frontier, which her armies have repeatedly | some kind a history which has an intercrossed, and which is held by States im- est, especially when spelled out on the perfectly under our control; and it prom- spot, among the monuments of the spot. ises to occupy the grave attention of the Each city had its bishops; most of them Indian government for some years to had counts or other lords. And the docome, — in fact, until a satisfactory set-ings of those bishops and counts are tlement, a modus vivendi, has been dis- pleasant to study, at all events under the covered between ourselves and the Chi- shadow of their own churches and castles. nese. This arrangement of the difficulty There were municipalities also, and there between Russia and China in favor of the is a certain satisfaction in an age of molatter appears, therefore, to be the intro- notonous prefects and mayors, when one duction of a more difficult and complicated finds for oneself, from some epitaph or controversy between England and China. other inscription, that the magistrates of one town were consuls, those of another échevins, those of a third capitouls. A few days' examination of this kind will not of course put the traveller on a level with the local antiquary in point of local information. But such an examination carried on in several places will perhaps open to the inquirer in each place some things which the local antiquary fails to see. He will actually know far less of each place than the man who has given his life to the study of that place; but he will be better able than the man who has studied one place only, to compare one city with another, and to mark at a glance what is most truly characteristic of each.

From The Pall Mall Gazette.
ANTIQUARIAN TRAVELLING IN CENTRAL
FRANCE.

To those whose tastes lead them that
way there is a certain special interest
in a ramble through the smaller and
less famous cities of France. There is
doubtless an equal interest in doing the
like through the cities of Germany or
Italy; but the interest differs somewhat
in its nature in the three countries. We
are speaking now in all three lands of the
lesser cities, those which do not rank,
and which never did rank, among the
great historic cities of Europe. Their
examination carries with it something of
the pleasure of discovery. The traveller
is not likely to take with him any very
minute knowledge of the local history.
He makes it out largely on the spot, with
such help from books and men as he can
find on the spot, in the presence of the
existing monuments which the course of
the local history has left. He goes away,
having as it were formed a new friendship.
He has become possessed of a new inter-
est; he seems to have acquired a kind of
property in the place; every mention of it
which he afterwards comes across speaks
to him with a life and meaning which it
had not before. No man could venture
to assert this kind of personal claim in
any of the great cities of Europe; in
Rome old or new, in Athens or Venice or
Florence, in Cologne, hardly in Rheims
or Rouen. Such cities can belong to him
only as they belong to countless others.
But a smaller city, known perhaps before
by name and little more, when it has once
been examined in this way, becomes a
kind of possession. The central French
cities have special opportunities in this
way. Every one has a history; few have,
what so many Italian cities have, a Euro-
pean history; but all have a history of

We have specially in our eyes, on the strength of a recent visit, a group of cities, chiefly but not all, coming within the district known as the Morvan. This natural district does not seem exactly to coincide either with any old principality or with any modern department. Part lies in Yonne, part in Saône and Loire; along with part of the undoubted duchy of Burgundy, it takes in some of the border counties of France, Burgundy, and Aquitaine. In some parts, as about Autun, the scenery is bold and hilly-almost mountainous. And of its hills one is crowned with the immemorial native fortress of Bibracte; and another with its Roman successor at Augustodunum. The inhabitants are spoken of as a hardy and vigorous race a race which may be recommended to the study of economists, as something very like village communities is said to have prevailed among them till quite modern times. But it is with the cities that the historical inquirer has mainly to deal. And it is greatly to his comfort that most of them lie out of beaten tracks. They keep their nationality; they have not become cosmopolitan. The traveller is not lodged in buildings which are at once palaces and caravanserais, where every place inside and out is swarming with his own countrymen, and where he has hardly the chance, even if

he tries, of speaking and hearing any | how a naked child appeared and said that, language but his own. The land is not if the king would clothe him, he would spoiled by tourists. The traveller must save him from the boar. The king prombe content to speak and hear only the ises; the child mounts the boar and guides language of the country, and to live in him by his tusks to die by the king's hands. many respects as the natives of the coun- The clothing is explained by the Bishop try live. And in the chief cities at least, of Nevers to mean the complete rebuildthat is not a life to be despised. He will ing of his church in which Saint Cyrus be very comfortably housed and fed in already had a small chapel. And if we hôtels which may claim to keep their his- take with us no very clear idea of the torical circumflex, as with them the word later countesses and duchesses of Nevers, is not the sign of modern English gran- we shall at least carry away an idea of one deur or affectation, but is simply the nat- of them when we read how she wrought ural French for the natural English inn. for the church of Nevers a piece of tapThere he will find himself, not an imper-estry representing the martyrdom of the sonal No. 497, but a human creature, two patron saints, and how, on receiving placed in a personal human relation to some offence from certain of the canons, the landlord or the landlady. A good she brought in their likenesses in the deal of this is common to all those lands persons of the heathen torturers of Cyrus which the traveller finds civilized enough and Julitta. A higher interest attaches and not too civilized; but it is certain to the process of tracing out the essential that no one anywhere else understands differences between the cities themselves. the art of keeping an inn as a Frenchwoman does. It is in itself not unpleasant to spend several days in one of these cities, to go in and out, to con over its monuments leisurely, and to have no dealings with any one but those on the spot who may be able to give help.

Here, where every city is a Roman chester, it is instructive to mark the exact amount of influence which the Roman lines have had upon the modern town. We see Sens - not in Morvan, but on the road to it-still, as far as the city itself goes, bounded by its Roman enclosure. We see Auxerre and Nevers, where the Roman enclosure is lost in the greater extent of the medieval and mod. ern city. We see Autun, once the vast Augustodunum, which has shrunk up, like Rome itself, and which has girded itself with a later wall far within the limits of the ancient one, leaving the great monu ments of Roman times to be looked for among straggling suburbs. We have the hill cities, the river cities, the cities which hold a kind of intermediate place between the two. The field is a wide and an attractive one.

These mid-French cities again, for the pleasures of discovery at least, have some advantages over places both to the north and to the south of them. It is in some sort a gain that they have less to do with the general history of later times, that in some cases their main historical interest belongs to the days of Cæsar. There is more to find out; we are brought among newer things and persons, and this process has its interest also as well as the process which we may call that of recognizing old friends. At some points again we find ourselves distinctly in a border district; we see how men did and spoke and built in lands which were not exactly French and not exactly Aquitanian, but which show signs of influence from both sides. We light on unfamiliar names and stories. We ask for instance why the cathedral of Nevers should be dedicated to Saint Cyrus, and why Saint Cyrus in Blue China" Mr. Lang makes his should appear in the sculptures of the church and in the arms of its chapter, as a naked child riding on a pig. An effort of memory may or may not call up the remembrance of the infant martyr Cyrus or Cyricus and his mother Julitta. But it will at least be news to hear how a King Charles-whether Charles the Great or Charles the Bold seems uncertain dreamed that he was in hunting, that he was in grievous danger from a wild boar,

From The Pall Mall Gazette. AMONG ALDINES.

WHEN in his graceful little "Ballades "book-hunter" search every bookstall, however humble and however dingy, in quest of "Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs," he can hardly be thinking of a wary bookhunter of to-day. It is not that

the fabled treasure flees;
Grown rarer with the fleeting years,
In rich men's shelves they take their ease-
Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs,

but that they are not esteemed the treas

ure that once they were. Fashion in books, like fashion in everything else, is always changing, and to-day it is running on French books with illustrations by Eisen, Moreau, and Gravelot. For a long time past the market for Aldines has been dull indeed, and, though one or two of the very rarest will always command a price, the ordinary Aldine has been sadly neglected. And yet there are some signs that Aldines may once again rise in favor and in value, and the catalogue which Mr. Toovey of Piccadilly lately gave to the world is, in its way, remarkable enough. It is a catalogue of "an extensive and extraordinary assemblage of the productions of the Aldine Press." The collection is said to be in the finest condition-large paper and original bindings and contains many Aldines that are believed to be unique. The entire collection is valued at the modest sum of £4,000.

of language about him which is delightful; he certainly had aspiring hopes of doing the world good; he expresses himself about his labors adjuvante Jesu Christo; and he is a specimen of mental freedom glorious to the republic which nurtured him." This collection of Mr. Toovey's seems to want the editio princeps of Aristotle, and probably some others, but it is wonderfully complete, and among other treasures it contains the rare Lascaris, the first book that Aldus ever printed, in 1494-5. And from the date of this Lascaris, the great firm went on and flourished for over a hundred years, when Alde le Jeune (as Renouard, the historian of the Aldi, calls him) died at Rome in 1597.

Nothing is better remembered about this Venetian family of printers than their celebrated device, the anchor and the dolphin, which appears in all, or nearly all, Certainly a collection of Aldines, for their books. It is said that a medal of which £4,000 is asked, seems to bring Vespasian's with an anchor round which a one back to the good old times; and, in dolphin has entwined was once given to spite of what fashion may think or say, the old Aldus, and that he took the idea what a fascination there is about many of from this as expressive at once of swiftthe Aldines! The text of the editions of ness and solidity. Nothing could have the old classics is often good, but this is been more appropriate, nor anything of the least merit in the book-collector's the sort more graceful. Years after, it eyes. He can get good texts elsewhere; became well known and popular, and imibut the type is so delightful, and, above tators fraudulently made use of the Aldine all, there is the feeling that in many mark; but the dolphin's tail was turned cases it is an editio princeps, the first the wrong side, or some other slight error printed edition of one of the great classics, would betray the deceit. I have myself that lies before you. Henceforth the la- three other Aldines. One is the Catullus, borious copying of the monks may cease. Tibullus, and Propertius of 1515-a Aldus has printed and sent out broadcast | charming little duodecimo in red morocco. into the world Aristotle, Demosthenes, It has the autograph “Falkland" on the Herodotus, Euripides, Plato, Thucydides, title - page, but the date is unluckily and many more. This copy of Plato- 1737; "if only it had been a hundred the editio princeps—which lies before me years earlier! Another is a Plautus, 4to; was once in the British Museum, and was this is not so valuable as many other Alsold out as a duplicate in 1804. It is a dines, but the original old binding and its folio of 1513, bound in old red morocco, gold embossed edges make it externally with gilt edges. It has once belonged to the most interesting of any I possess. Charles II., and his crown and double Lastly-and anything less inviting in its cypher is stamped at every corner. It is old parchment binding it is difficult to full of contractions, and is therefore so conceive I have a copy of the Ovid of difficult to read that it is not very wonder-1516; or rather of two volumes of it bound ful that it should be in good preservation. in one, but the volume of the "Amores" In any case one may doubt whether is wanting. A perfect copy of this Ovid Charles II. ever studied it very deeply.

And there is a further interest in the prefaces to these first editions. As is well known, Mr. Beriah Botfield printed them some years ago, and, in a paper which he contributed to the first volume of the Miscellanies of the Philobiblon Society, he writes: "Old Aldus's dedications are worth all the rest; there is a high, noble feeling, a self-respect and simplicity

is one of the much-prized Aldines; but I console myself by believing that my imperfect copy has still its special interest, for it once belonged to Cardinal Bembo, and that respected lover of Lucretia Borgia (perhaps she got possession of the missing volume) has filled up all the margins with his manuscript notes and emendations.

If Aldines are not at present held in the

same high honor as of old, yet once a year | vate the fruits of the earth and to provide at least in England the great printer's her children with common food. Had the memory is recalled. It is at the annual Peruvians devoted only a quarter of the dinner of the most celebrated' of English money they spent in making the Lima book-clubs the Roxburghe. The din- and Oroya Railway to saving the water of ner, which takes place in the July of every the Piura and directing its course, they year, is almost as eminent as the club; need not have come to the dreadful pass and there, after honor has been duly done in which they now find themselves. to the "immortal memory of John, Duke of Roxburghe," and to " Valdarfer, printer of the Decameron' of 1471," to Gutemberg, and to Fust, and to the great English printers, then follows the toast of "The Aldine family at Venice."

A BOOK-COLLECTOR.

From The Pall Mall Gazette.
THE FALL OF LIMA.

The recent battles of Lurin, Chorillos, and Miraflores supply the most convincing proof that Peru has met with the precise punishment her incapacity and dishonesty deserved. She pitched her own battle-field, and not even Balaklava exceeded it in the opportunities it afforded for all the purposes of a decisive struggle. Mounds and ditches, stretching plains, escarpment of sheltering hills, even sturdy groves of wild olive, and vast ruins of ancient days were in her favor and ready to her hand; but her principal force was made up of a people whom she had degraded to a truly brutal level. That the storm of battle, so far as we gather, was not permitted to break over the densely peopled city of Lima makes the task of the invading enemy somewhat light and easy. It is to be hoped that there will be no sack of the Peruvian capital. All the rich English merchants who made colossal fortunes out of guano have long ago retired, carrying their gains with them. There are no more monkeries, with hoarded bullion to plunder; and it is doubtful whether the churches contain much available treasure.

FEW people have ever doubted the issue of the prolonged conflict which is now probably brought to an end. There is no doubt that the government of Peru for some time past has been in the hands of incompetent, dissolute men, under whose guidance the whole country has been gradually falling to pieces. Peru, like Chili, had abundance of wealth at her command: copper is plentifully distributed along her seacoast, she has abundance of gold and silver; but she has never acquired any knowledge to enable her to make the most of these natural gifts. In agriculture she could This is the second time within a period have rivalled the world, and yet she was of little more than half a century that the content to be fed by her neighbors. She Chilians have been masters of Lima. has the finest of wool-producing animals The first was to deliver it from the corin the alpaca and vicuna, but has al- rupt sway of the mother country; this ways been dependent upon foreigners may put an end to an equally corrupt for her blankets. Her fields of perennial régime of indigenous growth; for Peru is cotton of the longest and best staple are a land that only needs the establishment unlimited, but she has never turned it to of the common means for keeping order any practical use. So foolish, ignorant, to ensure its being fruitful and happy. and arrogant has she been, that she has How far this conquest on the part of Chili delighted her heart in building costly rail- may have the effect of making her equal ways that are not of the slightest practi- to still greater conquests remains to be cal utility, and war-ships that she could seen, and her movements will be watched neither man nor sail, while she has neg-with an interest that has never been exlected with contempt such lowly but cited by any recent campaign on the necessary duties as storing water to culti-western coast of South America.

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