fifteen hundred epigrams he reflects every phase of Roman life, and his gallery of female characters is entirely unrivalled in literature.

We observe among ourselves that the growth of luxury and opulence is accompanied by a disinclination to marriage. Young men find it hard to live as bachelors in the style which they deem necessary; hence it is not surprising that they should dread the idea of a wife and children. And indeed, when you regard attentively all that is requisite to the comfort of a modern young lady, you cannot be astonished that the idea of having her as a wife is somewhat terrifying. Inquire in the Burlington-arcade the price of one of those dainty bonnets, of a pair of those delicate bottines, then calculate if you can the cost of all the mysterious articles of apparel which lie between the one and the other. And how often will all these charming costly things require renewal? These are momentous considerations for the young gentleman who is anxious to marry, unless he is lucky enough to be a millionaire. In that event let him wed the belle of the season, and give her carte-blanche in the matter of dress. She will fulfil the French saying, 'Elle s'habille, elle babille, elle se déshabille;' and what better can she do, if her dress is artistic and her chat is witty? Dress is a fine art, and not the least of the fine arts. It takes the loveliest of Nature's productions, and adorns it gracefully; and he is a bloodless churl who does not rejoice to see a beautiful woman, perfect as to the light of her eyes, the sweetness of her lips, the colours and curves of her form, dressed with sufficing sumptuousness, sparkling with diamonds and sapphires. But

'Non cuivis homini contingit adire Corinthum ;'

everybody cannot dress a divine beauty as she deserves, any more than everybody can have a house in Park-lane, and tread on Aubusson carpets, and dine from Rose du Barri porcelain, and hang Claudes and Titians on his walls.

So expensive were the girls of Rome, that Julius Cæsar was induced to offer premiums in encouragement of marriage. He allowed married women to dress more superbly than the unmarried, and to drive in costlier carriages; and he relieved of various taxes the married man who was father of three children. The distinction of dress was gradually obliterated under the emperors; but the privileges of the natorum genitor trium seem rather to have increased, since he had a right to the best seats at the public games, and was more readily admitted to official positions. Shall we come to this sort of thing in England? Will there ever be a time when the father of three children will have his income-tax reduced, and a gratuitous stall at the Opera, and get first choice of a sinecure, from the office of Lord Privy Seal downwards?

It is clear that both sexes are injured by the existence of a corrupt luxury; clear also that social extravagance and female eccen

tricity act and react on each other. In simple communities, where girls are taught to regard marriage as their natural destiny, and to prepare themselves for being wives and mothers, we see nothing of the variations in feminine character and habit which are familiar to us in modern England. When a girl of high spirit and quick intellect perceives that marriage is by no means the certainty it ought to be that it is, on the whole, rather improbable-she naturally meditates on other possible careers. This is the reason why so many ladies take to novel-writing and maintaining the rights of women; why they turn themselves into deaconesses and sisters of mercy; why they are always eagerly searching for some new rôle. Deprived of the career which Nature designed for them, they must discover some other. Who can blame them? When that other is discovered, it will give them no satisfaction; it will not supply that dual existence which is their chief need. So they deserve rather pity than blame.

Let us return to the Rome of Domitian. Were there professors of the art of making girls beautiful for ever' in that city? It would seem so. Paulus, a stingy but ostentatious friend of Martial's, gave the poet a gold phiala-which seems to have been a shallow bowl

-of such thin material, that it was scarcely more than gold-leaf. Martial wrote thereon some pleasant verses, comparing the tawdry gift to the lightest things his gay fancy could conjure up :

Thicker the chalk old ladies' faces crave,
And thicker swells the bubble on the wave;
More dense the magical Batavian foam
Which dyes the tresses of the girls of Rome.'

This same spuma Batava a name which any advertising hair-
dresser is welcome to use- appears to have been introduced by
German barbers, with intent to redden the hair of the Roman
maidens. There were old girls of the period, it would seem, as well
as young ones; of this, indeed, the poet gives us frequent evidence.
He is very hard on a lady named Afra, in an untranslatable epi-
gram:
'Mammas atque tatas habet Afra: sed ipsa tatarum

Dici et mammarum maxima mamma potest.'

Let us try a very free rendering:

'When Afra lisps "Mamma,' Papa," one's laughter one smothers:
She might be grandmamma of all our fathers and mothers.'

Poor old lady, who would fain be a girl of the period, as lively as Lalage, as adorable as Theophila ! The epigrammatist calls another mature lady a corpse; which reminds us of a good story in the late Miss Eden's clever diary Up the Country. A certain lady, from her pallid appearance, was nicknamed the little corpse;' and Lord Auckland declared that he would not sit near her, as he did not know what disease she died of. Martial should have thought of that.

Sometimes the affectation is the other way, and little girls affect maturity. Our poet links Cærellia with Gellia: the former, being a puppa (a little girl, the same word as our puppy!), assumes antiquity; the latter, being elderly, goes about dressed as if entering her teens. As the puppa is not too old to be whipped, and the elderly party pretends not to be-why, let both be castigated with something sharper than an epigram.

The toilet of a girl of the period was no trifling matter in those days. The cosmeta or lady's-maids had often a hard time of it. They were slaves, and their dissatisfied mistress thought nothing of ordering them to be flogged if she were out of temper or her hair out of curl-if, in fact, any of the delicate processes of adornment went wrong. To take the law into her own hand seems to have been bad form' on the lady's part. At least Martial rebukes Lalage, who, because one of her tresses was out of place, beat her waitingmaid with the steel mirror that revealed the mistake. Some of the useful or elegant trifles which the toilet required are casually named in Martial's Apophoreta-a word which indicates a pleasant custom of Rome. Men who gave dinners during the Saturnalia were wont to place by each guest an elegant present, and Martial has written some two hundred couplets to serve as mottoes for such gifts. Now here is a new idea for English gentlemen who like social distinction. Let them at their great dinners put beside each guest some exquisite trifle suited to his or her idiosyncrasy, and let them employ an epigrammatist of the first force to furnish appropriate rhymes. Thereby will they both delight their friends (the ladies most of all) and encourage literature. What more charming welcome for a lady at a dinner-table than a silken zone, with some such legend as Waller's

'Give me but what this ribbon bound,

Take all the rest the sun goes round'?

Martial also has a girdle among his Apophoreta. His epigram thereon, though very pretty, is not equal to Waller's couplet. Other articles of feminine apparel on which we find epigrams are a corset, a tucker, and an apron-curious presents, it may be thought; but customs vary in different ages and with different races of men. However, the gifts for the toilet are not at all out of date. To one lady a golden hair-pin; to another a comb of boxwood; to a third pomatum, warranted to turn the darkest hair to the envied colour of the Teutonic slaves. The ladies of Rome were not content with their wonderful dark tresses: nothing would satisfy them but to imitate the light locks of the blue-eyed girls whom they bought in the slave-market. So, in the first century of the Christian era, our ancestresses set the fashion in Rome. Other apophoreta for the toilet were tooth-powder, myrobalanum, and a lomentum or wash (by some translators given as bean-flower) to smoothe a wrinkled skin.

Seeing that wrinkles are not unknown in these days, it might be worth inquiry whether bean-flower has any decorrugative effect.

The mania for an appearance of abundant hair, which has attacked the modern female world, seems not to have prevailed in Rome. In this city of London false hair is rather the rule than the exception: it takes the form of chignons, braids, plaits, and what not. The female head, which is really a pretty thing when you can see its shape, is deformed by accretions and agglomerations. How long this absurdity of fashion will last we cannot guess; for fashion is a strange thing, and does not change any the faster, but indeed sometimes lasts the longer, by reason of being ugly and offensive. Fashion is the most irresistible of all forces; it is stronger than even religion. It is also the most unaccountable of all forces. You can seldom trace its origin; you can never calculate its duration. Inasmuch as fashion ought to be the application of art to social life, it would doubtless be an excellent thing if people of artistic capacity would condescend to lead the fashion.' " This has been done by a

man-Count d'Orsay. We do not know that any woman of the true type has ever attempted it. If only a lady, who united high birth and intellect and a cultivated taste for the beautiful, would take this matter in hand, what a multitude of monstrosities we might be spared!

Wise, in our belief, are those artists of dress who seek to imitate natural forms. Leaves and flowers and even fruit are delightful as the decorations of beauty. Even birds and butterflies have been appropriately pressed into the service. A bird of paradise or

a purple emperor adds to the fairy grace of a bonnet. Let the lady who is blue mount Athene's owl, and the gossip adorn herself with a magpie. Roman ladies were ahead of our English girls: 'Gelidum collo nectit Glacilla draconem,' says Martial. Yes, Glacilla wore around her beautiful neck a cold serpent; nor was she alone in this habit. Seneca, Lucian, Pliny, bear witness that the girls of Rome wore living snakes around their necks, and cherished them in their bosoms. They seem to have found them pleasantly cool. Will any English girl of the period set this fashion in midsummer? Pleasant for the eager lover to approach within osculating distance, and to find the glassy eyes of a snake fixed on him, its forked tongue quivering near him! This kind of partnership between Eve and her tempter is not altogether desirable.

Be it not thought that there were no nice girls' at Rome in Domitian's days. There was one loving sister at least. Carrierpigeons were not unknown among the Romans. Martial tells how one flew into the sweet bosom of Aretulla as she longed for her brother, an exile in Sardinia, and hails it as an omen of his pardon by the emperor. This epigram reminds us of Béranger's exquisite song, wherein the poet tells how the Aï sparkled, and his mistress sang a

lyric of Greek divinity, when, lo, a carrier-pigeon, tired by long travel, settled at their feet. No wonder it was weary, the faithful bird! It had flown straight from Athens with news that Greece was free, and the immortal poet sang:

'Bois dans ma coupe, O messager fidèle!

Et dors en paix sur le sein de Naeris.'

And there is one other whom we must mention-Theophila, who married the poet Canius Rufus. None of the writings of Canius are known to us; but as his statue was set up in Rome, he must have had some repute. He was a native of Cadiz, and his style was humorous. 6 What is my Canius about ?' asks Martial. 'Is he writing the history of the Claudii, or emulating the jests of Phædrus, or striding majestic in the cothurnus of Sophocles? Or is he loitering in the portico of Isis, or bathing in the therma of Agrippa, or enjoying Lucan's country house, or the suburban villa of Pollio? Or has he started for sunny Baiæ, where now the yacht flies along the Lucrine waves ? You wish to know what your Canius is doing? Laughing.

Tell me, if you chance to know it,

Where's our friend the humorous poet?

Is he studying themes historic

Kings of England, Earls of Warwick?
Perhaps his pen disvalueth
Froude upon Elizabeth.

Does he mean to get the upper
Hand of the proverbial Tupper?
Is't burlesque he's writing, à la
Byron and Burnand and Sala?
Is he hunting in the shires,
Well in front of peers and squires?
Lured by country invitation,

Is he practising flirtation?

This be sure-whate'er he's after,
Where the poet is, there's laughter.'

A right pleasant fellow this Canius, and he seems to have been rewarded for his healthy hilarity with a most charming bride. Martial wrote a delightful epigram on the portrait of this lady. This is that Theophila, your betrothed, my Canius, whose mind is full of Attic learning. The Athenian garden of the great old man might well claim her; not less willingly would the Stoic sect take possession of her. If she approves your poems, they will be immortal. Sappho must have praised the verses of Theophila, who, more modest than the Lesbian, is her equal in genius.' Here is a pretty portrait of a Roman girl of the period wherewith to end our sketch. What a pity the poems of Canius did not attain their promised immortality! His love-songs to this peerless Theophila, for whom Stoics and Epicureans contended, ought certainly to have been of the first force. Alas! the laughing poet and his lovely learned wife have been dust near eighteen centuries.

MORTIMER COLLINS.