lage lives better, owns more squaws and more horses and goes better clad than he. Like the Teutonic chiefs of old, he ingratiates himself with his young men by making them presents, thereby often impoverishing himself. If he fails to gain their favor, they will set his authority at naught and may desert him at any moment; for the usages of his people have provided no means of enforcing his authority. Very seldom does it happen-at least, among these Western bands-that a chief attains to much power unless he is the head of a numerous family. Frequently the village is principally made up of his relatives and descendants, and the wandering community assumes much of the patriarchal character.

The Western Dahcotah have no fixed habitations. Hunting and fighting, they wander incessantly, through summer and winter. Some follow the herds of buffalo over the waste of prairie; others traverse the Black Hills, thronging, on horseback and on foot, through the dark gulfs and sombre gorges, and emerging at last upon the "parks," those beautiful but most perilous hunting-grounds. The buffalo supplies them with the necessaries of life with habitations, food, clothing, beds and fuel, strings for their bows, glue, thread, cordage, trail-ropes for their horses, coverings for their saddles, vessels to hold water, boats to cross streams and the means of purchasing all that they want from the traders. When the buffalo are extinct, they too must dwindle away.

LOVE OF WAR.

War is the breath of their nostils. Against most of the neighboring tribes they cherish a

son and inflamed by constant aggression and retaliation. Many times a year in every village the Great Spirit is called upon, fasts are made, the war-parade is celebrated and the warriors go out by handfuls at a time against the enemy. This fierce spirit awakens their most eager aspirations and calls forth their greatest energies. It is chiefly this that saves them from lethargy and utter abasement. Without its powerful stimulus they would be like the unwarlike tribes beyond the mountains, scattered among the caves and rocks like beasts and living on roots and reptiles. These latter have little of humanity except the form, but the proud and ambitious Dahcotah warrior can sometimes boast heroic virtues. It is seldom that distinction and influence are attained among them by any other course than that of arms. Their superstition, however, sometimes gives great power to those among them who pretend to the character of magicians, and their orators—such as they are-have their share of honor.

A PATRIARCH.

One morning we were summoned to the lodge of an old man, the Nestor of his tribe. We found him half sitting, half reclining, on a pile of buffalo-robes; his long hair-jetblack, though he had seen some eighty winters-hung on either side of his thin features. His gaunt but symmetrical frame did not more clearly exhibit the wreck of bygone strength than did his dark, wasted features, still prominent and commanding, bear the stamp of mental energies. Opposite the patriarch was his nephew, the young aspirant Mahto-Tatonka, and besides these there were one or two women in the lodge.

Let them perfect and elaborate their marvellous processes for making the light and the lightning their ministers for putting "a pencil of rays" into the hand of art and providing tongues of fire for the communication of intelligence; let them foretell the path of

them be satisfied with what is revealed of the mysteries of the divine nature.

ROBERT C. WINTHROP.

storm; let them hang out their gigantic pendulums and make the earth do the work of describing and measuring her own motions; let them annihilate human pain and literally "charm ache with air and agony with ether." The blessing of God will attend all their toils, and the gratitude of man will await all their triumphs.

Let them dig down into the bowels of the earth; let them rive asunder the massive rocks and unfold the history of creation as it lies written on the pages of their piled-up strata; let them gather up the fossil fragments of a lost fauna, reproducing the ancient forms which inhabited the land or the seas, bringing them together, bone to his bone, til leviathan and behemoth stand before us in bodily presence and in their full proportions, and we almost tremble lest these dry bones should live again; let them put Nature to the rack and torture her, in all her forms, to the betrayal of her inmost secrets and confidences. They need not forbear; the foundations of the round world have been laid so strong that they cannot be moved.

But let them not think by searching to find out God; let them not dream of understanding the Almighty to perfection; let them not dare apply their tests and solvents, their modes of analysis or their terms of definition, to the secrets of the spiritual kingdom; let them spare the foundations of faith. Let

ITOLINE TEMPLE OF ROME.

FROM THE GERMAN LECTURES OF BARTHOLD GEORG NIEBUHR.

THE Tarpeian rock was cut quite precip

itous-a circumstance which at present is not visible everywhere, because houses of six and seven stories in height were built there, which, when demolished in the time. of destruction, formed heaps of rubbish as high as two-thirds of the rock, and upon this rubbish houses were afterward erected. In one part of the rock there was a flight of one hundred steps, which was visible as late as the twelfth century.

The exact site of the Capitoline temple is a much-disputed question among antiquarians; it is strange that no ruins of it are remaining. The old opinion which was generally adopted until the time of Nardini is the true one: Fulvius, Marliani and Donati all agreed in stating that the temple was situated on the southern part of the hill; but Nardini perverts the whole matter by placing it on the north side, on the site now occupied by the church and convent of Araceli. The northern part formed the arx, as is clear from the history of the Gallic war; it was a very steep height—not a fortress, but only a strong point-and was occupied by houses of private citizens.

The Capitoline temple was built by the kings and completed by the first consuls; it was then consumed by fire in the time of

Sulla, but was restored and consecrated by Catulus. It was burnt down a second time under Vitellius, after which Vespasian rebuilt it with great splendor. Twelve years later fire again broke out, in an unaccountable manner, and Domitian restored it a third time. The immense splendor lavished upon it was probably the principal cause of its subsequent total destruction. It is scarcely possible to form any idea of its costly ornaments; the gates were of bronze covered with thick and solid plates of wrought gold. This gilding alone is said to have cost more than two millions sterling. Even the tiles which Genseric carried away were gilt.*

All ancient temples consist of two main parts, the cella and the space in front of the cella. The latter might be constructed in different ways; it might be sheltered by a roof or exposed to the open air, in which case it was enclosed by four walls or a portico all around. We generally imagine the altar to have been in the temple itself; in the ancient Christian churches (basilica) it always stood in the apsis, but in the temples it did not belong to the cella of the gods, but to the space in front of it. The cella was generally open, but could be closed; it was usually very small. The Roman tem

* "I will mention only one example to show how rich the Roman gildings were. In the Forum of Trajan the letters of an inscription were cut into the rock, and the letters themselves, consisting of gilt metal, were sunk into the openings. This is the method according to which the letters of inscriptions were generally put. In others the bronze letters were nailed to the wall, traces of which are

ples often were of extremely small dimensions, and at present I scarcely know a chapel of an equally small size, not even in Italy, where there are some incredibly little chapels; for there were temples of which the cella was only seven or eight feet in diameter. The cella contained the statue of the god, and for this reason it was necessary to have the altar outside in the centre of the space in front of the cella, which was either exposed to the open air or could easily be aired, because the statue, in consequence of the burnt sacrifices, might have become disfigured by smoke or otherwise, and because the bones and the like might easily have created foul air in the cella, and thus produced injurious effects. In the temple of the Capitoline Jupiter the cella was divided into three sacella, separated by walls, for Jupiter, Juno and Minerva. But this cella was only the smallest part of the building; the larger was the space before it, where the ordinary donaria were hung up, except the more precious gifts, which were kept in the favissæ, or large catacombs under the temple in the lautumiæ. It is possible that they might still be discovered; a few traces of them are visible in the garden of Duke Caffarelli. In the twelfth century, under Pope Anacletus II., large ruins still existed, but a church was erected upon them which bore the name S. Salvatoris in maximis (supply ruinis), but has been destroyed long ago. been destroyed long ago. Such names must always be attended to, for they often lead to important discoveries. The heaps of rubbish.

scholars have very ingeniously attempted from these holes of the nails to make out the whole inscription. In the Forum of Trajan a bronze letter has been found the gilding of which was valued at a ducat; all the rest had, of course, been carried off as plunder."

Translation of DR. LEONHARD SCHMITZ.

THE DEATH OF ROLAND. TRANSLATED FROM "LA CHANSON DE ROLAND."

ACCOR

66

CCORDING to the historian Eginhard (author of the "Life of Charlemagne" and the Annals of the Franks "), Roland (the Orlando of the Italian Epics) was the nephew of Charlemagne, and held one of the chief commands in his army. On the return of that great emperor with his army from Spain, in the eighth century, Roland commanded the rear-guard. In the little pass of Roncesvalles the Gascons, aided by some vagabond Moors, after allowing the main body to enter France unmolested, set upon this rear-guard while it was in the narrow pass of the mountain, hurling rocks and logs upon them, and when they were entirely overcome setting upon them and destroying them to a man. This was on the 15th of August, 778.

"THE SONG OF ROLAND,"

from which the following extract is taken, had its origin in a poem by an unknown author composed toward the end of the tenth or the beginning of the eleventh century. In its present developed form it was presented to the world about the year 1070. It abounds in the marvellous, and while as to historic facts it may not be depended on, it gives internal historical evidence of great value concerning the men and the traditions

of the time in which it was written. It is in

the oldest French, and is of importance in the study of French philology. The extract here given begins with stanza 201, and presents Roland dying after prodigies of valor.

heart. He totters to throw himself under a

pine tree, couching upon the green herb with his face against the earth. Placing beneath him his olifant and his sword (that matchless Durendal which has accomplished such wonders in war), he turns his face toward the infidel host. And why? Because he wishes. to have that told to Charlemagne and all the Frankish army. The noble count thus dies as a conqueror. He beats his breast. He repeats his mea culpa in penitence for his sins, and waves toward heaven his gauntleted hand.

CCII.

"Roland feels that his end has come. He lies there on the summit of a peak, looking toward Spain. With one hand he strikes his breast, exclaiming mea culpa: 0 my God, extend pardon with thy almighty power for my sins, for the little and for the great, for all that I have committed since the hour of my birth up to this present moment.' He extends his gauntlet upward with his right hand, while angels beat the air with their wings around him.

CCIII.

There he lies under the pine tree-the Count Roland-desiring to turn himself toward Spain. Many memories pass rapidly through his mind-of all the countries he has conquered, of lovely France and of the people his kinsfolk, of Charlemagne his soverign, who brought him up; and as he ponders he cannot restrain his tears and his sighs, nor does he wish at the last to forget himself. Anew he beseeches the pardon of God in these terms: 'O our true Father,' said he, who never liest, who brought from the dead holy Lazarus, and defended Daniel against