famous city of Pompeii, and been made the object of a special study by one of the French scholars, M. Homolle, whose monograph upon its history embraced a special scrutiny of more than seven hundred inscriptions found in its close neighborhood. We may turn next to the department of classical epigraphy, and ask what signs of earnest effort have been given by the Ecole Française in dealing with the monumental evidence engraved on bronze or stone. the empire. Within the city stood the statues of great men, whose marble forms graced the temples and the forum and well-nigh every public spot, while on the base of each was graven some leaflet of the Roman peerage, that all might learn something of the annals of the past in a sort of national gallery through which all citizens must pass. Still more varied and abundant was the information stored in many of the places of resort throughout the city. Within and without the walls of the great temples, as in the neighborhood of many sacred precincts, were posted the records of official acts of every kind, laws and treaties dating from the earliest times, the results of the consular elections, resolutions of the Senate, registers of triumphs, and imperial decrees. Unlike our placards and our proclamations, feeble papers flut We cannot realize without an effort the abundance of such materials for study, as they were strewn in old times in countless thousands over the whole face of the then civilized world. We should not seek, nor find, in our churchyards much sober history, nor would the few words which might be found upon our public works go far to reconstruct for coming ages a pic ture of our national life; and few of us nowadays, without some special study, know how much in ancient times both of public and of private interest was written in enduring forms in characters which all might read, even in days when great pub-tering at the mercy of the wind and rain, lic libraries stood always open, and book- they were entrusted seldom to material less sellers drove a thriving trade, and the durable than bronze, while at times the newest literary wares, the epigrams of flattery of the Senate chose ivory or gold Martial or the speeches of the younger to do honor to the words of their imperial Pliny, were copied for a trifling sum, and master. Many of these were gathered despatched to the most distant corners of with special care in the record office on the Roman world. We can understand the Capitol, but all the temples served as indeed that there is much wholly new to archives, and Rome was a great museum us to be learnt from the papyrus rolls of where students of history might freely Egypt, or from the sunburnt tablets which read. There on the walls of the Auguswere stored in the Assyrian libraries, and teum might be seen the autobiography of from which in our own days the civiliza- the great organizer of the empire, a copy tions of the past have been rising as from of which has happily been saved in a farthe tomb before our eyes; it seems nat-off provincial town. Not far away, in the ural enough, again, that in rude times lasting materials like stone or bronze were used when there was but little to be written, and when books were quite unknown; but we have cause at first to wonder when we find that literary ages still had recourse so largely to archaic usage, and wrote out the records of their daily life in forms which seemed so solid as to defy even the processes of slow decay. Thus, for example, in the neighborhood of Rome the great highway was fringed for miles with the long line of stately tombs on which might be read the musterroll of ancient worthies, the statesmen and generals of the republic, as well as the ministers and organizers of the empire. The epitaphs recorded the offices of State which each had filled, the battles fought, the provinces annexed, and the whole round of public service. Those marble pages pieced together would go far to make the chronicle of the governing families of Rome; and the traveller who compared the lists of honors and of titles, could scarcely fail to get a larger grasp of the ruling mechanism of the administration of centre of the city, the edicts of the em- Nor |