They entered the house, and Terence set wine before his guest and himself. Tossing a libation of a few drops on to the floor, he drank a cup eagerly, and then, having reinforced his spirits, turned to the other and said,—“ What is it?"

"Well," returned Bubulcus, "you remember when you were a little boy fresh from Carthage, when the patron Lucanus had just bought you, before he found out that you were going to be so clever, and when you were home-sick, and Rome seemed very big and lonely to you, and you used to come to my little shop in the leathermarket?"

Terence murmured that he did remember all this, and refrained from adding that nothing was more distasteful to him than to be reminded of it.

"They say you write very beautiful Latin now, but you used to talk very queer Latin then; and people would not take the trouble to understand you, and the boys laughed at you, and I think you spent your happiest hours in my little booth. Edepol! I have something like a shop now! I gave you the scraps of leather, and you used to cut out little figures of soldiers, and thieves, and parasites, and make them talk to one another. How we used to laugh! Did we not? Those were pleasant old times."

"Yes, they were pleasant," said Terence with a sigh. He was half ashamed to realize that the man who wearied him so now had once been very kind to him. All the same, he could not help wishing him at the bottom of the Tiber.

"I hear," proceeded Bubulcus, "that the great general Africanus is a patron of yours."

"Scipio Africanus is a friend of mine," returned Terence.

"Friend I mean,-and a word from you to him would go a long way. You know, Publius, I have done you a good turn before now."

"What is it that you want?"

"It is about sandals for the army. You see, the leather they are using No. 373.-VOL. LXIII.

now

But no! we cannot follow Bubulcus in detail any further. When he embarked upon the subject of leather he was too vast, too interminable, to be anything more than lightly indicated here. In a kind of waking nightmare of weariness, interspersed with restless dozings, threaded upon the string of a monotonous voice, and the unutterable yearning that Bubulcus would go, Terence heard him discourse of leather. Of the leather at present supplied to the army, and its shortcomings; together with the anecdote of a soldier, who, pressed by famine, ate his sandals without subsequent indigestion, thereby proving to demonstration the flaccid fibre of the material; and the history and deeds of one Calvinius Burbo, who purveyed leather to the army and was also a thief, wittol, and informer. Of the friend who told Bubulcus that Terence was acquainted with the general Africanus, and of the sleepless night that Bubulcus and his wife passed in consequence. Of the early morning visit to the friend, and of the friend's opinion of the suggestion that Terence should be asked to serve Bubulcus in the matter. Of what Bubulcus's wife said of the affair in all its bearings, and of what she would have said of it had the bearings been different from what they were. Of a passage of arms between the friend and Bubulcus's wife, neither bearing on the matter in hand "nor meriting narration on its own account. Bubulcus talked until he absolutely perspired with talking, and the nodding Terence watched his stolid and shining visage, now elated with joyous hope, as when he pictured a victorious Scipio treading on soles of Bubulcan fashioning towards Iberian conquest, followed by an army similarly shodanon depressed with foreboding, as he conjured up the image of a possible Terence elated with success and forgetful of old friends. At last Terence slept, to be wakened by the sudden cessation of the dreadful voice. The silenced Bubulcus was staring openmouthed at two men, gracefully attired,

D

the one in civil, the other in military dress, who had entered the room unheard by the sleeping poet.

Into the arms of one of them Terence suddenly cast himself, exclaiming, "Oh Lælius, Lælius!"

Lælius rather moderated than repelled his effusive embrace. "I understand," he said kindly. "We have been talking with Turpio."

Terence then welcomed his military guest, and indicating his former companion with a half-malicious glance, said suddenly, "Africanus, Bubulcus has a suit to you."

Scipio graciously inclined himself to listen. But where was now the portentous eloquence of the leather-shaper? That flowing stream had become suddenly as a summer-dried watercourse. And Scipio Africanus, who had once on a certain historical and momentous occasion said "No" to himself, had, perhaps in consequence, little difficulty in saying it to another. Bubulcus even assisted him, for his faltering queries were put in a tentative form that suggested a negative reply.

"Perhaps, noble general, you do not at the present moment happen to want any tough-soled sandals for your soldiers?"

"No," said Scipio.

"You don't think that by putting the leather-work into other hands you might get an improvement in quality?"

Scipio shook his head.

"I don't speak, of course, of fine work like embossed cuirasses, or even such sandals as you wear yourself, noble general."

This received attention but no answer, being an incomplete remark.

"You would not perhaps think it worth your while to visit my poor shop, and see for yourself the kind of material that I could put into a sole?" "No."

"You would not perhaps like me to wait upon you at your villa with some examples?"

"I will not trouble you so far," said Scipio.

Here Bubulcus thanked him with fervour for his great kindness and condescension, and relapsed into silence. "Will he go?" murmured Terence to himself. But no, not he-they never do. He established himself solidly on a seat, obviously determined to sit out the conference to the end, and to talk it over at great length with Terence when the elegant strangers who overawed him should have withdrawn, and his natural powers of conversation should have been restored to him.

Then Terence, Lælius, and Scipio fell into easy conversation on the subject of the play. The first read fragments of his manuscript which the other two applauded and criticized. They discussed with him this continual demand for adaptations from Epicharmus and Menander, and the tendency of their discourse was rather to reconcile Terence to his lot.

"I do not think, my dear Publius," said Lælius, "that you need distress yourself. The fact is, there are only a certain number of characters, a certain number of plots, suitable for comedy, and they have been already occupied. The mere invention of them is no great achievement, and it naturally falls to the share of the earlier writers. What is the most popular character on the stage? The parasite. Who invented him? Epicharmus, the first man who ever wrote comedy at all. If Terence had lived in those days, Terence would have invented him as easily as the Sicilian; and, if Epicharmus had lived in these, it would only have been left for him to rehandle and stamp with his own genius the inventions of our Terence. The fact is, my dear Publius, that we live not at the beginning of literature, nor even in the middle, but at the end of it. The broad field of invention has been reaped, and but the gleaning is left for us to do. An original dramatist has become impossible, since no original materials remain for him to handle."

"Indeed there have," returned Lælius, bowing graciously to the conqueror of Africa, "but no new weapons. Your legions, my Africanus, wield the same spear and the same sword as did those of Atrides, and with the same skill. The fall of Carthage was as great as the fall of Troy; it was no less a deed to conquer Hannibal than to conquer Hector. Yet the old war retains through mere antiquity a certain pre-eminence, and all modern heroes and deeds of battle seem great as they are comparable with the deeds and heroes of the Trojan siege."

There was a short silence, and Bubulcus, who had once or twice cleared his throat, said to Terence in a hoarse and reproachful whisper,"You never talk to me about things of this kind. I like to hear about plays too."

"It is

Scipio and Lælius, moved by a common impulse, rose to go. Terence followed them into the porch. so hard," he said, detaining Lælius, "for me to have to write into the play the sort of things that Ambivius wants."

"I will tell you," said Scipio, "what I should do, were I in your place. I should go back to that worthy cobbler with aspirations beyond his last. I should take him by the throat, and shake him until he spoke. Whatever he said I should cherish and put into my play, certain it would hit the fancy of our good gossips of Rome."

Terence looked ruefully after them as they departed. "They only laugh at my difficulties," he thought.

He re-entered the room where the stolid leather-seller sat in a state of expectancy, his shoulders hunched up to his ears, his fat hands spread out on his fat legs. The blond foolish face, the round red beard of the man, his staring eyes and open mouth were intensely irritating to the nervous little poet. Terence seized Bubulcus by the

shoulders, and shook him until his teeth rattled.

"What do you mean by it?" he exclaimed. "Have you nothing to do of your own, that you come here to meddle with things that do not concern you?"

"My dear Terence-after all, I am a man, and nothing that concerns a man but has some interest for me."

The poet released him, and murmured to himself, "Well, of all the commonplaces!-But I will put it in."

Terence's play of The Self-Tormentor was acted, just two thousand and fiftyfour years ago, at the games in honour of the great goddess Cybele. It was announced as from the Greek of Menander.

In

Ambivius Turpio, the manager, produced it, and himself played the important part of Chremes, and spoke the tag. He also, as a pleasing innovation, spoke the prologue as well; justly conceiving that the audience could not have too much of him. the prologue the manager justified by great example the process of adaptation from the Greek. He made the usual hit at the crusty old Luscus Lavinius, and he concluded with a touching and sincere tribute to the width and variety of his own powers of impersonation, and the disinterestedness of his own motives. Then the play began. When old Menedemus, the Self-Tormentor, looked up from his digging to ask his inquisitive friend how he came to have so much leisure to attend to things that did not concern him, and Chremes replied,

I am a man; all things in human life Come home to me

the whole listening theatre burst into thunders of applause.

The fortune of the play was made.

H. ARTHUR KENNEDY.

37

On the isolated hill which forms the last spur of the Pegu Yoma range, before it dips, as it were, into the sea to reappear in the Andaman and Nicobar groups of islands, there stands in stately grandeur, venerable with associations of two thousand years, yet fresh to-day as if from the builders' hands, one of the most beautiful and honoured shrines of Buddha to be found throughout the vast territories of IndoChina. Without a rival in the grace of its proportions and the richness of its adornments, the great Shwedagone pagoda, as it flashes a mass of gold in the tropical sunlight, dominating from its commanding site not only the city of Rangoon but the whole delta of the Irrawaddy, is a worthy emblem of the faith of which it is the conspicuous and tangible embodiment.

None of all the sacred buildings in this land of monasteries and pagodas can boast a tithe of the dignity or splendour assigned to a shrine which is the object of veneration for races and languages without number, and which commands the astonished admiration even of Western nations. This majestic monument, moreover, serves as a model for the countless lesser shrines which lie scattered, like stars in space, through the regions within its influence.

In an Indo-Chinese country the most striking characteristic of every landscape is found in the religious buildings, and especially in the high places of Buddhism. What the village church is to rural England, what the mountain chapel is in Catholic lands, that is the pagoda in such a country as Burmah or Siam. But if the landmarks which distinguish the smallest village on the plain are the triple-roofed monastery building and the glittering pagoda spire rising from the trees, it is the

high places which here, as in Palestine of old, are the specially consecrated abodes of religious worship. In a land traversed by mountain ranges of varying altitude the crown of every hilltop and of every spur, even of crags almost inaccessible to human foot, is the same tapering spire with gilded canopy and tinkling bells and all the well-known accompaniments of Buddhist worship. Like beacon-lights they pass on from hill to hill the message of the common faith, for each one is a centre alike for distant pilgrimage, for daily worship of the faithful, and for ritual service of monks from lonely mountain cells.

From whatever quarter the city of Rangoon is approached, whether by sea, or river, or railway, the site of the town is recognised from afar by the vision of a golden spire lifted into the clouds and seeming hardly to rest on the solid earth. Faintly glowing through the mist, or flashing like a diamond in the midday sun over the waste of forest and flood, this beautiful apparition seems to move with the traveller as he journeys, like the moon riding through summer clouds,—now hidden in a bower of trees, now emerging brilliant and clear to the base across the level rice-fields. For any one to whom this sight is familiar it is easy to realise the profound influence exercised over an Oriental imagination by a symbol of the national faith at once so ancient and so beautiful, so imposing in its towering height and in its imperial station. The first gleam of its gold is invariably greeted by the pious Burman with adoration of bended knees and hands uplifted in silent prayer.

And if its aspect from a distance is striking, the grandeur of the structure only becomes more conspicuous with a