the sword. Free-trade, then, is progressing: currency it may be hoped will at no distant time be assimilated ;—not long ago a great congress representing the working men of all nations met in the capital city which was of all others the most appropriate for their meeting; and men have turned their minds to see what can be done to remove a difficulty which is serious, but which the example of Switzerland shows not to be fatal-that of language. Above all, in England, upon which so much of the world's future depends, the spirit of freedom is abroad, has recently gained a victory, and will not rest (we may hope) until its triumph is complete. It cannot be long before a neighbouring and rival nation shakes itself free from the charge of unfitness for self-government; and, when that is done, more than half the battle of freedom will

1

1 This victory, which is compared to Charonea by those who think the political slavery of five-sixths of a nation essential to its welfare, is in reality but a small affair. The alarm felt by the opponents of freedom in the presence of household suffrage is as unfounded as the exultation of her friends. In France there is not household but universal suffrage. But, as in France universal suffrage does not give freedom because the

have been won. Beyond the Atlantic the cause is secure. So long as that great people, whose greatness has been shown by recent events to rest on a foundation which no hurricane can shake, possesses almost a monopoly of real political liberty, the idea of a common polity for civilized men can assume for it no practical form. But nationalism is opposed to the very spirit of its institutions, and to its thoughtful, enlightened, and independent character; and so soon as it shall be possible for nations, meeting on the common ground of freedom, to erase the word "foreigner" from the vocabulary of the world, America will take the lead in the inauguration of the new era, and will continue to attract to her shores the myriads of every race welcomed as now to wealth and liberty, but expatriated no more.

"seats" are all "distributed" (if the expression might be used) to one man, so in England household suffrage will not give freedom, or even (as some liberal statesmen fondly imagine) prepare the way for it, so long as the seats are distributed in the way we know. To invest a man with political power at the same time that you invest another with ten times as much, is a strange mode of conferring upon him political liberty.

"HAVE you seen the guardroom of the Seventh Cohort?"

"Were the 'Sebaciaria' a mere affair of tallow candles after all?"

Laughing girls on horseback in the Roman Campagna, stout dowagers and white-headed elders in the drawingrooms of Rome, would put such questions with equal ease; and the new puzzle for the lexicographer would slip as glibly from rosy lips as from the parchment mouth of antiquaries.

For who is not archæological in Rome? The thing is in the air; and you catch it, willy-nilly; not in the damp or close air only of catacombs No. 95.-VOL. XVI.

and excavations, whither the prudent venture not in their best coats and gowns, fearing the wax drops of the string of taper-bearers; but in the open air, under the bright blue sky, out on the green sward of the charioteering circus, or on the stone tiers of the giant amphitheatre, or on the lofty slopes of Tusculum, or by the leafy lake lip of Albano. The learned lecture: the unlearned listen; and then, amidst the flowery language of flirtation, or the duller drone of commonplace talk, strike in the significant sounds of the language of old Rome.

Now "Cohors VII. Vigulum" is easy

A A

enough to understand. For, without knowing that Augustus Cæsar had enrolled seven companies of a fire brigade, under the name of "Vigils," as may be read at length in the learned book of Kellermann,your quick witted English girl, or her Yankee cousin, has driven a dozen times past the stations of your modern "Vigili," noted their quaint copper-crowned caps and their sawbacked short-swords: and has thus prepared herself to learn that these stout Papal soldiers of the pump and bucket had their forerunners under the old Cæsarian rule.

But “Sebaciaria," what might that mean? No dictionary knew the word. And why should the loyal firemen of the Seventh Cohort take to themselves such credit for having made Sebaciaria in such or such a month, under the Consuls So and So, when Heliogabalus or Alexander Severus filled the throne of Empire?

For, as on the barrack wall in the Piazza della Pilotta now-a-days, some private of Papal dragoons, aspiring to a corporal's stripes, records his loyalty by scrawling, "Viva Pio Nono Papa e Re,'

-so did Cornelius Jucundus, of the Seventh Cohort, or Caius Fulvius Rogatianus of the same,-I quote realities,— inscribe upon the barrack wall just brought to light the interesting fact that they had duly made "Sebaciaria."

These inscriptions, scratched as they are, suffer wrong, perhaps, when I write them down as scrawls. The characters are Roman capitals, except where, as in the inscriptions of the Catacombs, Latin words are awkwardly mis-spelt in Greek letters. Lines representing a sort of tabletframework inclose the most of them.

Well! Did I think that the Sebaciaria were a sort of tallow-candle or rather grease-pot illumination made on imperial days of birth or triumph and the like?

I did; for this interpretation of the learned Professor Visconti fell in with reminiscences of bygone days in Paris, before the use of gas light had unhooked the old "reverbère," or swinging oil-lamp, from its wooden post,

days when the grandest illuminations owed their brightness to what was called the "lampion," a rough earthen saucer, where a coarse wick of tow was embedded in a flake of tallow. Yes, I had often seen such Sebaciaria, and thought them gorgeous, too, as Caius Fulvius Rogatianus may have done. Wherefore I was ready to subscribe to derivation from " Sebaceus," ready to allow the likeness to the more dignified "ceriolaria" or displays of waxlight, to the "luminaria" and "lucernaria" of the Christian rites of Rome.

But had I visited the Transtibertine suburb, entered the excavations, looked upon that spirited Mosaic pavement where the merman and dolphins disport themselves? I had, indeed, and had much wondered when the development of art industry among ourselves, Cole C.B., South Kensington and all, would give our Fireman's barracks a pavement of such artistic character and force.

"Were not these most interesting excavations, and were we not most fortunate to find ourselves in Rome at their first opening?"

Not without their interest, I must needs own, the livelier by times, the closer one shall look into the dates and circumstances: as when, for instance, the grease-pots blazed on a July night under Heliogabalus. "Omnia tuta," scribbles the loyal Vigil, "all safe and sound "-the very words of Dion the historian, for the forces of Macrinus were beaten and destroyed. "Omnia tuta;" but before July came round again, the august imperial Cæsar had come to his bloody and untimely end.

Not without their interest: as when a private of the VIIth informs our modern historians on a curious point of history. They knew that in the third Christian century, the Emperor Alexander, known lately as Severus, received his name because born on the birthday of the Great Alexander of Macedon; but of the precise day they were ignorant. Our Vigil scratched a note of the illumination kept upon the Caesar's birthday, and so settles that of the greater Alexander.

"Not without interest indeed, but a mere interest of yesterday, dear Sir or Madam, compared to what I want to discover here in Rome."

"Oh, we understand! The empire of the third century seems a late date for you; your Gordians are too recent folk.

You seek Rome of the republic; perhaps even of the kings. Well, our best archaeologists assert that, since a cohort of the Vigils had a station here, the wall of Servius Tullius runs hard by. That must be old enough to please you, surely."

"I grant that Servius Tullius has an ancient sound: as of the day before yesterday compared with your Gordians and the like."

"Are Etruscan antiquities your aim then, or even Oscan? Have you seen the quaint potteries found beneath the peperino of the Alban slopes? You will find them at

"The Vatican, where I saw them years ago; and I am not unaware of their renewed claim to high antiquity. I have already learnt what traces of a primæval Pompeii, as a bold Roman archæologist has called it, are brought each year to light under the outpour of the volcanoes of old Latium. But all this is modern side by side with what I seek."

For I had thought, good reader, that somewhere, deep under this long-trodden soil of Rome, there needs must lurk some tokens of a race of men earlier than the earliest to which historian or even poet of the Latin tongue had. sought to give a name.

I myself had never seen, and, with one or two exceptions, I believe no other Englishman has ever seen, a Roman sample of those rough tools and weapons of wrought flint, which are the earliest material monuments of man's presence upon earth.

Yet I could not believe that, in this immemorial seat of habitation, the antiquary's spade and pickaxe should never have disturbed beneath historic pavements gates and walls, some of the rude handiwork of prehistoric men. And herein I was right that Rome, rich

mother-city of museums, is rich in this respect as well, although a stranger might, from certain circumstances, be long in lighting upon the treasures it enfolds. The Vatican does not contain them, nor the Capitol. The Jesuits' Museum has but a stray specimen or two of undetermined origin. At the Sapienza, it is true that Cavaliere Ponzi, the learned geological professor, can show a small, yet significant, collection; but the great service he will render to inquirers will be this, that he will name to them the name of Signor Luigi Ceselli, a scientific and accomplished Roman gentleman, who has allowed me to write him down my friend.

What I saw and heard with him may be of interest to others. I will try to set it briefly down,-then tax, perhaps, the patience of my readers by a little after gossip of my own.

That weird science of geology had long cast upon Signor Ceselli one of her strong spells. Under its working he had long sought, and with singular success, the fossil bones of the great mammals long since disappeared from Europe and from Italy. But one hope or expectation always cheated him. Nowhere, among the quaternary deposits of the Campagna, rich in the remains of bygone families of elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus, had his eager, hopeful, and minute researches revealed to him the bones of human beings. Yet his conviction held, that if not these, yet other proofs would be forthcoming of man's presence among the waning monster races of an older time.

The great army of artists and of amateurs know the Ponte Mammolo quite well. A thousand sketch-books, if Macmillan suffered illustration, would open to show, from north, south, east, and west, the picturesque old bridge which. spans the River Anio some few miles from Rome. The scene of his first discovery was there hard by. It was in 1846. The date itself will not be without meaning for those who have followed elsewhere the history of similar discoveries. A shoulder blade of the cave bear was the fossil found, and, close in com

pany therewith, the rude flint weapons of man's earliest time. Not the mere rudeness of their workmanship, but also the rough treatment they had undergone, rolled in the torrent bed of Anio in old diluvial days, must plead the excuse of those who met with sneers and scoffs Ceselli's shrewd and sound conjecture as to the pregnant meaning of these misshapen flakes of flint. Their persistency in contempt and ridicule is less excusable in the face of the discoveries which their scientific fellow-citizen kept making during the two next years. For the same site of Ponte Mammolo yielded another crop of the wrought flints, intermingled with huge tusks of elephants and horns of a stag, whose species was as yet unknown to Italian osteologists, or at least undescribed by them. Then the Monte Sacro, next the Ponte Molle close to the gates of Rome, the Acqua Traversa, the Tor de Quinto-all familiar names to English artists, tourists, foxhunters-yielded indubitable specimens in turn to the unwearying gatherer. And then came 1848.

Ah! "Gentlemen of England who sit at home at ease!" Ah! builders-up of liberal fabrics, peacefully cemented now-a-days; too lightly you forget, methinks, how the blood of brave forefathers binds together the old foundation-stones on which you build. We are all Italian enough now, but I have heard light judgments passed, contemptuous valuations made, blame severely uttered, sneers and scoff's put upon men who were dreamers indeed, who dreamt of an united Italy, but who were ready to bleed, did bleed freely, for the dear object of their dream. Rome is not yet in Italy, but a Roman gentleman may well be proud of the practical science which enabled him to command a corps of engineers when Rome needed defence against the foreigner; and a Roman man of science need not blush to own that a foreigner's bullet on the temple has dimmed for ever the microscopic power of his bold, bright eye.

Then came partings from wife and children of tender age, and loss of property in the owner's long absence from

his home. But the weird science held him still in thrall. In 1853, in Rome once more, he was reading to the Academy of the Quirites a "Memoir on the discovery of bones and teeth of certain carnivora, to wit, the cave-bear and the cave-hyæna; together with certain wrought flints in the quaternary breccia of the Campagna of Rome."

I cannot say with what reception his paper met, but I take it the time for due appreciation was by no means come; for, though he took to collecting again, with utmost care and zeal, he held his peace again for years. When once more he broke it, it was under the following constraint: The present Ponte Molle is the old Pons Milvius; it carries across the Tiber the modern representative of the old Flaminian way. It figures in Cicero's precautionary measures against the communications of Catiline's conspirators with friends and allies outside. It was a point of much strategical importance in the contest of Belisarius with the Goths. There is a tradition, if my memory does not play me false,. that in some rush and scuffle of the later times upon it. one was swept off into the swirl below whose clutch was on the sevenbranched candlestick from Zion. I have even dared to marvel more than once, whether a steam-dredge might not rescue from the yellow mud that precious relic of an awful doom. When you have crossed this bridge on leaving Rome, before you mount the slope in front upon the Florence road, turn sharp towards the right, and a few hundred steps will bring you to a deep cutting in a considerable mound, whose base may be some 150 yards from the Tiber's present bank. Sand and gravel for mason and road-mender were the past, and are the present, objects of the cutting. But if a local geologist wished to give a stranger, who need not have a tinge of science for the purpose, a notion of the force and grandeur, and varied movement of the diluvial sweep of the Tiber after its junction with the Anio just above, here is the spot on which to give his lecture in the open air.

"You know where the Pincian hill, Sir, rises on the left bank, over there. A few cliffs intervene to hide it from us where we stand; but I can hear the big drum of the Papal Zouave band at intervals. Here, behind us, on the right bank, the stiff ridge of the Monte Mario breaks off and dips in front of the Janiculum. A broad mile and a half between the Pincian and the Monte Mario swept the grand flood of Tiber in the days when it first drained in torrent force and speed the Monte Gennaio, the Sabine, and the Umbrian range. The rush and swirl was to this side; the quiet flow, perhaps the back water, was over there upon the right bank; for those shrub-crowned cliffs, the joy of sketchers, are almost from top to bottom great layers of travertine-a quiet deposit, full of delicate freshwater shells. But look on this side, here, at the very base of the cutting, some fifteen or twenty yards beneath the surface of the vegetable soil, what a rough breccia! -what a coarse drift of gravel, of pebbles, and of stone! Then heavy layers of marl, and sand, and clay, brought by diminished water-power; then, above that again, another diluvial drift, gravel and pebbles, and stones; and both these drifts telling the tale of torrents swashing down from Jurassic Apennine formations, calcareous and silicious. specimens mingling with them by and by volcanic substances from sub-Apennine soils. Then sandy clays again, yards deep, and then, at last, above, the rich vegetable soil of Rome. Twice at least a furious giant torrent, with long dividing interval, and with recurring ages of a more sluggish silting stream, such was Father Tiber long before the shewolf found the twins in his reed beds." Among the Frenchmen of many quick wit and eye, whom the Army of Occupation brought to Rome, was a military surgeon of the name of Bleicher, a shrewd and observant student of natural science. This cutting at the Ponte Molle drew his attention: and, in the winter of 1864-5, in its lowest and therefore far most ancient gravel bed, he lighted upon a few flint-stones

which bore unquestionable markings of the hand of man. Naturally eager to make known his discovery, he not only spoke of it at Rome, but sent a pamphlet, which I have before me, to the Natural History Society of Colmar in Alsace, which is, I take it, his native town.

Thereupon outspake once more Ceselli, and recalled, to all who cared in Rome for studies such as these, his past researches and his conclusions of almost forgotten date and then it was seen that the "some thirty" specimens of which Doctor Bleicher writes, would scarcely fill a cabinet-drawer in the superb collection which, with such interruption as I have noted, Ceselli had been making almost silently for twenty years.

The fear of becoming too technical and lengthy forbids me to enter upon a precise description of the treasures of that collection, yet some few observations upon its character may be allowed.

In the first place the remote antiquity of the deposits in which the greater part of it has been found needs hardly to be noted again if the description of the Ponte Molle cutting be taken, as it fairly may, for characteristic. Both the lower and the upper gravel drift have yielded abundant specimens, and are eloquent enough upon that score when we consider the formidable layers of marl, and sand, and clay which part them from each other, and the depth at which they both lie beneath the surface of the vegetable soil. The wrought flints have been found lying twenty yards deep and more.1

1 The list of animals whose remains are found in the same deposits are-Bos Primigenius, B. Latifrons, B. Bubalus; Cervus Primigenius, C. Capreolus, C. Giganteus, C. Ramosus; Sus Palæochoerus, S. Aper, S. Priscus; Kaup's Machairodus Cultridens; Felis and Hyæna Spelæa, Gulo and Castor Spelæus; Canis Viverroeides, Scelidotherium Lophiodon Parisiense, Equus Primigenius; Hippopotamus Major, H. Medius, H. Minutus; Rhinoceros Tichorhinus, R. Incisivus, R. Megarhinus; Elephas Primigenius, E. Antiquus, E Meridionalis-with various bones of other beasts and birds, some of species as yet not clearly ascertained or described.