you must be wanting some new ones, do rate as though he hired them in the ," bazaar. Mrs. A. is not enlightened on the subject, and what money transactions pass between the two worthies does not transpire.

let me send you a few dozen to-morrow,' you know she will be hurt if you decline them on the plea of having obtained yesterday a supply hemmed by Mrs. Brown's schoolchildren; while if you have the temerity to say that you prefer to buy always in the bazaar because the jáhrans there are so much cheaper than anything your friends can offer, and with your many children you are obliged to consider expense, you may be sure that Mrs. Smith will never think so well of you again after manifesting what she considers so lamentable a want of anything like proper feeling.

The etiquette of calls in India is, that they should be paid by the last comer between the hours of twelve and two, and any one is at liberty to call on all the people who have arrived at a station before him. Everybody in society, on going to the chief town of a province, leaves a card at Government House, and receives an invitation to a dinner or ball with "R. S. V. P. to So-and-so," in the corner. These mysterious letters have been known to Your servants sometimes involve you cause some difficulty to India-born offiin amusing little difficulties, either by cials of the "uncovenanted" class, who, lending your property to your friends, or by obtaining the wished-for distinction of by borrowing theirs for you. You are a gazetted appointment, find themselves going to give a large entertainment, and admitted to a society above the level of desire your khansamah to hire for you in their earlier days. There is a story, said the bazaar such extra crockery as will be to be wholly true, of a worthy couple who required. You are charged so much for were anxious, before going to a new sta the use of the china, and pay the money, tion, to part from their old neighbors with thinking the sum asked by no means un- every graceful and appropriate form of reasonable for such nice plates as you farewell; and long and sadly they ponhad, especially those white ones with a dered over the cards they were to leave. blue crest upon them, a lion rampant, "I know the ladies do write something in with a motto curling round him. It just the corner of their cards when they are occurs to you whether it would be worth going away," said the wife, "but I don't while to buy those plates, and to wonder like to ask anybody what it is, because what they would cost; but other things that would show we did not know ourput them out of your head, and by the selves." She had better have asked, poor time you go out to dinner the next even- lady, or else put nothing at all, for her ing you have forgotten the china. Then, husband, who was familiar with no comwhen a plate of soup is put before you, bination of letters without words save £ you see the blue lion again: there he is s. d. and T. O., suggested she should look too on all the other plates round the through all the cards she had received. table, with the same motto, word for word, She did so; there was none with P. P. C., just as it was upon the plates you hired. but there was a card of invitation to an This rather surprises you. Has your entertainment at Government House; hostess really so few soup-plates of her that must be right surely the mysteri own that she must borrow of your Parsee ous initials good enough for high officials friend, and that for small dinner-parties? must be good enough for her, and so the You have spied a most unexpected lean- station was convulsed with laughter when ness in this land of Egypt, you think. in every house appeared a farewell card But then the fish comes round, and there | from is the lion again and there he is on every piece of ware for every course of the dinner. At last you speak.

"I had some plates like this, with just the same blue lion on them, from the bazaar, for my ball supper."

Your hostess brightens visibly. "Then that explains it," she cries. "We could not think what was the matter that night, for we had barely enough plates to eat our dinner off."

The mystery is solved: your khansamah borrows Mrs. A.'s plates of her khansamah, and charges you at the same

MR. AND MRS. DA COSTA,
R. S. V. P.

It is rather amusing to watch the arrival on horseback of a visitor who wisely wears an ugly and unbecoming sola topee (cork helmet) to screen his head from the fierce sunshine, while a sais runs behind carrying the tall glossy hat which his master brings into your drawing room and strokes during his visit. It is always hopeless to give one's name to a native servant, its mangled remains would be long past recognition by the time they reached his

mistress; so the proper thing to do after | unkindest words spoken, but is is very ascertaining that a lady is at home, is to true; and true too that while the hard send in your card, or "ticket," and wait and bitter words are born of idle want of until the servant returns to give you her thought, the good deeds spring from ten"salaam." Ladies get very much per- derness of heart, and from consideration plexed sometimes as to the personal iden- and sympathy for the wants of others. tity of their visitors. Thus, when a pair Nowhere else, probably, does one form of friends go round together to make calls such close and intimate friendships, desduring their holiday in the hills, how is a tined sometimes, as long years of absence hostess, who never saw either of them be- weaken the old links with home, to grow fore, to discover from their occasionally stronger even than the ties of blood. It rather bashful conversation which gentle- is a melancholy fact that a long sojourn man is Mr. Jones, and which is Mr. in India does and must cut off the exile Smith? If she ask them to dinner after- from his own family; they have forgotten wards for different evenings, she is sure the old early days whose memory he cherto find the man she took for Smith re- ishes so fondly, while he has acquired sponds to Jones's invitation, and vice new tastes and interests of which they know but little, and feel very seldom an inclination to learn more, and so when the first novelty of his return has worn off, the old Indian begins to feel himself an outsider in the family circle, and to wish sometimes for more congenial society, until he ends by settling down amongst the tried friends of his exile, feeling that however delightful it is to be able to see his relations when he will, his true home. is with his own compeers.

versa.

In the wholesale system of calling pursued in the hills it often happens that you have to entertain at dinner guests whose personal appearance is entirely unknown to you. These ladies, whose husbands are unable to get leave from work in the plains, have called upon your wife without seeing her, and she has returned the visit with the same result; so you are both dependent on the quickness of your own faculties to discover from their preliminary talk which is the most important lady whom you must take in to dinner; you know her name of course, and probably all about her, but you have no idea which of your guests she is. As the first visitor is seen approaching, a servant enters and announces, "A lady comes." So you go out and receive on your threshold an utter stranger, to whom you offer your arm to the drawing-room, and make your self as charming as circumstances permit, until the announcement of another lady, whom you must receive in the same manner, and so on until all the party is assembled.

Amongst the peculiarities which strike the visitor in India are what are called acting appointments." Official No. I goes to England, and his place is temporarily supplied by Official No. 2, who enjoys a larger salary for the time; then No. 3 is moved up to "act" for No. 2, and so on downwards, until to the outsider it really seems sometimes as though no one were doing his own, but everybody some other man's work.

In writing of society in India, and deploring its obvious faults and shortcomings, one turns with grateful pleasure to record its almost universal and thorough kindness. It sounds paradoxical to say that India is the country of the world in which the kindest deeds are done, and the VOL. XL, 2032

LIVING AGE.

People say the character of Indian society has altered greatly in the last twenty years. Before the introduction of croquet, when everybody rode or drove at sunset on the Mall, it was an important thing to have your carriage appointments perfect of their kind, and your horses such as should challenge the admiration of your friends. Now, though croquet has been killed by Badminton and tennis, the Mall is almost deserted, and the few people who hasten through it are on their way to garden parties of one kind or another, utterly reckless as to the appearance of the vehicle in which they sit, and preferring an inexpensive tum-tum, or even a hired gharry, to the elegant conveyances of the good old times.

The lavish hospitality which was needful before the days of dak bungalows and hotels, is so no longer; but in no other country of the world are you sure to receive from people upon whom you have not the slightest claim, help such as you would hardly dare to hope for from your nearest relatives: nowhere else will you, as an utter stranger, be taken in and nursed with untiring tenderness and kindness, and this too where nearly all the fatigue of nursing falls upon your entertainers themselves, and not upon some old trustworthy servant, as it would do in an English house. And all this is done as a matter of course: you are ill and

alone, therefore you must be taken home | native Arab dynasties. But they proved by some motherly soul who, be she young to be implements which as often cut the or old, will treat you as her own and only hand that wielded them as those against child all through the period of your ill-whom they were directed.

say

"thank you

From The Cornhill Magazine.

MOSLEM PIRATES IN THE MEDITERRA

NEAN.

ness, and be your fast friend ever after- Perhaps not the least singular circumwards if you have only the common stance connected with the piratical wars courtesy to to her for of the Mediterranean is the fact that their her goodness. latest and ablest historian is a Roman We may laugh at Indian society, suffer Dominican monk. Padre Alberto Guglielperhaps from its faults, and be irritated motti, of the Order of Preachers, is the or disgusted by its weaknesses and fol- author of a series of valuable works all lies, but never let us deny the generous dealing with marine matters, and espekindness for which it is still remarkable, cially and peculiarly with the Papal navy. the good qualities which come to light Perhaps to the general reader the very when any passing breeze is strong enough phrase "Papal_navy may appear almost to blow aside the foliage of that noxious incongruous. Yet a Papal navy once explant of gossip which does its best to isted, and its captains and sailors were stifle and to overshadow them. amongst the most valiant and skilful of all those who manned and navigated the fleets of the Mediterranean. Still more incongruous does it appear to think of a cowled friar in his cell inditing treatises and narratives about naval doings, which not only manifest the most complete mastery of technical details, but have as breezy a salt savor of the sea in them as Dibdin's songs! The phenomenon is partly accounted for when we learn that Padre Guglielmotti is a native of Cività Vecchia, and that his boyish reminiscences include listening with eager delight to the yarns of an old sailor who was wont to sit on the quay on holiday afternoons and recount his adventures. But Padre Guglielmotti's natural bent and aptitude for maritime things have been cultivated by assiduous and intelligent study. On navigation, gunnery, and fortification, on marine topography and meteorology (especially as regards the phenomena to be observed in the Mediterranean), this Dominican monk speaks with science and authority. One is tempted to exclaim, "What a fine sailor wasted!" But it must be remembered that for thousands of stout fellows able to take part in doughty deeds afloat, all the seaports in Italy could perhaps not furnish one other able to chronicle them as the Padre Alberto has done for us. He brings to the performance of his task some valuable elements which are supplied by the learned leisure of a cloistered life; and a mass of very varied erudition is fused, so to speak, into homogeneity by the glow of a strong and steady enthusiasm.

ACROSS the blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea two irreconcilable enemies, Moslem and Christian, have glared at each other for centuries: to the north Spain, France, Italy; to the south, Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli. The waves that wash those shores have many a time been dyed with the blood of the valiant and the helpless, the strong soldier and the trembling child. They have been the liquid battle-plain for belted knight and turbaned Turk during many troubled years, and along the coasts of Italy from Villafranca to Sicily there are few miles of territory which have not at one time or another been scorched and ravaged by African fire and sword.

There are no pages of European history more full of wild romance and stirring adventure than those which record the deeds of the Moslem pirates in the Mediterranean; and of all these pages those which embrace the period from 1500 to 1560 are by far the most important and interesting. Not that a fierce maritime warfare between the Turks and Christians did not exist long before; but during this period piracy on the part of the former took a more powerful development, by reason of the protection afforded to these lawless marauders by the sultans of Turkey, who invested sundry of them with important dignities, and even with sovereignty. Within those sixty years the Ottoman emperors made use of the pirate chiefs to forward their own ambitious aims in northern Africa, and to drive out the

The leading incidents of the piratical warfare waged by the Mussulmen against the Christians in the Mediterranean are to be met with scattered throughout the pages of many chroniclers and historians. Jacopo Bosio in his well-known history of

the Order of St. John of Jerusalem,*. alarms inflicted on their respective counknown later as the Knights of Malta tries by the Mussulmen pirates. At the records many of them; as does Agostino same time, the traditions of the ancient Giustiniani in his "Annals of Genoa," crusades against the infidel were revived Pietro Bembo in his "Rerum Venetarum and warmed by all the religious exerHistoria," Guerrazzi in his "Life of An- cises, the public preachings, and the visits drea Doria" (the latter, despite its power to famous sanctuaries, which belonged to and elequence, not always to be relied on the Jubilee year. The Borgia pope, Alexin detail), and many others. But Padre ander VI., who then sat on the throne of Guglielmotti has for the first time col- St. Peter's, proposed an alliance of Chrislected and co-ordinated these scattered tian princes and peoples against the Turk. records into a historic whole, and has Almost every European nation had vital added to them much valuable original cause to desire the overthrow of the Musthought, and many hitherto inedited doc-sulman power. The shores of France uments, the fruit of his diligent research- and Spain were constantly exposed to es. The work we are now alluding to is piratical ravages. Venice waged a fierce entitled "La Guerra dei Pirati, e la war in the waters of the Levant to defend Marina Pontificia, dal 1500 al 1560." her possessions. Even the inland counIt is rare to meet with a book so interest- tries of Hungary and Poland were ening at once in matter and manner. The gaged in a struggle against the hordes of author's character and tone of mind Bajazet. Italy, from Genoa to Reggio on might furnish as valuable a study to the the Mediterranean, and from Venice to psychologist as his facts afford to the Taranto on the Adriatic, had suffered by historian. He is endowed with a fresh- the fire and sword of the barbarians. ness and vigor of imagination which en- The most sanguine hopes were excited in ables him to realize to his own mind the the public mind by the announcement that events he chronicles, almost as forcibly the sovereigns of France and Spain (at as if he had witnessed them. One result that date Louis XII. and Ferdinand V., of this power is that he writes of distant surnamed the Catholic) were about to put incidents with a lively personal interest, out all their strength against the common which the majority of mankind are unable foe. Matters went so far in the councils to feel even for the passing life around of Rome, that the pope nominated as them. Three hundred and fifty years have not fossilized the men of the Cinque Cento for Padre Guglielmotti. He loves and hates them with a heartiness worthy of Doctor Johnson. As a counterpoise, he has a genuine love of truth, and would not willingly misrepresent even a Barbary pirate! But his manifestations of impartiality are such as an honest man might display towards his neighbor and contemporary in the flesh; and they neither have, nor affect to have, any Jove-like air of serene tolerance, or scientific imperturbability. For him humanity is still warm and palpitating in parchment chronicles of three centuries ago.

The year 1500 of our era was the Jubilee year. Rome was full of pilgrims from all parts of Europe. Her hostelries were overflowing; the ports of her maritime territory were populous with foreign vessels; the sea in those days was a more frequented highway than the land; and the concourse of travellers arriving from the different coasts and islands of the Mediterranean accumulated a mass of testimony as to the vexations, injuries, and

Storia della sacra religione et illustrissima milizia

di San Giovanni Gerosolimitano. In fol. Roma, 15941602.

captain-general of the Christian armies Pierre d'Aubusson, grand master of Rhodes; and the Papal master of the ceremonies composed the formula of prayers to be recited on the distribution of the crosses, and the blessing of the common standard of the league.

At the same time active preparations went on to provide the contingent of twenty galleys which the pope had promised as his contribution to the Mediterranean fleet. The captain of the Papal navy at this time was Lodovico del Mosca, of a noble Roman family, now extinct. For a long period it had been customary for the Papal government to keep a squadron of war galleys cruising along the coast of the Roman and Tuscan Maremma, and a considerable way to the south towards Naples, for the protection of Italian commerce against the pirates. The number of these vessels was, in 1500, increased from three to twelve; namely, three galleys, three brigantines, three low coasting barges, two galleons, and a vessel called balniere or baloniere, which was a long rowing boat, something like the canoes used by the natives in Siam. Thanks to the seamanship and vigilance of Captain del Mosca, and his

bored in proportion to the weight of the balls came into use. And whilst on the subject of mediæval artillery, we may mention a curious etymology maintained by our author. In a previous work he mentions the first example of the use of the word mitraille-in Italian metraglia

to express a quantity of projectiles fired off together, in the year 1453. Guerrazzi writes it in Italian with an i, and it is precisely this orthography which has blinded him to the true etymology of the word. In his "Life of Andrea Doria" Guerrazzi writes: "Cartouches filled with ball received the name of mitraglia, the etymology of which word is unknown to us." Had he written metraglia he would more easily have perceived the derivation of the word from the Italian verb mettere, to send, to emit. Of course its ancestor

colleague, Lorenzo Mutino (also a Roman), the great mass of pilgrims who came by sea reached Rome without accident or spoliation; and there was abundance of provisions in the ports of the State and the hostelries of the city. During the whole time of the Jubilee, Mosca's little squadron was incessantly cruising along the coast from Cape Argentaro to the Circean Promontory, and amongst the little islands off the Tuscan and Neapolitan shores. The name of Mosca was a word of fear to the pirates, who prudently kept out of his way, and left the seas free to peaceable folks bent on piety or profit. Besides fulfilling these, his normal duties, Lodovico del Mosca busied himself in preparations for the great allied campaign against the Turk, which was then in prospect. Under his supervision six new galleys were at once put on the a little further removed is the Latin mitstocks in Cività Vecchia. Moreover, he was quick and vigilant enough to make an excellent bargain for his sovereign the pope by buying, at a very low price, all the artillery which King Frederick of Naples, then flying from his kingdom, had collected at Ischia. It is said to have been worth fifty thousand ducats, and was purchased for thirteen thousand!

tere. But, as Padre Guglielmotti well observes, the desinence in aglia is not Latin, but belongs to the idiosyncrasy of the Italian language, which has other examples of it; as pedonaglia, foot-soldiery, nuvolaglia, a mass of clouds, expressing the agglomeration of a number of similar objects.

With all these preparations, and others The two captains, Mosca and Mutino, on a great scale made by Louis XII., shipped the guns and munitions at Ischia, king of France and seigneur of Genoa, and brought them up the Tiber to the and by Ferdinand the Catholic king of Ripa, whence they were conveyed by land Spain, mighty results were expected from through the Campo di Fiori to the Castle the Christian alliance against the Turk. of St. Angelo. The procession greatly The French king had prepared a fine fleet excited the public interest and curiosity, and army under the command of Count and the line of march was crowded with Philip of Cleves Ravenstein; whilst the spectators. "There were thirty-six great troops of his most Catholic Majesty were bombards, with eighty carts pertaining to led by the famous Gonsalvo of Cordova, them; some drawn by horses, some by surnamed the Great Captain.. But these buffaloes, harnessed singly, or two, four, Christian princes were more intent on and even six together; two wagons laden their own aggrandizement than on effecwith arquebusses for ship's boats; nine tually protecting their peaceable subjects with about forty smaller bombards (bom- from piracy and rapine. Both looked bardelle) placed three, four, or six on each with greedy eyes on Naples; and both wagon; twelve with ordinary pieces of used the war against the Turks as a preartillery; as many more for the service of text for collecting sea and land forces, twelve big guns; thirty-seven carts with and taking Frederick of Naples by suriron balls; three with gunpowder; and, prise. In fact, Count Philip of Cleves finally, five laden with nitre, darts, and Ravenstein, without taking counsel either bullets. Splendid artillery of excellent with the Venetians, or with the grand workmanship and great power, escorted master of Rhodes, entered the Archipelby two thousand men under arms, without ago, making a mere pretence of waging mentioning the companies who marched war on the Ottoman government. before and after each wagon." Thus assaulted Mitylene, bombarded it without Padre Guglielmotti. He points out that, effect, put about to the westward, and lost according to this irrefragable evidence, on the voyage the flagship on which he the ancient bombards were still highly himself was, and soon afterwards another valued at the beginning of the sixteenth of his biggest ships with nearly all her century, and that this was about their crew. Similarly the army of the Spanish latest period. Thenceforward, cannon king, under the command of Gonsalvo,

He