and the air close and fetid with a thousand evil odours, though the entrance and the roof are lofty. You can catch no glimpse of the latter at this time of night; there is only one great starless darkness overhead, but below, here and there, a tiny oil flame glimmers before the picture of some saint. There is one burning at the foot of Peppiniello's bed, which occupies the worst place but one, that farthest from the entrance, and when the two reach it, after exchanging a few friendly words with Donna Lucia, one of the occupants of the neighbouring bed, they refill the lamp from a little flask, and then kneel down before a rough print of the Virgin to repeat a Paternoster and an Ave.

The bed itself is large enough not only for the whole family, but also to accommodate a stranger now and then, when, of a stormy night, Peppiniello happens to find some homeless boy shivering on a doorstep that does not shelter him from the rain. Three children are now sleeping quietly enough in it. The eldest of them, who may be nine, has a strong family likeness to Concetta, and so has one of the younger girls, whom you take to be six; but the third, who seems to be of nearly the same age, has quite a different face and figure. She is far more slightly built, has a little rosy mouth and tiny hands and feet. Her skin, though it is bronzed by the sun, is far fairer than that of her bedfellows, and she has fine light brown hair which would be silken if it were kept in proper order. Her name is Mariannina, and she is not in fact one of Peppiniello's sisters. This is her story :

One night, about a year ago, when the boy was returning home, he saw her sleeping all alone in the portico of a church. If it had been a boy he would have passed on without taking any notice, but that wasn't a proper place for little girls to sleep in, so he wakened her, and asked where her home was that he might take her there. It was a long way off, she said; she didn't know where, but a long, long way. At length, in answer to many questions and a good deal of coaxing, she told him she lived alone with her mother, who, as soon as she had had her breakfast, used to give her a hunch of bread, turn her into the street, lock the door, and go to her work, from which she did not return till after dark. But one morning some time ago—Mariannina did not know exactly how long it seemed a long while-her mother was lazy and would not get up. The child had nothing to eat that day, but in the evening her mother gave her the key of the cupboard where the bread was, and told her where to find some money. Mariannina had a good time of it for several days, as her mother took no notice of her, and would not eat anything; but when the money was all spent she told her she had no more, and that she must get her breakfast how she could. She went out to play as usual, and a neighbour gave her something to eat. When she came back her mother was talking very loud, but there was no one else in the room, and the child could not understand what she said. She went on in that way for a long time, but at last she made a strange noise and then she was quite still. Afterwards the lamp before the Virgin went out; there

had been no oil to replenish it with. Next morning when Mariannina awoke her mother was still asleep. When she touched her she was quite cold. At first she had tried to awaken her, but she would not speak nor move, so the child was frightened and ran away. All day she had tried to get as far away as she could. She did not want to go home; she would go with Peppiniello, and she was hungry.

The kindest as well as the wisest thing would of course have been to take the little orphan to the Foundling Hospital, but Peppiniello never thought of that. He was convinced that the Holy Virgin had sent him to take care of this child, and he was not the boy to shrink from such a trust. Concetta was of the same opinion, and from that day to this Mariannina has been a member of the family. She is a quiet child, with soft, caressing ways, and never has those fits of wild merriment into which the others fall; but she has also less cheerfulness to face hard times with, and when the supply of food is very scanty, she is apt to be rather subdued and to look weary. The girls treat her exactly as they do each other, but there is just a shade of extra gentleness in the relation between her and her protector, which may arise from the consciousness that the ties between them have been formed by their own free choice, or perhaps from the belief which both entertain that it was the Blessed Virgin who brought them together.

Con

As soon as Peppiniello and Concetta have finished their prayers they arm themselves with two long sticks. A rusty fork is firmly bound to the end of that which the girl leans against her side of the bed, while her brother's terminates in the blade of an old knife, carefully sharpened. Aз he creeps into his place, Mariannina puts her hands up to his cheeks and falls asleep again in the midst of the caress. And now the purpose of the strange weapons soon becomes clear, for scarcely has quiet been restored than the floor is literally covered with hundreds of rats. cetta makes several ineffectual thrusts before Peppiniello moves his armi, but at his first blow he succeeds in wounding one of them, which utters a sharp squeak as it disappears. In a moment all the rest have vanished, and a shrill yet tremulous voice is raised in angry protest from the darkness beyond. At first it utters nothing but vile abuse and frightful curses, but then in a whine it urges that it is a sin to maim and injure the poor creatures. "They, too, are God's children."

"Why doesn't he keep them at home, then? While I'm here, they're not going to nibble Mariannina's toes," replies Peppiniello, but in a tone only just loud enough to catch Concetta's ear, for he respects the age and pities the suffering of the wretched being who has just spoken.

It is Donna Lucia's mother, who, having been found too loathsome to retain her place in the family bed, has been accommodated with a sack of dried maize leaves in the darkest corner of the cave. As her daughter and son-in-law are abroad at their work all day, their children are too little to be of any use, and she cannot move from her pallet, she has perhaps some reason to be grateful to the natural scavengers she vainly endea

vours to protect. Perhaps, too, the last affectionate instincts of a motherly nature have centred themselves on the only living beings that constantly surround her. At length the querulous voice dies away, the stick falls from Peppiniello's hand, and he sinks into a sound sleep.*

V.

When Peppiniello wakes he feels instinctively that it is dawn, though, as yet no ray of light has penetrated even to the entrance of the cavern, so he awakens Concetta. She is tired, and would willingly sleep another hour or two as she usually does, but in that case she could not go to mass with her brother, so she rouses herself, and they are soon on their way to a neighbouring church.

mass.

It is still dusk, the larger stars have not yet faded out of the sky, and the freshness of the morning air is felt even in the narrow streets through which their way leads them. There is a stillness everywhere, and an unusual light on common things which impress both the children, but chiefly Concetta, who never rises so early except when she goes to And when they pass the portal of the church the blaze of the candles upon the altar, the glow of the polished marble, the rich colours of the hangings, seem to stand in a strange contrast, not only to the quiet twilight outside, but also to all their ordinary surroundings. To you and me the church looks gaudy, a miracle of bad taste it may be; to them it is a little glimpse of splendour which they feel all the more keenly because it is so different from all the sordid circumstances of their daily life. And they are so safe here, too. Dirty as they are, no one rudely forbids their entrance or will push them from the altar step at which they kneel. For this is no great man's palace, but the house of God and the Madonna, and even these outcast children have a right to a place in it.

And so the mass begins, and Peppiniello remembers a number of trifles, and asks forgiveness for them. He thinks about the daily soldo

66

The incident of the old woman's affection for the rats is borrowed from Renato Fucini's interesting "Napoli a occhio nudo," p. 67. On his visiting one of the habitations of the poor, some such wretched being as Donna Lucia's mother used the expression employed in the text, in reproving him for frightening the rats away. The Italian words are "Son creature di Dio anche loro," and the verbal translation would of course be, "They, too, are God's creatures;" but this would quite fail to give the point of the reproof, for the word creatura is constantly applied in affectionate excuse for little children, or to urge their claim on the pity of adults. When a poor widow says in begging “ Tengo tre creature," she means to insist on their inability to care for themselves in any way, and "Sono creature" is the constant plea of the mother whose children have excited the anger of a grown-up person; pretty much as an Englishwoman might say, "They are too young to know what they are doing, poor things." In calling the rats "creature di Dio," therefore, the old woman wished to insist upon their weakness and their ignorance of right and wrong as a claim upon human pity, quite as much as on the fact of their having been created by God; almost as if she had said, "Spare the poor helpless innocents who have no protector but Him who made them."

he conceals from his sister, and has half a mind not to do so any more, though he is by no means sure it is a sin, and he thanks God and the Madonna for having taken care of him so often, but particularly yesterday, and prays them still to be good to him and his sisters and Mariannina, and to the girl who so kindly befriended him yesterday. For the rest of his friends and benefactors he prays in a general way and in the usual form; he does not specially think even of Donna Amalia or Don Antonio (though he would pray for both if they asked him), far less of the English sailors; and when he repeats the petition which he has been taught to use with respect to his enemies, I doubt whether any remembrance of Donna Estere comes into his head. When the elevation of the host is past, and the time has come to remember the dead, Concetta gently presses his hand, and he prays for the souls of his parents and of Mariannina's mother, and for "all that rest in Christ." She remembers their old home better, and thinks oftener about it, than he does, and so she is more moved by this part of the service, which he is sometimes apt to forget.

And all his real sins, his lies and thefts, doesn't he repent of them? I am afraid not. Some time ago he took his sisters to see the miracle of San Gennaro, and when the liquefaction of the blood was long delayed, did not think of all the other spectators who crowded the church, but concluded that it was some personal sin of his that had offended the saint. So he searched his conscience, and remembered that some time before he had refused an old woman a part of his scanty dinner, even though she had begged for it in the Madonna's 'name, and that he had spoken harshly to Donna Lucia's mother a few days afterwards; and he resolved to be gentler and kinder to the aged and infirm in future. Then the miracle was wrought, and hitherto he has kept his resolution. But his lies and thefts he did not remember. Nay, when he next prepares himself for confession, they will probably be the last sins that come into his mind. When the priest insists on their wickedness, the boy will be moved, and he will really repent, and make up his mind to give them up altogether, and for a day or two he will persevere; but then he will begin to consider the matter from a worldly point of view. The priest was doubtless right in what he said. Peppiniello himself can hardly imagine that a saint ever picked anyone's pocket, but then there is no chance of his ever becoming a saint, and they know how hard a poor mozzonare's life is, and will not judge him too harshly. In some such way he will probably arrive at the conclusion that perfect honesty is a luxury as far beyond his means as the whelks and periwinkles which are heaped upon the itinerant vendor's tray, and whose dainty odours so often vainly excite his appetite.

But now the mass is over, and Peppiniello and Concetta pass out of the church into the golden morning sunshine and there part, each to begin anew the labours and adventures of the day. And here we must leave them for the present.

455

Rambles among Books.

No. IV. THE STATE TRIALS.

IT sometimes strikes readers of books that literature is, on the whole, a snare and a delusion. Writers, of course, do not generally share that impression; and, on the contrary, have said a great many fine things about the charm of conversing with the choice minds of all ages, with the innuendo, to use the legal phrase, that they themselves modestly demand some place amongst the aforesaid choice minds. But at times we are disposed to retort upon our teachers. Are you not, we observe, exceedingly given to humbug? The youthful student takes the poet's ecstasies and agonies in solemn earnest. We who have grown a little wiser cannot forget how complacently delighted the poet has been to hit upon a new agony; how he has set it to a pretty tune; how he has treasured up his sorrows and despairs to make his literary stock in trade, has taken them to market, and squabbled with publishers and writhed under petty critics, and purred and bridled under judicious flattery; and we begin to resent his demand upon our sympathies. Are not poetry and art a terrible waste of energy in a world where so much energy is already being dissipated? The great musician, according to the well-worn anecdote, hears the people crying for bread in the street, and the wave of emotion passing through his mind comes out in the shape, not of active benevolence, but of some new and exquisite jangle of sounds. It is all very well. The musician, as is probable enough, could have done nothing better. But there are times when we feel that we would rather have the actual sounds, the downright utterance of an agonised human being, than the far away echo of passion set up in the artistic brain. We prefer the roar of the tempest to the squeaking of the æolian harp. We tire of the skilfully prepared sentiment, the pretty fancies, the unreal imaginations, and long for the harsh, crude, substantial fact, the actual utterance of men struggling in the dire grasp of unmitigated realities. We want to see Nature itself, not to look at the distorted images presented in the magical mirror of a Shakspeare. The purpose of playing is, as that excellent authority is constantly brought to us, to show the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure. But, upon that hypothesis, why should we not see the age itself instead of being bothered by impossible kings and queens and ghosts mixed up in supernatural catastrophes? If this theory of art be sound, is not the most realistic historian the only artist? Nay, since every historian is more or less a sophisticator, should we not go back to the materials from which histories are made?