It was with some feelings of trepidation | combined result in many an uproarious that I knocked at Fattori's door, and was scene. The Sunday before we left was ushered into a sitting-room to interview the festival of Santa Mustiola, celebrated his wife and sister, owing to the absence at a short distance from the town. After of the lord. I told my tale candidly. I the formalities of the mass and procession stated how charmed I was with all I had had been gone through, crowds of men seen except the inn, and that I craved for and women collected at a neighboring a more pleasing habitation. They re- house to drink and play games. By this ferred me to a neighboring house, and time I was well known to most of them, invited us next day to join their party in and each exhorted me to put my lips to witnessing the grand ceremony of the in- their brimming jugs of wine. They filled stallation of the incoming captains, on my pockets with walnuts. So intent were which occasion, twice a year, the Samma- they on hospitality, that I was forced to rinesi shake off their lethargy and appear watch my opportunity to affect an escape right merry in holiday attire. as fast as my legs would carry me, to avoid involuntary inebriation. receives the bird by way of reward, and the unsuccessful pay a small sum towards the purchase of the cock. Charmingly primitive were our host and hostess, whom I found inhabiting a little On the day of San Marino, their patron house near the principal gate of the city; saint, they hold grand festivities outside perhaps no two people could be more en- the walls. The pièce de résistance for this tertaining in their domestic arrangements. day is a refined species of cruelty to aniThe lady of the house was portly and mals; a live cock is procured and hung by garrulous; she was, we remarked, most its legs from a tree; each competitor in noble in her bearing, and of noble_re-turn endeavors by a leap to wring its neck. publican blood she proved to be. Hers Great excitement prevails amongst the was one of the oldest of San Marino's bystanders, and when success attends the noble families, for, owing to the incon-attempt the victor is loudly cheered, he venience of having two illiterate captains, certain families are set apart as noble, from amongst whom one of the rulers is chosen. Here their privileges of nobility cease, but not their pride, for old Signora Casali, whose maiden name was Belluzzi, was most proud of her pedigree. She scoffed at the later elevations to the Sammarinese peerage as nobilità di carta, mere paper upstarts, and for her own parental house she claimed the honor of possessing the genuine nobility of blood. She thoroughly despised her lame and drunken husband, who was the impersonation of a henpecked nonentity. Every meal we ate under the shadow of their roof was attended by the talkative pair, and many were the stories they told us of their quaint little country which served as a relish to many a frugal repast. Winter at San Marino is terribly severe. For months they are snow and frost bound, and to amuse themselves the republicans have invented a species of tabogening, and down the main street of the town they whirl themselves on a crazy piece of wood with terrible velocity. Last winter a lady Sammarinese gained for herself an unpleasant notoriety at this game, for she slipped off her liscia or sledge, and performed the rest of the downward descent on her own person, which became wofully contused thereby. The first of April is a day of general mirth and hilarity. Woe to the Lilipu tian sluggard who tarries in bed after sunrise on this morning; he renders himThough poor, our accommodation was self liable to be dragged from his couch, cleanly, and though our food was brought and in his nocturnal attire placed on muleup from the Borgo and invariably arrived back with an umbrella in his hand, and, cold, yet the keen mountain air assisted shivering with cold, he is set up as an ob us to dispose of most unpalatable dishes.ject of derision in the most exposed part Everything they sent us tasted the same - be it turkey, beefsteak, or chicken, the difference was hardly perceptible; but we had come to study the Liliputians and not our own comforts, so we were con tent. How do the Liliputians amuse themselves? was one of our first questions, and we soon found them a right jovial eight thousand. Religious festivals are common, and so is wine, and the two of the town. This disaster one year befell our old host, who had been imbibing freely the night before. His wife entered fully into the fun of the thing, and assisted her husband's tormentors in laying their plans. However, lest her domestic arrangements should be exposed to question, she took care that her spouse should retire to rest with a clean nightgown, so that he might appear before the world to the best advantage. I felt myself lucky when one day our host informed me that an arringo would be held on the morrow, and that he would have much pleasure in conducting me thither. My thoughts involuntarily wandered back to the days when Rome's peo It is the case at San Marino, as it is in other primitive societies, that the marriage ceremony is attended with unusual merriment; the happy pair trip along the street attended by all their friends at an early hour in the day, to be united under the roof of their country's god; or, if the dis-ple were summoned to the Comitia to tance be great, the bride rides with her lady friends astride a mule. On the return to the parental homestead the bride and bridegroom are placed aloft on a daïs to be the cynosure of neighboring eyes for the remainder of the day, whilst wild dancing and festivities take place around them. It is a keenly contested point among the assembled matrons, who shall have the honor of assisting the bride on retiring to rest; but it is the oldest and most venerated of the Liliputian mothers who is appointed to the almost sacred office of presenting the nouveaux mariés with a mess of pottage at sunrise. decide on peace and war, but I was not privileged to hear an eager, unanimous decision on the necessity of crushing Carthage, or of resisting to the death the invaders from Gaul. No, it was a real blow to my dreams of the past when some forty or fifty republicans assembled to discuss the advisability of opening telegraphic communication with the neighboring town of Rimini, and thus did the degenerate offspring of the Roman Curia on that day recognize its existence in the nineteenth century, and acted accordingly. This existence of telegraphy I look They dearly love the Italian game of upon as one of the first symptoms of depalla on this mountain-top; they are in-cay in our veteran State. The simpleveterate theatre-goers, possessing two mindedness with which they assembled within their territory; an excuse for a daily around the postman in the Borgo at masquerade they seize with avidity, and the sound of his bell, and awaited the talk incessantly of their success in decep- distribution of his small handful of lettion on such occasions. Our landlady told ters, will rapidly disappear. They reus how her mother, when eighty years of sisted to the death a tempting proposition age, had gone to a masked ball dressed as for a railroad, an hotel, and a gamblinga girl of seventeen, and, thanks to her house, from some energetic company; good figure and activity, she was enabled but will they resist the more insidious to carry off the palm of being belle of the innovations which will follow in the wake evening. of the electric wires, and in the train of the feverish excitement incident on having a separate room in the Street of Nations at a Paris Exhibition? No, if I could have that day recorded a vote in San Marino's assembly, I should have opposed the introduction of the telegraph. I should have opposed entering into contact with the outer world, and have been content to boast of the greatest claim to notoriety San Marino has, namely, that of being a living fossil of bygone ages. Let us now say a word about the constitution of this curious little State. In it we see the lineal descendant of ancient Rome, tracing its pedigree through the vicissitudes of medieval Italy and her municipal organizations, each of which reproduced a miniature example of the mighty Roman fabric. Here, in the days of constitutional governments and deeply elaborated schemes of legislation, we find two old Roman consuls ruling a speck of Italy. They now call themselves captains, but one is still patrician and one is still plebeian, as in the earlier days of the Roman republic; they owe their election to the Senate, which at San Marino as in Rome still wields the chief executive power, but now it is termed the Council of Sixty. There is yet another power in the State, namely, the general arringo, or gathering of the people, to decide on momentous questions of the day. Each male republican can here make his voice heard; but it is now but seldom convened, and occupies much the same position that Rome's Comitia Curiata did in the latter days of the republic. Let no one who can so arrange fail to visit San Marino on April 1 or October I; perhaps, if he be not an early riser, for above-mentioned reasons the latter date had best be chosen; for on these days the captains are elected for the ensuing six months, and the visitor will derive much amusement, if not profit, from being present at the ceremony. Their dress is rich; they are resplendent with the cordon of San Marino's military order around their necks, and moreover a eulogistic address is delivered to the bystanders, entering deeply into San Marino's historical lore. On this day is to be seen the little republican army of eigh teen strong, drawn up to the best advan- the sulphurous soil around Mount Titatage. Though the soldiers have no notion | nus, and the wines produced from them of drill or of military bearing, though are sparkling and pure. Their cellars their gaudy uniforms fit them like sacks, beneath the mountain are warm in winter nevertheless they are unique in them-and cool in summer; no wonder then that selves; there are only eighteen such in they exceed occasionally in their libathe whole wide world, and they represent tions. There is a well-known character the smallest standing army in existence. at San Marino, an old beggarman, who However, San Marino is not entirely de- gains his livelihood by means of a poem pendent on them for its defence; every he once wrote; he has spent his patrimale citizen is presumably a soldier, and mony on drink, and now subsists on the they are divided into several regiments; enthusiasm excited by his stirring verses. but their uniforms have long since been This poem is entitled, "Che Tremenda worn out, and in these days of peace the Repubblica," and, intoxicated with their prudent lawgivers have not seen fit to love of liberty, the Sammarinesi at their replace them. Yet the law obliges each festivals will listen again and again to the man to keep a gun and a cockade in case pompous refrain of the old man's song. of a rupture with some foreign power. He is the hero of their oft-repeated festivals and the minstrel of their board. I feel morally convinced that Lord Cardwell must one day have been at San Marino, and, whilst sighing over the extravagance of the British lion, have mentally resolved to follow the humble example set him by Europe's smallest State. The traveller who is not fortunate enough to be present at the installation of the captain, may any day get an order to inspect their state wardrobe, where are seen their rich velvet cloaks, their insig nia of office, and the above-mentioned collection of dress clothes; he will then feel thankful that he was not born a Sammarinese, with a chance of the captaincy, for it would require an acute archæologist to decide on the date of these raiments, and an entire disregard for cleanliness to allow of putting them on. For the lovers of legendary lore and wild, fantastic beauties, San Marino is a perfect paradise. Legends are attached to each weird spot, principally connected with the history of their patron saint, and the scenes of his spiritual labors in the days of Diocletian. There, is his bed of hewn stone, his garden in an almost inaccessible cliff, his head and face in the parish church; but perhaps the heritage he has left his successors most worthy of remark is their skill in stone-masonry. Himself a quarryman employed in build. ing Rimini, San Marino gathered around him on his mountain a colony of his comrades, and for fifteen centuries these men of San Marino have hewn and toiled in their natural workshops for a means of livelihood. It was with many feelings of regret that we left this old-fashioned little country, and it was with infinite_pleasure that shortly after my departure I received an intimation that for the interest I had taken in the republic they had thought fit to make me a citizen. For in these days of craving for novelty it was satisfactory to me to look through the list of citizens, and find myself the only Englishman enrolled therein. Continental celebrities there were by scores whom interest or curiosity had brought in contact with the republic; and the accompanying letter, herewith transcribed, will show their own opinion of the honor they conferred upon me. It ran as follows: San Marino: Feb. 14, 1879Illustrious Sir and Fellow-Citizen, - The gift of citizenship of San Marino is truly a great one, since if perchance you are at a distance you may be protected thereby; but if you come to this Alpine mountain no one can molest you, and you will be respected by all, and possess the same privileges that the other citizens enjoy. Accept, then, dear sir, this diploma in order that the great city of London may rejoice with you over the possession of it. Be good enough to acknowledge the receipt of the diploma. Your devoted servant, FRANCESCO CASALI. P.S.Our Republic enjoys the greatest tranquillity. Before bidding adieu to San Marino, I propose laying before any traveller who may wend that way the advantages which a sojourn in the republic offers for exThey are most expert too in the rear-ploring an almost unknown district of the ing of cattle, and from far dealers come to the fairs at San Marino to purchase the far-famed oxen fed on the slopes of the giant mountain. Very excellent grapes are produced on Apennines. By means of a small ponychaise, possessed by an energetic republican who has seen somewhat of the outer world and served under the Italian flag in the Crimea, we were enabled to make of sea breezes and pure mountain air toJ. THEODORE Bent. some delightful excursions from our re To the small streamlet which once decided the destinies of the world we paid a pilgrimage the far-famed Rubicon, which flows some few miles beyond Verruchio, or rather there is the bed in which it once did flow. San Leo offers the architect two rich and ancient cathedrals where the Bishops of Montefeltro.once held their see. This is indeed a strange, weird spot, built on a rock which, like San Marino, is raised two thousand feet above the surrounding valley. On the journey thither from San Marino, the traveller passes Monte Maggio, or the "bowing mountain," which the countryfolk tell you inclines eastwards each year more and more in pious reverence towards the Holy Sepulchre; and the old inhabitants of San Marino affirm that now they can distinctly see houses which were invisible from the opposite valley in their youth. And Monte Maggio too is celebrated for a theft perpetrated by Napoleon, who took from thence to Paris two lovely frescoes by Giulio Romano, and replaced them with hideous daubs. From The Spectator. AMERICAN PROSPERITY. IT is hardly fair to smile at the slight tone of self-congratulation which runs through the last message of President Hayes. It is not in human nature for the chief magistrate of a great State, be he sovereign or president, not to feel in a time of rushing prosperity that he himself has done something to produce it. He might have prevented it so easily; and every man credits himself not only with the good acts which are seen of his neighbors, but with the good abstinences which are invisible. Especially is this excusable in an American president, who, however modest, must feel with a certain bitterness that, although his administration has been successful, he has never been asked even by implication to take back his own self-denying pledge, and accept a second term. Mr. Hayes has been a very fair president, and an unusually self-effacing one, and he leaves behind him a republic prosperous beyond any historic precedent. We can recall no country which has ever been in precisely such a condition. The treasury is literally brimming over with wealth. The surplus this year amounts to £13,176,000 sterling, an amount of which Mr. Gladstone has never ventured to dream, and which all other financiers in Europe must regard with envious despair. The whole of this vast surplus-nearly the revenue of Prussia when she advanced to the headship of Europe - and a million and a half besides, has been applied to the reduction of debt. The American people, half-ruined by their Civil War, insisted on paying off instead of bearing their debt, and amid the most terrible temptations adhered to that resolve with an unswerving persistence which throws a new light upon the future of democracy. They were utterly unused alike to debt and to sharp taxation. They were, for a time, doubtful if they had succeeded in their war. They were compelled to pass through a cycle of depression unparal lelled in their annals, depression amid These and many others are the attrac- which every one felt poor, and it was tions offered by San Marino, where a gravely stated, on competent authority, spring or autumn month can be spent, that every Western farmer was more or combining as it does the rare advantage | less mortgaged, and workmen in the great Urbino, the eagle nest of the Montefeltrian dukes, the quondam hereditary protectors of our little republic, is a pleasant drive from San Marino, and there the artist and the antiquary can enjoy to the full the legacies of beauty which the art loving dukes of Urbino have left behind them. Buried in a cleft of the Apennines, and approached only by a bridle path from San Marino, is the quaint village of Monte Cerignone. A high arched bridge over a mountain stream leads you into the town, and reminds you of the Ponte alla Maddalena near Lucca. And a grim square castle overlooks the town, once a favorite summer resort of the Urbino dukes. It is still rich in mouldering frescoes and beautiful specimens of Cinquecento work by skilful artists, who were summoned thither by the dukes to beautify their summer hiding-place. new centres not only talked socialism, but | immigration has suddenly swollen until fought for it, and the first feeder of the | half a million of people the population resources of the nation, the marvellous of two cities like Leeds, or of two counimmigration from Europe, came practi- ties like Suffolk - have entered the repubcally to an end. The people, however, lic, bringing with them cash equal to had made up their minds, and they taxed £5,000,000 sterling at least, and themselves wholesale, as if self-flagella- labor worth £10,000,000 a year. It is betion titillated them, and, with one notable lieved that the new census to be taken exception, that of the income-tax, they next year will show, speaking roughly, a bore their heavy imposts without flinch- population of fifty millions, forty-five ing. No doubt they were helped by the millions of them whites; while, if prosnational feeling, entertained even by those perity continues, the immigration may not who indulge, that alcohol is in se an evil impossibly be doubled. Every day the thing, by the rooted prejudice in favor of means of communication improve, every high tariffs, and by the national careless- day the exhaustion of the European continess about the cost of certain luxuries nent is more felt, while every day, as intelno other people in the world would bear the ligence spreads, the masses fret more and Western price for good boots and gloves more under their monotonous daily toil, - but their resolution to pay rather than with its want of chances, and the insetheir descendants should pay, had in it a curity of which they have only just be superb pride. They held on, devoted a come aware. That is to say, the Union is surplus eighty per cent. higher than already the second of the white powers of their whole taxation before the war to the world in population, and might exthe redemption of debt, voted down all pend a German army a year in slaughter repudiators by crushing majorities for without feeling an impediment to her the craze about "the dollar of our fathers" progress. Nor are these multitudes as was honest enough—and finally reached yet pressing on the means of subsistence. their present financial position. More It is a special feature of the condition of than a third of their debt is paid, the interest will next year be under £18,000,000 a year (£17,800,000), or, say, two-thirds the debt of Great Britain; and the secretary to the treasury, while proposing to sweep away all inland duties except those on alcohol and tobacco, expects to place a vast refunding loan at from three to three and a half per cent. The half-ruined people of 1865, with their consols at fortyeight and an irredeemable paper currency fluctuating two per cent. in an hour, have in 1880 the credit of Great Britain, and could raise £300,000,000 for a war. There never was such a financial triumph in the history of a nation, or one which reflected greater credit on its authors. The people have not been skinned, either. If Mr. Sherman's proposals are adopted, the Union will next year be as free of excise duties as Great Britain, and more free of direct taxes the State taxation counting against our "rates the depression has disappeared, the mortgages are paid off, and again the over-spill of the Caucasian world is pouring, in ever-increasing volume, in to the republic. The Union has received since 1847 five millions and a half of white men, and among them a fact to be carefully noted Irishmen are not the majority. They are beaten by the Germans alone, and the Teutons of all branches outnumber them by three to two. This year the the American Union that there are within it few "congestions," that as men grow thick on the ground they move off of their own will to more attractive soils, that migration has become an automatic law, till the sweep of the population towards the West that is, towards an area of profitable agriculture is gradually transferring the control of the Union to the Western freeholder. All who will work obtain a living, and the immense majority of the population secure one which, though not without sordid features in it and an element of grinding anxiety, is, as regards food, clothing, lodging, and education, distinctly better than that of any large population in the past or present of the Old World. The economic condition of the Union is marvellous, and a just source of pride to its people, but Americans must not forget that much of their brimming pros perity is purchased at a heavy moral price. They do less for the world involving self-sacrifice, deliberately do less, than any great people in it, unless it be the Germans, who may fairly plead that their gigantic armaments, if they produce unrest, still save Europe from the ambition alike of Gaul and Slav. The American Union is rich beyond compare, first, because it inherited the richest estate but one in the world — Brazil is possibly richer, as men will see when the Germans |