pointing out that their chief objections to the early history of Rome were anticipated by De Beaufort a hundred years before Niebuhr.

Fully admitting the existence of exaggeration and fiction, or legend, in the early annals of Rome, Dr. Dyer maintains that these do not invalidate the credibility of the main outlines of the story subsequently to the foundation of the city. After quoting Sir George Cornewall Lewis's exposure of the futility of all attempts to rationalize ancient legends-in which Sir Cornewall was only a follower of Grote-Dr. Dyer adds:-" "We must either take the early Roman history as it stands, or nearly as it stands, rejecting only those figments which are evidently the natural product of an illiterate and superstitious age, or we must abandon it altogether, as no better than a romance from first to last."

Dr. Dyer lays it down as a principle, that before we pronounce stories told in connection with places, customs, and names, to have been caused by them rather than because of them, we are bound to show the incredibility of the traditional accounts.

ADRIAN, THE MODEL ROMAN EMPEROR.

Adrian believed the empire was large enough already. He withdrew the eagles from the half-subdued provinces, and contented himself with the natural limits, which it was easy to defend. But within those limits his activity was unexampled. He journeyed from end to end of his immense domain, and for seventeen years never rested in one spot. News did not travel fast in those days-but the emperor did. Long before the inhabitants of Syria and Egypt heard that he had left Rome on an expedition to Britain, he had rushed through Gaul, crossed the channel, inquired into the proceedings of the government officers at York-given orders for a wall to keep out the Caledonians, and suddenly made his appearance among the bewildered dwellers in Ephesus or Carthage, to call tax-gatherers to order, and to inspect the discipline of his troops. The master's eye was everywhere, for nobody knew on what part it was fixed. And such a master no kingdom has been able to boast of since. His talents were universal. He read everything, and forgot nothing. He was a musician, a poet, a philosopher. He studied medicine and mineralogy, and pled causes like a Cicero, and sang like a singer at the opera. Perhaps it is difficult to judge impartially of the qualities of a Roman Emperor. One day he found fault on a point of gram

mar with a learned man of the name of Favorinus. Favorinus could have defended himself, and justified his language, but continued silent. His friends said to him, "Why did you not answer the Emperor's objections?" "Do you think," said the sensible grammarian, "I am going to dispute with a man who commands thirty legions." But the greatness of Adrian's character is, that he did command those thirty legions. He was severe and just, and Roman discipline was never more exact.-White's Eighteen Christian Centuries.

THE BONES OF DANTE.

The following is, according to the authentic records found in the old archives of the Franciscans of Ravenna, the reason given for the removal of the bones of the great poet from his tomb in that city:--In 1677, Cardinal Corsi, who was Papal Legate at Ravenna, and well known for his passionate admiration of Dante, ordered the chapel containing the poet's monument to be repaired, as it was in a very ruinous condition. The Archbishop of Ravenna himself acknowledged the necessity of these repairs, but the Franciscans, to whom the chapel belonged, opposed the measure with all their might; and there is every reason to believe that they more than suspected Cardinal Corsi, who was a Florentine, of an intention of getting possession of Dante's bones in order to send them to Florence. This induced Father Antonio Santi, who was Chancellor of the Order, to remove the bones from the monument and place them in a box or coffin, on which he wrote his name and the date, 1677, all which have now been discovered, as already stated.

ARIOSTO.

The inspection of the MS. of Ariosto, preserved at Ferrara, greatly confirms the opinion of those who think that consummate excellence, united to the appearance of ease, is almost always the result of great labour. The corrections are innumerable. Several passages where, as they now stand, the words and thoughts seem to flow along with the most graceful facility, and the rhyme to come unsought for, have been altered over and over, till scarce a line of the first draft has been allowed to remain. Another MS. of Ariosto_is_preserved at Ferrara. It is a letter to his farming servants in Tuscany. It is curious from being full of grammatical errors and vulgarisms. He writes to his servant in the same dialect in which his servant would have written to him.

TASSO.

At Ferrara is preserved an original MS. of Tasso-not a canto of the Jerusalem-but a letter which it fills one with shame and grief to think that so great a man should ever have had occasion to write. It is dated from prison, and addressed to a friend whom he desires to get five shirts washed for him; "all of them," he observes, " also require mending," he seems to have been in extreme poverty and distress. There is hardly a more signal disgrace to civilized society than the fate of this great man.-Earl Dudley's Letters.

LEONARDO DA VINCI.

In the year 1863, a search was made at the Château of Amboise, on the site of the ancient church of St. Florentin, between Blois and Tours. Here the object of search was the tomb of Leonardo da Vinci, who died, May 2, 1519, at Cloux Luci, a small château, which still exists near the furthermost houses of Amboise. According to Vasari, Leonardo died in the arms of Francis I., by whose invitation the great painter had three years previously arrived in France. We perceive that M. Arsène Houssaye, Inspector-General of Fine Arts, thinks it was at Amboise, where Francis I. often stayed, that Leonardo died in his Royal patron's arms; and not at Fontainebleau, as often stated, Francis not having yet fixed his Court there. Now, the painter's will received at Amboise by M. Boreau, notary, is dated the 28th of April, 1519. Therefore, as Leonardo, who was already ill, died four days after, it appears impossible that he could have gone as far as Fontainebleau, even had the King requested it. Such is the statement which has just appeared in the French journals; but, “according to the journal of Francis I., preserved in the Imperial library at Paris, the Court was on that day (May 2, the day of Leonardo's death) at St. Germainen-Laye. Fransesco Melzi, in a letter to Leonardo's relations immediately after his death, makes no mention of so noteworthy an incident. Lastly, Lomazzo, who communicated so much respecting the life of the great artist, distinctly says that the King first learned the death of Leonardo from Melzi." (See Painting Popularly Explained by Gullick and Timbs, p. 161, note.) That Leonardo died at Cloux, near Amboise, appears certain. He is said to have expressed a desire to be interred in the Church of St. Florentin. The few monuments which were spared by the fanatics were demolished with the church; but M. Houssaye is hopeful in his mission. Stone coffins, and tombs,

skeletons three or four centuries old; and pieces of stuffs, hair, shoes, urns, and money have been found, but no name or date had been discovered when the last report was made. Still, to recover a memorial of the greatest man of the fifteenth century will be a strong incentive to the archæologists at Amboise. Mr. Hallam justly says that the fragments of Leonardo's writings that have been published, "according, at least, to our common estimate of the age in which he lived, are more like revelations of physical truths vouchsafed to a single mind than the superstructure of its reasoning upon any established basis. The very theories of recent geologers are anticipated by Da Vinci within the compass of a few pages, not, perhaps, in the most precise language, or on the most conclusive reasoning, but so as to strike us with something like the awe of preternatural knowledge."

WHAT IS POSTERITY?-MITFORD'S HISTORY OF GREECE. Byron, in Don Juan, replies to the above question,—

"That suit in Chancery-which some persons plead

In an appeal to the unborn, whom they,
In the faith of their procreative creed,
Baptize posterity, or future clay,-
To me seems but a dubious kind of reed
To lean on for support in any way;
Since odds are that posterity will know

No more of them, than they of her, I trow.

"Why, I'm posterity-and so are you;

And whom do we remember? Not a hundred;

Were every memory written down all true

The tenth or twentieth name could be but blunder'd;

Even Plutarch's Lives have picked out a few;

And 'gainst those few your annalists have thunder'd;
And Mitford in the nineteenth century

Gives, with great truth, the good old Greek the lie."

Upon this the note is "Grecia Verax," his (Mitford's) great pleasure consists in praising tyrants, abusing Plutarch, spelling oddly, and writing quaintly, and what is strange after all, his is the best modern history of Greece in any language, and he is, perhaps, the best of all modern historians whatever. Having named his sins, it is but fair to state his virtues-learning, labour, research, wrath, and partiality. I call the latter virtues in a writer, because they make him write in earnest. But the poem was written more than half a century ago.

DEATH OF HEINRICH HEINE.

This learned and brilliant prose-writer and poet, whose works

are too often pervaded by a spirit of sarcasm, which has no respect for persons, are frequently traversed by veins of mockery which touch the most soured subjects, in his will says: "Though I belong to the Lutheran confession, I do not desire to be followed to the grave by any clergymen of that denomination, and I wish to dispense with any other sacred solemnity at my burial. This is not the weak fancy of a free-thinker. For the last four years I have cast aside all philosophical pride, and have again felt the power of religious truth." He regrets having so often spoken of sacred subjects in a disrespectful manner, and implores "forgiveness for any offence which in his ignorance he may have given to good manners and morals, which are the true emanations of all faith."

MALLATH, THE HUNGARIAN.

Mallath, the ingenious Hungarian poet and historian, fell a victim to the Revolution in 1848, and was unable to obtain compensation from the Austrian government. His literary labours did not prove remunerative, and his fortitude gave way under the combined afflictions of poverty, exile, old age, and blindness. The old man, whose productions have earned him a permanent and honourable place in the literature of both Hungary and Germany, was driven by the pressure of extreme destitution to drown himself in the lake of Sternberg, in Upper Bavaria, and with him his daughter, who had for some time acted as his amanuensis. This most painful catastrophe took place in

January, 1855.

LABORIOUS READINGS.

Mr. Henry Fynes Clinton, was a classical scholar of the highcst rank. He read carefully all the best works of the Greek and Roman writers with a diligence perhaps unexampled, at least in modern times. He himself states that while at Oxford, during less than seven years, he read 5,323 pages of the Greek poets and prose writers; but that afterwards, between 1810 and 1820, he read about 40,000 pages: the reading at Oxford amounting to 746 pages annually, while the reading during 1810-20 amounts to 4,000 pages annually, which is at any rate more than five times greater.

GROTE, THE HISTORIAN.

Mr. Grote died in June, 1871, at the time when the Ballot which he so courageously advocated in Parliament, between 1832 and 1841, was passing. Mr. Grote had nearly completed