And Isabal she must go town to the yacht | bours are likely to take your side of the and tell that tall Duncan of Mr. Macken- story, if there is a story. Now, you must zie's to gife her the sattle for Mrs. Laf- keep up your spirits, Moira; it is a bad fenter's horse."

thing for a young wife to be downheartIt was with great difficulty that they ed, for a man will soon tire of that, becould persuade Angus and Moira to come cause he may not understand the cause of into the house and sit down at the table it. And why should you be downhearted? with the great people from Borvabost. I dare say, now, that when you come over Mr. MacDonald of himself could never to Ardtilleach - you will not be long after have managed it; but Sheila took Moira us, I suppose you will find the neighby the hand and led her into the room, bours ready to hef a dance over the wedand then the young husband silently folding as soon as the evening comes on." lowed.

It was a great grief to the minister that Mr. Lavender would not taste of the claret, which had come all the way from Stornoway, and was of so excellent a vintage that it was named after the prime minister in Parliament himself. But Sheila had some of it in a tumbler, and pronounced it very good; though the minister observed that "there wass no great strength to go to the head in the French wines," and he "wass ferry much surprised to see that Mrs. Laffenter would hef water with the claret wine."

As there was little time to be lost on the part of those who were coming back the same evening to the yacht, the small and shaggy animal that was to carry Mrs. Lavender to Ardtilleach was brought round to the door. The young bride and bridegroom, with somewhat wistful eyes, saw their ambassadress set out, her husband walking smartly by her side.

"It iss a great thing they hef undertaken to do," said the minister, "ay, and if they cannot do it, there iss not any one in all the islands will be able to do it."

From The Saturday Review.

A MONASTERY AMONG THE APENNINES.

HALF a day's journey pleasantly divided between the railway and an open carriage takes the traveller from Siena to the famous Benedictine monastery of Monte Oliveto Maggiore. The difficulty of access in former days may account for the otherwise almost culpable omission by Mrs. Jameson of any mention in her volumes on sacred and monastic art of this rich repository of fresco-painting. Within the vast structure, more like a defiant fortress in its unassailable position and strong outworks than the abode of peace and piety, the enlightened pope Pius II. was a visitor, and the all-potent emperor Charles V., accompanied by 2,500 soldiers and attendants, found lodgings and hospitality. In more recent days a copyist employed by the Arundel Society obtained board and lodging there for a year; and it has likewise welcomed two skilful photographers from Siena and Florence, to whom the public is indebted for faithful transcripts from the famous wall-paintings in the cloister. This wealthy and picturesque monastery was founded in the fourteenth century by a But you must not look at it that way," Sienese noble and doctor of law; subseher counsellor said, cheerfully. "You quently it received ample endowments will soon get over your father's anger; from the Piccolomini and other families, and the neighbours-well, the neigh- and it was long looked up to reverently

"And I hear that Angus is going to build a cottage for you, Moira," said Mrs. Lavender, "further removed from the village and the curing-houses. That will be ferry good for you; and it is not every one that has a husband who can work at two trades, and be a good fisherman on the sea, and a good carpenter on shore. And I suppose you will be going back now to the house that he has at present." "Ay, that iss the worst of it," said the girl, sadly. "If my father iss ferry angry, it will be a pad thing that we will hef to lif in Ardtilleach together; and all the neighbours will know that he is angry, and he will hef the long story to tell to each of them."

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as the parent stock whence sprang allation of the lands by the State and the Olivetan monasteries, which, like that dispersion of the monks. Here, as at which overlooks the banks of the Arno, the great convent at Assisi, only a small we have found usually planted on wood-clerical staff is retained, whose duties ed eminences rising above valleys and consist in the saying of mass, the educaplains, as the Mount of Olives commands tion of about a dozen youths, the adminfrom a height the city of Jerusalem. The istration under the government of the other day, as the carriage toiled up per- estates, and lastly, the entertainment of ilous mountain paths, we not unnaturally travellers, ladies included, at a small fixed recurred to the oft-repeated question: charge. The scholarly and gentlemanly Why did the monks of old choose for superior remarked, in a melancholy their dwelling these inaccessible and in-voice, "We were formerly masters; we hospitable spots? Was it indeed that are now servants." Utilitarian considerthey thought to establish as it were a ations have, as usual, proved fatal to pichalf-way house to heaven? or was it that, turesque effects; the three remaining from singleness of faith in the ascetic monks have, by command of the governlife, they sought through seclusion to ment, exchanged the white raiment of cut themselves off from access to the their order for the black gown of parish lower world? or could it be that the priests; the artist's eye is no longer debeauties of nature proved to be precious lighted by groups of grey friars seated as a solace and an aid - beauties which beneath the green olives, or wending here, as in other like sanctuaries, find their steps at eventide in lines of light response in the accumulated treasures of among paths of dark cypress-trees. a beauty-loving art? It is scarcely un- The student of art, as well indeed as reasonable to suppose that the good old the general traveller, is attracted to this monks may have been as divided in mo- monastery among the mountains by the tive as modern travellers are in mind. thirty frescoes which cover the whole of Some may have turned with horror from the four walls of the great cloister. These precipices down which pilgrims are pictures were begun by Luca Signorelli at known to have been pitched headlong, the close of the fifteenth century, and conwhile others will have rested fondly ontinued and completed by Bazzi (otherwise the vision of the founder who saw in a Razzi or Sodoma) in the commencement dream, on the very site of this sky-soar- of the sixteenth century. The series ing monastery, a silver staircase reach-comprises the life of St. Benedict, a ing from earth to heaven. theme which found favour among paintMonte Oliveto Maggiore has shared a ers. The pictorial narrative here before common fate; the monastery was de- us, in common with others elsewhere spoiled by the French, fine tarsia work more or less complete, gives prominence was torn from the refectory and the li- to the visit of Totila to the saint; here, brary and used for firewood, the books also, are illustrated many true or apocryhave been dispersed, and the church, phal incidents in his career, such as the which was once covered with early fres- overthrow of the heathen temple at coes, has been modernized in the worst Monte Cassino, sundry adventures with style. Some slight signs of these pic-the devil, the visit of a company of fair tures can still be traced; likewise in a damsels to tempt the monks, with the adpassage between the church and thedition of various legendary miracles. cloister there are remains of figures Yet these compositions can scarcely be which, though of no great merit, show, deemed religious in spirit, at least in the as is often the case, successive strata of sense in which the word attaches to the pictures. In the refectory, too, are severe and devotional pictures of the small fragments of a Last Supper; also fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Inround the door leading to the church deed the two painters here employedhave been discovered beneath whitewash Signorelli and his successor Bazzi-bemutilated portions of a wall-painting. In long to that period of transition when fact, the whole monastery was at one sacred art was passing into secular, and time a museum rich in treasures of art, ideal forms became pronounced with the and the preservation of what remains is individual traits of naturalism. Signogreatly due to the enlightened superior, relli stands conspicuous as the pupil of who kindly conducts strangers through Piero della Francesca; he was, too, the his domains. The last misfortune that contemporary of Melozzo da Forli; be has befallen Monte Oliveto is its secu-belonged to the company of artists who, larization, with the consequent appropri- following in the steps of Paolo Uccello,

reduced drawing to the accuracy of a science, and brought perspective and the principle of foreshortening under strict geometric law. These frescoes also stand as early examples of aerial perspective; neutral and atmospheric tones appear almost for the first time, the fundamental principles of surrender and relation being in great degree due to that marvellous yet mysterious genius, Piero della Francesca. All the more interest attaches to these frescoes because of their transitional and tentative character. We here tread on the frontiers which divide classic, medieval, and modern styles; we are in the hands of a man who by the force of his will moulded elements so conflicting, that his compositions have been aptly compared, by reason of the angularity of their forms and the harshness of their colours, to a peal of bells ringing out of tune.

within the sphere of Signorelli than the spirit of Christianity; and yet the warrior is sometimes subdued by sentiment, as in a young knight of drooping head and melancholy mien which reminds the spectator of the famous figure in Orcagna's "Triumph of Death" in the Campo Santo at Pisa. Yet on the whole we are impressed with the fact that the time had come for the dying-out of types; instead of traditional forms we are offered actual portraits, painted, as we have said, on the spot. Here too among these semi-secular legends we encounter almost for the first time a simply domestic art. Take, for example, two monks caught by the saint in the act of feasting contrary to rule in a private house, each guest being served at table by a young and charming damsel. This scandal, emblazoned on the wall of a cloister, fills the spectator with amazement. At a peThese master-works by Signorelli are riod when artists had devoted themselves turning-points in the history of art; we to Madonnas and saints, in a place of here find difficulties which had long imped- special sanctity lying on the confines of ed progress overcome. The drawing of the Siena and of Umbria, each identified human form is based on the knowledge with express spiritual phases of art, we of anatomy; the draperies, whether sym- come upon a picture which stings as a metrical or disturbed by accident, fall satire and tickles as a joke. Signorelli naturally by the law of gravity; they left his work when not half finished; the show too the articulations of the form be- traveller on his way to Rome next meets neath always a proof of knowledge and this bold and original master in Orvieto ; power; they are moreover valuable as in Monte Oliveto we have made actrustworthy records of the military, mo-quaintance with the man in his every-day nastic, and domestic costume of the time and place. These frescoes, indeed, have all the more value from the distinctive local character they bear. An oil or easel picture can be painted anywhere, and afterwards may be carried hither and thither; but these frescoes from first to last have inhered to the freehold and inheritance; the artist dwelt on the spot; Bazzi, who came and lived in the monwhen he rose in the morning to work he astery to carry out the pictorial scheme found models ready to hand; the monk which had broken down half way, soon with whom he had walked and talked at showed himself as the antithesis to his the vesper hour was ready at sunrise to predecessor Signorelli. He was a man lend his head and figure for pictorial who played with his art; he had little uses. Signorelli had a piercing, wide-feeling of responsibility, no belief in a sweeping vision; his eye was open to mission; in short, he scamped his work. the world on all sides. These frescoes, Forsaking study, he took refuge in senas we have said, show a keen insight into timent; his drawing is careless and inlocal character. Here are monks aged and meditative, others young and not quite subjected to spiritualism; here, too, occurs again and again the conjectural but apposite figure of St. Benedict -a venerable old man with white and flowing beard. Another representative character in these times is the knight or warrior as seen in the retinue of Totila. Perhaps the spirit of chivalry came more

mood; here among the mountains he gathered strength for the sublime conceptions which stand in the rank of pictorial epics as the precursors to the “Last Judgment" of Michael Angelo. No painter will better repay study than Luca Signorelli; the world of art has not known enough of him.

firm, his execution hasty and slight. But he received a timely reprimand from his employers, which so far put him on his mettle that some few of these compositions do no injustice to his acknowl edged ability. How pure and noble the art of this painter might have been, and occasionally was, may be judged from the composition, specially commended by Vasari for its unaccustomed care,

not shown themselves wise even according to their generation; they first of all screwed down the artist, and then did their utmost to ruin his works. These frescoes have suffered cruel injury; the surfaces are scratched and scrawled over, and there is actually now to be seen a wall-painting in the upper part of the monastery which was rescued from beneath nine coats of whitewash.

"St. Mauro and St. Placido brought to St. Benedict as children and dedicated by their parents to God." Some of the heads are ennobled under the influence of Da Vinci, others confess to consanguinity with Perugino, Pinturicchio, and even with Raffaelle. The infirmity of the master seems to have been that he slided too easily into eclecticism; like the mocking-bird in his notorious menagerie, he simulated the notes he heard floating The scenery and the accompanying in the air around him, so that his own stratification of Monte Oliveto have exvoice became merged and lost. Yet had ceptional attractions for the artist and he a fine sense of beauty, especially in the geologist. In the midst of that light the female form; his manner was ever alluvial deposit which gives the fertility as bland and gracious; his pencil is pecul- of a garden to the hills and the valleys of iarly persuasive; such a painter could the Apennines are here thrust barren not fail of popularity. Bazzi, in common deposits of marl, arid as lava-streams, with his contemporary Luini, is fitted which make inroad on vineyards and every way for the art of fresco; he was olive-groves. These clayey tracts, formso facile that he painted impromptu; his ing the high promontory whereon the inventions had off-hand readiness even monastery is planted, are subjected in to a fault; his brush was so rapid that it the rainy season to an annually recurring ran ahead of guiding intention. The life deluge that ploughs the surface with torof this wayward genius within the monas-rents which rush wildly as water down a tery was, to say the least of it, eccentric; house-roof, breaking away roads, underugly stories are rife which for the hon-mining woods, and devastating the fields our of art we are glad to discredit, but whereon scanty harvests are reaped and at all events he brought with him for his stunted trees obtain precarious footing. retinue a motley crew of birds and ani- The path to the monastery itself is submals, so that his abode became, accord-ject to disintegration and disaster; it ing to Vasari, "like the very ark of may be compared to the backbone of Noah;" this way of going on grew so some antediluvian monster of rugged extraordinary that the monks gave him vertebræ, with a bare skeleton of ribs the nickname of "Mattaccio" or "the outstretching on either side. The whole arch-fool." And the scandal obtains cur- scene is eminently Dantesque; here rency that Bazzi here painted in the sim-Gustave Doré might have made his ple nude the women who are said to sketches for the horrors of "L'Inferno" have come to tempt St. Benedict and his or for the exploits of the "Wandering brethren; and the story is in some Jew;" here, too, our own Martin could measure borne out by the fresco itself; have caught ideas for the illustration of the superior insisted that draperies" Paradise Lost; " the scene indeed is as should be added for the sake of decency, of a paradise into which demons have and some of the clothing seems as if it entered. Such were the waste places might have been an afterthought. The which the Benedictines loved to colonize artist has written his character unmis"places," to quote the words of the takably in his own portrait painted on late Mr. Maitland, "chosen because they these walls, with his raven, baboon, and were waste and solitary, and such as could other brute companions around; the be reclaimed only by the incessant lahead might pass for that of a ferocious bour of those who were willing to work bandit, yet it is not without a certain hard and live hard." The present suwild force. Bazzi, although he made perior points to plots barren within his himself at home within the monastery, memory now brought under cultivation; was not altogether comfortable. It is the vine mantles the rock, the cypress not pleasant to think of the bickerings crowns the precipice, and golden corn over payments which marred the friend- adds colour to the grey shadowy landly relations between the artist and the scape. So true are the words of M. ecclesiastics. Bazzi, like Signorelli, was Guizot, that "wherever the Benedictines ill paid; accordingly he slighted his carried the cross they also carried the work, and in a fit of temper exclaimed plough; wherever they placed a book that his pencil danced only in tune with they painted a picture. Here we see the the chink of the coins. The monks have 'last survivors of the reformed order at

the place of its birth; let us hope that the good which these men have done may live after them, and that only the evil will be buried with their bones.

From The Spectator.

GERMANY AND AUSTRIA.

merous as the German, and in reality as numerous as any army Germany could move, unless her very existence were in danger, animated by an intense wish to retrieve her prestige, and a fixed determination at some future period to recover Lorraine. To the southward is an empire badly constructed, and essentially weak, but ruled by a most experienced prince, who during war would be abso

would dispose of 400,000 men, nearly half of them Germans, and who cannot be believed willing to put up with his expulsion from an empire which in 1868 he acknowledged by his visit to Frankfort that he hoped to rule. To the northward is a peninsula which might under certain circumstances open the gate of Germany to a foe, and to the eastward a gigantic empire, ruled by a man whose successor may not be friendly, who must regard his empire rather than his own feelings, and who could order a quarter

THERE is one peculiarity in the situa-lute, who, for one great battle at least, tion of Germany to which Englishmen do not as yet, we think, pay quite sufficient attention. It is very doubtful whether the statesmen and soldiers who guide the destinies of the empire the emperor, Prince Bismarck, Count von Moltke, the Crown Prince, and Prince Frederick Charles as yet think its military position safe. So sudden and complete were the victories of 1866 and 1870, so utterly were Austria and France prostrated, so perfect seemed the mechanism of the German military machine, that Englishmen scarcely understand how of a million of stubborn soldiers to move Germans can be anxious, and wonder upon Berlin, a capital which on that side why they cannot, like Englishmen and is not a hundred and fifty miles from a Americans, content themselves with the nearly defenceless frontier. Germany is peaceful accumulation of wealth. No hemmed in by first-class armies, and power dare attack them, and no power of with all her gigantic strength might be the military kind ventures even to defy overmatched by a coalition of these powthem. There is reason to believe, how-ers, or even of two of them; and it is no ever, that this is not exactly the view wonder that her rulers and her people, as taken by the great German chiefs them- yet scarcely aware of the greatness of selves. They know perfectly well that, powerful as Germany is, she was indebted, both in 1866 and 1870, in some degree to fortune for her marvellous success. In 1866, the best German regiments in the Austrian army never met the Prussians at all, but were occupied with the Italians at Custozza. In 1870, That the best of these plans would be the army of the Second Empire was in a to remain quiet, to grow rich, and to acsituation unparalleled since the days of quire the confidence of Europe, is the Louis XV., undermanned, badly ́ offi- conviction of most Englishmen, but it is cered, led by generals who hated one an- not necessarily the conviction of men other, and commanded, in the last resort who at heart doubt whether European by a man who had no orders to give, and opinion ever seriously affects the policy was unable to secure attention to his ad- of military states. The rulers of Gervice. Nevertheless, that army fought many may think that France can one splendid battle, and but for Marshal be conciliated, that Austria may find it Bazaine's self-seeking policy might, even necessary to choose between a great vicat the eleventh hour, have altered the tory or a near decease; that Russia, be whole current of affairs. Such circum- her opinion what it might, would obey stances are not likely to repeat them- her czar's command; and that the only selves, and as Prince Bismarck and security for Germany is to grow till she is Count von Moltke look around, they may in her own strength beyond the reach of see facts which, if interpreted as they attack, even by a coalition. We English would interpret them, may cause them serious disquietude. To the westward lies a military Republic full of wealth and resources, with an army on paper as nu

their new position, scarcely exempt from the influences of their own past history, should restlessly watch the faintest indications of the coming of such a combination, or should even brood over plans which would, if successful, render it impossible.

never

think this, and say this, as regards the sea, where we always profess ourselves bound to be ready to meet a combination; and Germany, in this view, is in the po