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true abiding place on Italian soil had thrust themselves into the windows both of its apse and of its clerestory. We picture it as it was when Hildebrand arose from the patriarchal throne of the world, from the throne which his suc

much smaller than it really is. We may be sure that no man wondered on that score in the ancient building, as no man now wonders in the restored church of Saint Paul. No wonder that the building looks small when three arches have taken the place of twenty-four intercolum-cessors have swept away as an useless niations; the vastness of the parts takes away from the vastness of the whole. In this mood we turn from the boasted glory of the Renaissance to try and call up to our minds the likeness of the nobler pile which has passed away. That dreary and forsaken apse, that front which it needs some faith to believe to be part of a church at all, may pass away from our thoughts. They have sprung up on ground which no part of the old basilica ever covered. We turn from the work of the Borghese to the portal of ancient times, when the one imperial tomb which Rome still holds was not yet thrust down out of sight and out of mind.* We enter, and, as the eye hurries along the few yawning arches of the nave, we long for the days when it might have rested step by step along the endless ranges of its columns. And even the majesty of the dome cannot make us forget that on its site once stood the altar, not as now, standing alone and forlorn, with its huge baldacchino further to lessen the effect of size and dignity, but standing in its place, canopied by the apse blazing with mosaics, with the throne of the Patriarch rising in fitting dignity among his presbyters, the throne from which a worthier Leo than the Medicean destroyer came down on the great Christmas feast, first to place the crown of Rome on the head of the Frankish Patrician, and then, as a subject before his sovereign, to adore the majesty of the Frankish Cæsar. We turn trom the church of the Emperors to the special church of the Popes, to their own forsaken home on the Lateran, to the patriarchal church, disfigured indeed, but not, like its successful rival, wholly destroyed. We strive to call up the pile as it stood when its columns, its arches, were still untouched, not only before the destroyers of later times had hidden the marble columns beneath dull stuccoed masses of stone, but even before Northern forms which have no

The tomb of Otto the Second, which stood in front of the old Saint Peter's, is thrust down into the crypt of the modern church. To be sure several tombs of Popes have shared the same fate.

Einhard, 801: "Post quas laudes ab eodem ponitfice more antiquorum principum adoratus est."

thing, to declare the King of Germany and Italy deposed from both his kingdoms. We picture it as it was when Urban sat in the midst of his assembled Council, and called Anselm of Canterbury, as himself the Pope of another world, to take his seat beside him in the circle of which the destroyers have left no trace behind. So we might go through all the buildings, great and small, of which any portion has been spared to us. Everywhere there is the same destruction, mutilation, or concealment of the ancient features, the same thrusting in of incongruous modern devices, the same fulsome glorification of the doers of the havoc. Still, in the vast extent of the city, enough is left for us to trace out all the leading features of the various forms which were taken by the early Christian buildings, and to connect them with the buildings of the pagan city which form the models out of which they grew by healthy and natural development. The historical associations of these buildings are surely not inferior to those of their pagan predecessors. As marking a stage in the history of art, we must look on them as links in the chain, as the central members which mark the great turningpoint in a series. That series, as we have seen, begins with the arch of the Great Sewer; it goes on, obscured for awhile, but never wholly broken, under the influence of a foreign taste. Through the buildings of Rome and Spalato and Ravenna and Lucca it leads us to the final perfection of round-arched architecture, both in its lighter and more graceful form at Pisa, and in its more massive and majestic variety at Caen and Peterborough and Ely and Durham.

The fact has been once or twice lately brought into notice that in the cloister of Saint John Lateran, the patriarchal chair of the Bishop of Rome may be seen, cast out among other disused fragments. A paltry altar fills its place in the apse, and the whole ancient arrangement, which may be traced in one or two of the smaller churches of Rome, is utterly destroyed. † Eadmer, Hist. Nov. p. 52, Selden. "Cum vero ad concilium venturum esset, et episcopis qui de Italia et Gallia venerant suas sedes ex consuetudine vendicantibus, nemo existeret qui se vel audisse vel vidisse archiepiscopum Cantuariensem Romano concilio ante hæc interfuisse diceret, vel scire quo tunc in loco sedere deberet, ex præcepto Papæ in corona sedes illi posita est, qui locus non obscuri honoris in tali conventu solet haberi."

From Blackwood's Magazine.

THE STORY OF VALENTINE; AND HIS

BROTHER.

CHAPTER XVI.

certain place where he should rest every night and wake every morning. There was no way in his power by which he could attain to that glorious conclusion; but he thus secured what is the next best thing to success in this world, a distinct conception of what he wanted, an ideal which was possible and might be carried out. He sat down upon the bank, swinging his feet over the mass of gravel which the workmen, beginning their morning work, were fishing up out of the river, and contemplating the scene before him, which, but for them, would have been noiseless as midnight. The irregular wooden buildings which flanked the rafts opposite looked picturesque in the morning light, and the soft water rippled up to the edge of the planks, reflecting everything, — pointed roof and lattice window, and the wonderful assembly of boats. It was not hot so early in the morning; and even had it been hot, the very sight of that placid river, sweeping in subdued silvery tints, cooled down from all the pictorial warmth and purple glory of the evening, must have cooled and refreshed the landscape. The clump of elm-trees on the Brocas extended all their twinkling leaflets to the light; lower down, a line of white houses, with knots of shrubs and stunted trees before each, attracted Dick's attention. Already lines of white clothes

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DICK BROWN got up very early next morning, with the same sense of exhilaration and light-heartedness which had moved him on the previous night. To be sure he had no particular reason for it, but what of that? People are seldom so truly happy as when they are happy without any cause. He was early in his habits, and his heart was too gay to be anything but restless. He got up though it was not much past five o'clock, and took his turn at the pump in the yard, which formed the entire toilet arrangements of the tramps' lodging-house, and then strolled down with his hands in his pockets and his ruddy countenance shining afresh from these ablutions, to where the river shone blue in the morning sunshine at the foot of Coffin Lane. Dick had passed through Windsor more than once in the course of his checkered existence. He had been here with his tribe-those curious unenjoying slaves of pleasure who are to be found wherever there is merrymaking, little as their share may be in the mirth on the 4th of June, the great fete day of Eton, and on the occasion of reviews in the great Park, and royal visits; so the place was mod-put up to dry betrayed at once the occuerately familiar to him, as so many places were all over the country. He strolled along the raised path by the water-side, with a friendly feeling for the still river, sparkling in the still sunshine, without boat or voice to break its quiet, which he thought to himself had brought him luck," a new friend, and perhaps a long succession of odd jobs. Dick and his mother did very fairly on the whole in their wandering life. The shillings and sixpences which they picked up in one way or another kept them going, and it was very rare when they felt want. But the boy's mind was different from his fate; he was no adventurer and though habit had made the road and his nomadic outdoor life familiar to him, yet he had never taken to it quite kindly. The thing of all others that filled him with envy was one of those little tidy houses or pretty cottages which abound in every English village, or even on the skirts of a small town, with a little flower-garden full of flowers, and pictures on the walls inside. The lad had said to himself times without number, that there indeed was something to make life sweet-a settled home, a

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pation and the industry of the inhabitants. If only his mother was of that profession, or could adopt it, Dick thought to himself, how sweet it would be to live there, with the river at hand and the green meadow-grass between to live there forever and ever, instead of wandering and tramping about the dusty roads!

There was no dust anywhere on that clear fresh morning. The boy made no comment to himself upon the still beauty of the scene. He knew nothing of the charm of reflection and shadow, the soft tones of the morning brightness, the cool green of the grass; he could not have told why they were beautiful, but he felt it somehow, and all the sweetness of the early calm. The great cart-horse standing meditative on the water's edge, with its heads and limbs relieved against the light sky; the rustling of the gravel as it was shovelled up, all wet and shining, upon the bank; the sound of the workmen's operations in the heavy boat from which they were working, gave a welcome sense of "company" and fellowship to the friendly boy; and for the rest, his soul was bathed in the sweetness of the

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"Mother," said Dick, "did you never think as you'd like to try staying still in one place and getting a little bit of a home?"

"No, Dick," said the woman, hastily; "don't ask me - I couldn't do it. It would kill me if I were made to try." "No one ain't a-going to make you," said Dick, soothingly; but look here, mother now tell me, didn't you ever

try?"

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"Oh yes, I've tried tried enough till I was nigh dead of it "I can't remember, mother." "It was before your time," she said, with a sigh and uneasy movement · "before you were born.""

morning. After a while he went higher up the stream and bathed more than his soul-his body too, which was much the better for the bath; and then came back again along the Brocas, having crossed in the punt by which some early workmen went to their occupation, pondering many things in his mind. If a fellow could get settled work now here - a fellow who was not so fortunate as to have a mother who could take in washing! Dick extended his arms as he walked, and stretched himself, and felt able for a man's work, though he was only sixteen-hard work, not light a good long day, from six in the morning till six at night; what did he care how hard the work was, so long as he was off the road, and had some little Dick did not put any further questions. nook or corner of his own - he did not He had never asked anything about his even mind how tiny-to creep into, and father. A tramp's life has its lessons as identify as his, absolutely his, and not well as a lord's, and Dick was aware that another's? The cottages facing to the it was not always expedient to inquire Brocas were too fine and too grand for into the life, either public or private, of his aspirations. Short of the ambitious your predecessors. He had not the least way of taking in washing, he saw no royal notion that there had been anything parroad to such comfort and splendour; but ticular about his father, but took it for homelier places no doubt might be had. granted that he must have been such a What schemes were buzzing in his young one as Joe or Jack, in rough coat and head as he walked back towards Coffin knotted handkerchief, a wanderer like the Lane! He had brought out a hunch of rest. He accepted the facts of existence bread with him, which his mother had as they stood without making any diffiput aside last night, and which served for culties, and therefore he did not attempt breakfast, and satisfied him fully. He to "worrit " his mother by further referwanted no delicacies of a spread table, ence to the past, which evidently did and dreams of hot coffee did not enter" worrit" her. "Well, never mind that," his mind. On winter mornings, doubtless, it was tempting when it was to be had in the street, and pennies were forthcoming; but it would have been sheer extravagance on such a day as this. The bread was quite enough for all Dick's need; but his mind was busy with projects ambitious and fanciful. He went back to the lodging-house to find his mother taking the cup of weak tea without milk which was her breakfast; and, as it was still too early to go to his appointment to Val, begged her to come out with him that he might talk with her; there was no accommodation for private talk in the tramps' lodging-house, although most of the inmates by this time were gone upon their vagrant course. Dick took his mother out by the riverside again, and led her to a grassy bank above the gravel-heap and the workmen, where the white houses on the Brocas, and the waving lines of clean linen put out to dry, were full in sight. He began the conversation cunningly, with this practical illustration of his discourse before his eyes.

he said; "you shan't never be forced to anything if I can help it. But if so be as I got work, and it was for my good to stay in a place supposing it might be here?"

"Here's different," said his mother, dreamily.

"That's just what I think," cried Dick, too wise to ask why; "it's a kind of a place where a body feels free like, where you can be gone to-morrow if you please

the forest handy and Ascot handy, and barges as will give you a lift the moment as you feel it the right thing to go. That's just what I wanted to ask you, mother. If I got a spell of work along of that young swell as I'm going to see, or anything steady, mightn't we try? If you felt on the go any day, you might just take the road again and no harm done; or if you felt as you could sit still and make yourself comfortable in the house

"I could never sit still and make myself comfortable," she said; "I can't be happy out of the air, Dick-I can't breathe; and sitting still was never my

way nor you couldn't do it neither," only a dame's, not a master's house. she added, looking in his face.

"Oh, couldn't I though!" said Dick, with a laugh. "Mother, you don't know much about me. I am not one to grumble, I hope - but if you'll believe me, the thing I'd be proudest of would be to be bound prentis and learn a trade." 66 'Dick!"

I

"I thought you'd be surprised. know I'm too old now, and I know it's no good wishing," said the boy. "Many and many's the time I've lain awake of nights thinking of it; but I saw as it wasn't to be done nohow, and never spoke. I've give up that free and full, mother, and never bothered you about what couldn't be; so you won't mind if I 'bother a bit now. If I could get a long spell of work, mother dear! There's them men at the gravel, and there's a deal of lads like me employed about the rafts; and down at Eton they're wanted in every corner, for the fives-courts and the rackets, and all them things. Now supposing as this young swell has took a fancy to me, like I have to him and supposing as I get work- let's say supposing, for it may never come to nothing, - wouldn't you stay with me a bit, mother, and try and make a home?"

"I'd like to see the gentleman, Dick," said his mother, ignoring his appeal.

"The gentleman!" said the boy, a little disappointed. And then he added, cheerily "Well, mother dear, you shall see the gentleman, partickler if you'll stay here a bit, and I have regular work, and we get a bit of an 'ome."

"He would never come to your home, lad not the likes of him."

The elegant young Grinder, who was Val's tutor, was but a younger branch of his exalted family, and had no immediate share in the grandeurs of the establishment, which was managed by a dominie or dame, a lay member of the Eton community, who taught nothing, but only superintended the meals and morals of his great houseful of boys. Such personages have no place in Eton properthe Eton of the Reformation period, so to speak - but they were very important in Val's time. Young Brown went to a side door, and asked for Mr. Ross with a little timidity. He was deeply conscious of the fact that he was nothing but "a cad"

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not a kind of visitor whom either dame or tutor would permit "one of the gentlemen " to receive; and, indeed, I think Dick would have been sent ignominiously away but for his frank and open countenance, and the careful washing, both in the river and out of it, which he had that morning given himself. He was told to wait; and he waited, noting, with curious eyes, the work of the great house which went on under his eyes, and asking himself how he would like to be in the place of the young curly-headed footman who was flying about through the passages, up-stairs and down, on a hundred rands; or the other aproned functionary who was visible in a dark closet at a distance, cleaning knives with serious persistence, as if life depended on it. Dick decided that he would not like this mode of making his livelihood. He shrank even from the thought—I cannot tell why, for he had no sense of pride, and knew no reason why he should not have taken service in Grinder's, where the servants, as well as the other inmates, lived on the fat of the land, and wanted for nothing; but somehow his fancy was not attracted by such a prospect. He watched the cleaner of knives, and the curlyheaded footman in his livery, with interest; but not as he watched the lads on the river, whose life was spent in launching boats and withdrawing them from the water in continual succession. "I'll stay -a bit-to please you, had no pride; and the livery and the livDick," said the woman. And the lading were infinitely more comfortable than sprang up and hastened away with a light anything he had ever known. heart. This was so much gained. He mind did not go with it," he said to himwent quickly down, walking on through self; and that was all it was necessary to the narrow High Street of Eton to say. the great red house in which his new friend was. Grinder's was an institution in the place, the most important of all the Eton boarding houses, though VOL. VI. 314

"You think a deal of him, mother. He mightn't come to Coffin Lane; I daresay as the gentlemen in college don't let young swells go a-visiting there. But you take my word, you'll see him; for he's taken a fancy to me, I tell you. There's the quarter afore ten chiming. I must be off now, mother; and if any thing comes in the way you'll not go against me? not when I've set my heart on it, like this?

LIVING AGE.

He

"His

While he was thus meditating, Valentinę Ross, in correct Eton costume — black coat, high hat, and white necktie - fresh from his tutor, with books under

"I say, I mustn't keep you here," said Val; "my dame mightn't like it. Here's your half-crown. Have you got anything to do yet? I think you're a handy fellow, and I shouldn't mind saying a word for you if I had the chance. What kind of place do you want?"

"I don't mind what it is," said Dick. "I'd like a place at the rafts awful, if I was good enough; or anything, sir. I don't mind, as long as I can make enough to keep me - and mother; that's all I care."

his arm, came in, and spied him where he wrote a hasty answer, for such important stood waiting. Val's face lightened up business cannot wait. Dick, watching into pleased recognition, - more readily his movements, felt with genuine gratifithan Dick's did, who was slow to recog-cation that here was another commission nize in this solemn garb the figure which for him. But his patron's next step made he had seen in undress dripping from his countenance fall, and filled his soul the waters. "Hollo, Brown!" said Val; with wonder. Val opened his door, and "I am glad you have kept your time. with stentorian voice shouted "Lower Come up-stairs and I'll give you what I boy!" into the long passage. There was promised you." Dick followed his patron a momentary pause, and then steps were up-stairs, and through a long passage to heard in all directions up and down, ratVal's room. "Come in," said Val, rum-tling over the bare boards, and about maging in a drawer of his bureau for the half-a-dozen young gentlemen in a lump half-crown with which he meant to pre- came tumbling into the room. Val insent his assistant of last night. Dick en- spected them with lofty calm, and held tered timidly, withdrawing his cap from out his note to the last comer, over the his head. The room was quite small, the heads of the others. "Take this to bed folded up, as is usual at Eton. The Benton at Guerre's," he said, with admibureau, or writing-desk with drawers, rable brevity; and immediately the mesadorned by a red-velvet shelf on the top, senger departed, the little crowd melted stood in one corner, and a set of book-away, and the two boys were again alone. shelves similarly decorated in another; a heterogeneous collection of pictures, hung as closely as possible, the accumulation of two years, covered the walls; some little carved brackets of stained wood held little plaster figures, not badly modelled, in which an Italian image-seller drove a brisk trade among the boys. A blue and black coat, in bright stripes (need I add that Val-august distinction was in the Twenty-Two ?), topped by a cap of utterly different but equally bright hues the colours of the househung on the door; a fine piece of colour, "Was that your mother?" said Val. if perhaps somewhat violent in contrast." Do you work for her too?" The window was full of bright geraniums, "Well, sir, you see she can make a deal which grew in a box outside, and gar-in our old way. She is a great one with 'landed with the yellow canariensis and the cards when she likes, but she won't wreaths of sweet-peas. Dick looked never do it except when we're hard up round upon all these treasures, his heart and she's forced; for she says she has to throbbing with admiration, and some- tell the things she sees, and they always thing that would have been envy had it comes true: but what I want is to stay been possible to hope or wish for any- in one place, and get a bit of an 'ome tothing so beautiful and delightful for him-gether and she ain't good for gentleself; but as this was not possible, the men's washing or that sort, worse luck," boy's heart swelled with pleasure that said Dick, regretfully. "So you see, sir, his young patron should possess it, which if she stays still to please me, I'll have to was next best. "Wait a moment," cried work for her, and good reason. She's Val, finding, as he pursued his search, a been a good mother to me, never going note laid upon his bureau, which had on the loose, nor that, like other women been brought in in his absence; and Dick do. I don't grudge my work." stood breathless, gazing round him, glad of the delay which gave him time to take in every detail of this school-boy palace into his mind. The note was about some momentous piece of business, the domestic economy of that one of "the boats " in which Val rowed number seven, with hopes of being stroke when Jones left next Election. He bent his brows over it, and seizing paper and pen,

Val did not understand the curious tingling that ran through his veins. He was not consciously thinking of his own mother, but yet it was something like sympathy that penetrated his sensitive mind. "I wish I could help you," he said, doubtfully. "I'd speak to the people at the rafts, but I don't know if they'd mind me. I'll tell you what, though," he added, with sudden excitement. "I can

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