which is the true genius loci of all places that have a past, we threw ourselves down and feigned slumber. On the grass, and under the trees around, our Delphic following likewise flung themselves, and were soon sleeping and snoring in good earnest. Then we opened our eyes, gazed at the bright blue sky through the dark green foliage, listened to the distant murmur of the most sacred fountain in the world, and pondered many things.

What Muses there were, were up to the
elbow in soapsuds. Was there ever such
a commentary on the Sic transit gloria
mundi? Hard by there is still a shrine,
but it is dedicated, not to Apollo, but to
Saint Elias, who, despite his nominal
patronage of the little chapel, is com-
pletely overshadowed, as in so many other
Greek churches, by the Mother of God.
That is the title she is always given; no
metaphorical word like a Madonna being
employed to mitigate the stern directness The midday siesta over, we were in-
of the doctrine with which the blessed vited to the house of the head man, and
among women is associated. Her face, there regaled with dried olives, curds,
as pictured in sacred Greek frescoes, is sour bread, Castalian watercresses steeped
neither gentle nor sad, but awful, far- in vinegar, and what I should call turpen-
away, austere, I might almost say abtine if my hospitable friends had not
stract. You may see something of it in offered it as wine. As we ate, women
Cimabue. But the Italians soon made and children came and timidly glanced at
the Mother of God in their own more us; one young creature very beautiful,
human image, and dowered her with and holding a child in her arms as none
tears, smiles, and indulgent pity. Nor but a Greek or an Italian mother knows
does one see among Greek believers the how to hold a child. All these people
same vulgar familiarity with things sup- are picturesque by unconscious and inev-
posed to be sacred that strikes one among itable instinct. That laborer leaning on
the sacristans, beadles, and ciceroni of his spade is a picture. That matron march-
Italy. The little church was literally coving to the well is a flawless composition.
ered with mural decorations, all of them That fellow lying along the wall is atti-
dedicated to the lives of saints, or to the tudinizing unawares.
The various group
story of the Redemption. One of these around us as we fed arranged itself as at
represented "the Resurrection;" and the prompting of some cunning artist.
while my companion and I were admiring But were we really going? Would we not
it for its artistic value, the retired mar- stay three days? If we would they would
iner, who evidently thought that to us kill a kid, and we would all be merry to-
heretical Englishmen the theme of the gether. The temptation would have been
fresco was novel, attempted to describe it great but for the reflection that for three
to us in short, crisp sentences denuded mortal days we should never be able to
of copulatives, and compressed to accom- stir without being accompanied by the
modate his extremely limited acquaint- whole population of Delphi. They at
ance with the language in which he tried tended us somewhat on our way, and then
to speak. But his enthusiasm made him once more we were in the company of the
roughly eloquent; and when, accompany. mountains. We returned to Amphissa
ing the words with pertinent gesticulation, by Chryso, a far more flourishing place
and winding up the story by narrating the than Castri, though nothing more than a
triumph of Christ over Death and Hell, good-sized village. A little way below it,
he exclaimed, "Cristo morto; Cristo just as the Gulf of Corinth began to
sepolto: niente a Dio! Sorge Cristo, Ev- broaden out to our gaze, we met a civil
viva Cristo!" all the male denizens of engineer, with two attendants and a the-
Delphi crossed themselves at mention of odolite. He was making a survey for a
the name, and Apollo and the Pythia road from Scala to Delphi. So, by-and-
and the Muses seemed, as Milton says, by, Delphi will be accessible by carriage;
"with bollow shriek the steep of Delphos and those who want to see it as it still is,
leaving."
had better make haste. For the company
of Mr. Cook will soon invade the Casta-
lian Fount, and the personally conducted
tours of Mr. Gaze will become familiar
with the shrine of Apollo. You will tele-
graph or telephone to the Pythia Hotel
for a bed, and the oracles of the place
will be valets and couriers.

Close by the church is the Monastery of St. Elias, containing one monk. Under an ilex-tree he spread out a mattress and pillows, that we might repose; and as it was impossible to get rid of our retinue even for an instant, much as we naturally desired to be left to that silent solitude

From The Spectator. "PHIZ" AND "BOZ."

fine point on the humor of Dickens, and catching- especially in the illustrations to "Master Humphrey's Clock "— that WHEN Mr. Dickens was making his delightful vein of extravagance, which a last tour in the United States, the follow- lesser artist of a duller wit would have ing incident occurred at one of the West- swollen into sheer caricature, he gives us ern towns, where he gave a series of read- two such finely differentiated figures as ings. The programme included the trial the delightful Dick and the whimsical scene from "Pickwick;" a very large and Chuckster, and then Quilp, with the "dogattentive audience was assembled, and all like smile" and the bow-legs; Codlin, seemed pleased, with the exception of Short, Jerry, the dancing dogs, and Whisone individual, a burly and emphatic per- ker. The latter we hold to be the most son, who, accosting a member of the characteristic four-legged portrait in existreader's party, inquired whether the gen-ence. Think of him, as he stands at tleman to whom he had been listening was Mr. Witherden's door, steadily turning a really Mr. Dickens. "Certainly, that is deaf ear to the mild remonstrances of Mr. Mr. Dickens," was the reply. "He who Abel, and the "Dear, dear, what a naughty wrote Pickwick'?" "Yes, the same.' Whisker!" of the old lady; as he dashes "Then you just tell him," said the ag- off, full of purpose, with the Marchioness grieved questioner, "that he knows no hanging on behind the little carriage, in more about Sam Weller than a cow knows the act of losing her one shoe forever, and about pleating a shirt!" How often has as he submits to be hugged by the resone heard the same thing (not so graphi- cued Kit, and say whether playfulness, cally expressed) said by disappointed lis- obstinacy, good living, and a serene conteners to the heavy, lumpish, drawling sciousness of being master of the situarendering of the "Sam" of whom one has tion, could find more perfect expression so totally different an idea, by the humor- in the form of a pony. Again, think of ist to whom we were accustomed to think the half-tipsy horror in the faces of Mrs. ourselves entirely indebted for him! Jiniwin and Sampson Brass, the susThat Sam could never have "bestowed a pended motion of the teaspoon in the wink the intense significance of which hand of the cruelly disappointed motherpasses description" on anybody, or been in-law, and the lifting of her warning fincapable of catching the tone of the ger, as Quilp interrupts the calumnious friendly swarry "of the Bath footmen. description of his nose, by "Aquiline, you That Sam was a hoarse, vulgar lout, hag! Could anything beat the expresneeding a great deal of room to turn him- siveness of that little picture, with the self round in, and no more like the smart stolid men in sou-westers, who have been fellow who plays a return match with Job dragging the river (it is to drown the Trotter in Mr. Nubbles's kitchen, than dwarf, in the end, so that there is a touch the Single Gentleman of the "Old Curi- of iron grimness in this conceit), and are osity Shop" is like the pathetic figure of requested by Quilp to "keep everything Master Humphrey seated in the corner they find upon the body." It is a good by the clock, though the identity of these plan to turn at once from this scene to two is indicated to the reader in a passage the fine picture of Quilp's corpse, when which both the author and the illustrator the river, after it has "toyed and jested seemed to have overlooked. The truth with its ghastly freight," has flung it on is, our Sam Weller-the Sam of that the bank, amid the weeds and stones and frank Western farmer is, Hablot stumps of a lonely place, where pirates Browne's Sam Weller, and it is impossi- had been hung in chains. The reaches ble to accept any other. This is a striking instance of the power of the distinguished artist whom we have so lately lost, and who is indissolubly associated with one of the most precious of the treasures of memory that of the books that delighted us, and the fancies that were realities to us in early days. It is, how-stump, form a composition that "Phiz" ever, only one among many, for every one of the characters in the works of Dickens and Lever which have a peculiarly strong hold upon the memory, mean and are what "Phiz" has made them. He put the

of the winding river, the long, flat shores, the rough, heavy, numbered posts, the heavily swooping birds of prey, the tumbled, dishonored corpse tossed there, head downwards, with the clenched hand, bared arm, and one leg, with the claw-like foot in its torn stocking, crooked over a

has rarely excelled. And if he has been the one interpreter of Dickens who adorned every humorous conception which he touched, he has also done away with much of the mawkishness of Dickens's

It is difficult to believe that "Phiz " might not have induced Mr. Dickens to suppress the introductory chapter of "Martin Chuzzlewit," it is not surpassed in vulgarity and puerile, would-be humor by any of his earlier "Sketches," or even by certain parts of his "Pictures from Italy" (which we take to be the lowwater mark of his performances) — for the frontispiece to that work, in some respects, the author's best, is one of Mr. Hablot's Browne's happiest achievements. So graceful is the conceit, so beautiful is the musing, vision-seeing figure of Tom Pinch, with all the aerial fabric of the

sentiment, and modified his vulgarity. | rably characteristic. Miss La Creevy is Edith Dombey, Lady Dedlock, and Mrs. sheer caricature, and this is a pity. Merdle are instances that will occur to "Phiz" might have made them " a comevery one; the three are caricatures in fortable couple." the books, but they are sympathetic personages in the artist's presentments. It is, indeed, owing to the two fine illustra tions of the Carker episode, that the whole story of the elopement in "Dombey and Son fails to strike the reader at once as simply a mock-heroic treatment of the feat of "cutting off one's nose to spite one's face." When "Phiz" fails as the illustrator of Dickens, it is because he has had to illustrate a failure; he never missed the humor of the author, because he always felt it, the sentiment he probably despised. The self-conscious, affected Esther Summerson, in "Bleak House," would be altogether odious; the less tire-story floating round him, that we cannot some, but feeble and lachrymose Amy Dorrit; and the shadowy Mary Graham, of "Martin Chuzzlewit," would be no bodies, but for their portraiture by "Phiz." Both author and artist failed equally to interest the reader in Madeline Bray. Kate Nickleby is charming; Ralph, one of Mr. Hablot Browne's memorable works; Squeers, though caricatured, is admirable; Smike, the Ken- at Leamington, is not like Mr. Dombey wigses, and the Crummleses, are very clever; Morleena in the barber's shop, with the coal-heaver who is on the wrong side of "the line," scratching his head in puzzled disconcertedness, is as good as Mr. Pickwick going down the slide; but Nicholas Nickleby's ladylove, with a big face, and no figure inside her clothes, is as feeble a creature as Minnie Gowan in "Little Dorrit."

bear to reflect that a real Tom Pinch would be an insufferable idiot, and that a real Pecksniff could not take in even such a fool as he.

"Phiz" found Mr. Dombey a difficult ideal to portray, and made no less than seventeen sketches, before he hit upon that one to which he generally, not always, adhered. Mr. Dombey, in his courting days

talking about "a cold spring" to deceive the world; but the artist's perplexity is not surprising, for the author varied his Dombey considerably, making him merely a pompous ass in the first part of the story, intensifying his purse-pride and folly in the second part, and turning him into a brute and the dupe of the coarsest chicanery in the third. This tendency to exaggeration, a note of Dickens's lack of The tea and quarrel scene between education which, but for his wonderful Mrs. Gamp and Mrs. Prig is one of the humor, must have been fatal to his ficauthor's masterpieces; the same may cer- tions, was in most instances toned down tainly be said of the illustration, from the by the sympathetic, but more refined toppling pippins on the bedstead, and the taste of the artist, who, after "Pickwick," extinguisher bandboxes, to the symptoms almost always avoided caricature in ilof inflammation in the faces and tempers lustrating Dickens. In his illustrations of the ladies. Wonderfully good, also, is to the works of Lever and Ainsworth, the scene of Mr. Pecksniff's discomfiture; "Phiz" showed that he could enter into the detected humbug's face, as he rests and render human interests, emotions, his head against the wainscot, "with and passions which were out of the range an expression of disconcerted meek- of Dickens's humor and of narrative ness enormously ridiculous," is perfect. Among the semi-comical, as distinguished from the broadly farcical characters whom "Phiz" had to portray for "Boz," Tim Linkinwater is highly meritorious; the smiling, yet anxious solicitude with which he watches Nicholas Nickleby's début, the wave of his pen with which he invites the brothers to silence and motionlessness, the tilted stool, the natty shoes, all are admi

power.

To Mr. F. G. Kitton we are indebted for a slight memoir of "Phiz," which is chiefly concerned, as it ought to be, with the artist. The man chose to live in retirement, to "keep himself to himself" in the strictest sense of the phrase; and he was in his right so to choose, and it is the artist, and not the man, with whom the public are concerned. We do not want

to know for what reason "Phiz" and accomplished painters avoided caricature "Boz" quarrelled in 1859, just after and forced humor; but those two works "Phiz" had illustrated "A Tale of Two are full of both, and they failed either to Cities," with etchings which come nearer illustrate, or to palliate them. We doubt to those in "Barnaby Rudge" than any whether any of the thousands of readers other of the artist's works of this kind. to whom the Pickwickians, Dick Swiv"Phiz" was not the only friend whom eller, Mark Tapley, Pecksniff, Peggotty, Dickens lost, for he had played the part Barnaby Rudge, Maypole Hugh, Grip, of iconoclast to himself. The quarrel, Guppy, Skimpole, and Inspector Bucket, however, was a disaster for the readers of are images as familiar and recognizable Dickens. Mr. Marcus Stone and Mr. as their own in a glass, have the least idea Luke Fildes illustrated "Our Mutual of the personages of either story, or have Friend and the fragment of "Edwin ever cared to form one, by the assistance Drood." Mr. Kitton truly says that these of Mr. Stone and Mr. Fildes.

it as the law directs for sixpence per quart, this is to give notice, that he shall have more customers than half his profession, and his house be as full from morning to night as a conventicle or Westminster Hall the first day of term." Later, the vintners became more scientific in their operations. Addison (in "The Tatler," No. 131, 1710) alluded to a certain fraternity of chemical operators who wrought underground in holes, caverns, and dark retirements to conceal their mysteries from the eyes and observations of mankind. "These subtle philosophers are daily employed in the transmutation of liquors, and by the power of magical drugs and incantations raise under the streets of London the choicest prod. ucts of the hills and valleys of France; they squeeze Bordeaux out of the sloe, and draw champagne from an apple."

ADULTERATION IN THE OLDEN TIME. - As Search after Claret," by Richard Ames, a thin early as the reign of Edward the Confessor, quarto, the last leaf is occupied by the followwe find it recorded in Domesday Book that in ing advertisement: "If any vintner, winethe city of Chester a knavish brewer, "malam cooper, etc., between Whitechapel and Westcerevisiam faciens, in cathedra ponebatur sterco-minster Abbey, have some tuns or hogsheads ris" in other words, the offender was taken of old rich unadulterated claret, and will sell round the town in the cart in which the refuse of the place had been collected, and to this degradation was often added corporal chastisement. In many towns in the sixteenth century, we find "ale-tasters," whose duty it was to inspect the beer. In 1529, for example, the mayor of Guildford ordered that the brewers make a good useful ale, and that they sell none until it be tasted by the "ale-taster.' The ale was not only tasted, but some of it was spilt on a wooden seat, and on the wet place the taster sat, attired in leathern breeches, then common enough. If sugar had been added to the beer, the taster became so adherent that rising was difficult; but if sugar had not been added, it was then considered that the dried extract had no adhesive property. A less coarse, but not dissimilar, method was also applied by the earlier inspectors to test the purity of milk. The frauds of the vintners or wine-sellers attracted some share of public attention in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as shown by municipal records, fugitive tracts and broadsides. In August, 1553, a certain Paul Barnardo brought into the port of London some wine, and there is extant an order in council directing the lord mayor to find five or six vintners to rack and draw off the said pipes of wine into another vessel, and to certify what drugs or ingredients they found in the said wine or cask to sophisticate the same. At a later date the records of the Common Council contain a certificate from the lord mayor to the lords of the council, stating that the wines of a certain " Peter Van Payne had been drawn off in his presence, and that in eight of the pipes had been found bundles of weeds, in four others some quantities of sulphur, in another a piece of match, and in all of them a kind of gravel mixture sticking to the casks; that they were conceived to be unwholesome and of a nature similar to others formerly condemned and destroyed. In "The

Country Brewers' Gazette.

A GIANT BIRD. In the neighborhood of Rheims, recently, M. De Lemoinne found sufficient remains of a remarkable bird (of new species), belonging to the eocene epoch, to give a fair idea of its structure. A thigh bone of the same animal had before been discovered by M. Planté, the well-known physicist, at Meudon; it was about eighteen inches long. The bird was of gigantic size, having a height, when erect, of at least ten feet. The skull was comparatively large, and less disproportionate than that of the ostrich. In the opinion of M. Alph. Milne-Edwards, judging by the skeleton, the bird had affinities to the duck, but it has peculiarities which forbid the ranking of it in any of the present natural groups. It has been called Gastornis Edwardsii. Various anatomical details, with a representation of the skeleton, are given by M. Meunier in La Nature, 466.

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