where we should find an inexhaustible supply of ammunition. My aunt was rich. She spared nothing for her own amusement or to amuse others, and never had she found a better occasion for spending her money. She had already given two successful soirées, at which her large drawing-rooms were filled, but this crowd did not include everybody, and those who were absent were precisely those she was most anxious to have, and the very ones who, on Jeudi-Gras, were to give her the pleasure of making use of her rooms. She did not dream of fathoming their motives; it was enough to have their presence.

At last, after examining and approving everything, as disorder reigned in the drawing-room, my aunt took us to her chamber. She gave Stella and myself two armchairs that were there, placed on the floor a supply of biscuits, candied chestnuts, and mandarines for Angiolina's benefit, and seated herself on the foot of her bedstead, taking for a seat the bare wood; the mattress, pillows, and coverings being rolled up during the day, according to the Neapolitan custom, like an enormous bale of goods, at the other end of the bedstead. Arming herself with an immense fan, which she vigorously waved to and fro, she set herself to work to entertain us. First, she replied to my questions:

"You ask where the ragazze are. . . . I didn't tell you, then, they are gone on a trip to Sorrento with the baronessa?"

"No, Zia Clelia, you did not tell me. When will they return?”

"Oh! in a short time. I expect I expect them before night. It was such fine weather yesterday! They did

The girls.

not like to refuse to accompany the baroness, but it would not please them to lose two days of the Carnival, and the baroness wouldn't, for anything in the world, miss her part at San Carlo. Teresina is to go there with her this evening."

The baroness in question was a friend of my aunt's whom she particularly liked to boast of before me. If she was indebted to me for some of the acquaintances she was so proud of, she lost no opportunity of reminding me that for this one she was solely indebted to herself.

"Ah! Ginevra mia! . . ." continued she, "you have a fine house, to be sure I can certainly say nothing to the contrary; but if you could only see that of the baroness!... Such furniture! Such mirrors! Such gilding! . . . And then what a view!

Here my aunt kissed the ends of her five fingers, and then opened her whole hand wide, expressing by this pantomime a degree of admiration for which words did not suffice. .

"How?" said Stella with an air of surprise. "I thought her house was near here, and that there was no view at all. It seems to me she can see nothing from her windows."

"No view!" cried Donna Clelia. "No view from the baroness' house! . . . See nothing from her windows! . . . What a strange mistake, Contessa Stella! You are in the greatest error. You can see everything from her windowseverything! Not a carriage, not a donkey, not a horse, not a man or woman on foot or horseback or in a carriage, can pass by without being seen; and as all the drawing-rooms are al primo piano, you can see them as plainly as I see you, and distinguish the color of

their cravats and the shape of the ladies' cloaks."

"Ah! yes, yes, Zia Clelia, you are right. It is Stella who is wrong. The baroness has an admirable view, and quite suited to her tastes."

"And then," continued Donna Clelia, waving her fan more deliberately to give greater emphasis to her words, "a situation unparalleled in the whole city of Naples! ... A church on one side, and the new theatre on the other! And so near at the right and left that-imagine it-there is a little gallery, which she has the key of, on one side, leading to the church; and on the other a passage, of which she also has the key, which leads straight to her box in the theatre! I ask if you can imagine anything more convenient? . . . But, apropos, Ginevra, have you seen Livia lately?"

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Yes, I see her every week." "Ah! par exemple," said Donna Clelia, folding her hands, "there is a saint for you! But I have stopped going to see her since the Carnival began, because every time. I go I feel I ought to become better, and the very next day off I go to confession. . . It has precisely the same effect on the ragazze ; so they have begged me not to take them to the convent again before Ash-Wednesday."

Stella, less accustomed than I to my aunt's style of conversation, burst into laughter, and I did the same, though I thought she expressed very well in her way the effects of her visits at the convent. At that minute the doors opened with a bang, and Teresina and Mariuccia made their appearance, loaded with flowers. At the sight of us there were exclamations of joy :

"O Ginevra! . . . Contessa!

E la bambina! Che piacere!

here!"

How delightful to find you

A general embrace all around. Then details of all kinds-a stream of words almost incomprehensible.

"Che tempo! Che bellezza! Che paradiso! They had been amused quanto mai! And on the way back, moreover, they had met Don Landolfo, and Don Landolfo had invited Teresina to dance a cotillon with him at the ball to-morrow . . . And Don Landolfo said Mariuccia's toilet at the ball last Saturday was un amore !"

It should be observed here that everything Lando said was taken very seriously in this household. His opinion was law in everything relating to dress, and he himself did not disdain giving these girls advice which cultivated notions of good taste, from which they were too of ten tempted to deviate.

We were on the point of leaving when Mariuccia exclaimed:

"Oh! apropos, Ginevrina, Teresina thought she saw Duke Lorenzo at Sorrento at a distance."

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Lorenzo? . . . At Sorrento? No, you are mistaken, Teresina. He went to Bologna a week ago, and will not be back till to-morrow."

"You hear?" said Mariuccia to her sister. "I told you you were mistaken-that it was not he."

"It is strange," said Teresina. "At all events, it was some one who resembled him very much. It is true, I barely saw him a second."

"And where was it?" I asked with a slight tremor of the heart.

ning, a day sooner than I expect ed, I felt a slight misgiving at seeing him. He perceived it, and smilingly asked if I was sorry because he had hastened his return. I was tempted to tell him what troubled me, but was ashamed of

the new suspicion such an explanation would have revealed, and I reproached myself for it as an injustice to him. I checked myself, therefore, and forced myself to forget, or at least to pay no attention to, the gossip of my cousins.

THE Liber Hymnorum is the next selected. It is believed to be more than one thousand years old, and one of the most remarkable of the sacred tracts among the MSS. in Trinity College, Dublin. It is a collection of hymns on S. Patrick and other Irish saints, which has been published by the Irish Archæological and Celtic Society, under the superintendence of Dr. Todd. The three pages selected contain the hymn written by S. Fiach of Stetty, between the years 538 and 558, in honor of S. Patrick. The hymn is furnished with an interlinear gloss.

The tenth of these MSS. is The Saltair of S. Ricemarch, Bishop of St. David's between the years 1085 and 1096, a small copy of the Psalter containing also a copy of the Roman Martyrology.

Of the four pages of this volume which have been selected for copying, two are a portion of the Martyrology and two of the Psalter. The first of these last contains the first two verses of the 1o1st Psalm, surrounded by an elaborate border formed by the intertwinings of four serpentine monsters. The initial D of Domine is also expressed by a coiled snake, with its head in an attitude to strike; the object of its

attack being a creature which it is impossible to designate, but which bears some resemblance to the hippocampus, or sea-horse. The second page of the Psalter contains the 115th, 116th, and 117th Psalms, in which the same serpentine form is woven into shapes to represent the initial letters. The version of the Psalms given in this volume differs from that used in England in Bishop Ricemarch's time. It is written in Latin in Gaelic characters. The volume belongs to Trinity College, Dublin.

Next in order appears the Leabhar na h-Uidhré, or Book of the Dark Gray Cow, a fragment of one hundred and thirty-eight folio pages, which is thought to be a copy made about the year 1100 of a more ancient MS. of the same name written in S. Ciaran's time. It derived its name from the following curious legend, taken from the Book of Leinster, and the ancient tale called Im thecht na trom daimhé, or Adventures of the Great Company, told in the Book of Lismore. About the year 598, soon after the election of Senchan Torpeist to the post of chief filé (professor of philosophy and literature) in Erinn, he paid a visit to Guairè, the Hospitable,

King of Connaught, accompanied by such a tremendous retinue, including a hundred and fifty professors, a hundred and fifty students, a hundred and fifty hounds, a hundred and fifty male attendants, and a hundred and fifty female relatives, that even King Guairè's hospitality was grievously taxed; for he not only had to provide a separate meal and separate bed for each, but to minister to their daily craving for things that were extraordinary, wonderful, rare, and difficult of procurement. The mansion which contained the learned association was a special source of annoyance to King Guairè, and at last the "longing desires" for unattainable things of Muireann, daughter of Cun Culli and wife of Dallan, the foster-mother of the literati, became so unendurable that Guairè, tired of life, proposed to pay a visit to Fulachtach Mac Owen, a person whom he thought especially likely to rid him of that burden, as he had killed his father, his six sons, and his three brothers. Happily for him, however, he falls in with his brother Marbhan," the prime prophet, of heaven and earth," who had adopted the position of royal swineherd in order that he might the more advantageously indulge his passion for religion and devotion among the woods and desert places; and Marbhan eventually revenges the trouble and ingratitude shown to his brother by imposing upon Senchan and the great Bardic Association the task of recovering the lost tale of the Táin Bó Chuailgné, or Great Cattle Spoil of Cuailgne. After a vain search for it in Scotland, Senchan returned home and invited the following distinguished saints, S. Colum Cille, S. Caillin of Fiodhnacha, S. Ciaran, S. Brendan of Birra, and S. Brendan the son of Finnlo

gha, to meet him at the grave of the great Ulster chief, Feargus Mac Roigh-who had led the Connaught men against the Ulster men during the spoil, of which also he appears to have been the historian-to try by prayer and fasting to induce his spirit to relate the tale. After they had fasted three days and three nights, the apparition of Feargus rose before them, clad in a green cloak with a collared, gold-ribbed shirt and bronze sandals, and carrying a golden hilted sword, and recited the whole from beginning to end. And S. Ciaran then and there wrote it down on the hide of his pet cow, which he had had made for the purpose into a book, which has ever since borne this

name.

The volume contains matter of a very miscellaneous character: A fragment of Genesis; a fragment of Nennius' History of the Britons, done into Gaelic by Gilla Caomhain, who died before 1072; an amhra or elegy on S. Colum Cille, written by Dallan Forgail, the poet, in 592; fragments of the historic tale of the Mesca Uladh, or Inebriety of the Ulstermen; fragments of the cattlespoils Táin Bo Dartadha and Táin Bo Flidais; the navigation of Madduin about the Atlantic for three years and seven months; imperfect copies of the Táin Bó Chuailgné, the destruction of the Bruighean da Dearga, or Court of Da Dearga, and murder of King Conairé Mór; a history of the great pagan cemeteries of Erinn and of the various old books from which this and other pieces were compiled; poems by Flann of Monasterboice and others; together with various other pieces of history and historic romance chiefly referring to the ante-Christian period, and especially that of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Three

pages, containing curious prayers and the legend of The Withering of Cuchulain and the Birds of Emer, extracted from the Leabhar buidh Slaine, or Yellow Book of Slane, one of the ancient lost books of Ireland from which the Leabhar na h-Uidhré was compiled, have been selected.

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The Book of Leinster, a folio of over four hundred pages, appears as the next. It was compiled in the first half of the XIIth century by Finn Mac Gorman, Bishop of Kildare, by order of Aedh Mac Crimhthainn,the tutor of Dermot, King of Leinster. Among other pieces of internal evidence pointing to this conclusion are the following entries, the first in the original hand, the second by one strange but ancient, translated and quoted by O'Curry: Benedictions and health from Finn, the Bishop of Kildare, to Aedh Mac Crimhtain, the tutor of the chief King of Leth Mogha Nuadut (or of Leinster and Munster), successor of Colaim Mic Crumtaind of, and chief historian of, Leinster, in wisdom, intelligence, and the culti vation of books, knowledge, and learning. And I write the conclusion of this little tale for thee, O acute Aedh! thou possessor of the sparkling intellect. May it be long before we are without thee! It is my desire that thou shouldst always be with us. Let Mac Loran's book of poems be given to me, that I may understand the sense of the poems that are in it; and farewell in Christ.

"O Mary! it is a great deed that has been done in Erinn this day, the Kalends of August-Diarmait Mac Donnchadda Mic Murchada, King of Leinster and of the Danes (of Dublin), to have been banished over the sea eastwards by the men of Erinn! Uch, uch, O Lord! what shall I do?"

The more important of the vast number of subjects treated of in this MS. are mentioned as being: The usual book of invasions; ancient poems; a plan and explanation of the banqueting-hall of Tara; a copy of The Battle of Ross na Righ in the beginning of the Christian era; a copy of the Mesca Uladh, and one of the origin of the Borromean Tribute, and the battle that ensued; a fragment of the battle of Ceannabrat, with the defeat of Mac Con by Oilioll Olium, his flight into, and return from, Scotland with Scottish and British adventurers, his landing in Galway Bay, and the defeat of Art, monarch of Erinn, and slaughter of Olium's seven sons at the battle of Magh Mucruimhé; a fragment of Cormac's Glossary; another of the wars between the Danes and Irish; a copy of the Dinnsenchus; genealogies of Milesian families; and an ample list of the early saints of Erinn, with their pedigrees and affinities, and with copious references to the situation of their churches. The volume belongs to Trinity College, Dublin.

Three pages have been selected. The first contains a copy of the poem on the Teach Miodhchuarta of Tara-a poem so ancient that of its date and author no record remains-and of the ground-plan of the banqueting-hall by which the poem was illustrated, published by Dr. Petrie in his History and Antiquities of Tara Hill. The groundplan, which in this copy is nearly square, is divided into five compartments lengthwise, the centre and broadest of which contains the door, a rudely-drawn figure of a daul or waiter turning a gigantic spit, furnished with a joint of meat, before a fire, the lamps, and a huge double-handed vase or amphora for the cup-bearer to distribute.