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But she seemed specially timid when we approached the sleeping child and began to praise it; and I saw in an instant by her answers that she was afraid of the jettatura, for to every question we asked she always took heed to say, "Benedetta sia la Madonna," to ward off the effects of the evil eye. "Whose child is it?"

we asked. “Il figlio — benedetta sia la Madonna! di mia nipote." "Is it a boy or a girl?" "Un maschio, -- benedetta sia la Madonna." It is a very pretty child." "Sta in buona salute, benedetta sia la Madonna.” Poor old creature! she was always in fear lest we might unintentionally work some evil to the little one by looking at it while it was asleep and praising it; for the peasants are as superstitious on this point as they were in ancient days, and will not willingly allow you to praise a child, particularly while sleeping, without warding off the evil eye by attributing the glory to God or the Madonna. To our good fortune the rain soon ceased, or, as our guide expressed himself, “avera spiovuto," and putting a few small silver pieces into the hand of the old woman we took our leave.

Our road now lay over a rocky bridle path, which in the rainy season was the bed of a torrent. It was sometimes broad and shallow, and sometimes narrowed down between high banks, so that we could only pass along one by one. The rain still continued to fall at intervals, and on the mountains it was pouring. We had scarcely gone on a half hour when our path began to take up its winter's trade, and to become the bed of a torrent. The muddy water drained from the hills and slopes poured into it; and our mules, oftentimes knee-deep, went plunging along and slipping over the great stones upon the bottom, over which the ever-deepening torrent whirled. It was splash, splash! jerk, jerk! all the time, and the wrenching we got in our saddles, which were quite wet through, at every step became almost intolerable. However, we kept up our spirits, and sang as we went. It was wild enough, there among the mountains, and as the afternoon began to darken under the

black clouds, the scenery grew grim and ghastly. At about six o'clock we saw Sora in the distance, and kicking well our jaded mules, who had got enough of it, we urged them into a desperate gallop up into the streets of the town, which we had scarcely set foot in when down came the rain again in a deluge. When it rains in Italy, it does it with a will, not softly sifting out its moisture over the earth, but pouring it down in torrents, as if the flood-gates of the sky were opened. The Locanda del Genio proved a good genius to us, and within ten minutes we were under its shelter and ordering our dinner. It is useless to say after such a ride that our appetites were good. What is quite as much to the purpose, our dinner was good, and our good-humored landlord, a thorough Neapolitan, was himself the cook.

The next morning (Monday) it was raining violently, and we were forced to amuse ourselves as well as we could by foraging round the town for "panni.' The costume here is by no means Greek, as Murray states. The busti is still worn, and the dress is far less picturesque than at Alatri. The women, however, deserve their reputation for beauty. At one shop where we made a stand, a crowd gathered round us, bringing us all sorts of panni and tappeti to sell. And among them were two very remarkable-looking women: one a venerable Sorina, still very beautiful in her old age, and the other a surprisingly handsome girl of about nineteen. On the whole, it seemed to us that the Alatri women had decidedly the advantage of the women of Sora in beauty.

Sora, which still retains its old Volscian name, is a clean, well-paved town of about seven thousand inhabitants, lying under a great gray mountain sown with rocks, that jut out of it like dragonteeth. Directly behind the town tower are the ruins of an old feudal castle where the Piccolomini Buconcompagni, and other Roman families, once made their stronghold; and some fragments of the Cyclopean walls which inclosed its ancient citadel still exist. In front of the town the Liris swoops by in a fierce

stream; all along its banks is a promenade, and an arched bridge is thrown across it. The town seems prosperous; it has its great piazza and church, and holds its market days like other larger places. Juvenal tells us in his third satire that in his time it was an agreeable residence:

"Si potes avelli Circensibus optima Sorae

Aut Fabratercæ domus aut Trusinone paratur; " but either the rain made it unusually dreary to us, or it is an uninteresting town in itself.

For want of better amusement, we diverted ourselves in the afternoon, all' Inglese, by scattering little coins among the people in the piazza, for the beggars thronged about us in such crowds that it was impossible in any other way to get rid of them. The late afternoon we passed around a great copper scaldino, drying ourselves and making plans for the morrow, and sipping tea out of tea-cups so preposterously small that we seemed to be playing at tea like children.

The next morning it was raining still, and we lay abed late, amusing ourselves with the absurd landscapes painted on our walls by some Sora artist. In these perhaps the proportions of the different objects were the most worthy of note, though the color was quite as original and ideal: little carriages of about an inch and a half in size were passing over bridges, while men of about four times their height were seen on very green slopes beyond, shooting with newly-in vented fire-arms at gigantic nondescript birds. The land was distinguished from the water by a broad Etruscan border, which bound its hem like a plaited ribbon, and the figures and houses were like our earliest efforts after nature.

At about twelve o'clock, while we are sitting disconsolately about our brazier, there enters the room a traveler who has come from Isola, and orders his lunch. While he is eating we fall into conversation with him about our journey. He exhibits the deepest interest, offers to make our bargain for a carriage, summons Carluccio the vetturino, with whom he discusses in our behalf, calling us

Oh,

his "friends," and claiming that as such we were entitled to a reduction of prices. Carluccio, however, does not every day catch a foreigner. He is very obstinate as to his price, and our friend, after a half hour's dispute with him and much expenditure of eloquence and logic, gives him up as an ostinato and sends him away, He then insists on going out to seek another more reasonable vetturino, and out we all go together. The new vetturino is evidently another representation of Carluccio. He demands ten piasters to carry us to Atina, thence to St. Germano, and to bring us back to Sora, and shows us two old, rickety, break-neck vehicles, which he assures us are just the thing. We complain that the carriages are not safe. per quello guarantisco io," he says. It is impossible here to have a decent vehicle; they always upset. "Why so?" we ask. He shrugs his shoulders, and the reason is conclusive. Our friend argues stoutly, having offered him eight piasters, which he refuses, turns up his lip in disdain, and invites us to a café. There he offers us coffee; we thank him, and decline his civility. At least, he says, "un po de rosolio o rhum." We again decline with all the grace we can command, but he insists, if we do not want it, at least we will take it, per ceremonia, out of favor to him; and rhum is brought and poured out to each of us. I take out my purse to pay for all, but he waves back my offer, en prince, and after spending an hour in bargaining for us insists upon paying for the rhum.

Finally we arrange with the vetturino to pay him nine piasters, including buonamano, and to take his two wonderful half-covered carrozzelli, high up with a driver's seat in front, ignorant of paint since their birth, and all broken down and ramshackly. He offers me at once a piaster as caparra, or earnest money, to close the bargain, and our friend smiles approval at the proceeding. This affair being now settled, we return to the locanda to eat yellow corn bread and wait until the morning, when we are to set forth.

W. W. Story.

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Torch-like, our garden plot illumed
The sea-like waste, when sunset gloomed;
Its homely scents the night perfumed;
And through the long bright noontide hours
Its tints outblazed the prairie-flowers:
Gay, gay and glad, that nest of ours!

Our marigolds, our poppies red,
Straggling away from their trim bed,
With phlox and larkspur rioted;
And we, fresh-hearted, every day
Found fantasies wherewith to play,
As daring and as free as they.

The drumming grouse; the whistling quail;
Wild horses prancing down the gale;

A lonely tree, that seemed a sail
Far out at sea; a cabin-spark,
Winking at us across the dark;

The wolf's cry, like a watch-dog's bark;

And sometimes sudden jet and spire
Belting the horizon in with fire,

That writhed and died in serpent-gyre,—
Without a care we saw, we heard;
To dread or pleasure lightly stirred
As, in mid-flight, the homeward bird.

The stars hung low above our roof;
Rainbow and cloud-film wrought a woof
Of glory round us, danger-proof:
It sometimes seemed as if our cot
Were the one safe, selected spot

Whereon Heaven centred steadiest thought.

Man was afar, but God close by;
And we might fold our wings, or fly,
Beneath the sun, His open eye:

With bird and breeze in brotherhood,
We simply felt and understood

That earth was fair, that He was good.

Nature, so full of secrets coy,
Wrote out the mystery of her joy
On those broad swells of Illinois;

Her virgin heart to Heaven was true.
We trusted Heaven and her, and knew
The grass was green, the skies were blue,

And life was sweet! What find we more In wearying quest from shore to shore? Ah, gracious memory! to restore

Our golden West, its sun, its showers,

And that gay little nest of ours

Dropped down among the prairie-flowers!

Lucy Larcom.

MUSICIANS AND MUSIC-LOVERS.

PERSONS Whose taste for music has brought them in contact with the more cultivated class of musicians must have noticed how difficult it is to talk sympathetically about their art with them. One can rarely broach the subject of music, about which all of us are inclined to express ourselves rather warmly, without having a certain chilling sense that the musician who happens to be present is in no wise a participant in that genial enthusiasm which, one somehow instinctively feels, ought to season the conversation. The musician, at such times, is apt to preserve a monosyllabic aloofness which gives us no very favorable idea of his temper; it seems impossible to force VOL. XLIII. NO. 256.

10

him into sympathy with our own point of view, which is generally an enthusiastic one, and we are tempted to doubt his capacity for more than a dry and purely intellectual enjoyment of his art. If we have the ill luck to fall a-rhapsodizing, in the presence of a musician, over a composition that does not happen to be his own, we are usually met with a condescending stare, which, in spite of its struggles to be polite, says as plainly as may be: "And pray what do you know about it?" It is indeed hard to have a wet blanket thus cast over our fine feelings, but did it ever occur to us how difficult it is to talk sensibly about music? Let us honestly put the question to our

selves: Have we anything to say (about the fifth symphony, for example) that is really worth listening to? It is a fact that musical literature, taken all in all, is the poorest the world possesses. When we consider that the publication of even a thoroughly good musical text-book for the use of students is a greater rarity than the discovery of a new planet, it should not be a matter of surprise that general musical literature is so poor as it is. But of all writing or talking about music, the rhapsodical is undoubtedly the flimsiest, as it is, unfortunately, the commonest. Schopenhauer says that of all human beings the most utterly undignified and pitiable is the hero struggling against inexorable fate; so there is nothing more futile than attempting to rhapsodize about music, which is it self the most incomparable of rhapsodies. Man, especially heroic man, is a very glorious creature, but he is not seen to the best advantage when battering his own head against a stone-wall. Sweet poetry and heart - stirring eloquence can illumine most things of this world with a new and heavenly light, but when they try to chant the praises of a Beethoven symphony, you have only to play a few measures of the divine music to make both poetry and eloquence seem very dark indeed. The brightest gas-flame shows black against the sun's disk.

The trouble is that people deceive themselves. Often, when they think they are talking about music, they are not talking about the music itself at all, but about how it makes them feel. And so the musician, who perceives this very plainly, finding that any discussion on the subject must needs involve certain personalities which may not be entirely palatable to his interlocutor, can only take refuge in silence or in evasive an

swers.

It is peculiarly noticeable that musicians, among themselves, say very little, as a rule, about the feelings that music calls up in them; they talk about the music itself, and such talk is rarely of a nature to be interesting to an outsider. I remember once listening to an impas

sioned performance of Schumann's overture to Manfred in company with a musician. The only thing he said after the performance was, "How much more effect Schumann has drawn from his horns here, by using the open notes, than he often does by writing chromatic passages for them!" This was a technical point. As for rhapsodizing about the spiritual essence of the music, my friend very wisely let that alone. I doubt whether, if Shakespeare were alive today, even he could write a good poem about the Manfred overture. About Music (with a capital M) it is indeed possible to speak and write in the poetic vein; but about this or that piece of music poetry can utter only dreariness or nonsense. It is both curious and instructive to note how Hector Berlioz, a man who felt music with almost frightful intensity, and whose excitement while listening to some compositions approached the pitch of frenzy, how Berlioz, in his series of essays on Beethoven's symphonies, rarely rises above the consideration of technical details.

to note

In judging music, the amateur has only his feelings to guide him. The musician is, at least while listening to a piece of music for the first time, very much in the same case. Yet, from his superior special culture, his feelings are far more trustworthy guides; beauties and imperfections strike his ear at once, and are felt by him instinctively, which it would take much study for the amateur to perceive. And by superior culture I do not mean merely superior special knowledge, but that well-digested knowledge and experience which go to form fine artistic fibre in an organization of naturally æsthetic proclivities. Real genius and original power can be more or less clearly recognized by every one. But I think that the true position which genius holds among the other qualities that go to make up what we call an artist has been very generally I will not say overrated but misunderstood. We often observe a seeming tendency in artists to speak slightingly of that heavensent power by virtue of which he who

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