arm, picked up his paper, and departed, to return some time later with a rueful face. Chiara asked how he had sped. "Eh! Chiara mine, I did just as you said, and I found a nice osteria near Porta Maggiore where the man said I might leave the poor creatures; but when I opened the basket to show them, not one was there!" Chiara interposed: "I wager, Sor Matteo, you were reading the Capitan Fracassa all the way." He shamefacedly acknowledged it, and Chiara laughed loud and long, regretting to the day of her death that she did not see "Sor Matteo" going along with his nose in the paper, while five kittens leaped out in the rear. "To think," she murmured, "that the imbecile never felt the difference in the weight of the basket!”

One grateful Boston lady, for whom Mattei had called more than one carriage and done many an errand, presented him, on her departure, with a resplendent black and yellow satin cravat. It was observed that only once a year, when this lady visited Rome, did Mattei don his finery; at other times a wilted black tie did duty under the cheerful grin. On my remarking, the third winter, that the cravat was wearing well, he replied: "What will you have, signorina? I put it on only when the Signora Lorrrde comes to find us. I am a poor man, but I am an Italian, and I cannot wear the colors of Austria."

Passionately fond as a lad of playing cards, his father came to him one day, saying, "Look here, Gigi, you will have to stop this; we can't have such squandering." "You do it," retorted he. "Yes, but no family can stand two gamesters at once." "Well, then," quoth Luigi, "you stop, for you have had your turn, and I have only just begun." He meant no disrespect, but was simply expressing his idea of justice; and when, years later, this same father came down from the mountains, after the death of his good old wife Columbine, to be cared for by his son in Rome, he was served with the devotion and tenderness of a loving woman. "Why, signorina," said Mattei, with tears in his eyes, a few weeks before his father's death, when he was tramping all over the city to find a bottle of the sincere wine dear to the heart of the ancient peasant, "I would carry him on the palms of my hands."

Every life has its romance, and Mattei's

is centred in a curly-headed little maid, who inherits her father's big mouth and retroussé nose, but has a face as bright as a flash and can declaim like a true daughter of the South; and in her mother, the first wife, a consumptive, shiftless Roman, whose tribe of vagabond relations borrowed his money, told his secrets, and infested the dirty kitchen. Her successor, a strongminded, capable Tuscan, who keeps his house and children in irreproachable order and neatness, but thinks he has not backbone enough and lets him know it, has never won the love which embalmed the gentler Agnes. When congratulated by practical minds who assert that he could not have found a better wife for himself and mother for the children, he responds ambiguously, "I don't know;" and when he passes through the narrow streets near the Cancelleria he grows absent-minded, and says dreamily, "Eh! I know these parts. That tall, dark house is where my Agnesina lived when we were betrothed to each other, eighteen years ago."

I verily believe that, with the exception of King Humbert, Mattei has the largest bowing (or rather, nodding) acquaintance in Rome, and I have yet to hear of a trade in which he has not a friend. Of this large public he is the servant, the willing slave of every claimant. A colossal share of the pan giallo, Rome's Christmas dainty, which Mattei won at the lottery, lingers with grateful fragrance in a child's memory, but I have waited five years to obtain a set of shelves for which this factotum amiably advanced the money (refunded by me) to a strange but handsome and beguiling young carpenter. It is Mattei who registers the community's babies and attends to the details of the funerals; every one calls on him for everything, and of course every one snubs and scolds him, too. The scanty hair is growing very gray, and he does not forget as often as of old. Perhaps some day, when the insignificant body has gone to its rest, Isola and the other critics may find that a loving spirit dwelt among them, and that they comprehended it. not.

it, the fact is very striking as it is thus manifested in the fiction of the period. I read a good many novels, and I object so much to spending my time over decidedly unpleasant ones that I wish authors would kindly label their works in some such way that one might be warned off by the title page from the perusal thereof. It is not that I cannot read a sad story; but some sad stories are beautiful and carry in them a compensation for the pain they inflict, and other sad stories are simply unpleasant without mitigation. I can read Mrs. Gaskell's Sylvia's Lovers and like it; such a novel as The Wages of Sin, by Charles Kingsley's daughter, I would not willingly have read, had I known what manner of book it was. There are kinds of sadness and degrees of it. Mr. Thomas Hardy is a writer who is almost uniformly grievous, yet his art is so rare and so powerful that the reader consents to follow him to whatever dreadful end he leads. No one has a more profound apprehension of the force of circumstance to entangle men and women in its net, and no one paints so vividly momentous situations, where the history of a life hangs upon some thread of impulse, some apparently trifling turn of events. And yet Mr. Hardy has this in common with Shakespeare and other truly great artists, that his deepest tragedy is consequent upon character, and is not the simple working of fate. The Mayor of Casterbridge brings about his own downfall; his destiny is involved in his nature, and circumstance does but help to determine foregone conclusions. Mr. Hardy's last novel is a tragedy truly of a most piteous and heartrending sort, where the catastrophe is the result less of character than of fate; the complications of circumstance are most to blame for the fatal web in which poor Tess is caught.

Beside the novels which portray special types of character, carrying with them each its own individual destiny, there are others peculiarly characteristic of the period, which depict life itself as it appears to the modern observer in its general aspect or in some one of its phases, usually the most melancholy one. It is this scene of life rather than the actors in the scene on which the real interest is concentrated. Take such a book as A Marked Man. While the hero is a well-painted figure, it is not what he is

so much as what happens to him that concerns the author. His life is a spoiled one, his best affections are denied their natural channel, and at the end of his days he leaves his life with the mournful complaint, "But three years [of happiness] in fifty!" and his daughter echoes his thought, sighing out, "Oh, why is it? why?" and finds no answer to her hopeless query. As another example of this school of fiction-writing whose aim is to depict life as it is, take The House by the Medlar Tree. It is too unhappily true to life to be tolerable reading for any one past youth who knows what trouble is, who does not need and does not wish to have the woe of life thrust upon his notice and pressed down into his soul more than it already and inevitably is. For my own part, I think that a preface by Mr. Howells, recommending a book for its realism, will hereafter be enough to guard me against it. Some may agree with him to prize such novels as masterpieces of modern art, but is the depression they produce a wholesome effect to receive from a work of art? In no other form of art is that the outcome of the highest efforts of genius, — a clouding of the aspect of the world, a lowering of the mental nerve. To read such books as A Country Town, A Modern Instance, The Wind of Destiny, The Failure of Elizabeth, is gratuitously to weaken one's vitality, which the mere fact of living does for most of us in such measure that what we need is tonic treatment, and views of life that tend to hopefulness, not gloom.

-The story of Louis Philippe Royalty in the Genesee in a Wigwam, given in the ConCountry. tributors' Club of the February Atlantic, has filled several gaps in a historical study of great interest, and awakened a desire to know more of the experiences of the three Bourbon princes who, as exiles, wandered through the forests and clearings of the "wild West" of 1797, four years after the execution of Louis XVI. It is said that the full story may not be known until papers in the possession of the New York Historical Society are published; but many are the stories that have come down to those whose ancestors lived in the Genesee country of the three princes following the Indian trails on horseback, attended by a single servant and sharing the hospitality of the border cabins. Sometimes they were

escorted by the great landowners of the locality, Thomas Morris, James Wadsworth, or Colonel Williamson. They were in an important sense the guests of Gouverneur Morris, assistant financier of Robert Morris. He had bought of Phelps and Gorham an immense tract, thousands of broad acres on the flats of the upper Genesee, where Mount Morris now is. The Duke of Orleans, the future Louis Philippe, had been enabled to come to this country through the invitation of Gouverneur Morris, who had placed some fifteen thousand pounds to his credit in London, adding to this sum when the duke was joined by his two brothers, the Duke of Montpensier and the Count of Beaujolais. Let it be remembered of the royal exiles that they drew very sparingly upon their liberal allowance, repaying every dollar in good time; the whole amount not exceeding thirteen thousand dollars.

Wild as the Genesee country then was (it was but nine years after the sale to Phelps and Gorham of the hunting-grounds of the Senecas), a titled or distinguished personage was not infrequently wrapped up in a blanket before the blaze of the campfires along the much-traveled route between Albany and Niagara Falls. The old register of "the Hosmer stand," near the scowferry crossing of the Genesee at what is now Avon Springs, contained autographs that would be priceless to collectors of today. There were not only those of the three exiled princes of the House of Bourbon, but those of Joseph Bonaparte, ex-king of Spain, Kosciusko, the Duke of Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Count Niemcewicz, Marshal Grouchy, Talleyrand; to say nothing of Joseph Brant (Red Jacket), John Jacob Astor (a foot traveler and Indian trader with a pack of furs on his back), and heroes of the Revolution by the score.

Among the stories that come down to us from the pioneers of the Genesee Valley is one illustrating the travel of those early days, and, like most pioneer reminiscences, it is aggravatingly lacking in detail. The three princes had dined with Mrs. Orange Stone, in the house still to be seen in the eastern suburbs of the city of Rochester; and a very fine, spacious house it must have been for a backwoods settler. The future king of France and his party, escorted by Thomas Morris, had walked to the Genesee Falls, a good three miles, and, pushing

through the dense thicket along the banks, they had heard what they thought to be an Indian skulking in the bushes, or a wild beast. They shouted an alarm, and were soon face to face with a high-bred Englishman, he who was afterwards Lord Ashburton, who could not have been more surprised at meeting the princes in such a place than were they to meet him. It is bits of story like this that make those to whom they have been handed down impatient for the verification and fuller details which may possibly be given in the family papers of Louis Philippe and of the Morrises, each of whom was intimately associated with the Duke of Orleans during his stay in this country. The princes, having seen the falls of the Genesee, returned to Canandaigua, it is said, where they were the guests of Thomas Morris. One of the historic treasures of that historical town is the slipper that the future king of France left behind him. From Canandaigua they went, according to the Genesee pioneers, to Elmira, on foot, over the Indian trail. At Elmira a bateau was built for them, on which they sailed down the Chemung and the Susquehanna to Harrisburg. It is hard to make this account tally with that given in the February Contributors' Club, unless the princes made two journeys to the Genesee country. If they were going to Niagara Falls, why did they not push on when at the Genesee River? And there is the story of their having been at Canawaugus (Avon), and the tradition that their names were on the old register of the Hosmer tavern. Did they take in Niagara on their way to New York from New Orleans? Were they in the United States a little more than three years?

We hear of them in the gay life of New York and Philadelphia in the winter of 1797-98, at the dinner parties of Mrs. Alexander Hamilton and of Mrs. Gouverneur Morris, when the Duke of Kent, the father of the future queen of England, was also conspicuous in society. There seems to have been a great deal of dignity in embryo moving on the social currents of the metropolis just then he that was to be king of France, he that was to be the father of the queen of England, and he that was to be Lord Ashburton being woven into the traditions of the time. There is the story of a dinner party given by the future Louis Philippe

at his modest lodgings, where one half the guests were seated upon the side of the bed, for want of room to place chairs.

Not until thirty-three years after this trip through our Western settlements did "the citizen king" come to the throne. In all the changes and chances of his mortal life, we may believe that he was never happier than when wandering over the trails of the Genesee country, learning what raccoon steak was like, and succotash, and seeing the big rattlesnakes infesting the ledges of "the little Seneca's River." The impression he made upon the pioneers whose hospitality he shared was that of a good, true, simple-hearted gentleman, an impression which their children will perpetuate, no matter what royal archives may bring to light.

The Actor and Himself.

- A member of the Club re

cently treated us to some words of wisdom on Le Cothurne Étroit, throwing a light on its qualities sadly needed by our theatre. But I find a certain infelicity in his question, "What, then, becomes of the oft-repeated assertion that one must feel the part in order to be 'natural' or 'effective'?"

This query is, of course, not a full expression, even by implication, on the point at issue, but I think it unfortunately misleading. It is because they feel that the doctrine of law in expression contradicts this assertion that the great mass of English-speaking players and their public distrust it, or, in other words, Delsarte, whose name is considered synonymous with it, and also, unfortunately, as authorizing much charlatan teaching that takes his name in vain. Their antagonism does not prove, to be sure, the doctrine wrong, even though it were based on a fair understanding of it; but nevertheless I think their belief in the necessity of emotion sound, based on deep and true instincts, and that their error lies in a misunderstanding of Delsarte and his best expounders. The "natural" result sought by all is not literally natural, but, as in all the arts, has the effect of nature, more or less idealized as the case may be, limited and modified by the technical conditions of the creation.

A wordy war has long raged between Mr. Irving and M. Coquelin on this subject, and I am fully aware of the disadvantage it must be, in any kindred discussion,

to be found on the great Englisà manager's side; but I declare that is not my position. I am only not on Coquelin's. I have never seen or heard an expression from a competent artist or critic and I am thinking of Salvini for one- as to the comedian's insistent assertion that he never "feels" his parts, that the commenter did not attribute it to a deficiency of self-analysis, the diverse use of words by different people, the natural perversity aroused by the popular over-valuation of feeling, and insufficient appreciation of technique among such an inartistic people as the English, -one or all of these things, — - or did not, worse than all, and, I think, unjustly, dismiss the subject by saying that Coquelin's acting would have led him to suppose the case to be exactly as he states it.

The fact is, acting, psychologically considered, is the most curiously subtle thing in the world, and while all possible training can make nothing of a part but an empty shell unless there exists in the performance the feeling that gives the actor a sense of momentary identity with it, that sense of identity should cover but a small part of his consciousness (to speak, perforce, metaphorically); and outside of this emotional centre the critic part of him should stand unmoved, guiding, more or less consciously, his excitement, and turning it to the best artistic account.

One of Delsarte's great arguments for the study by actors of the beautiful, eternal principles of expression he formulated was that the knowledge and assumption of the outward symbols of a mood would powerfully aid in producing it; whereupon, of course, the reciprocal play of action and reaction would continuously add to the result.

In a recent beautifully lucid little paper, which I have not now by me, and so cannot quote directly, Salvini, who was a close pupil of Delsarte's, describes the emotional exaltation of acting, and the process of mastering it to the actor's purposes, instead of being mastered by it, with all the charming typical naïveté of a great plastic artist. And when I read what he had to say I was consoled for Coquelin's incredible, tiresome paradoxes, and, in my own mind, complacently congratulated the greatest actor in the world upon saying exactly what I had always thought.

Ignis Fatuus.

Bayard Taylor relates that, in crossing the square in Frankfort, he encountered a man who was singing softly to himself. Our American abroad might not have noticed the appearance of this stranger, although the latter was young and handsome, except for a striking peculiarity of the eyes. These were large, expressive, and extraordinarily luminous, — luminous with the phosphorescent light which had been observed in the wild beasts of the forest or of the desert, and which, as in the case of this famous musician, Mr. Taylor remarks, is rarely absent in men of great genius. Additional testimony to this effect is furnished by Vincent Nolte in his Fifty Years in Both Hemispheres, in which one finds the following picture of Napoleon alighting from a carriage in Leghorn: "A man of small stature, pallid complexion, hair long and straight as that of a Florida Indian; the countenance wearing the perpetual smile of the man of affairs; the eyes dull with introspection, and actually dim with a phosphorescent glare." It may be remarked that this description refers to a date shortly before Marengo, and at a period in which the energies of the great captain were at their highest ; for, prodigious as were his later achievements in wielding vast armies and vast nations, it was at this very time of which Nolte writes that he performed his most extraordinary miracles of creating armies and of dallying with thrones.

In our own immediate times, "Bull Run" Russell, the famous war correspondent and word-painter of the London Times, lays stress upon this same characteristic as to

the eyes in his description of Wigfall, of Texas: "A man of prepossessing appearance, of genial manner, of great originality in expression, but bearing ever in his eyes the phosphorescent glare of the wild beast." Another instance of this mysterious light in the window of the soul is to be found in the case of a most amiable and lovely lady of our own day, who was believed by partial friends to have been the original of Zenobia in Hawthorne's portraiture. So noticeable was this peculiarity that many poetic compliments and not a few fugitive verses were inspired by the glow which the darkness always revealed in her eyes. More than once, in reference to this subject, were quoted the lines from Lalla Rookh about

"Gems in darkness issuing rays They 've treasured from the sun that 's set."

On the other hand, some feminine commentators referred the matter back to natural history, and talked about cats.

True, this so-accredited signal-fire of genius becomes a baleful light when found in the eyes of maniacs, just as the stars, in Hiawatha, grew to look like the eyes of wolves to the starving Indians. Indeed, this glow which sometimes illumines the human orb of sight may be either a blessing or a curse, for it denotes preternatural activity of the nervous centres. Phosphorus plays a mysterious rôle in the nouriture and chemistry of the brain; and the cerebral perturbation which might make this irradiation manifest in the struggles of genius might also, if still further increased, light up a noble wreck.